April 2015

Sen Paul seeks to block Internet rules

Sen Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced a resolution to block net neutrality rules approved by the Federal Communications Commission in February. Sen Paul, a recently announced GOP presidential candidate, said he does not want to see the government regulating the Internet. “This regulation by the FCC is a textbook example of Washington’s desire to regulate anything and everything, and will do nothing more than wrap the Internet in red-tape,” he said. More than a dozen House lawmakers have already sponsored a nearly identical resolution to block the FCC’s new order, which would reclassify broadband Internet access under authority governing traditional telephones.

The seven-line resolution said “Congress disapproves” of the new rules and that they “shall have no force or effect.” The resolution under the Congressional Review Act would provide for an up-or-down vote in the Senate, allowing it to avoid a filibuster. But the resolution has little chance of getting past a Presidential veto.

ALEC-based restrictions on city-run Internet at risk after FCC ruling

States that restrict municipalities from offering Internet service to residents could see their laws overturned if they based the bills on a model offered by a conservative legislative group. Many of the provisions in the model legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) were incorporated into a North Carolina law that was knocked down by the Federal Communications Commission in February. ALEC, a self-described free-market think tank made up of mostly Republican state lawmakers and funded by corporations and trade groups, created a model municipal broadband law in 2002 that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for cities to build their own networks. The goal of the legislation is to keep cities from what the group views as unfairly competing with large Internet providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T. All four companies have donated to ALEC and some executives have served in leadership positions on committees and boards.

About 20 states have passed laws that either outright ban cities from building networks or places requirements that make it almost financially impossible to develop one. Many of the laws have provisions that are similar to ALEC’s model bill. Now they risk the same fate as North Carolina. In February, the FCC voted to preempt that state’s law and another in Tennessee that restrict cities from building or expanding broadband networks. The Tennessee attorney general is suing the FCC to overturn the decision. By citing those six provisions, the FCC has by extension struck down much of ALEC’s model law, said Jim Baller, an attorney who represented Chattanooga (TN) and Wilson (NC) when they asked the FCC to preempt their states’ broadband laws. “Because the North Carolina law uses similar language to that found in the ALEC model legislation, it would seem to follow that any other state that has relied heavily on the ALEC model has also effectively banned municipal broadband investments,” Baller said. ALEC has cited the North Carolina law as a good prototype for other states.

Google Is Buying Media Friends

[Commentary] Remember how Google used to profess an aversion to being evil, back when it was the coming Internet company? Well, the "Digital News Partnership" it announced with eight European publishers is pretty evil -- a transparent attempt to buy political influence. European publishers have long fought Google for spreading their copyrighted information free of charge through its Google News service and search engine. The US company has done a good job of fighting them off by market means: Cutting the complainers out of Google News and its search index. More often than not, they've come crawling back, begging to be reinstated.

Recently, however, the balance of forces appeared to tip against Google, when the European Commission decided to pursue an antitrust case against it for allegedly stifling competition by promoting its own comparison shopping service. This followed attacks on the US company from various European capitals, especially Berlin, on matters ranging from customer privacy to tax avoidance. Google's executives must have wondered if their unfriendliness toward politically influential publishers might have contributed to the political headwinds it suddenly faced in Europe. Obviously, news organizations have to develop new business models: Journalism is increasingly hard to monetize. They have the brains, however, to figure these things out for themselves. Google is big and sells a lot of ads, but that doesn't mean it knows more about the news business than publishers do, after more than two decades of technological revolution. Those European news organizations that say "thanks, but no thanks" to the Digital News Initiative won't have to explain themselves to their readers, many of whom already suspect Google of being too close to the US government. They can just say they want to avoid any conflict of interest when writing about the search giant and its regulatory tribulations. Maybe it's Google that needs some remedial training in journalism.

