You’re reading the Benton Foundation’s Weekly Round-up, a recap of the biggest (or most overlooked) telecommunications stories of the week. The round-up is delivered via e-mail each Friday; to get your own copy, subscribe at www.benton.org/user/register
Robbie's Round-Up for the Week of August 28 - September 1, 2017
The reason why network neutrality is so important—and why this issue remains so fiercely contested—is that it amounts to the free speech principle for the internet. This open access concept is absolutely essential, net neutrality advocates argue, because the entire US economy—and indeed society—is now deeply rooted in internet connectivity. More than that, net neutrality ensures that US democracy will continue to thrive by allowing all voices—even unpopular ones—to be heard. "Net neutrality is what democracy looks like," said Winnie Wong, a veteran political activist involved in Occupy Wall Street, People For Bernie, and the Women's March on Washington. "Without it we can't tell the story of the struggle for social justice. If the government empowers corporate monopolies to dictate how and what we can share online, we'll never be able to advance our vision of racial justice, climate action, and economic equality." With so much at stake, US faith leaders are also getting involved. "An open internet is vital for our organizing efforts here in North Carolina, and around the country," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, a leading national justice organizer and President of Repairers of the Breach.
Facing such strong public opposition to his net neutrality rollback, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai may punt the issue to Congress, which is actually what the nation's largest ISPs want. The broadband industry's real goal, according to many tech policy experts, is to move this battle to the Republican-led US Congress, where deep-pocketed ISPs can lobby to craft internet policy rules that favor themselves. If the ISPs are successful, look for a spirited net neutrality debate this fall featuring Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN). This fight is far from over.
After months of debate, protests, and disruptions, the Federal Communications Commission’s comment period on its proposal to kill network neutrality is now over. The commission stopped accepting comments closing out with nearly 22 million total replies — setting an immense new record. The FCC’s previous comment record was just 3.7 million, set during the last net neutrality proceeding. But the process of receiving all those comments was far from smooth this time around.
The FCC’s website is fairly confusing. It’s also, apparently, susceptible to spam and other attacks, which we saw at multiple points across the past four months. All the while, the FCC’s chairman has been trying to explain that comments don’t really matter anyway, despite the commission’s requirement to act in the public interest and take public feedback. From the very beginning of the proceeding, FCC leadership laid out that it would be the quality, not the quantity, of the comments that made a difference. On the surface, that’s a reasonable argument, but it’s being set out as an excuse to ignore the overwhelming millions of comments in support of net neutrality in favor of few well-written filings by Comcast and the like. Now that the comment period has ended, the FCC will begin work on a revised version of its proposal, which it will then vote on and quite likely pass, making it official policy. The commission is supposed to factor public input into its revisions — and in fact, much of the original proposal was just a big series of open-ended questions — so it’ll probably be a little while before we see a final draft.
It’s entirely possible that the commission will go ahead with its original, bare-bones plan to simply kill net neutrality and leave everything else up to internet providers to sort out. But if the commission does decide to put in place some sort of protections, then we’ll have another debate to run through — one over exactly how effective those rules might be, and exactly how many ways companies can weasel around them.
The Federal Communications Commission's website already gets a lot of traffic—sometimes more than it can handle. But thanks to a weakness in the interface that the FCC published for citizens to file comments on proposed rule changes, there's a lot more interesting—and potentially malicious—content now flowing onto one FCC domain.
The system allows just about any file to be hosted on the FCC's site—potentially including malware. The application programming interface (API) for the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System that enables public comment on proposed rule changes has been the source of some controversy already. It exposed the e-mail addresses of public commenters on network neutrality—intentionally, according to the FCC, to ensure the process' openness—and was the target of what the FCC claimed was a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack. But as a security researcher has found, the API could be used to push just about any document to the FCC's website, where it would be instantly published without screening. Because of the open nature of the API, an application key can be obtained with any e-mail address. While the content exposed via the site thus far is mostly harmless, the API could be used for malicious purposes as well. Since the API apparently accepts any file type, it could theoretically be used to host malicious documents and executable files on the FCC's Web server.
Blacks and Hispanics remain less likely than whites to own a traditional computer or have high-speed internet at home, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in fall 2016. But mobile devices are playing important roles in helping to bridge these differences.
