July 2015

Charter just attracted a really important ally in its attempt to purchase Time Warner Cable, making it that much more likely that federal regulators will approve the $55 billion mega-deal. Netflix is endorsing the Charter-TWC acquisition after meeting with the cable company to discuss how it will preserve competition online. In a regulatory filing, Netflix says the Charter deal could offer "substantial public interest benefit" -- if it follows through on a new promise. What does that promise look like, and what has Netflix singing Charter's praises after it so strenuously opposed Comcast's bid for TWC? Well, Charter is offering not to charge Netflix and other content companies any fees in exchange for accepting their traffic and carrying it to end users like you and me.

You may remember that this issue, known as "interconnection," caused a big dispute between Netflix and Internet providers such as Comcast. When a surge of Netflix video began arriving at those companies' doorsteps, they argued that Netflix should cover the cost of expanding the pipes to let that data in. Netflix strongly opposed the practice but wound up signing commercial deals with those companies anyway. And Netflix was among the Comcast-TWC merger's biggest critics. Now Charter is saying it won't do what Comcast did. Although Charter doesn't currently charge companies fees for interconnection, the key here is that Charter is promising not to do so going forward. If the overall merger is approved, Charter says, it'll abide by the condition until the end of 2018.

Internet adoption in the United States has increased significantly in the last few years, but the map of who gets online still falls along divisions of geography and income. In an attempt to get a better picture of these disparities, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has released a new report on the so-called digital divide. The report uses data from the Census’ 2013 American Community Survey and the National Broadband Map. Segmenting the country into regions with 100,000 residents, the report found that in the most affluent sectors, 80 to 90 percent of households have Internet at home. In the regions with the lowest median income, only about 50 percent do.

The map gives a more detailed look at the inequalities of Internet use, and income is one of the strongest determining factors. Many rural areas have high adoption rates while poorer urban neighborhoods have low ones. A 90-year-old in the top income quartile is more likely to have an Internet connection than a person of any age in the bottom quartile. Geography plays a role too, and at first glance, the national map seems to paint a picture of rural and urban division. Densely populated regions have higher rates of Internet adoption, while large swaths of the rural South and Southwest lag behind. However, the Great Plains and sparsely populated parts of Montana and and North Dakota also have high rates of adoption, and for such a dispersed country, the US does respectably: Norway and Switzerland are the only two members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with both higher rates of Internet use and a larger share of their population in rural areas, according to the report.

Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS), former Sen John Breaux (D-LA) and a host of other former congressional staffers will lobby for a group pushing a ban on Internet gambling. The Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling -- backed by GOP donor and casino owner Sheldon Adelson -- hired the lobbying firm Squire Patton Boggs, according to disclosures filed July 14. The group is lobbying in support of the Restoration of America’s Wire Act, which would renew federal restrictions on online gambling. It would reinstate the original interpretation of the Wire Act, which was used to prosecute early Internet gambling such as online poker.

The Justice Department changed its interpretation in 2011 to say the law should not be used to go after online gambling, except traditional sports betting. The legislation has been introduced in the House and Senate and is cosponsored by a pair of GOP presidential candidates in the Senate -- Sens Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL).

Bill O'Reilly lashed out at several news sites on July 14, referring to them as hate websites and "rank propaganda." O'Reilly was responding to criticisms from Salon and Media Matters over his comments on undocumented immigrants. O'Reilly had defended Donald Trump's characterization of migrants as criminals, in particular citing Kate Steinle, the California woman who was allegedly killed by a man who was living illegally in the country.

He also cited the San Jose Mercury News, which in a story quoted a Salon headline: "Bill O’Reilly: The murder of Kate Steinle proves Donald Trump is right about Mexicans." "Of course, I never said that," he said. "The San Jose Mercury News fabricated it, mimicking a hate website. So here's a suggestion for the Mercury News, Yahoo News and others who print that garbage: You wouldn't use something from Stormfront, another hate website, would you? So why are you using stuff from Salon, which is just as ugly? Why are you legitimizing rank propaganda? You should be ashamed of yourselves." Stormfront is the white supremacist web forum formed during David Duke's 1990 Senate campaign. In response, Salon writer Scott Eric Kaufman called O'Reilly a "self-important palaverist."