August 2017

BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 2017

Embracing Innovation and Diversity in Cybersecurity https://www.benton.org/calendar/2017-08-11

COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY
   President Trump Is Going After Legal Protections for Journalists - Foreign Policy op-ed
   White House aide Gorka insists he was criticizing 'fake news' journalists, not Sec Tillerson [links to Hill, The]
   The Time for Engaging Citizens in Democracy Is Now [links to New America]
   Editorial: Partners in Voter Suppression [links to New York Times]
   Op-ed: How we communicate is changing. So should the way we think about free speech. [links to Washington Post]
   Op-ed: Adults are flunking civic engagement; can we teach kids to be better at it? [links to San Francisco Chronicle]
   Republicans are increasingly antagonistic toward experts. Here’s why that matters. [links to Washington Post]
   Democrats think they’ve found a way to pin down how much money Trump could be making off his presidency [links to Washington Post]
   Organizing for Action, the successor to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, is launching a new effort to train more activists by connecting progressive groups with newly-trained organizers [links to Washington Post]

NET NEUTRALITY
   Net Neutrality Advocacy Day Planned for Sept 27
   ISP, Edge Groups Talk Network Neutrality Legislation
   Network Neutrality Fake Out
   Paid Prioritization and Zero Rating: Why Antitrust Cannot Reach the Part of Net Neutrality Everyone Is Concerned About - Hal Singer analysis
   Caitlin Johnstone -- Net Neutrality: In A Corporatist Government, Corporate Censorship Is State Censorship [links to Medium]

INTERNET/BROADBAND
   The Future of Broadband in Underserved Areas
   The FCC Is Hinting it Might Change its Rules to Hide America’s Digital Divide [links to Benton summary]

OWNERSHIP
   Who’s Afraid of Sinclair Broadcasting? - Politico analysis [links to Benton summary]
   Altice-Charter Chatter May Be Just Talk [links to Wall Street Journal]

SECURITY/PRIVACY
   “Pretty egregious” security flaw raises questions about Pacer [links to Ars Technica]

CONTENT
   What Happened to Google's Effort to Scan Millions of University Library Books? [links to Benton summary]
   The Fate of Online Trust in the Next Decade - Pew research [links to Benton summary]
   David Lazarus: Disney streaming venture could make bloated pay-TV bundles obsolete [links to Los Angeles Times]

JOURNALISM
   CNN cuts ties with Jeffrey Lord after 'Sieg Heil' tweet [links to Benton summary]
   Ousted Fox News host Bill O'Reilly launches online news show [links to Benton summary]

GOVERNMENT & COMMMUNICATIONS
   Dispute Over Public Officials and Social Media [links to Benton summary]

DIVERSITY
   House Democrats demand answers on controversial Google memo [links to Hill, The]
   How Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai decided to fire James Damore was just as hard as its all-hands meeting will be [links to Vox]
   Ezra Klein: Behind the Google diversity memo furor is fear of Google’s vast, opaque power [links to Vox]
   Op-ed: The Real Root Of Google’s Gender Problem Starts At Birth, But It Isn’t Biology [links to Fast Company]
   The Google engineer’s memo shows the stereotypes that keep women out of STEM [links to Vox]
   Sexism in tech impacts women everywhere. YouTube's CEO just made that clear. [links to Vox]
   Alt-right plans 'free speech' march against Google [links to Hill, The]
   What that Google memo didn't tell you about pay inequality in America [links to Guardian, The]
   Opinion: If Google doesn't say why diversity is good, how can the fragile white men there grasp it? [links to Los Angeles Times]
   David Brooks: Sundar Pichai Should Resign as Google’s CEO [links to New York Times]

POLICYMAKERS
   Ajit Pai accused of conflict for helping former client, a prison phone company
   FCC packs broadband advisory group with big telecom firms, trade groups
   Defense Secretary Mattis tours Amazon headquarters during West Coast swing [links to Hill, The]
   President Trump Favors Outside Candidate Simons to Lead Federal Trade Commission [links to Bloomberg]
   The CTO of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is leaving after less than a year [links to Vox]