Roughly eight-in-ten whites (83%) report owning a desktop or laptop computer, compared with 66% of blacks and 60% of Hispanics. There are also substantial racial or ethnic differences in broadband adoption, with whites more likely than either blacks or Hispanics to report having a broadband connection at home. (There were not enough Asian respondents in the sample to be broken out into a separate analysis.) But despite these inequalities, blacks and Hispanics have mobile devices such as smartphones and tablet computers in shares similar to whites. There are differences between Hispanics born inside and outside the U.S.: 88% of native-born Hispanics own a smartphone, compared with 62% of Hispanics born abroad. About three-quarters of whites and blacks own a smartphone. Mobile devices play an outsize role for blacks and Hispanics when it comes to their online access options. About two-in-ten Hispanics (22%) and 15% of blacks are “smartphone only” internet users – meaning they lack traditional home broadband service but do own a smartphone. By comparison, 9% of whites fall into this category. In addition, blacks and Hispanics are also more likely than whites to rely on their smartphones for a number of activities, such as looking up health information or looking for work.
BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for THURSDAY, AUGUST 31, 2017
Susan Crawford on Title II Net Neutrality
NET NEUTRALITY
Survey: Most Verifiable FCC Comments Favor Title II Repeal
AT&T absurdly claims that most “legitimate” net neutrality comments favor repeal [links to Benton summary]
FCC Chairman Pai Huddles Mostly With Allies Ahead of Net Neutrality Rewrite
If FCC repeals net neutrality, FTC won't leave users unprotected - FTC Acting Chair op-ed
FCC flooded with comments before critical net neutrality vote [links to Guardian, The]
Ensuring an Open Internet while Fostering Innovation and Investment [links to AT&T]
Log in now: Here’s your last chance to weigh in on net neutrality before the FCC rolls back its rules [links to Washington Post]
IIA Survey Says: Public Uses 'Net as Information Service [links to Benton summary]
Public Knowledge Files FCC Reply Comments to Preserve Net Neutrality Rules - press release [links to Benton summary]
NCTA: Title II Fans Are Fearmongering [links to Benton summary]
Comcast: Congress Should Lay Down Law on Net Neutrality [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
Free State to FCC: Set ISPs Free to Invest [links to Benton summary]
House Commerce Committee delays network neutrality hearing [links to Hill, The]
INTERNET/BROADBAND/TELECOM
Chairman Pai's Response to Senator Peters and Senator Stabenow Regarding the GAO Report on the Lifeline Program - press release
Chairman Pai's Response to Rep Hanabusa Regarding Oversight of the Universal Service Fund High-Cost Program - press release [links to Benton summary]
Sept 6 Hearing Addressing the Risk of Waste, Fraud and Abuse in the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline Program [links to US Senate Commerce Committee]
Kansas City Was First to Embrace Google Fiber, Now Its Broadband Future Is 'TBD'
Redefining ‘Broadband’ Could Slow Rollout to Rural Areas [links to Benton summary]
Remarks of Chairman Pai Senior Counsel Nicholas Degani at University of Mississippi Tech Summit - speech [links to Benton summary]
State of the Internet Report [links to Akamai]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
AT&T Fixed 5G Network Trials Expands to Waco, Kalamzoo, and South Bend [links to telecompetitor]
EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
Will Rural Texas Ever Get Its Phone Service Back After Harvey? - Harold Feld blog
Chairman Ajit Pai to Visit Areas Impacted By Hurricane Harvey on Tuesday Sept. 5 [links to Federal Communications Commission]
Communications Status Report for Areas Impacted by Tropical Storm Harvey for Aug. 30 [links to Federal Communications Commission]
FCC: Three TV stations Off Air in Harvey's Wake [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
After Harvey Took Out Communications, FEMA Set Up its Own [links to nextgov]
The apps that are saving Harvey victims [links to Washington Post]
Crowdsourcing Website Is Helping Volunteers Save Lives in Houston [links to nextgov]
Local TV Steps Up To Help Harvey Victims [links to TVNewsCheck]
Covering the storm itself is just the beginning [links to Radio Television Digital News Association]
Barely anyone used text-to-911 during Hurricane Harvey [links to Marketplace]
Despite Hurricane Harvey Telecom Outages, Industry Steps Up Good Will Efforts [links to telecompetitor]
Comcast Starts Assessment, Restoration Phase in Houston [links to Multichannel News]
Dish Helps Customers, Communities Impacted by Harvey [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
Alaska Joins FirstNet [links to First Responder Network Authority]
SECURITY/PRIVACY
Editorial: Collapse of California bill to protect internet users would be awful [links to San Diego Union Tribune]
What's Up Those Baseball Sleeves? Lots Of Data, And Privacy Concerns [links to National Public Radio]
