June 2014

The Federal Communications Commission has approved a technical change in the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act (CALM Act) that it says could further reduce the volume of TV commercials.

It has given stakeholders a year to comply with the new standard, as the National Association of Broadcasters had requested. The Act requires broadcasters and multichannel video programming distributors (MVPDs) to monitor and control the volume of commercials to make sure they are not louder than the surrounding programming.

The FCC received more than 20,000 complaints about loud commercials in the year since the FCC began enforcing the CALM Act in December 2012, but the good news was that the complaints have been on a steep downward curve, from 4,777 in December 2012 to 656.

Larger operators must conduct annual spot-checking of commercials for the first two years, after which that requirement sunsets. Smaller operators and stations don't have to spot check, but stations and operators of all sizes must test in response to a "pattern or trend" of complaints -- rather than, say, a single complaint -- involving their station or system.

Net neutrality advocates are ramping up pressure on a top Democrat to support stronger regulations on Internet providers. National progressive groups urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to get behind reclassifying broadband as a utility -- a move that would give regulators at the Federal Communications Commission much greater authority to ban Internet fast lanes.

The liberal groups argued in a letter that allowing the FCC's current net neutrality proposal to move forward would make it harder for activists, artists and journalists to do their jobs.

"We urge you to -- as soon as possible -- publicly call on Chairman [Tom] Wheeler and his FCC to reclassify Internet service as a telecommunications service under Title II and implement strong net neutrality regulations that will ban all unreasonable technical discrimination (and define pay-to-play arrangements as inherently unreasonable)," according to the letter, which was signed by groups including MoveOn, CREDO, SumofUS and Daily Kos.

Altogether, the letter's signatories claim to represent 10 million people -- and 100,000 of Reid's own Nevada constituents. It's not hard to see why they'd target Sen Reid. As the head of his party in the Senate, Reid has the power to set the body's agenda, and pressuring the Senate leadership might counter other lawmakers who've been openly resisted the idea of reclassification.

[Commentary] There is a subversive plan to slow the Internet, and it must be stopped. The new plan, now being contemplated by the Federal Communications Commission, could alter the Internet forever.

It could slow speeds, limit the content and applications consumers can access, and create a two-tier system that favors some companies over others. The plan even has a code name: it’s called “Title II.” For all of Title II’s potential for catastrophic harm, it offers no upside, even for its most hearty proponents. The bête noire of the neutrality fundamentalists is so called “paid priority,” where some bits (like high resolution videos that require fast and reliable delivery) are prioritized over mundane applications (like data backups or routine emails, where it doesn’t matter if the bits arrive now or a few milliseconds later).

But common carrier regulation of phones or trains (of which Title II is an example) explicitly allows service discrimination (paid priority) as long as all similarly situated customers get the same offer. Title II thus doesn’t even solve the supposed problem — but would cause new problems of its own. Far from a burden on small Web start-ups, paid priority could be an inexpensive and crucial tool. Behemoths like Google, Amazon, and Netflix have built out vast networks and content delivery systems of their own -- to speed the delivery of their own bits.

But small firms focusing on a first time product don’t have the wherewithal to match that physical infrastructure. They often use CDNs to deliver static content. But for other real-time services like gaming, or education, or health care, they may prefer to pay a network provider to move their bits and provide their customers with a first-rate experience. Prohibiting paid priority and other network services could thus harm start-ups and reinforce the big Web firms’ position of dominance.

[Swanson writes for Forbes]

A federal judge in Idaho upheld the National Security Agency's controversial phone surveillance program. But Judge B. Lynn Winmill seemed to invite the Supreme Court to overturn his decision.

He suggested that the program, which collects data on millions of US phone calls, likely violates the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures.

Judge Winmill upheld the program because he concluded that his hands were tied by current Supreme Court precedent. He pointed to the Supreme Court's 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, which held that people don't expect privacy in the phone numbers they dial.