The Net Vitality Index and the Wide Open Internet

[Commentary] Since 2010, I have been developing the first-ever quantitative and qualitative composite analysis of the global broadband Internet ecosystem, which compares countries from around the world. The broadband Internet ecosystem includes applications, content, devices, and networks. These essential elements drive each other in a virtuous cycle that is highly interdependent. If broadband networks are fast, reliable, and widely available, companies produce more powerful and more capable devices to connect to them. These new applications draw interest among various end users, bring new users online, and increase use among those who already subscribe to broadband services. The continuing growth in the broadband Internet ecosystem reinforces the cycle; for example, encouraging service providers to boost the speed, functionality, and reach of the networks can also spur innovation in applications, content, and devices. Consequently, any consideration of how to best shape the future of broadband Internet should account for the entire ecosystem, rather than individual elements.

The Open Internet as a goal is worthwhile, but also too narrow as a foundation for Net Vitality. Rather, the Wide Open Internet is what the United States and other countries around the world should be trying to achieve. The Wide Open Internet encompasses the broader goal of an efficient ubiquitous broadband Internet ecosystem with virtually unlimited content and applications available without government restrictions. Users should be able to use the Internet at home, at work, and on the run through a range of devices accessing affordable high-speed wireline and wireless broadband networks. With a sustained focus on the broadband Internet ecosystem, the idea of Net Vitality can be realized through a future-oriented policy process that capitalizes on the blazing speed of Internet time that has propelled us so far, so fast, and so impactfully to date.

Comcast's next act

[Commentary] The question now is where Comcast CEO Brian Roberts moves next. With a steady revenue stream flowing from millions of pay TV and broadband subscribers, Comcast has performed well even as the digital revolution has upended much of the media world. But a rapid reshaping of the television industry poses big challenges to Comcast and its competitors, leading some analysts to conclude that the company should push hard into next-generation wireless technology to satisfy rocketing demand for online video. Others say it should look beyond the US for growth. Not surprisingly, streaming video consumption is highest among the youngest consumers, with nearly three-quarters of households headed by someone under 35 subscribing to a service such as Netflix or Hulu Plus, according to Nielsen -- the same consumers who are least likely to be pay-TV subscribers.

Traditionally, advertisers have coveted these younger viewers. For the world’s biggest media companies, including Comcast, reaching that next generation means giving them access to content when, where and how they want to watch it. The international market is another option for Roberts. Comcast, which also owns the Universal movie studio and theme parks, has a minimal television or internet presence outside the US. With the TWC bid no longer viable, Roberts may look to the “cable cowboy” John Malone for inspiration. As a hardened squash player Roberts knows all about working the angles to win. But with the rules of the media game evolving rapidly his next shot will need to be well placed.

Back to the future by blocking the Comcast/TWC merger: How the government is killing competition

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice have explained that they shut down the Comcast/Time Warner Cable merger largely out of concern that it would allow the merged companies to harm the streaming and over-the-top video marketplace. But the cable companies are already on the losing side in that marketplace -- the market power already favors the content providers. Indeed, Netflix has roughly three times as many subscribers as Comcast does, and more than twice as many as the merged Comcast/TWC would have had. And one of the clearest conclusions to draw from the FCC’s Open Internet proceeding is that Netflix has captured the hearts and minds of the Washington political elite. Welcome back to 1956.

The government is making the same mistakes again -- in an attempt to protect us from today’s bogeymen, it’s clearing the path for tomorrow’s monopolist. And, unlike 1956 -- when the bogeyman was an honest-and-true monopoly -- the company the government has cast in the role of “villain” is not a monopolist. Comcast and Time Warner Cable are in a market that is at least moderately competitive today and getting more competitive by the month. And, as the Netflixes of the world increasingly dominate the video marketplace, the government has robbed consumers of one of the few firms that could have stood tall in the face of the oncoming storm.

