March 2015

Publishers and adblockers are in a battle for online advertising

Electronic warfare has broken out between Internet users and the $120 billion online advertising industry. On one side are the ad blockers. More than 140 million people, or 5 percent of the world’s online population, are estimated to use software such as Adblock Edge and Adblock Plus to prevent advertising from appearing on web pages. A study by Adobe and PageFair found that the number of people using blocking software rose 70 percent in 2014. On the other side are media groups including Google and Germany’s RTL that depend on advertising. They are fighting back against the blockers using various weapons, including cash and the courts.

With billions of dollars at stake, some websites are deploying technology to sneak round adblocking software, prompting an online arms race. “Ad blocking is beginning to have a material impact on publisher revenues,” says Mike Zaneis, general counsel at the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a US industry body whose members account for four-fifths of the country’s online advertising market. “The free internet that consumers demand cannot coexist with the continued proliferation of ad blockers,” he says, adding that publishers are increasingly looking for “aggressive solutions”.

Trans-Pacific Partnership treaty will help neither workers nor consumers

[Commentary] Our global trade and tax policies have been and still are controlled by corporate and financial interests. They, not workers or consumers, write the rules. In the early post-World War II years, trade treaties were focused on lowering tariffs. In theory at least, workers in both nations might benefit from larger markets and increased trade. But now a significant portion of our trade is intra-corporate trade, an exchange between one branch of a multinational and another. How do trade treaties that undermine workers, cost jobs and create a private, corporate global arbitration system get through Congress? The answer, of course, is the corporate lobby that writes the rules mobilizes big money and armies of lobbyists to drive them through. Most Democrats oppose the treaties, but the Wall Street wing of the party tends to support them. Conservatives would naturally oppose secretive global panels that can force taxpayers to pay damages to companies, but the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable round up votes to get the treaty passed.

Access denied: Reporters say federal officials, data increasingly off limits

Stacey Singer, a health reporter for the Palm Beach Post in Florida, was perusing a medical journal in 2012 when she came across something startling: a federal epidemiologist’s report about a tuberculosis outbreak in the Jacksonville area. Singer promptly began pursuing the story. But when she started seeking official comment about the little-reported outbreak, the doors began closing.

The stories aren’t always as consequential or as dramatic as a TB outbreak, but Singer’s experience is shared by virtually every journalist on the government beat, from the White House on down. They can recite tales with similar outlines: An agency spokesman -- frequently a political appointee -- rejects the reporter’s request for interviews, offers partial or nonresponsive replies, or delays responding at all until after the journalist’s deadline has passed. Interview requests that are granted are closely monitored, reporters say, with a press “minder” sitting in. Some agencies require reporters to pose their questions by e-mail, a tactic that enables officials to carefully craft and vet their replies. Tensions between reporters and public information officers -- “hacks and flacks” in the vernacular -- aren’t new, of course. Reporters have always wanted more information than government officials have been willing or able to give. But journalists say the lid has grown tighter under the Obama Administration, whose chief executive promised in 2009 to bring “an unprecedented level of openness” to the federal government.

Jeb Bush ‘nervous’ about NSA attacks

Former-Gov Jeb Bush (R-FL) said that he’s “nervous” about excess criticism of the nation’s intelligence agencies. Shortly after news broke that two people had tried to ram the gates of the National Security Agency’s headquarters in suburban Maryland, Bush rose to the defense of the agency and its mission. “I’ve always been nervous about the attacks on the NSA, and somehow that we’re losing our freedoms by keeping the homeland safe,” Bush said. “I think we need to be really vigilant about that.”

Bush has been a staunch defender of the NSA, which grew in stature during the George W. Bush Administration in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The president has to lead, has to explain to people that he’s actually enhanced the intelligence capabilities in many ways, because the technology has gotten better,” Bush said. “But he never defends it; he never explains it. He never tries to persuade people that their civil liberties are being protected by the systems we have in place,” he added. “If people knew that, I don’t think there would be any doubt that they’d want to have the ability to identify people from the outside that may be trying to coordinate with people on the inside.”

DARPA’s plan for US military superiority in cyberspace

The US military will never be completely hack proof, admits the director of the Pentagon’s futuristic research arm. “Invulnerability is not a future state,” says Arati Prabhakar, head of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA’s mission is to develop breakthrough technologies to help the US military. It’s the influential agency that fueled the creation of the Internet in the first place. Yet the asymmetrical nature of digital conflict means increasingly sophisticated hackers will always pose a threat, no matter how advanced the solutions become -- even the ones DARPA is developing. That’s because “human beings are so creative,” Dr. Prabhakar said. This, however, is not stopping DARPA from trying to shift the balance. “We have to change the cybersecurity game we’re in right now,” Prabhakar said. “All the prowess of our conventional capabilities is meaningless in this environment.”

