June 2014

Senator wants closed captioning of in-flight movies

Sen Tom Harkin (D-IA) wants US airlines to add closed captioning to movies that are shown during long flights in an effort to aid hearing impaired airline passengers.

Sen Harkin said he was considering adding an amendment requiring the airline industry to at least study the proposal to a $54 billion funding bill for the departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development during a markup of the measure.

"I have been trying for some time to get the airlines to provide closed captions on the movies on their airplanes. I can't understand why they don't do it. It doesn't cost anything," Harkin said after the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to send the measure to the full of the floor Senate.

The chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee said that she would try to include the amendment addressing Sen Harkin's concerns in the final version of the transportation department funding measure when it reaches the Senate floor.

FCC Report and Order Addresses Spectrum Changes for Wireless Microphones

With the release on June 2 of the Federal Communications Commission’s Incentive Auction Report and Order (R&O), following the May 15 vote -- a 3-2 decision along party lines -- the long-term future looks to be full of potential changes and challenges for users of wireless microphones and in-ear monitors.

Says Roger Charlesworth, executive director, DTV Audio Group, “It’s going to be as problematic as we thought it could be. It’s still several years away, but, after the TV-channel repack, it will become virtually impossible to do large-scale production in the 600 MHz band.”

The Incentive Auction’s 600 MHz Band Plan will strip away the two TV channels that are currently reserved for wireless-microphone use. Even this 12 MHz is by itself completely inadequate for large sports and entertainment events, which routinely use 100 to 150 wireless frequencies, says Charlesworth.

“That’s more like 10 TV channels. Theoretically, there will be one naturally occurring channel available to be shared with white-space devices after the channel repack, but I think that’s a fantasy. Over the long term, there really won’t be a useful amount of spectrum available.” Manufacturers and users in the DTV Audio Group have engaged in productive discussions with the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology about potential frequency-spectrum and wireless technologies that could be used in the future.

BBG Broadcasts Reach Record Audiences

US government funded international broadcasters reached an estimated 187 million people every week in 2011, an increase of 22 million from 2013, according to new audience data being made public by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

“We are pleased that people the world over are responding in unprecedented numbers to our high-quality journalism and active audience engagement,” said BBG Chairman Walter Isaacson. “The ability of our broadcasters to inform, engage and connect audiences through traditional and social media alike lie behind these impressive results and will be essential to driving future audience reach and impact.”

The record numbers, released in the BBG Performance and Accountability Report (PAR), measure the combined audience of the Voice of America (VOA), Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio and TV Martí, Radio Free Asia (RFA) and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (Alhurra TV and Radio Sawa). The report details impact on audiences around the globe.

In 2014, there were significant audience increases in Afghanistan, where RFE/RL and VOA together reach 75% of adults weekly; in Egypt, where Alhurra TV doubled its weekly audience to 15% in tandem with the Arab Spring; and in Indonesia, where VOA’s aggressive affiliate strategy has boosted weekly audiences to some 38 million adults.

Audiences in many other strategically relevant countries held strong. In Nigeria, VOA retains its position as a news source of record with 23 million weekly listeners. In Burma, VOA and RFA reach 26% and 24% of adults, respectively, amounting to a weekly audience of 10 million.

Public piles on network neutrality debate

A blistering battle over network neutrality has the Federal Communications Commission hearing an earful -- and from more than just the usual torrent of lobbyists and lawyers who swarm the chairman’s eighth-floor office.

“Eliminating net neutrality is wrong for America,” warned Carolyn from Kennewick, Washington, one of roughly 69,000 people to write the agency so far about its proposed open Internet rules. “Do not change the Internet,” pleaded David from San Antonio. “In fairness to all users,” added Debie from Gaston, Oregon, “do not allow these gluttonous Internet providers any more corrupting power.”

Even beyond the Beltway, critics have pilloried the country’s top telecommunications regulator as it weighs new rules to ensure that all Web traffic is treated equally. The debate over net neutrality has always been controversial and complicated -- for consumers, companies and courts alike.

