February 2015

Clinton is looking for a middle ground on encryption that experts say doesn’t exist

Hillary Clinton avoided taking a position on how easy it should be for law enforcement to access people's encrypted e-mails and texts during an interview at a women's leadership conference in Silicon Valley, calling the debate a "classic hard choice." Clinton said people have a “legitimate right to privacy,” but she argued that the encryption debate was about finding "the right balance” -- a balance Clinton said she hasn't figured out yet. But there is already a dialogue going on between the Obama Administration and leaders of the technology industry -- and much of it is coming down to the technicalities of how encryption works more than an ideological debate over privacy and national security.

"We had this fight almost 20 years ago, and we thought we'd answered the question -- that the benefits of strong encryption outweigh the needs for tap-ability," said Alan Davidson, vice president and director of New America's Open Technology Institute. But political leaders appear to be re-hashing the same debate in search of a compromise solution that technical experts say does not exist. "Everybody in Washington loves the notion of a middle ground, but the solution people are looking for just doesn't exist," Davidson said. "You can't build a strong encryption system with guaranteed tap-ability."

Diversity: Tech companies need new strategies

[Commentary] The lack of diversity in the tech industry isn't new, but the frank discussion about the nature and severity of the problem is. Growing transparency around workforce demographics and high-profile harassment and discrimination lawsuits have made "diversity in tech" a topic that's impossible to ignore. The question now is whether tech companies will actually do what it takes to become more diverse. Tech companies that want to become more diverse and inclusive should abandon outdated, ineffective strategies and instead rely on social science research to find strategies that work.

Here are a few suggestions:

Develop effective training.
Create better tools for recruiting and hiring candidates.
Address bias in the performance management processes.
Create a sustainable approach to work-life integration.

[Joelle Emerson is the co-founder and CEO of Paradigm]

FCC should create a 40 MHz reserve for 600 MHz auction, public interest groups urge

A coalition of public interest groups urged the Federal Communications Commission to adopt a spectrum reserve of at least 40 MHz for the 600 MHz incentive auction, one of several rule changes they are suggesting aimed at helping smaller carriers acquire spectrum.

In a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and his fellow commissioners, the groups said that the AWS-3 auction strengthened the position of AT&T and Verizon Wireless and that, now, smaller carriers need a leg up to compete. The groups also want the FCC to move quickly to free up the 3.5 GHz band for mobile broadband. The groups noted that the AWS-3 auction, which did not have any bidding restrictions, resulted in AT&T and Verizon securing 20 MHz of paired AWS-3 spectrum in most major markets, "and left the rest of the industry with only a smattering of paired blocks and 15 MHz of low-value, unpaired, uplink spectrum."

The groups writing to the FCC included the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation, Public Knowledge, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Engine, Center for Media Justice, Common Cause, the Writers Guild of America - West, the Institute for Local Self Reliance and the Benton Foundation.

For five years, FCC Commissioner Clyburn held firm in network neutrality fight

Just one member of the Federal Communications Commission who will vote on network neutrality on Feb 26 was on the FCC the last time it tackled the issue in 2010. FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn took office in August 2009 and soon thereafter argued that the FCC should pass a far stronger version of net neutrality than it ultimately approved.

She said that rules preventing broadband providers from interfering with Internet traffic should apply fully to wireless carriers and that the FCC should use its Title II authority to regulate broadband providers as common carriers. Julius Genachowski, the FCC Chairman at the time, ultimately pushed a plan that did not fully apply to wireless and relied on the commission's weaker authority under Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act. Commissioner Clyburn voted in favor of the plan to get rules in place but made it clear she wanted a stronger net neutrality regime. Commissioner Clyburn prediction that using the FCC's weaker authority could lead to failure in court proved correct. This time around, Commissioner Clyburn wants to make sure strong rules are passed without relying on questionable legal grounds.

FCC Seeks Comment for Report Required by the STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014

The Federal Communications Commission’s Media Bureau seeks data, information, and comment for use in preparation of a report required by the STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014.

Section 109 of STELAR requires the FCC to submit a report on designated market areas and considerations for fostering increased localism to the appropriate congressional committees not later than 18 months after the date of enactment (i.e., June 3, 2016).To prepare the STELAR Section 109 Report, the Bureau seeks comment on the appropriate methodologies and data sources, as well as the submission of data and information, to analyze the extent consumers have access to broadcast stations located outside their local markets. We ask commenters to identify technologically and economically feasible alternatives to designated market areas that would provide more programming options and the potential impact of such alternatives on localism and on broadcast television locally, regionally, and nationally. We also ask commenters to provide recommendations that would foster localism in counties served by out-of-State DMAs and the impact of such recommendations.

