April 2016

Publishers and filmmakers should be wary of Democrats at the Federal Election Commission trying to squeeze them out of an exemption created for the press, according to FEC Republican Commissioner Lee Goodman. Goodman used a five-page statement to scold Democrats on the commission for trying to continue an investigation into a company that created and distributed a conspiracy theory film ahead of the 2012 election that claimed that President Barack Obama's real father was Franklin Marshall Davis, described as "an American Communist." The FEC ultimately voted in February to close the case without taking any action — an increasingly common occurrence with the 3-3 deadlock at the commission that is divided between the two parties.

Though no action was taken, Goodman said the implication of the Democrats' position could have been much broader than a fringe film. "Imagine the specter of a government investigation and punishment of a filmmaker for showing a political film in over 500 theaters nationally," Goodman wrote. A complaint filed in 2014 alleged that Highway 61 Entertainment owner Joel Gilbert should have reported the cost of distributing the film and included a disclaimer along with it. The film "Dreams from my Real Father: The Story of Reds and Deception" is described as a play on President Obama's actual autobiography with a narrator impersonating the president. The FEC requires many organizations to report the donations they receive and any expenses used when attempting to sway federal elections. However, there is a broad press exemption for news or commentary released through newspapers, magazines and other media as long as they are not owned by a political committee or a candidate.

A new trend is emerging in rural communities throughout the United States: Fiber-to-the-Farm. Tired of waiting for real Internet access from big companies, farmers are building it themselves. Communities in and around Minnesota’s rural Sibley County are going from worst to best after building a wireless and fiber-optic cooperative. While federal programs throw billions of dollars to deliver last year’s Internet speeds, local programs are building the network of the future.

This paper documents a groundbreaking new model that’s sprung up in South Central Minnesota that can be replicated all over the nation, in the thousands of cities and counties that have been refused service by big cable and telecom corporations. From the technologies to the financing, rural communities can solve their problems with local investments. “This cooperative model could bring high quality Internet access to every farm in the country,” says Christopher Mitchell, director of ILSR’s Community Broadband Networks initiative. “It’s time we stop giving billions of dollars to the big telephone companies that have refused to meet local needs. There is a better way, there are better models emerging. We can do this. RS Fiber proves it.

A recent $51 million proposed fine is a sign of more to come in Universal Service Fund integrity and fraud enforcement, Federal Communications Commission Enforcement Bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc said April 11. Pay TV consumer protection work is another of the Enforcement Bureau's highest priorities, LeBlanc said.

The bureau hasn't focused much on consumer protections for cable and satellite subscribers in recent years, but views it as important to do so now, said LeBlanc. “The complaints that we are seeing from subscribers of cable and satellite services really are high,” he said. Consumer complaints relate to unclear bills, debt collection practices, and quality of service. Those complaints raise concerns for the bureau, “especially given that the rules that we have on the books that apply to consumer protection in the cable context are pretty strong,” he said. LeBlanc pointed to existing rules on prompt cancelation of service and requirements to protect customers' personally identifiable information. LeBlanc said fines have gotten larger under his tenure as bureau chief. “However, it's not just because we're looking for the maximum fines,” he said. “It's because we're targeting the most egregious cases” where the most consumers are harmed, he said.

Google is warning you to watch out for, well, Google. As of April 19, the search giant's own Safe Browsing tool labels "google.com" as "partially dangerous." The tool, which automatically scans "billions of URLs per day looking for unsafe websites," cites "google.com" for some potentially scary problems. "Some pages on this website install malware on visitors' computers," the Safe Browsing Site Status page warned, adding that "[a]ttackers on this site might try to trick you to download software or steal your information." Google declined to comment on the site's status, but those ominous warnings likely don't mean that visiting "google.com" itself is dangerous.

Instead, they suggest that some people have used Google services to host or link to something malicious, so the tool is flagging the whole domain as a little risky. "Users sometimes post bad content on websites that are normally safe," the page explained. It's not clear how long google.com has been flagged as "partially dangerous," although some reddit users noticed it Tuesday -- the same day the Site Status page says its information was last updated. A flurry of blog posts from last November suggest google.com was also flagged with the dubious distinction back then.