On June 10, 2014, the Federal Communications Commission mailed the second of its Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) audit letters for 2014 to randomly selected radio stations. The FCC annually audits the EEO programs of randomly selected broadcast licensees. Each year, approximately five percent of all radio and television stations are selected for EEO audits.
Dish wants to make inroads with people who are fed up with traditional pay TV with its upcoming internet-based TV service, said the company’s GM of Interactive and Advanced TV Adam Lowy.
“Cord cutters, cord nevers and what we call cord haters” will be the target audience of the new service, said Lowy. Lowy said that his company is talking to all the networks that it also carries over its traditional satellite service about licensing their content for the new venture. Dish is currently working on setting up technical infrastructure to launch the service, which will initially be based on Dish’s existing infrastructure, but eventually be moved over to an all-IP infrastructure, Lowy said. “All this is being moved very fast,” he added.
[Commentary] To gain approval, Sprint and T-Mobile will almost surely have to make some substantial concessions to appease regulators. And those concessions may change the landscape of the mobile industry in some substantial ways. Some of the most intriguing possibilities include:
In the wake of the Supreme Court's refusal to take up a case involving a New York Times reporters refusal to identify his sources, a coalition of more than 70 news organizations and press freedom groups is urging the Senate to take prompt action to pass a shield law that would make it easier for journalists to protect their sources.
"Given Risen’s case, as well as last year’s revelations that the Justice Department secretly obtained the communications records of AP and Fox News reporters, a federal shield law is needed now more than ever to prevent government overreach and protect the public’s right to know," the news outlets and press advocates wrote. "The ability to protect confidential sources is the oxygen that investigative reporting needs to survive. Without it, journalists cannot provide the public they serve with the spirited, independent journalism that is the lifeblood of American debate and democracy."
The letter asks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to schedule a floor vote soon on the Free Flow of Information Act, which passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last September.
[Commentary] Digital ownership is important because increasingly when you “buy” a digital thing online you don’t really own it. Instead, you click through some long terms of service agreement and “license” it. That distinction matters -- if you are licensing something you are not really buying it, and if you are not really buying it you don’t really own it. Non-ownership plays itself out in all sorts of ways. Because you don’t own those digital goods, you may not be able to lend them to someone else, or resell them, or even pass them on to your heirs when you die. Similarly, because you are only leasing them, rightsholders can reach out after the “sale” and simply make the files disappear. When you are only renting something, the rightsholder can take it away and make it disappear at any time for any reason. That gives them the power to alter their own history.
Amazon rolled out its rumored streaming music service for Prime members. Prime Music, included with the $99/year Prime membership, promises over a million songs from about 90,000 albums and hundreds of pre-made playlists. There’s little new music, and so far one of the three major record labels -- Universal Music Group -- isn’t participating. Prime Music is ad-free and a perk Prime members didn’t have before. It’s not available as a standalone paid service. Amazon is also touting Prime Music’s advantages over non-Spotify competitors, like Pandora: “Choose exactly what you want to listen to, skip as many songs as you want, repeat your favorite song over and over again, or download music to your phone or tablet to listen offline.”
Verizon has filed an amicus brief in support of Microsoft’s challenge in US federal district court to a US government warrant seeking digital information stored overseas.
“The magistrate’s decision in this case allowed the United States government to use a warrant to compel Microsoft to produce a customer’s e-mail stored overseas. Verizon believes that decision was wrong: The law does not allow the U.S. government to use a search warrant to obtain customer data stored overseas. We think the decision was wrong when applied to an e-mail service provider; it would be even more wrong to apply the same logic to customers’ data stored in cloud data centers outside the United States. We noted in our 2013 Transparency Report that we had not received any demands for customers’ data stored in data centers outside the United States, and we do not expect to receive these types of demands. So we are filing this brief to try to avoid any unnecessary confusion or concern on behalf of customers outside the U.S. who store their data in cloud data centers outside the U.S.”
Marc Touitou is hopeful that what’s starting as a small Wi-Fi hot spot on Market Street in San Francisco will soon become the standard for cities around the world. So what is it about this hotspot stretch that has Touitou, San Francisco’s CIO, so excited? “It’s about you being safe in the street!” Touitou said with a huge smile in his voice. “With all the data breaches you have seen, it becomes increasingly important to protect our residents." Touitou calls it Hotspot 2.0.
About 50,000 Comcast Internet customers in Houston became part of a massive public Wi-Fi hotspot network, a number that will swell to 150,000 by the end of June.
Comcast began activating a feature in its Arris Touchstone Telephony Wireless Gateway Modems that sets up a public Wi-Fi hotspot alongside a residential Internet customer’s private home network. Other Comcast customers will be able to log in to the hotspots for free using a computer, smartphone or other mobile device. And once they log into one, they’ll be automatically logged in to others when their devices “see” them. Comcast says the hotspot -- which appears as “xfinitywifi” to those searching for a Wi-Fi connection -- is completely separate from the home network. Someone accessing the Net through the hotspot can’t get to the computers, printers, mobile devices, streaming boxes and more sitting on the host network. Comcast officials also say that people using the Internet via the hotspot won’t slow down Internet access on the home network. Additional capacity is allotted to handle the bandwidth.
Tired of crappy cell-phone service at home? Trying putting a cell tower in your living room. That's the solution a number of wireless companies have begun offering for homes and businesses, using "small cell" technology to fill holes in their coverage and ease network congestion.
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