September 2015

How I’ll Slash the Regulation Tax

[Commentary] To understand what is wrong with the regulatory culture of the US under President Barack Obama, consider this alarming statistic: the US ranks 46th in the world in terms of ease of starting a business. That is unacceptable.

My goal as president would be to find and retire the rules that are posing a major obstacle to people who want to get a job, start a business, move up the income ladder or do anything else that contributes to the prosperity of this nation. If elected president, I will use my executive authority to direct agencies to create one dollar of regulatory savings for each new dollar of regulatory cost they propose. We will eliminate and reform outdated and burdensome rules and, when necessary, work with Congress and the courts to overcome legal obstacles that stand in the way of sensible savings. I will work to repeal the so-called network neutrality rule forced on the Federal Communications Commission by the White House.

Most important, as president, I will be guided by the faith that we are a nation of free men and women who are capable of achieving far more than liberals and regulators believe possible. Once we remove the burdens of overregulation, America will once again reclaim its reputation for inventiveness, energy and boundless opportunity.

[Bush, a former governor of Florida, is a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.]

The Plot Twist: E-Book Sales Slip, and Print Is Far From Dead

While analysts once predicted that e-books would overtake print by 2015, digital sales have instead slowed sharply. Now, there are signs that some e-book adopters are returning to print, or becoming hybrid readers, who juggle devices and paper.

E-book sales fell by 10 percent in the first five months of this year, according to the Association of American Publishers, which collects data from nearly 1,200 publishers. Digital books accounted last year for around 20 percent of the market, roughly the same as they did a few years ago. E-books’ declining popularity may signal that publishing, while not immune to technological upheaval, will weather the tidal wave of digital technology better than other forms of media, like music and television.

How Cable Can Capture the Mobile Internet

T-Mobile US chief John Legere believes the future of cable may be up in the airwaves. “[W]hat’s happening in the world is all content is going to be Internet, and all Internet will be viewed” on mobile devices, he said. “That is all you need to know to understand everything that’s going to happen from Disney to Comcast to Verizon to T-Mobile.”

Legere’s comments are an endorsement of the idea that the Internet increasingly becomes a mobile experience, the cable and wireless industries will begin to converge. Such convergence could involve a cable company buying T-Mobile. Even so, as broadband has taken over from video as cable’s primary profit center, it stands to reason cable companies would see wireless as the next frontier. That could mean cable and wireless companies increasingly tread on each other’s turf and angle for each other’s customers.

Cable companies have three options for getting into wireless: 1) an agency agreement with one of the four big US wireless operators, 2) leasing carriers’ networks and selling service under their own retail brand, or 3) buy their own spectrum and develop networks. The agency model would make the most sense because it would allow cable operators to enter wireless, and offer mobile-video services, without being too exposed to bruising wireless-industry competition. Buying spectrum could give cable companies leverage in negotiating such arrangements.

EU-US Data Sharing Deal Can't Be Trusted, Top Court Aide Says

Advocate General Yves Bot, an adviser to the European Union’s top court, warned that American spies have almost unfettered access to information about European users of Facebook and other social media thanks to an illegal trans-Atlantic pact on data-transfers.

Secret US orders forcing technology companies to hand over personal data linked to EU citizens can’t continue under an “invalid” data-transfer accord struck 15 years ago, Bot said in a non-binding opinion. The EU court follows such advice in a majority of cases. EU citizens “who are Facebook users are not informed that their personal data will be generally accessible to the United States security agencies,” said Bot. National data privacy watchdogs have the power, “where appropriate,” to suspend the transfer of such data to servers located in the US, including in the case concerning the data of European Facebook users, he said. The EU Court of Justice should scrap the 2000 Safe Harbor decision because it doesn’t protect citizens from the 28-nation bloc enough from an “unwarranted interference” with their rights and a “large-scale collection of personal data,” he said.

Xi Jinping Pledges to Work With US to Stop Cybercrimes

President Xi Jinping pledged to work with the United States on fighting cybercrime, saying that the Chinese government was a staunch defender of cybersecurity.

