October 2015

INTERNET/BROADBAND

REP SHIMKUS PUSHES BACK AGAINST CRITICS OF INTERNET TRANSITION BILL
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: David McCabe]
Rep John Shimkus (R-IL), the lawmaker behind a bill giving Congress oversight of the transition shifting control of the Internet domain name system away from the US, said he disagrees with critics who question whether the transition is entirely legal. Rep Shimkus pushed back against four Republican lawmakers who sent a letter in Sept asking for a Government Accountability Office review of whether the government has the legal authority to complete the transition. The letter questioned whether the transition would involve handing over United States property. In particular, they questioned whether the root zone file -- a part of the domain name system -- was property of the United States. “Yeah, I don’t agree with that analysis,” Rep Shimkus said. "Because we’re not giving up that root address. That’s the basis of their argument, is that the root address will be given up. Well, we’ll still maintain the root address. So I don’t agree with their analysis of, in essence, the ownership rights of the government, because we’re keeping what we have.”
benton.org/headlines/rep-shimkus-pushes-back-against-critics-internet-transition-bill | Hill, The
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DIFFERENTIATED TREATMENT OF INTERNET TRAFFIC
[SOURCE: Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group, AUTHOR: ]
Differentiated treatment of Internet Access Service traffic has been a subject of debate and regulatory scrutiny. In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted Open Internet rules that address paid prioritization as well as other topics. This report touches on a broad range of questions associated with differentiation, but is not intended to address or analyze the economic, legal, regulatory, or public policy issues that the differentiated treatment of Internet access service traffic may raise, focusing instead on the technical issues. The data transmitted across the networks that make up the Internet is formatted as packets, which contain information payloads encapsulated within one or more headers. These headers provide the information needed to deliver the packets to their destinations. As these packets travel across networks, they contend with other packets for network resources. The simplest way to handle this contention would be on a first come, first served basis (also known as First In First Out, or FIFO). In practice, however, network operators make many exceptions to FIFO, using the packet header information to classify packets into flows and treating those flows differently, for example rearranging the order or the timing with which packets are sent, or sending them along different network paths. This is done for various reasons, including meeting service level agreement (SLA) guarantees and selecting paths for traffic from different applications, among other things. Differentiated treatment of traffic can also contribute both to the efficiency of a network and to the predictability of the manner in which network resources are shared. The ability to treat traffic differentially has been built into Internet protocols from the beginning but has not been deployed end-to-end due to a number of issues.
benton.org/headlines/differentiated-treatment-internet-traffic | Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group
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BROADBAND'S FUTURE: WHERE WILL WE BE IN 10 YEARS?
[SOURCE: Government Technology, AUTHOR: Colin Wood]
Our 10 government, industry and nonprofit representatives answer to what extent universal access to broadband will be accomplished in 10 years.
Joanne Hovis: The prognosis for the next 10 years is relatively good, particularly for metropolitian areas. Incumbent phone and cable companies respond [to competition] by investing and offering better and more affordable services. The key question for progress in the next 10 years will be how much new investment goes into building competitive networks, thus stimulating innovation, competition and new broadband opportunity.
John Jones: As entertainment has become more and more a driver of data usage, the consumer market is really wanting more speeds where they don’t have buffering and pausing, whether they’re watching a movie or gaming or whatever. So the demand for speed is really a key driver in today’s market and that will probably continue to increase over time as more and more robust applications start riding over the Internet.
Robert Bell: Not everybody is going to be online and not everybody wants to be online, and that’s fine, but I think in 10 years from now, we’ll be pretty close to saturation.
[Joanne Hovis is a member of the Benton Foundation's Board of Directors]
benton.org/headlines/broadbands-future-where-will-we-be-10-years | Government Technology
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DISADVANTAGED TWIN CITIES HOUSEHOLDS FACE LOSS OF INTERNET
[SOURCE: Pioneer Press, AUTHOR: Julio Ojeda-Zapata]
About 14,000 low-income Twin Cities (MN) households are at risk of losing their low-cost Internet service, which they receive over an old Sprint data network that is expected to disappear Nov. 6. The Internet service, provided by a St. Paul (MN) nonprofit called PCs for People, has permitted cash-strapped Twin Cities residents to ditch dial-up service for a much-faster broadband connection at a comparable cost. But the service taps a wireless-data technology called WiMax that is not long for this world. Mobile phone giant Sprint is abandoning its WiMax network as it shifts to the more-modern Long Term Evolution standard, which the other major carriers also use. That is good for typical consumers, but bad news for PCs for People's disadvantaged customers. And other nonprofit organizations that offer similar low-cost, high-speed Internet access around the country face a similar dilemma. What happens now is up for debate. PCs for People said Sprint is required to put in place a substitute service that works on its LTE network. This would involve a swap of customers' WiMax-based wireless modems for LTE-based gear of comparable functionality on or before Nov. 6. The wireless devices are the equivalent of cable modems, but get their online connectivity over the air instead of via physical wires. Sprint said it is sympathetic but cannot move forward with a new low-cost Internet offering without contract terms it considers fair.
benton.org/headlines/disadvantaged-twin-cities-households-face-loss-internet | Pioneer Press
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TIME WARNER CABLE-COGENT STRIKE INTERCONNECTION DEAL
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Time Warner Cable says it has struck a long-term interconnection agreement with Cogent. "Cogent and Time Warner Cable have entered into a long-term, bilateral interconnection agreement for their public IP networks," the companies said. "This agreement allows the exchange of Internet traffic in a scalable and reliable manner to accommodate the growing use of the Internet."
Charter and Time Warner Cable are trying to get the Federal Communications Commission and Justice Department to approve their proposed merger and one of the issues the FCC is looking at is interconnection. Charter has pledged settlement-free interconnection, a policy that would be extended to TWC systems if the deal were approved, though a TWC spokesperson had no comment on whether the Cogent deal was such a settlement-free deal. Cogent supports the merger, citing Charter's settlement-free peering policy, as does another major peering player, Netflix.
benton.org/headlines/time-warner-cable-cogent-strike-interconnection-deal | Broadcasting&Cable
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FOR WHOM THE FIRST AMENDMENT MATTERS
[SOURCE: Medium, AUTHOR: Tim Karr]
[Commentary] Free speech matters to the hundreds of millions of Internet users who exercise this right every time they connect with others online. But if you ask some of the lawyers working for the companies that sell you Internet access, they’ll insist that it’s more important to protect the free speech rights of phone and cable giants like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. In a convoluted twist, they argue that the First Amendment gives these same companies the right to block, throttle and degrade the communications of everyone using their services. Did you get that? The First Amendment gives Comcast the right to censor you. We owe this Orwellian shift in thinking to a growing number of court decisions, among them Citizens United, that define corporations as people and their business practices as speech. Harvard Law School’s John C. Coates documents this change in a study released last February, noting that “corporations have begun to displace individuals as the direct beneficiaries of the First Amendment.” It’s a trend Coates describes as “bad law and bad politics” and “increasingly bad for business and society.” As the court case against the FCC’s Net Neutrality rules rages in the courts, the First Amendment should not be used to take communication rights away from the very people it was designed to protect.
[Tim Karr is senior director of strategy for Free Press]
benton.org/headlines/whom-first-amendment-matters | Medium
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