[Gus Hurwitz is an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska College of Law]

Report: Government agencies don’t like ‘bring your own device’ policy

According to a report by Forrester Research, Government agencies are less keen on letting employees use personal devices for official work than they were a year ago. Agencies have been cautious about adopting a “bring your own device” policy, citing concerns about security and liability, but the report found that officials have made it a lower priority in recent years. In 2014, 11 percent of officials who make technology decisions at their agencies said they considered implementing the device policy “critical,” down from 17 percent in 2013, according to a survey by Forrester. More than 40 percent of officials said such a program was not even on their agenda. Many government officials regard those programs as “more trouble than they’re worth,” the report said. Security is the top concern for those in government, with 66 percent of public sector leaders saying the use of personal computers reduces security, according to the report. In comparison, 52 percent of private industry executives cited security as their top concern.

Hollywood studios win landmark victory against Popcorn Time

Hollywood has won a landmark victory in the United Kingdom against Popcorn Time, a popular app for illegally downloading movies that has been nicknamed the “Netflix for pirates”. The Motion Picture Association, a trade body that represents the six major Hollywood studios, won a High Court order requiring that the UK’s biggest internet service providers block access to four sites linked to Popcorn Time. This is the first time anywhere in the world that Popcorn Time sites, which receive several million visitors each month, have been targeted and ordered to be blocked.

Hollywood has worried about Popcorn Time ever since it was launched just over a year ago, providing internet users with an easy way to watch films and TV programmes for free. What has caused particular concern is that Popcorn Time has opened the illegal filesharing underground to casual users. It has a similar kind of attractive design and easy-to-use interface as legitimate services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime. But behind its glossy interface, the application relies on BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer filesharing protocol that has long been used by illegal sites such as The Pirate Bay. The High Court’s order requires that the UK’s five major internet providers -- BT, EE, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media -- must block their users from assessing four sites that provide the Popcorn Time app: popcorntime.io; flixtor.me; popcorn-time.se; and isoplex.isohunt.to.

The good, bad, and the ugly of pending congressional surveillance bills

[Commentary] On June 1 the legal authority enabling the National Security Agency's bulk telephone metadata collection program expires. The expiration date of Section 215 of the USA Patriot Act comes two years after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the spying to the Guardian. Ahead of the deadline, three key bills have emerged. They can best be described as the good, the bad, and the ugly. One proposal scuttles the bulk metadata program altogether. Another bill tinkers with the snooping. Yet another allows it to continue unabated though 2020.

The good: There's a House measure called the Surveillance State Repeal Act that does what its name says. It ends the authority for the bulk telephone metadata collection spying.

The bad: Credo Mobile, Demand Progress, and others immediately blasted the latest version of the USA Freedom Act of 2015, which was proposed April 28 in the House and Senate. They decried it as a "diversion." Instead of the NSA collecting and housing the metadata from every phone call made to and from the United States, the USA Freedom Act's passage would mean that the same data would remain with phone companies. The act requires the NSA to seek approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court before demanding that the telecoms hand over metadata based on an NSA search query.

The ugly: A bill, which is unnamed, leaves the metadata snooping program unscathed through the end of 2020. The measure was proposed by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-NC). It keeps intact the Patriot Act's "business records" language allowing the authorities to acquire, without a probable cause warrant, "business records" on people held by most any institution, including banks and telephone companies.

GOP Reps Seek More Info on FCC Office Closures

The heads of the House Communications and General Government subcommittees say they need more information from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler on his proposal to close two-thirds (16 of 24) of the FCC field offices. That came in a letter to Chairman Wheeler from House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) and General Government Chairman Ander Crenshaw (R-FL). It was a follow-up letter to one from members of the full Energy & Commerce Committee, including Chairman Walden, after a hearing at which legislator concerns were raised about the impact of the closures on the FCC's responsibility to prevent interference between spectrum users. Broadcasters have registered similar complaints with the FCC given the upcoming post-incentive auction station repack and the interference issues. In response to that initial letter, the FCC provided information including a memo from the chief of the FCC's Enforcement Bureau, but Walden and Crenshaw said that significant questions remained about how the FCC would carry on that core interference monitoring function.

Benton

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