“The Chinese government will not in whatever form engage in commercial theft, and hacking against government networks are crimes that must be punished in accordance with the law and relevant international treaties,” President Xi said. “China is ready to set up a high-level joint dialogue mechanism with the United States on fighting cybercrimes.” Xi appeared to be attempting to reassure his business audience, many of its members from tech industries at the forefront of cyberspace issues, but how far his words would be believed by the Obama administration remained to be seen.

Weekly Digest

Obama Administration Aims to Empower Communities to Attract Broadband Investment and Promote Meaningful Use

A plan to empower communities with tools and resources to attract broadband investment and promote meaningful use

Earlier this week, the Broadband Opportunity Council issued a report and recommendations on expanding broadband deployment and adoption. We’re looking at sections of recommendations all week.

Charter Queried on Web Video Rivalry by FCC in Time Warner Deal

Regulators reviewing Charter’s proposed $55.1 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable want to know more about how the cable company has reacted to competition from streaming video innovators such as Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. The Federal Communications Commission, in a request released Sept 22, asked Charter for documents about its customer gains or losses to Web video and whether it’s slowed or blocked access to rival services.

The questions show the FCC is concerned about whether cable companies that provide access to the Internet may squelch streaming video that competes with their traditional channel lineup. Comcast in April abandoned its planned merger with Time Warner Cable after regulators said the combined company could thwart online video. The FCC also asked for similar information from Time Warner Cable and asked for responses by Oct 13.

Michigan PSC Commissioner Talberg Appointed to Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service

The Federal Communications Commission appoints the Honorable Sally Talber, Commissioner, Michigan Public Service Commissioner, to serve on the Federal-State Joint Board on Universal Service. Talberg's appointment fills the position held by the Honorable James Cawley, Commissioner, Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission.

GOP Memo Cites FCC Ownership Review Rife With Missteps

The House Communications Subcommittee has teed up a bunch of broadcast media ownership issues for potential discussion at its Sept. 25 hearing. In the Republican majority staff memo for the hearing the staffers said the purpose was to look at the relevance of broadcast ownership rules in today's media world. The memo talks about a Federal Communications Commission ownership review process "rife with missteps and setbacks," most having to do with a series of court challenges, remands, and regulatory responses dating back a dozen years under Chairmen of both parties. These resulted in a Congressionally-mandated 2014 quadrennial rule review that will be a couple years overdue if it is completed as promised in 2016, and a 2010 review for which an order was never released.

Among the issues in that quadrennial review elaborated on in the memo, which could also be issues for discussion in the hearing, are the FCC's newspaper-broadcast crossownership rules, local TV ownership limits, local radio ownership limits, the national TV station ownership cap (which was set at 39 percent by Congress so is out of the FCC's hands), crossownership limits, joint sales agreements (the FCC made most of those attributable as ownership in a March 2014 order, but some Republicans want to grandfather JSA's prior to that), and the minority tax certificate. There is no guarantee that all those, or even most, will be addressed in the hearing, but it shows the scope of issues Republicans are targeting.

Report: Nightly newscasts have covered Hillary Clinton e-mail story as much as her candidacy

Network news watchdog Andrew Tyndall is out with some numbers on how the big nightly newscasts have covered the presidential race, and the figures are chilling for the campaign of Hillary Clinton. In those marquee programs, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News have spent just as much time -- 83 minutes -- on the candidate’s e-mail scandal as they have on her candidacy -- 82 minutes, according to Tyndall’s number-crunching. The calculations stem from the weekday nightly news broadcasts on campaign 2016 from the start of 2015 through Sept. 18.

Minus the e-mail coverage, Clinton’s exposure on the nightly news falls short of Republican front-runner Donald Trump’s -- which is 145 minutes across the three networks. That accounts for 29 percent of all campaign 2016 coverage on the three networks and 43 percent of the Republican side.

Benton

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