1. Monthly archive
  2. April 2016

April 2016

Diversity Could Take A Hit Following Auction

Jessica Almond, a top aide to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, acknowledged that the FCC’s incentive auction could diminish diversity in broadcast ownership and programming by inducing stations that provide such diversity to sell out. “As you know, it is completely voluntary for stations to participate” in the auction, said Almond. “If a minority or a diverse programming station chooses to participate, I have no business telling them what to do with their business,” she said, responding to a question following her speech at the National Association of Broadcasters show. “So, while we wish such stations to stay in business, that’s not what the purpose of the auction is.”

She also said that the incentive auction could impact low-power TV stations offering diverse programming. “In areas that are already quite dense in broadcasting where a smaller TV band necessarily means everyone will be a little more squeezed, I think there is a possibility that LPTV stations may have some difficulty.” The space “available for LPTV is highly dependent on the amount of participation, the amount of spectrum that is bought and the size of the TV band after the auction,” she said. However, she added, the FCC could mitigate any loss of diversity from LPTVs by allowing the stations to share channels. “We have also said we will make our repacking analysis available to help [LPTVs] more easily find channels after the repack.”

Europe v Google: how Android became a battleground

The European Commission has accused Google of abusing its dominance of the smartphone market through Android, blocking competition and innovation. But what is Android, what does Google offer and what are others doing with Android? Android is the mobile operating system that runs on over 80% of the world’s smartphones, according to data from Gartner, but there are two versions of Android.

The first is the core operating system called the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). It is open-source, free for anyone to use, change, modify or adapt for practically any purpose. From smartphones and tablets to embedded devices such as sensors, fridges, cars and industrial machines, AOSP has been moulded into many, many forms.

To go along with AOSP, Google also offers its suite of apps and services, which includes the Google Play Store that is full of third-party applications. Most of the Android smartphones or tablets sold in the United Kingdom, US or European Union come with Google’s suite of apps, and is the version of Android most will be familiar with. While AOSP can be used freely for any purpose, Google’s app suite cannot. It comes with a series of conditions that must be met for Google to license an app’s use to device manufacturers. The crux of the EC’s complaint against Google is that the company will not allow manufacturers to include the Google Play Store, which has the largest collection of third-party Android apps available, without including both Google’s Search app, the company’s Chrome browser and having Google Search set as default.

App Store Censorship and FBI Hacking Proposed at Congressional Crypto Hearing

Tech experts and industry representatives squared off against law enforcement officials in two sessions of lively testimony April 19 in front of the House Commerce Committee. The hearing is the latest in the ongoing battle in the courts and legislature commonly called the second “Crypto Wars,” after a similar national debate in the 1990s.

Two witnesses on the law enforcement panel offered a chilling proposal to deal with the well-documented weakness that any domestic encryption ban would do little against the hundreds of encryption products developed and sold internationally. Thomas Galati of the New York Police Department and Charles Cohen of the Indiana State Police argued that software could be kept off American computing devices by exerting legal pressure on the Android, Apple, and Blackberry app stores. That proposal would seem to leave to app store gatekeepers the nigh-impossible task of ensuring none of the software it carries comes with “warrant-proof” cryptographic options. But worse, it cuts right to the core of fundamental computing freedom questions and cues up the next legislative battle to address what software people are allowed to run on their devices.

EFF sues to uncover government demands to decrypt communications

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is suing the US Department of Justice over its failure to disclose if Internet companies have been compelled to decrypt user data and communications. The EFF action targets applications to and decisions by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a Washington (DC) based court that meets in secret to consider cases related to government surveillance and national security. The court's decisions are classified, and Internet companies are prohibited from disclosing any details about warrants received as a result of arguments in front of the court. The result is that little is known about the extent of the court's activities.

In October, the EFF filed a freedom-of-information request seeking more information but, according to its lawsuit, the Department of Justice said it couldn't find any documents relating to the issue. The EFF filed a second freedom-of-information request in March 2016 seeking significant decisions or opinions issued by the FISC, but the group says it so far hasn't received a satisfactory response. Those opinions must be declassified as part of surveillance reforms enacted in 2015's USA Freedom Act, the EFF argues. The lawsuit, which was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, also argues the DOJ must disclose "if the government has ever sought or obtained an order from the FISC requiring third parties to provide technical assistance to carry out surveillance."

How Much Will Siri Lawsuit Cost Apple?

Apple has just agreed to settle a long-running patent lawsuit for almost $25 million. The lawsuit, filed by a company called Dynamic Advances, claimed that Apple had infringed on a patent involving "user interfaces that recognize natural language." The patent describes a method for "providing, through a user interface, a result of [a] search" using natural language queries of a number of connected databases.