It’s a critical problem for the US military. Its superiority, military leaders lament, does not carry over from the traditional battlefield into cyberspace. Several in-progress DARPA projects could ultimately give the US military the upper hand, Prabhakar said. A program known as Plan X, for example, is designed to give the military’s cyberwarriors greater visibility into their networks. It would translate attacks into smart display graphics, so they’re harder to miss, and streamline the military’s ability to defend against them by building an “app store” where cyberoperations could stored, ready to deploy. Prabhakar is optimistic that the US military can ultimately develop an edge over other countries, even if it will never be totally impenetrable.

'Trust me' is a bad model for Internet governance

[Commentary] When the US government announced in 2014 that it was relinquishing its historic oversight of the Domain Name System (DNS) -- the technical architecture of the Internet -- stakeholders began working feverishly to construct a secure and stable model for multi-stakeholder Internet governance. The core challenge is that without continued oversight by the US government, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) -- the nonprofit organization responsible for managing these key Internet functions -- would be operating independently without serious checks and balances. To address this problem, concerned stakeholders have been working to reform ICANN's system of governance to ensure it is fully accountable to the Internet community.

With the clock ticking, it is crucial that these reforms move forward so that the transition can succeed. Congress should vigorously continue its oversight of this transition process to make sure these principles do not get brushed aside by ICANN's leadership. Only by putting oversight, accountability and transparency into the DNA of ICANN can we hope to see the multi-stakeholder vision of Internet governance succeed in the years to come.

[Daniel Castro is the vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

Young People Watch More Than 22 Hours of Online Video a Week

According to the third annual Acumen Report, watching content online instead of on TV is the new normal for young millennials and even younger Gen Zers. Just how much digital video are they watching? The average survey taker viewed 11.3 hours of free online video (on sites like YouTube) and 10.8 hours of subscription video (on sites like Netflix) for a staggering total of 22 hours a week. By comparison, that same survey group -- 1,350 people between the ages of 13 and 24 -- viewed an average 8.3 hours of scheduled linear TV content. And of that, 6.4 hours happened online.

While almost everyone surveyed said they watch digital content, a little more than half reported watching TV. Whether you're a marketer or a content creator, the results magnify the growing influence of these millennial consumers and further affirmation that traditional media is falling short with this audience," said Andy Tu, evp of marketing for Defy Media, an online video production house that commissioned the study. Sixty-two percent of all respondents said they prefer to consume video content digitally. Overall, more young people said they like and relate to content on digital platforms than on TV. A little under 70 percent said they relax by watching digital content, as opposed to 47 percent who relied on television.

The Critical Need for Video Literacy

[Commentary] Video is a language. It is a way that we communicate ideas with one another. And, rather remarkably, it often transcends language and cultural barriers in a way that books and writing don't. So the notion of video literacy is appealing for many reasons. But being video literate is more than just picking up a camera, pointing it a something and pushing the record button. As with the world of print, there is a world of sophistication (and rules) to telling stories in video. These are not hard to learn, but as with any language, it takes a bit of work and then a bit of practice. It used to be that owning a video camera was a bit of an anomaly. If you did own one, it was that thing that you pulled out of the closet for birthdays and trips. No more. Now, every smart phone (and there are more than 2 billion of them in the world) is a video camera. It is a pencil and paper, with a world-wide audience. But you have to learn how to 'write' with it, if you want to get your ideas across.
[Michael Rosenblum is a video producer, and founder of Current TV]

National Baseball Hall of Fame's App Pings You With Location-Based Facts

With Major League Baseball season less than a week away, the National Baseball Hall of Fame is tapping into sports fans' addiction to their smartphones in 2015. The Hall of Fame is launching a mobile app dubbed The Beacon that gives users a virtual tour of the museum in Cooperstown (NY). Created with agency Sullivan, the app uses location to serve up baseball facts through Foursquare-style check-ins. For example, someone who checks in near the former grounds of Brooklyn's Ebbets Field will get information about Jackie Robinson's historic MLB debut in 1947.

"The Beacon aims to bring the rich national history of baseball to fans locally and ultimately inspire a trip to the institution in Cooperstown and its surrounding area," said Alison Grippo, Sullivan's principal of digital strategy. The app also uses GPS and location to drive people to the museum. A road trip feature lets people complete tasks to earn points that can be redeemed for discounts at the museum. Once someone checks in to every spot on a road trip, he or she receives a virtual pennant.

ACA to FCC: Deny NAB/PK Effective Competition Petition

The American Cable Association has told the Federal Communications Commission that slowing or narrowing its proceeding on potentially reversing the presumption that broadcasters are not subject to effective competition unless proved otherwise is an "extraordinary and disruptive motion" that should be denied. The National Association of Broadcasters has teamed with Public Knowledge to ask that the FCC think harder about the proposal and collect more input. The FCC has proposed fulfilling a statutory mandate to relieve smaller operators of the burdens of the process by proposing to reverse the presumption for all operators, given the fact that virtually all such petitions are granted and without challenge, and given that Dish and DirecTV provide video competition nationwide.

Benton

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