COMPANY NEWS
   Facebook introduces Watch, a streaming-video platform for TV-style series [links to Los Angeles Times]
   Venture capital firm sues ex-Uber CEO for fraud [links to Hill, The]
   Uber’s new in-app chat will help you avoid exchanging creepy texts with your driver [links to Vox]

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COMMUNICATIONS & DEMOCRACY

LEGAL PROTECTIONS FOR JOURNALISTS
[SOURCE: Foreign Policy, AUTHOR: Helen Murillo]
[Commentary] Recent statement by Attorney General Jeff Sessions mark a serious intervention in a delicate, decades-long balancing act between the federal government and professional journalists. A change in the policy about press subpoenas could have grave consequences for the government and press alike. A subpoena is the legal tool that forces an individual to testify or produce evidence. When subpoenas are issued to journalists (or their communications providers) in leak investigations, it is most often for the purpose of identifying a leaker: Match the relevant reporter’s telephone records to an individual with access to the classified information — or better yet, force the reporter to testify directly as to the source — and you’ve got your leaker. But you’ve also compromised the press’s ability to protect their sources, undermining their ability to do their job. Reporters who refuse to reveal their sources in compliance with such subpoenas risk contempt charges. While the Constitution limits government intrusion on the freedom of speech and of the press, the law does not offer absolute protection for journalists against revealing their sources. Congress has not enacted robust protections and the Supreme Court has not interpreted the First Amendment as itself embodying such a privilege — nothing approximating a broad “press privilege” relieving reporters from revealing sources. Such a privilege is protected at the state level in nearly all states. But no such privilege has been recognized uniformly at the federal level. [Murillo is a third-year student at Harvard Law School, where she is an editor of the Harvard Law Review]
benton.org/headlines/president-trump-going-after-legal-protections-journalists | Foreign Policy
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NET NEUTRALITY