SENATE DIGS INTO WIRELESS DEPLOYMENT
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
In an almost two-and-a-half-hour hearing, the Senate Commerce Committee on Oct 7 looked at ways to speed the deployment of wireless broadband. It was a busy day on the wireless front, with the House Communications Subcommittee holding a simultaneous hearing on freeing up government spectrum for wireless broadband. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) said that he was committed to crafting broadband deployment legislation in this Congress and said he believed it was among "the most important work that can be done by the committee," particularly a pressing need in rural areas for some of the benefits, including for agriculture. He said that without infrastructure, smartphones are just "expensive paperweights." Ranking Member Bill Nelson (R-FL) said everyone was there because of the demand for, and reliance on, wireless broadband. He said the need for additional spectrum always seemed to capture the lion's share of attention, but that it was crucial to look at the infrastructure side of the equation.
benton.org/headlines/senate-digs-wireless-deployment | Broadcasting&Cable
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SECURITY/PRIVACY

HOUSE INSPECTOR GENERAL: 'EVERYBODY' NEEDS TO FIGHT IN THE CURRENT CYBERWAR
[SOURCE: nextgov, AUTHOR: Hallie Golden]
Whether it’s a nation state-sponsored hack or simply a teenager with a laptop, Congress comes under cyberattack on a daily basis, said House of Representatives Inspector General Theresa Grafenstine. But this is not a challenge specific to the House. The country is in the middle of a cyberwar, she told the audience on Oct 7 during the National Town Hall Meeting on Minority Underrepresentation in Cybersecurity in Washington (DC). And to effectively compete in this war, the US is going to have to bring every able-bodied individual into the fight. “If we think we're going to engage in this with only half of our soldiers, we're going to lose; they're going to eat our lunch,” she said. “We need to make sure we're getting everybody involved; every single one of us.” This approach means reaching beyond the typical selection of cybersecurity job candidates and actively training and recruiting individuals from the country’s minority populations.
benton.org/headlines/house-inspector-general-everybody-needs-fight-current-cyberwar | nextgov
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS

ENCRYPTION DECISION
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima, Andrea Peterson]
After months of deliberation, the Obama Administration has made a long-awaited decision on the thorny issue of how to deal with encrypted communications: It will not — for now — call for legislation requiring companies to decode messages for law enforcement. Rather, the Administration will continue trying to persuade companies that have moved to encrypt their customers’ data to create a way for the government to still peer into people’s data when needed for criminal or terrorism investigations. The decision, which essentially maintains the status quo, underscores the bind the Administration is in — balancing competing pressures to help law enforcement and protect consumer privacy. The decision was made at a Cabinet meeting Oct. 1.
benton.org/headlines/obama-administration-opts-not-force-firms-decrypt-data-now | Washington Post
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'YOUTUBE EFFECT' HAS LEFT POLICE OFFICERS UNDER SIEGE, LAW ENFORCEMENT LEADERS SAY
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Aaron Davis]
Chiefs of some of the nation’s biggest police departments say officers in American cities have pulled back and have stopped policing as aggressively as they used to, fearing that they could be the next person in a uniform featured on a career-ending viral video. That was the unifying -- and controversial -- theory reached Oct 7 at a private meeting of more than 100 of the nation’s top law enforcement officers and politicians. With homicide rates soaring inexplicably this year in dozens of US cities, the group convened by new US Attorney General Loretta Lynch concluded with a brief news conference promising a robust response to the reversal of decades of falling violent crime rates. But for hours preceding that, mayors, police chiefs, US attorneys and even FBI Director James Comey privately vented in a Washington ballroom that they don’t really understand the alarming spike in murders and applause filled the room when mayors said police officers’ sinking morale could be a factor. Chiefs said patrol officers still do their jobs, clocking in and policing their beats. But fewer take extra steps such as confronting a group loitering on a sidewalk late at night that might glean intelligence or lead to arrests, for fear that any altercations that ensued would be uploaded to the Internet. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton called it the “YouTube effect” that has emerged for officers post-Ferguson and, in New York, after the death of Eric Garner in 2014 after he was put in a chokehold by an officer making an arrest.
benton.org/headlines/youtube-effect-has-left-police-officers-under-siege-law-enforcement-leaders-say | Washington Post
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ELECTIONS AND MEDIA

THIS NEW YORK TIMES CORRECTION HILARIOUSLY DRIVES HOME THE MONEY-IN-POLITICS PROBLEM
[SOURCE: Vox, AUTHOR: Andrew Prokop]
Every so often, we get a revealing glimpse into just how important money is in our political system, and in Congress in particular. And on Oct 8, we got a particularly amusing one, when the New York Times had to run a correction because it vastly understated how much time the speaker of the House has to spend fundraising: "An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to how frequently the House speaker typically travels to raise money. It is three weekends a month, not three weekends a year." It's amusing to think about a world where the speaker of the House would only have to spend three weekends a year fundraising. The reality, of course, is far different. Hauling in money from wealthy donors is a key part of the job description and a constant, unceasing pressure. For instance, in the first half of this year alone, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) raised a staggering $28 million for Republicans in his chamber.
benton.org/headlines/new-york-times-correction-hilariously-drives-home-money-politics-problem | Vox
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CONTENT