But Chairman Tom Wheeler’s new blueprint has triggered a reaction far more intense than what might typically greet the early stages of an FCC proceeding. Many commenters -- and members of Congress -- bemoan publicly that they have more questions than answers. They fear Chairman Wheeler’s approach might create a Web in which companies or consumers have to pay for faster access to the movies and other content they desire, though the chairman has assured otherwise. Adding to the trouble, intense lobbying from all sides of the fight only has imbued the issue with a new alarmism.

Navigating net neutrality analogies

[Commentary] In the net neutrality debate, commentators such as Susan Crawford have repeatedly called for a “public option for Internet access because Internet access is just like electricity or a road grid.” The argument typically goes along the lines that the Internet is simply a utility, like roads or electricity, so at the very least should be regulated in the same manner as these networks. Alternatively, in some utopian world, they should be owned and operated by governments -- local, state or municipal -- to ensure that they are operated in the ‘public good’.

At some point, the issue of needing only one wire to every house is brought up as some sort of justification for this stance. They also argue that, because consumers have paid a (fixed -- i.e. ‘all you can eat’) fee to connect to the network, they are entitled to the uninhibited right to consume as much content as they wish without either themselves or the providers of the content they consume being billed any further. But are the analogies really as simple and useful as these commentators imply?

Analogies comparing the Internet to electricity and roads illustrate some of the implications for regulating the Internet. But it is neither simple to consider the Internet in the same way as other utilities, nor axiomatic to invoke incomplete similarities in calls for changes to regulation or ownership. To do so denies the Internet’s unique characteristics and vastly different potential. The Internet IS different and needs to be considered on its own merits where regulation is concerned

[Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation and a faculty member of Victoria Business School]

The one thing Netflix and Verizon can agree on when it comes to the open Internet

If you've been following the debate about network neutrality, you know that federal regulators have proposed some pretty controversial rules for the Web. These proposed regulations mainly deal with the so-called "last mile" -- the connection between your house and your Internet provider, like Verizon or Comcast. The question here is: should the same openness rules for last-mile connections also apply to the network relationships -- also known as "interconnection" -- between companies in other parts of the Internet?

The Federal Communications Commission views the two as entirely different issues, and the agency's network neutrality proposal reflects that. If the FCC someday develops a policy on connections outside the last mile at all, it'll be done separately from net neutrality.

Surprisingly, there's a lot more agreement on this issue than you might think between companies like Netflix and Verizon. Even though the two firms advocate different policies, in some ways both believe that the government should treat the backbone like it treats the last mile. A top Verizon executive recently made this argument on C-SPAN, saying the whole debate about Internet fast lanes is a red herring when we already allow payments for better performance in the backbone.

Netflix uses much the same logic, but to make the opposite point: If the FCC believes the last mile should be kept free of ISP interference, the same should hold true for the backbone, where Verizon is extracting payments from Netflix. Netflix told the Post that more than 99 percent of its interconnection agreements involve no money.

Analyst: A Sprint and T-Mobile merger has a 10 percent chance of approval

That Sprint wants to buy T-Mobile is pretty much the telecommunications industry's worst-kept secret right now. The two companies reportedly turned a corner in their negotiations: Reports suggest the two companies have settled on general terms for a deal, around $40 a share -- or about $32 billion -- with a $1 billion break-up fee if the merger doesn't go through.

The feds seem largely skeptical of yet another tech merger on top of Comcast-Time Warner Cable and AT&T-DirecTV. In fact, it's such a long shot that a top telecom analyst thinks there's only a 10 percent chance that the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission will give Sprint-T-Mobile a green light.

"Softbank has apparently concluded that its odds of success are greater now -- while the FCC and DOJ are simultaneously reviewing Comcast/TWC and AT&T/DTV -- than they would be later," New York-based Moffett Nathanson wrote in a research note. "But realpolitik says otherwise. Approving all three would be untenable for the left. Rejecting all three would be untenable for the right. At least one of the three would have to be rejected. And it's easy to see which one of the three it would be."

Comcast Files Spin-Off Application With FCC

Comcast has now filed both parts of its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable at the Federal Communications Commission and the heavy lifting on vetting the deal, and comments about the deal, can begin in earnest.