NN ADVOCACY DAY PLANNED FOR SEPT 27
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Network neutrality advocates have set Sept 27 for their next coordinated protest of rolling back the Title II classification, as the Republican-majority Federal Communications Commission has proposed. The July 12 network Day of Action was an online and FCC-centric protest, the Sept 27 Day of Advocacy will be about facetime with policymakers, both on the Hill and at the FCC. According to Public Knowledge, one of the backers of the protest, the September event will feature participants going to Capitol Hill to make their case. The next day the protest will move to the FCC for the monthly open meeting to "let the commissioners know how you feel about net neutrality."
benton.org/headlines/net-neutrality-advocacy-day-planned-sept-27 | Broadcasting&Cable | link to Eventbrite page
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NET NEUTRALITY TALKS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
Apparently, House Commerce Committee Republican leadership got together, both in person and by phone, with the major trade associations on both sides of the network neutrality issue August 7 in a series of meeting throughout the day to discuss possible legislative pathways to clarifying the Federal Communications Commission’s network neutrality authority. The associations involved, according to sources, included NCTA: The Internet and Television Association, CTIA (the wireless industry), USTelecom, and the Internet Association. The associations were asked for, and answered with, suggestions for changes, updates, and input, or alternatives, based on a starting point of draft bills dating back a couple of years that included no blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization, though with paid prioritization language that was flexible enough not to be a blanket prohibition, say, only prohibiting “anti-competitive” or discriminatory paid prioritization.
benton.org/headlines/isp-edge-groups-talk-network-neutrality-legislation | Multichannel News
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NET NEUTRALTY FAKE OUT
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Margaret Harding McGill]
As the number of online comments in the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality proceeding soars to record highs, groups on both sides of the debate are calling on Congress to investigate mounting allegations of fake public input. The latest allegations come from the conservative-leaning National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), which said a whopping 5.8 million pro-net neutrality comments submitted between July 17 and Aug. 4 using the same one sentence appear to be fake. The docket has been plagued for months by charges that many of the comments are duplicates, filed under fake names or submitted without the permission of the people who supposedly signed them. The growing controversy is raising questions about how the comments will be used when the FCC mulls a final order. "It's almost unimaginable how anybody thinks this could do any good," NLPC President Peter Flaherty said.
benton.org/headlines/network-neutrality-fake-out | Politico
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NET NEUTRALITY AND ANTITRUST
[SOURCE: American Bar Association, AUTHOR: Hal Singer]
As Internet-based distributors move up and down the stack to become vertically integrated platforms with a preferred suite of affiliated content, there is a growing concern among policymakers that innovation among independent content creators and websites may be threatened. More fundamentally, the Internet is not one thing—it is many things, and our current regulatory regimes are struggling to address that complexity. These new platforms give rise to potential conflicts of interest, in which it might pay for a vertically-integrated platform owner to sacrifice some profits (if any) in its distribution division in order to support an affiliated (or favored, third-party) application. This essay focuses on identifying and fixing this potential regulatory gap when crafting a “net neutrality” policy—a set of rules or standards designed to spur innovation at the “edge” of the Internet by preventing Internet service providers (ISPs) from engaging in discriminatory conduct. But the essay could just as easily be directed at the powerful online platforms wielded by Amazon, Facebook, or Google. The applicability of this remedy to other parts of the Internet is natural, not because market power is paramount there (though it certainly exists), but because there is a large enough threat to innovation in adjacent markets to online shopping, social media, and search, respectively.
[Singer is Principal, Economists Inc., and Senior Fellow, George Washington Institute of Public Policy. The author has served as a consultant to both ISPs and independent cable networks in regulatory matters.]
benton.org/headlines/paid-prioritization-and-zero-rating-why-antitrust-cannot-reach-part-net-neutrality | American Bar Association
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

FUTURE OF BROADBAND IN UNDERSERVED AREAS
[SOURCE: New America, AUTHOR: Michael Lahanas]
At a recent panel convened by the Wireless Future Project at New America, Ellen Satterwhite, of the American Library Association, noted that 40 percent of libraries cannot meet the minimum speed requirements set by the Federal Communications Commission (100Mbs for small libraries and 1Gbs for large ones) because of high costs or lack of access. We need only look at Idaho to get a glimpse of this absurd pricing: One library there pays $1000 per month for 5Mb service, while another pays $650 per month for 40Mb service. So how can we ramp up connectivity in these areas? One potential solution that has shown promise is fixed wireless internet. This, in a nutshell, involves beaming internet access from a broadcasting tower directly into people’s homes via a small receiver on their roof. These sorts of point to multi-point (P2MP) fixed wireless services are becoming increasingly popular, particularly in Middle America, in part because of the relative ease of deployment and the ability to provide gigabit-level speeds. You might be wondering, then, how we can encourage fixed wireless. At the panel, advocates and industry leaders discussed the possible benefits of expanding, or sharing, wireless spectrum access in the 3.7-4.2GHz band to wireless internet service providers, or WISPs. This would be a boon to rural WISPs like Jeff Kohler’s Rise Broadband. Kohler noted that companies like Rise are starting to “feel the squeeze” on the spectrum they’re currently allowed to operate on. He also noted that the cost per customer is considerably less as well, often being roughly $250 for someone using fixed wireless, where the average rural fiber consumer could be upwards of $1,000. In fact, the overall cost of deploying “wireless fiber” for his company was roughly one-tenth of the price of standard fiber.
benton.org/headlines/future-broadband-underserved-areas | New America
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OWNERSHIP