A Federal Push for Smart Cities Cybersecurity and Privacy Standards [links to nextgov]
Sec Tillerson moves to close State cyber office [links to Hill, The]
TELEVISION
Sinclair Renews Five Fox Affiliations [links to TVNewsCheck]
Six-Second Commercials Are Coming to NFL Games on Fox [links to New York Times]
PHILANTHROPY
Google Critic Ousted From New America, a Think Tank Funded by the Tech Giant
Scholar says Google criticism cost him job: 'People are waking up to its power' [links to Guardian, The]
Congress Asked to Investigate Google/New America Story [links to Broadcasting&Cable]
New America response to claims that Google influenced an employee’s termination [links to New America]
Zephyr Teachout: Google is coming after critics in academia and journalism. It’s time to stop them. [links to Washington Post]
Jonathan Taplin: Google’s Disturbing Influence Over Think Tanks [links to New York Times]
JOURNALISM
What’s missing in the media conversation on gun violence [links to Media Matters for America]
OWNERSHIP
The Realpolitik of the Sinclair-Tribune Merger - The Diffusion Group analysis [links to Benton summary]
Amazon in Review: What the Amazon-Whole Foods Merger Teaches Us About Antitrust - PK analysis [links to Benton summary]
Amazon Looks to Whole Foods to Boost Online Grocery Shopping [links to Wall Street Journal]
HEALTH
Telemedicine can save money and lives, if rural communities have the equipment and infrastructure to put the technology to work [links to Daily Yonder]
Lawmakers worry hospital are abusing telehealth for financial gain [links to nextgov]
ESPN Football Analyst Walks Away, Disturbed by Brain Trauma on Field [links to New York Times]
LABOR
White House stops plan for companies to report worker pay by race and gender [links to Los Angeles Times]
CONTENT
These Alternative Browsers Could Change Your Internet Experience [links to nextgov]
COMMUNITY MEDIA
Most Americans – especially Millennials – say libraries can help them find reliable, trustworthy information [links to Pew Research Center]
COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY
UN Human Rights Chief Condemns Trump’s Attacks on Media
Trump voting panel apologizes after judge calls failure to disclose information ‘incredible’ [links to Benton summary]
Opinion: Free speech and anti-knowledge [links to Washington Post]
Opinion: The ‘he can’t be trusted to fairly grade [group X] students’ argument for firing professors based on their speech [links to Washington Post]
How ‘Doxxing’ Became a Mainstream Tool in the Culture Wars [links to New York Times]
Dan Borenstein: Liberals don’t own the First Amendment [links to San Jose Mercury News]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
Trump’s visit to Texas didn’t result in the front-page coverage he no doubt hoped to see [links to Washington Post]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Suddenly it’s open season on the press in Cambodia [links to Washington Post]
Here Are the 41 Websites You Can't Access in Cuba [links to Motherboard]
NET NEUTRALITY
SUPPORT FOR TITLE II REPEAL
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Broadband for America – whose members include AT&T, CenturyLink, Charter, CTIA – The Wireless Association, Comcast, NCTA – The Internet & Television Association, Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA), and USTelecom Association, representing ISPS opposed to Title II -- is telling the Federal Communications Commission that a study it commissioned found that – surprise! -- 69.9 percent (8,595,090) of the comments in the FCC network neutrality docket that were not either fake or unverifiable international comments favored repealing Title II classification, while only 29.5 percent (3,622,188) were against repeal. The study was conducted by data analytics company Emprata. CEO Paul Salasznyk said that the study was "conducted in an independent fashion, forming our own conclusions using the publicly available data." The study found that of the 21.766 million comments assessed, more than 20.684 million "appear to be artificial, international filings, form letters, and duplicative submissions." Emprata says more than 90 percent of the record-breaking 21 million comments are essentially pre-written form letters. The FCC received about 13 million comments that support the current net neutrality protections, according to the Emprata report, and it received about 8.6 million comments in support of Pai’s push for repeal. Once the form letters drafted by supporters and opponents are removed, the FCC more likely received about 1.7 million unique comments defending net neutrality rules, and about 24,000 unique comments backing Pai’s push to scrap them. In the eyes of net neutrality advocates, that might be something of a win. To be sure, these groups take great offense to the “form letter” label, arguing that it’s perfectly reasonable for web users to click a button and send a petition to their regulators — as millions seem to have done. Even if these comments are subtracted from the total, however, the data shows that Pai’s plan might be more popular with internet providers than with the masses.