Citing encryption, FBI lobbying to keep phone metadata spying powers

The law that the Obama Administration cites to allow bulk telephone metadata collection expires on June 1, and the FBI has already begun lobbying to keep Section 215 of the Patriot Act from expiring. Bad guys "going dark" using encryption, the FBI says, is one of the reasons why the government needs to collect the metadata of every phone call made to and from the United States.

Robert Anderson, the FBI’s chief of the Criminal, Cyber, Response, and Services Branch, said that the Patriot Act is necessary because encrypted communications are becoming more commonplace in the wake of the Edward Snowden disclosures. "In the last two to three years, that whole ‘going dark’ thing went from a crawl to a flat-out sprint because the technology is changing so rapidly," Anderson said. Joseph Demarest, assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division, said that if Section 215 expires, "Obviously it’s going to impact what we do as an organization and certainly on cyber." The comments, especially as they relate to encryption, are part of a growing chorus of calls -- from as high as President Barack Obama -- that the government needs Silicon Valley's assistance for backdoors into encrypted tech products like the iPhone.

Charting a Course to Carrier-Grade Wi-Fi

Cablevision’s recently launched voice-over-Wi-Fi service, Freewheel, is unlikely to be the last such offering, as cable operators continue to add hotspots in their service territories and develop new ways to monetize Wi-Fi technology. To do that, they need to up their game in terms of the reliability, strength and availability of Wi-Fi access.

Many operators are moving in that direction, but it’s going to take a couple of years for carrier-grade Wi-Fi to be ubiquitously deployed across the country, according to several experts in the field. A recent survey from Real Wireless for billings and operations software vendor Amdocs found that carrier-grade Wi-Fi will grow from 14 percent in 2014 to 85 percent by the end of 2016. Some 85 percent of operator respondents said they plan to invest in carrier-grade Wi-Fi by that time.

Comcast’s NBCUniversal Calls for Better Audience Measurement

Some 70 percent of views garnered by NBC’s “The Tonight Show” starring Jimmy Fallon occur online and aren’t counted in traditional TV ratings, said Steve Burke, chief executive of Comcast’s NBCUniversal, underscoring the pressures facing TV networks across the board. Burke added his voice to the chorus of media executives calling for measurement to improve as major television networks experience ratings declines.

Fallon’s show releases video clips from each night on YouTube, and many clips have gone viral as people shared them on social media. Burke said the majority of those views aren’t monetized by NBCU, Comcast’s entertainment arm. "I think there clearly is room for improvement,” Burke said. “That is not going to last forever.” Despite Burke’s comments about Fallon’s show, the broadcast-TV segment that houses NBC reported relatively better results, buoyed by strong ratings in 2014 at NBC. Revenue at the segment grew 4.8 percent, and operating cash flow rose to $230 million, from $140 million in the year-ago quarter.

The Near-Death Experience of Linear Television

[Commentary] In 2008, when I argued the case for linear TV, I was peppered with skepticism from friends and critics alike, who thought my wild opinions recalled a time when those slow to adapt rebelled against the heretical notion that Earth actually revolved around the sun. Six years later, it turns out it not only is very much alive, but poised for more growth.

Cord cutting, despite all of the dire predictions by producers, programmers and CTOs alike, did not actually commence in earnest until 2013, when for the first time there was a net loss of cable subscribers. None of this is a repudiation of linear TV, however, but rather a response to programming bundles imposed by the operators and networks alike. Consumers are tired of paying up to $200 a month for five times more content than they actually consume.Linear, in my opinion, is here to stay. New upfront deals offered by streaming services such as Amazon for network content are mitigating some of the financial risks by creating a new guaranteed revenue stream, thereby lessening the impact of Nielsen ratings. Subscription video on demand services, in turn, rely heavily on the television networks for their promotional muscle, which gives the show new life after first airing. Consumers can catch-up or binge as they like, fueling the popularity of the show in real time. The end result will be digital détente -- peaceful “co-op-etition,” and the ultimate in choice for the consumer.

[Ron Quartararo is director, business development, communications, media and entertainment for Hitachi Data Systems]

Pandora Dealt Setback in Turtles Lawsuit

Pandora's effort to move the Flo & Eddie lawsuit, on whether the streaming radio service has to pay master recording performance royalties for pre-1972 material, out of the courtroom of Judge Philip Gutierrez played out as expected when the judge denied the company's motion to dismiss.

Pandora filed the anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion to dismiss in the US District Court of Central California because Gutierrez previously ruled in favor of Flo & Eddie in a similar lawsuit against SiriusXM. In that suit, the judge said the Turtles songs were protected by California state copyright law. Flo & Eddie, aka Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan, were the singers of the Turtles.

Benton

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