LAWMAKERS EYING ELIMINATION OF CROSS-OWNERSHIP RULE
[SOURCE: Morning Consult, AUTHOR: Edward Graham]
Republican Reps are seeking to eliminate the Federal Communications Commission’s newspaper and broadcast cross-ownership rule through draft legislation reauthorizing the federal agency. The 1975 rule bars media companies from owning and operating newspapers and TV stations in the same local market. The FCC reauthorization draft bill that was discussed during a House Commerce subcommittee oversight hearing on July 25 includes a section called “elimination of daily newspaper cross-ownership rule.” Democratic Reps are reportedly largely opposed to eliminating the rule. “Committee Democrats will not support any efforts to eliminate the broadcast and newspaper cross-ownership rule,” a Democratic aide said. “We should not be making it more difficult for independent voices in the media to thrive, especially as the Trump administration continues its misguided attacks on the free press.” Senate lawmakers are also planning on releasing an FCC reauthorization bill before the end of 2017. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune (R-SD) said after a panel executive session on Aug 2 that FCC reauthorization will be one of the first things that the committee addresses when lawmakers return from the August recess. It is unclear if the committee’s legislation will also include a provision eliminating the media cross-ownership rule as part of the agency’s reauthorization.
benton.org/headlines/lawmakers-eying-elimination-fccs-media-cross-ownership-rule | Morning Consult
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POLICYMAKERS

PAI ACCUSED OF CONFLICT FOR HELPING FORMER CLIENT, A PRISON PHONE COMPANY
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Jon Brodkin]
A prisoners' rights group has accused Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai of having a conflict of interest because he used to represent a prison phone company as a lawyer. Under Pai's direction, the FCC dropped its court defense of rules capping the intrastate phone rates charged to prisoners. The decision helped prison phone companies—including Pai's former client, Securus Technologies—continue to charge high prices. Pai "represented Securus as its attorney while employed as a partner with the law firm of Jenner & Block, LLP, immediately preceding his confirmation as FCC Commissioner in May 2012," Human Rights Defense Center Executive Director Paul Wright wrote in a filing with the commission Aug 9. Pai worked for Jenner & Block for about a year beginning in April 2011. With his decisions at the commission, "he has never stopped representing the interests of his client Securus Technologies," Wright argued. "Based on this conflict, we request that Mr. Pai recuse himself from all decisions involving Securus Technologies in particular and the Inmate Calling Services (ICS) industry in general, and that he disclose any financial interests in same." A spokesperson for Pai's office said that Pai's work was cleared by the FCC's ethics office and pointed out that the recusal requirement in federal government standards lasts only one year.
benton.org/headlines/ajit-pai-accused-conflict-helping-former-client-prison-phone-company | Ars Technica
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BDAC MEMBERSHIP
[SOURCE: Center for Public Integrity, AUTHOR: Blake Dodge]
When the Federal Communications Commission went looking this year for experts to sit on an advisory committee regarding deployment of high-speed internet, Gary Carter thought he would be a logical choice. Carter works for the city of Santa Monica, California, where he oversees City Net, one of the oldest municipal-run networks in the nation. The network sells high-speed internet to local businesses, and uses the revenue in part to connect low-income neighborhoods. That experience seemed to be a good match for the proposed Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee (BDAC), which FCC Chairman Ajit Pai created. One of the panel’s stated goals is to streamline city and state rules that might accelerate installation of high-speed internet. But one of the unstated goals, members say, is to make it easier for companies to build networks for the next generation wireless technology, called 5G. The advanced network, which promises faster speeds, will require that millions of small cells and towers be erected nationwide on city- and state-owned public property. The assignment seemed to call out for participation from city officials like Carter, since municipal officials approve where and what equipment telecommunications companies can place on public rights of way, poles and buildings. But the FCC didn’t choose Carter — or almost any of the other city or state government officials who applied. Instead the FCC loaded the 30-member panel with corporate executives, trade groups and free-market scholars.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-packs-broadband-advisory-group-big-telecom-firms-trade-groups | Center for Public Integrity
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