The patent had been originally granted as far back as 2007 to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. Rensselaer, an engineering-focused university, then licensed the patent to Dynamic Advances. The high-profile case on Siri highlights the intellectual property minefield facing many tech companies, particularly wealthy ones who are a potentially lucrative target for opportunistic lawsuits. Some entrepreneurs have tried to address the issue by creating large networks connecting patent holders with inventors who may not realize there's already a patent that covers what they're working on. Others have simply adopted a strategy of patenting as many silly, random ideas as they can, just to deny non-practicing entities the opportunity to apply for broad or frivolous patents in hopes of cutting down on the number of abusive lawsuits.

Broadcast Networks Ignored Democracy Awakening, Democracy Spring Protests

Democracy Spring Urges Congressional Action On Specific Bills To “Save Our Democracy.” An April 19 Vox article explained that a group called Democracy Spring organized mass protests in Washington (DC) to “demand that Congress listen to the People and take immediate action to save our democracy,” according to the group’s website. Democracy Spring has four specific legislative demands: passing legislation to overturn the 2010 Citizens United decision, passing an update to the Voting Rights Act to restore provisions of the law struck down by the Supreme Court in 2013, passing the Voter Empowerment Act to make voter registration easier, and passing the Fair Elections Now Act to create a public financing system for Senate candidates. Evening Broadcast News Programs Devoted Less Than Half A Minute To Demonstrations.

A Media Matters analysis found that of the four broadcast network evening shows -- ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' CBS Evening News, NBC's NBC Nightly News, and PBS's PBS NewsHour -- only PBS NewsHour devoted any airtime to covering the Democracy Awakening and Democracy Spring protests in Washington (DC), from April 11 to 18. The coverage on PBS was scant, however, with only two segments totaling 29 seconds devoted to the demonstrations. Weekend Network Programs Entirely Ignored The Protests. The analysis found that the five network weekend programs -- ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, NBC's Meet the Press, Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, and PBS' PBS NewsHour Weekend -- entirely omitted coverage of the demonstrations and sit-ins in Washington (DC), during their April 16 and 17 broadcasts.

Digital tools enable citizen budgeting

[Commentary] The popular narrative in this election cycle is one of popular disillusionment and cynicism with government. Yet, this national narrative overlooks the power and energy of citizens coming together in their communities to solve problems. Across the country, people are working with their neighbors to strengthen their communities, re-imagine engagement with elected officials, and leverage new technologies to improve governance. These are some of the topics I address in my recent Brookings book with Harvard’s Ash Center; Democracy Reinvented: Participatory Budgeting and Civic Innovation in America. The book looks at an array of civic innovations, from the rise of open government data for community-based decisionmaking to civic crowdfunding where people pledge small-dollar amounts to fund public works.

Diverse examples include structured listening processes that empower people to set mayoral priorities and the multi-stakeholder Open Government Partnership that promotes greater government transparency and accountability. The book highlights the power of deliberate, structured participation opportunities to improve public decision making. Participatory budgeting and other civic innovations suggest the opportunity for experimentation and digital tools to provide new opportunities for citizens to engage with the state. These innovations may not be a panacea for status quo politics in the United States, but they do suggest that we can more creatively equip citizens as problem solvers and civic participants in 21st century society.

[Hollie Russon Gilman holds a PhD from Harvard's Department of Government and is the former open government and innovation advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.]

Fiber-to-the-Home Market Penetration on the Rise, Overtakes Cable Broadband Globally

From a global perspective, rising fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) market penetration has positioned the technology as the fastest growing broadband access method, overtaking cable broadband reports Point Topic. Total global broadband subscribers reached 751 million as of Q4 2015, according to Point Topic’s research. Fiber-to-the-x (FTTx) and FTTH market penetration is on the rise, and legacy copper based broadband access lines (DSL, ADSL and ADSL2+) are no longer the dominant method for broadband. In fact, legacy copper based broadband access lines declined 18.7% from 2014 to 2015. FTTH access lines increased by 60.6% during the same period according to Point Topic. FTTx, which includes FTTN access, like AT&T’s U-verse platform, increased by 14.7%. There are now more global FTTH subscribers than cable broadband, with growth in Asia accelerating. In China alone, the number of subscribers who swapped FTTH from copper based broadband is nearly equivalent to the entire South Korean copper broadband market, says Point Topic.

© 1994-2024 Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. All Rights Reserved.