benton.org/headlines/survey-most-verifiable-fcc-comments-favor-title-ii-repeal | Multichannel News | recode | ars technica
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PAI HUDDLES MOSTLY WITH ALLIES AHEAD OF NN REWRITE
[SOURCE: Bloomberg, AUTHOR: Kyle Daly]
The Federal Communications Commission is taking dozens of meetings with companies, trade groups and public policy advocates as it gears up to change its regulatory classification of broadband and loosen its network neutrality rules. But FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s own calendar mostly has been filled with proponents of redoing the commission’s broadband classification and rewriting the rules. Chairman Pai or his staff have sat down 15 times since he became chairman in January with companies and groups asking him to undo the FCC’s underlying regulatory classification of broadband and enact looser net neutrality rules. Pai or his staff have held four meetings with groups that have urged him to keep their priorities in mind in whatever approach he takes; and another three meetings with people urging Pai to leave the issue to Congress or the Supreme Court to resolve. Two of those meetings were with tech trade groups, CALinnovates and the Application Developers Alliance, who want Pai to let Congress rewrite the rules. AT&T is a member of both groups.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-chairman-pai-huddles-mostly-allies-ahead-net-neutrality-rewrite | Bloomberg
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IF FCC REPEALS NN, FTC WONT LEAVE USERS UNPROTECTED
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen]
[Commentary] The Federal Trade Commission can challenge harmful non-neutral practices on a case-by-case basis under its antitrust authority and under its consumer protection authority. These complementary tools ensure that consumers can effectively pursue their many, varying market preferences, including preferences for values of openness and free expression online. First, the FTC’s antitrust tools protect the competitive process, which motivates companies to deliver what consumers want. Second, the FTC uses its consumer protection authority to ensure that consumers get the benefit of the bargain they strike. This two-pronged competition and consumer protection enforcement approach is case-by-case. We evaluate each practice to see if it actually harms consumers. Such an approach has advantages over prescriptive regulation, which prejudges, in the abstract, entire categories of business practices. In dynamic, fast-changing industries, case-by-case enforcement better protects consumers and promotes innovation because it focuses agency resources on actual consumer injury and doesn’t require regulators to predict the future.
[Maureen K. Ohlhausen is acting chairman of the Federal Trade Commission.]
benton.org/headlines/if-fcc-repeals-net-neutrality-ftc-wont-leave-users-unprotected | Hill, The
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
PAI RESPONSE TO SENS PETERS, STABENOW RE: GAO REPORT ON LIFELINE PROGRAM
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Chairman Ajit Pai]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai sent letters to Sens Gary Peters (D-MI) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) on August 21, 2017, to respond to their letter expressing concern with the Lifeline program and asking for information relating to the Government Accountability Office Lifeline report. Chairman Pai provided information on enforcement and compliance mechanisms for oversight of the program, resources for determining program eligibility, the projected timeline for testing and implementing the National Verifier system and resources available for reviews and audits.
benton.org/headlines/chairman-pais-response-senator-peters-and-senator-stabenow-regarding-gao-report-lifeline | Federal Communications Commission | Letter to Pai
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KC GOOGLE FIBER
[SOURCE: Motherboard, AUTHOR: Kaleigh Rogers]
Five years after hooking up its first Kansas City customers, expansion of Google Fiber has come to a screeching halt. Thousands of customers in KC who had pre-registered for guaranteed service when Google Fiber made it to their neighborhood were given their money back earlier in 2017, and told they may never get hooked up. Google Fiber cycled through two CEOs in the last 10 months, lost multiple executives, and has started laying off employees. Plans to expand Google Fiber to eight other American cities halted late in 2016, leaving the fate of the project up in the air. I recently asked Rachel Hack Merlo, the Community Manager for Google Fiber in Kansas City, about the future of the expanding the project service there, and she told me it was "TBD." Kansas City expected to become Google's glittering example of a futuristic gig-city: Half a decade later, there are examples of how Fiber benefitted KC, and stories about how it fell short. Thousands of customers will likely never get the chance to access the infrastructure they rallied behind, and many communities are still without any broadband access at all. Many are now left wondering: is that it?
benton.org/headlines/kansas-city-was-first-embrace-google-fiber-now-its-broadband-future-tbd | Motherboard
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EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS
WILL RURAL TX EVER GET PHONE SERVE BACK AFTER HARVEY?