SOCIAL MEDIA USAGE: 2005-2015
[SOURCE: Pew Internet, Science and Tech, AUTHOR: Andrew Perrin]
Nearly two-thirds of American adults (65 percent) use social networking sites, up from 7 percent when Pew Research Center began systematically tracking social media usage in 2005. Pew Research reports have documented in great detail how the rise of social media has affected such things as work, politics and political deliberation, communications patterns around the globe, as well as the way people get and share information about health, civic life, news consumption, communities, teenage life, parenting, dating and even people’s level of stress.
Across demographic groups, a number of trends emerge in this analysis of social media usage:
Age differences: Seniors make strides – Young adults (ages 18 to 29) are the most likely to use social media – fully 90 percent do. Still, usage among those 65 and older has more than tripled since 2010 when 11 percent used social media.
Gender differences: Women and men use social media at similar rates -- Women were more likely than men to use social networking sites for a number of years, although since 2014 these differences have been modest. Today, 68 percent of all women use social media, compared with 62 percent of all men.
Socio-economic differences: Those with higher education levels and household income lead the way.
Racial and ethnic similarities: There are not notable differences by racial or ethnic group: 65 percent of whites, 65 percent of Hispanics and 56 percent of African-Americans use social media today.
Community differences: More than half of rural residents now use social media -- Those who live in rural areas are less likely than those in suburban and urban communities to use social media, a pattern consistent over the past decade. Today, 58 percent of rural residents, 68 percent of suburban residents, and 64 percent of urban residents use social media.
benton.org/headlines/social-media-usage-2005-2015 | Pew Internet
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DIVERSITY

GENDER BIAS IN HOLLYWOOD REPORTEDLY DRAWS FEDERAL SCRUTINY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Cara Buckley]
The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is looking into gender discrimination in Hollywood and sent letters to women directors asking them to share details of roadblocks they have encountered in their careers. The agency is responding to requests the American Civil Liberties Union made to state and federal governmental bodies in May, asking them to investigate major studios, networks and talent agencies for overwhelmingly hiring men. Citing dismal statistics about representation of women behind the camera -- just 4 percent of top-grossing movies were directed by women over the last 12 years -- the ACLU said women were purposefully excluded from being recruited and hired by what remains an old boys’ club in Hollywood, and that was a violation of civil rights.
benton.org/headlines/gender-bias-hollywood-reportedly-draws-federal-scrutiny | New York Times
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

INTERNET ACCESS AFFECTING BEHAVIORS IN AFRICA
[SOURCE: Broadcasting Board of Governors, AUTHOR: Press release]
Access to the Internet is affecting African civic engagement, corruption perceptions and focus on the welfare of its children, according to research released today by the BBG and Gallup. The data examined Internet use in Zimbabwe, Kenya, Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Ethiopia and found that going online had measurable impact on the activities, attitudes and behaviors of people in those countries. “We cannot underestimate the influence that the Internet is having on the communities we’ve surveyed,” said Sonja Gloeckle, Director of Research for the BBG. “And while we see disparities in the amount of access to the Internet in the different countries researched, we are seeing similar behaviors and attitudes among those who go online.” Internet users in each of the countries surveyed are more likely to volunteer their time or provide assistance to others, as measured by Gallup’s Civic Engagement Index.
benton.org/headlines/internet-access-affecting-behaviors-africa | Broadcasting Board of Governors
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UN AGENCY BACKTRACKS, EXPRESSES "REGRET" OVER CYBERVIOLENCE REPORT
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Sam Machkovech]
On Oct 7, a United Nations agency that published a report about "cyber violence against women and girls" formally retracted that report following criticism from the likes of games industry lobbyists and advocates for online abuse victims. The September 24 report, issued by the International Telecommunication Union, was published on the same day that the United Nations hosted a symposium at its New York headquarters that gathered women from across the world to talk about the Internet's potential as a platform for harassment and abuse. The accompanying report touched on those issues, but its accusations about video games as a broader inspiration for violence included messy citations that failed to back up such assertions. One lengthy takedown, posted by Jaime King, was able to discredit over 30 percent of the citations in the report. They ranged from circular (the UN citing itself) to dubious (citing Wikipedia) to baffling (just straight-up blank entries). More critics followed, including symposium participant and Crash Override founder Zoe Quinn, who pointed out that the sloppiness of the paper could "kneecap" various efforts to combat online abuse and hate speech.
benton.org/headlines/un-agency-backtracks-expresses-regret-over-cyberviolence-report | Ars Technica
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October 2015

President Obama Taps Sonus Networks CEO Raymond Dolan for National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee

FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on 5G and the Need for More Spectrum

California Now Has the Nation’s Best Digital Privacy Law

Washington Post’s “In the Loop” column ends as Al Kamen retires

Weekly Digest

International Agreements, International Disagreements: Robbie's Round-Up (October 5-9, 2015)

October 9, 2015 (Broadband; Wireless Deployment; Encryption)

Obama Administration opts not to force firms to decrypt data — for now

NY Times Editorial: European Data Ruling is Merely a Symbolic Victory for Privacy

Penny Pritzker Tackles Tough Assignments as Commerce Secretary

Differentiated Treatment of Internet Traffic