BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017
Events this week https://www.benton.org/calendar/2017-07-30--P1W
NET NEUTRALITY
We All Agree on Net Neutrality, Except When We Don’t
Content Delivery Networks Complicate Debate Over Network Neutrality
Avoiding the Pitfalls of Net Uniformity: Zero Rating and Nondiscrimination - TPI [links to Benton summary]
MORE INTERNET/BROADBAND
Editorial: Minnesota offers Virginia a lesson on rural broadband [links to Roanoke Times]
SECURITY/PRIVACY
Google’s new program to track shoppers sparks a federal privacy complaint
House Science Committee Probes Kaspersky Lab In Cabinet Level Request [links to House of Representatives Science Committee]
Rep Hurd: US just as focused on data security as Europe [links to Hill, The]
LinkedIn, a champion of privacy rights? Don’t buy it - analysis [links to Benton summary]
Privacy isn't Dead. It's More Popular Than Ever [links to Benton summary]
Cameron Kerry: The Department of State needs a cyber coordinator now more than ever [links to Brookings]
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
FirstNet: Putting Lifesaving Technologies into the Hands of Heroes [links to FirstNet]
FirstNet Becoming a Reality as the Number of States Opting in Grows to Seven [links to Government Technology]
OWNERSHIP
Discovery Communications agrees to buy Scripps for $14.6 billion
Sprint Proposes Merger With Charter Communications [links to Wall Street Journal]
Charter Is Cool to SoftBank's Sprint Plan, Still in Talks [links to Bloomberg]
Is Amazon getting too big? - WaPo [links to Benton summary]
Laurene Powell Jobs’s Organization to Take Majority Stake in The Atlantic [links to New York Times]
Apple paid Nokia $2 billion to escape fight over old patents [links to Verge, The]
CONTENT
YouTube wants to fix its awkward relationship with the music industry [links to Verge, The]
How Facebook groups bring people closer together – neo-Nazis included [links to Guardian, The]
ADVERTISING
Consumers May Be More Trusting of Ads Than Marketers Think [links to New York Times]
Facebook 'dark ads' can swing political opinions, research shows [links to Guardian, The]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
J.D. Power: Wireless Satisfaction Tied to Speedy Problem Resolution [links to telecompetitor]
TELEVISION
‘PBS Will Not Go Away,’ Says Its CEO of Federal Budget Debate… But Some Local Stations Might [links to Wrap, The]
TV sets are starting to disappear from American homes [links to Vox]
JOURNALISM
Reporters reveal how troll harassment chills coverage [links to Columbia Journalism Review]
EDUCATION
In rural America, school choice sometimes means virtual school [links to American Public Media]
HEALTH
In defense of escapism: Why it’s okay — yes, even now — to flip away from the news [links to Washington Post]
DIVERSITY
Toward More Inclusive Diversity in the Philanthropic Sector: LGBTQ People and People With Disabilities [links to Foundation Center]
Sheryl Sandberg calls for policy changes to raise women's pay [links to Guardian, The]
What Silicon Valley doesn’t understand about men harassing women [links to Vox]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNCIATIONS
Editorial: Russian propaganda has flooded U.S. airwaves. How about some reciprocity? [links to Washington Post]
Scaramucci learned his press tactics from Wall Street. They’ll only get uglier. [links to Washington Post]
Politicians’ social media pages can be 1st Amendment forums, judge says [links to Benton summary]
The role AI could play in writing laws [links to Benton summary]
LOBBYING
Why is Google spending record sums on lobbying Washington? [links to Guardian, The]
POLICYMAKERS
Kris Kobach: The man who may disenfranchise millions [links to Washington Post]
Regulatory Capture of the FCC: Stacking the Deck with the New Proposed Republican Commissioner [links to Bruce Kushnick]
Thomas Wheeler, Top Lawyer For Civil Rights At Justice Department, Leaving After Roughly 6 Months [links to National Public Radio]
COMPANY NEWS
Twitter introduces new paid service to promote tweets [links to Hill, The]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Apple Removes Apps From China Store That Help Internet Users Evade Censorship [links to Benton summary]
Russia bans VPNs to stop users from looking at censored sites [links to CNN]
As Election Nears, German Media Braces for Devious Hacks [links to New York Times]
Report calls on UK’s Ofcom to get tough on providers that promise fast speeds but fail to deliver
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NET NEUTRALITY
WE ALL AGREE ON NN, EXCEPT WHEN WE DON'T
[SOURCE: Benton Foundation, AUTHOR: Robbie McBeath]
The House Commerce Committee’s Communications and Technology Subcommittee held a hearing on July 25, 2017. It was advertised to be a Federal Communications Commission oversight hearing, meant to focus on agency actions and processes and to discuss draft legislation that would reauthorize the FCC, a step that has not been taken since 1990. But, as with most telecommunications policy discussions theses days, it quickly turned into a debate over network neutrality. Notably, this debate made public the below tactics by those in Congress and at the FCC who would repeal the rules barring broadband internet access service providers from web content blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. Throwing out those rules, especially paid prioritization (which prevents providers from making special deals with popular websites like Netflix to reach subscribers faster than their competitors), opens the door for broadband service packages that copy the cable TV model.