[SOURCE: Tales of the Sausage Factory, AUTHOR: Harold Feld]
[Commentary] Once the floodwaters recede and the reconstruction begins, when can residents see their phone service — and broadband service — return. For rural residents of Texas still dependent on traditional landlines, the answer to that may be “never.” Why never? Back in 2011, Texas deregulated its telephone system. Of particular relevance here, Texas made it ridiculously easy for phone companies to get rid of their “carrier of last resort” (COLR) obligations — the obligation for the incumbent telephone network to provide service to everyone its service territory. As a result, phone companies in Texas do not have a state-based legal obligation to repair or replace service once it goes down. So in places where the telephone network has been damaged or destroyed by Harvey, AT&T (the primary legacy phone company in the impacted area) has no state responsibility to restore service.
[Harold Feld is Senior Vice President at Public Knowledge]
benton.org/headlines/will-rural-texas-ever-get-its-phone-service-back-after-harvey | Media Matters for America
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COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY
UN HUMAN RIGHTS CHIEF CONDEMN TRUMPS ATTACKS ON MEDIA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Nick Cumming-Bruce]
The United Nations human rights chief said Aug 30 that President Donald Trump’s repeated denunciations of some media outlets as “fake news” could amount to incitement to violence and had potentially dangerous consequences outside the United States. The rebuke by Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, at a news conference in Geneva was an unusually forceful criticism of a head of state by a United Nations official. al-Hussein was reacting to President Trump’s recent comments at a rally in Phoenix (AZ) during which he spoke of “crooked media deceptions” in reports of the violent clashes at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville (VA) that resulted in the death of a counterprotester. In Phoenix, the president’s words also appeared to whip up audience hostility toward journalists. “It’s really quite amazing when you think that freedom of the press, not only a cornerstone of the Constitution but very much something the United States defended over the years, is now itself under attack from the president himself,” al-Hussein said. “It’s a stunning turnaround.”
benton.org/headlines/un-human-rights-chief-condemns-trumps-attacks-media | New York Times
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PHILANTHROPY
GOOGLE AND NEW AMERICA
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Kenneth Vogel]
In the hours after European antitrust regulators levied a record $2.7 billion fine against Google in late June, an influential Washington think tank learned what can happen when a tech giant that shapes public policy debates with its enormous wealth is criticized. The New America Foundation has received more than $21 million from Google; its parent company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt; and his family’s foundation since the think tank’s founding in 1999. That money helped to establish New America as an elite voice in policy debates on the American left. But not long after one of New America’s scholars posted a statement on the think tank’s website praising the European Union’s penalty against Google, Schmidt, who had chaired New America until 2016, communicated his displeasure with the statement to the group’s president, Anne-Marie Slaughter, according to the scholar. The statement disappeared from New America’s website, only to be reposted without explanation a few hours later. But word of Schmidt’s displeasure rippled through New America, which employs more than 200 people, including dozens of researchers, writers and scholars, most of whom work in sleek Washington offices where the main conference room is called the “Eric Schmidt Ideas Lab.” The episode left some people concerned that Google intended to discontinue funding, while others worried whether the think tank could truly be independent if it had to worry about offending its donors. Those worries seemed to be substantiated a couple of days later, when Slaughter summoned the scholar who wrote the critical statement, Barry Lynn, to her office. He ran a New America initiative called Open Markets that has led a growing chorus of liberal criticism of the market dominance of telecom and tech giants, including Google, which is now part of a larger corporate entity known as Alphabet, for which Schmidt serves as executive chairman. Slaughter told Lynn that “the time has come for Open Markets and New America to part ways,” according to an email from Slaughter to Lynn. The email suggested that the entire Open Markets team — nearly 10 full-time employees and unpaid fellows — would be exiled from New America.
benton.org/headlines/google-critic-ousted-new-america-think-tank-funded-tech-giant | New York Times
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