Comcast filed with the FCC the public interest statement, exhibits and license applications for its spin-off of 3.9 million customers, which it promised to do to try and assuage concerns about the size of the combined company. A key public interest point the company makes is how the creation of the new company, SpinCo, will bring more competition to the marketplace--while the TWC merger will not reduce it, Comcast has already pointed out.

"The SpinCo transaction will create substantial public interest benefits," says Comcast. "While SpinCo will be a new company, it will be larger than all but four other cable companies in the United States and will have a tightly integrated, contiguous service footprint. This scale and geographic scope will facilitate investment in innovation and high-quality services within SpinCo’s footprint. From the outset, SpinCo will be well positioned to compete aggressively in the highly competitive markets for high-speed Internet, voice, and video services."

Comcast will not own shares in either Charter or SpinCo after the closing of the spin-off, the company says, and for the first eight years would not be allowed to own more than 1% of SpinCo shares. "In short, SpinCo will be entirely independent of Comcast," the cable operator told the FCC.

Privacy groups push Senate for stronger NSA reforms

A coalition of privacy groups is pushing the Senate to pass a stronger surveillance reform bill than the USA Freedom House that recently sailed through the House.

“The result we seek is legislation that will protect constitutional and human rights and assure necessary oversight of the intelligence community’s collection of individuals’ personal information,” 30 groups said in a letter to leadership.

Signatories include the ACLU, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Demand Progress and the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is slated to take up the House bill, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has said he will turn his attention to NSA reform later this summer with an eye on strengthening privacy provisions in the House-passed bill.

In their letter to Senate leadership and the leadership of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees, the privacy groups pointed to eleventh-hour changes to the USA Freedom Act in the House before the final vote on the bill.

Edward Snowden, a year on: reformers frustrated as NSA preserves its power

In May 2013, it looked as though privacy advocates had scored a tenuous victory against the widespread surveillance practices exposed by Edward Snowden a year ago. Then came a resurgent intelligence community, armed with pens, and dry, legislative language.

During several protracted sessions in secure rooms in the Capitol, intelligence veterans, often backed by the congressional leadership, sparred with House aides to abridge privacy and transparency provisions contained in the first bill rolling back National Security Agency spying powers in more than three decades.

The episode shows the lengths to which the architects and advocates of bulk surveillance have gone to preserve their authorities in the time since the Guardian, 12 months ago, began disclosing the scope of NSA data collection. That resistance to change, aided by the power and trust enjoyed by the NSA on Capitol Hill, helps explain why most NSA powers remain intact a year after the largest leak in the agency's history.

"This is not how American democracy is supposed to work," said Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), who had supported the bill but ultimately voted against it.

Senior leaders at the agency say that Snowden thrust them into a new era. James Clapper, the director of US national intelligence, said the intelligence agencies need to grant a greater degree of transparency or risk losing public confidence permanently. But exactly one year on, the agency, under public pressure, has divested itself of exactly one activity, the bulk collection of US phone data.

Yet while the NSA will not itself continue to gather the data directly, the major post-Snowden legislative fix grants the agency wide berth in accessing and searching large volumes of phone records, and even wider latitude in collecting other kinds of data. There are no other mandated reforms. President Barack Obama in January added restrictions on the dissemination of non-Americans' "personal information", but that has not been codified in law.

The coalition of large Internet firms demanding greater safeguards around their customers’ email, browsing and search histories have received nothing from the government for their effort.

A recent move to block the NSA from undermining commercial encryption and amassing a library of software vulnerabilities never received a legislative hearing. While there have also been significant commercial changes brought by companies that fear the revelations imperiling their businesses -- Google's Gmail service broadened its use of encryption, will soon present end-to-end encryption for its Chrome browser; and after the Washington Post revealed that the NSA intercepts data transiting between Google and Yahoo storage centers, Google expanded encryption for Gmail data flowing across the Internet and Yahoo implemented default email encryption -- the bitterest disappointment has been the diminished ambitions for surveillance reform contained in the USA Freedom Act.

"That," Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU’s deputy legal director, said, "was a very frustrating process for us."

Benton

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