benton.org/blog/we-all-agree-net-neutrality-except-when-we-dont
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CDNs AND NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Morning Consult, AUTHOR: Miriam Baksh]
The network neutrality debate is often framed as a fight by everyday citizens to prevent broadband providers like AT&T and Comcast from using their servers to throttle or slow the internet traffic of business rivals. But internet service providers’ opponents in the long-running Washington fight — major content “edge” providers like Amazon, Facebook, Google and Netflix — don’t exactly have clean hands in the fight, according to analysts who say those firms have a way of favoring their content, in the form of content delivery networks. CDNs are clusters of servers that cache data from content providers to reduce the delay before a transfer of data begins — a way for the prominent and deep-pocketed sites to load more quickly than others. The networks are often owned by third party companies like Akamai Technologies, while some of the largest content providers have built their own. Globally, 71 percent of all internet traffic will cross CDNs by 2021, compared with 52 percent in 2016. Those networks have the ability to discriminate against and interrupt content flows, according to Dan Rayburn, principal analyst at Frost & Sullivan and executive vice president of Streamingmedia. Rayburn suggested that the Open Internet Order enacted by the Federal Communications Commission in 2015 was myopically focussed on ISPs. “If you’re thinking rationally about this, you’d address it with CDNs, with transit providers, with backbone providers,” Rayburn said. “You’d address it with everybody.”
benton.org/headlines/content-delivery-networks-complicate-debate-over-network-neutrality | Morning Consult
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OWNERSHIP
DISCOVERY-SCRIPPS
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Paul McClean]
Discovery Communications has struck a $14.6 billion deal to buy Scripps Networks, in the latest sign of consolidation in the cable TV industry. The combined group will have a wide-ranging roster of US cable channels, including Animal Planet, TLC and the Discovery Channel, owned by Discovery, and the Food Network and HGTV, owned by Scripps. Together they will have nearly 20 per cent of ad-supported pay-TV viewership in the US. The offer of $90 per share represents a 34 percent premium to Scripps’ unaffected share price as of July 18, and the companies said in a statement that they expect the deal to close by early 2018.
benton.org/headlines/discovery-communications-agrees-buy-scripps-146-billion | Financial Times
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PRIVACY
PRIVACY COMPLAINT
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Dwoskin, Craig Timberg]
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a prominent privacy rights watchdog, is asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate a new Google advertising program that ties consumers’ online behavior to their purchases in brick-and-mortar stores. The legal complaint, to be filed with the FTC on July 31, alleges that Google is newly gaining access to a trove of highly sensitive information -- the credit and debit card purchase records of the majority of US consumers -- without revealing how they got the information or giving consumers meaningful ways to opt out. Moreover, the group claims that the search giant is relying on a secretive technical method to protect the data -- a method that should be audited by outsiders and is likely vulnerable to hacks or other data breaches. “Google is seeking to extend its dominance from the online world to the real, offline world, and the FTC really needs to look at that,” said Marc Rotenberg, the organization’s executive director. EPIC alleges that if consumers don’t know how Google gets its purchase data, then they cannot make an informed decision about which cards not to use or where not to shop if they don’t want their purchases tracked. The organization points out that purchases can reveal medical conditions, religious beliefs and other intimate information.
benton.org/headlines/googles-new-program-track-shoppers-sparks-federal-privacy-complaint | Washington Post
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
UK BROADBAND REPORT
[SOURCE: The Guardian, AUTHOR: Mark Sweney]
Millions of United Kingdom broadband customers who do not get the connection speeds they pay for should receive compensation. A new report calls on Ofcom, the UK media and telecommunications regulator, to get tough on broadband providers that promise fast speeds but fail to deliver. The British infrastructure group of Members of Parliament (MPs), led by former Tory party chairman Grant Shapps, estimates that as many as 6.7 million UK broadband connections may not hit the 10Mb minimum that the government wants to be the UK standard for a basic decent service. The Broadband 2.0 report, which is backed by 57 MPs, calls for automatic compensation for customers who do not get the level of speed promised from the internet packages they buy. “Although broadband is increasingly considered to be an essential utility, the quality of customer services has simply not caught up with demand,” said Shapps. “It is unacceptable that there are still no minimum standards in the UK telecoms sector to protect customers from protracted complaints procedures, and ensure that broadband providers are fully accountable to their customers.”
benton.org/headlines/report-calls-uks-ofcom-get-tough-providers-promise-fast-speeds-fail-deliver | Guardian, The
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