Jeff Roberts

[Commentary] Nicole Wong, a former top lawyer at Google and Twitter, left the White House recently after working on privacy and big data issues for a little over a year. In choosing Wong’s successor, the White House may not need to find the best technologist or tech lawyer in the country.

Instead, the Administration should look for someone with a high public profile capable of broadening the debate beyond the recondite circles of tech policy, and into the language of ordinary Internet users.

Republican Federal Communications Commissioner Ajit Pai has renewed a push to kill a 1975 rule that allows the leagues to black out games on cable if a local team fails to sell enough tickets.

The proposal, first announced in December, appears to be gaining momentum before a vote in the fall, according to a National Journal report. If the FCC plan passes, which appears likely, it will be a victory for fans but a relatively minor one. The reason is that the FCC rule, for practical purposes, has only affected football fans in a handful of cities where small-market NFL teams -- including Buffalo, Cincinnati and San Diego -- fail to sell out their games.

An even bigger victory for fans comes by way of a court decision in which a federal judge in New York refused to halt class action claims by fans who say blackout rules imposed by the NHL and Major League Baseball violate antitrust laws.

Taken together, the rulings are important because they suggest that authorities are growing skeptical of rules that give powerful sports leagues a free pass on ordinary anti-trust rules. More importantly, for fans, the end of blackouts could mean not just more games, but lower prices -- the judge reportedly cited an expert who claims game packages could cost 50 percent less if there were true competition in the sports market.

A Canadian court is forcing Google to remove search listings not just for google.ca, but beyond the country’s borders too. The case could lead to more regional censorship practices becoming global.

[Commentary] This is the Federal Communications Commission’s dilemma as it tries to design rules to prevent broadband providers from playing favorites when they deliver web traffic: It has a big stick, called “Title II,” but most people think the agency lacks the political juice to wield it against some very powerful companies.

And while some have proposed “light touch” options to avoid a confrontation, that may be wishful thinking: FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler will have to go all-in and swing the Title II stick, or just it lay down altogether. Simply put, Chairman Wheeler won't wield his only weapon because Title II advocates just don’t have the money and lobbying firepower to challenge the telecom industry

The Supreme Court ruled in June that Aereo, whose service helped subscribers stream TV signals, is like the cable companies that need a license to transmit over-the-air TV. But when Aereo responded by trying to buy such a license, the Copyright Office stated it is not a cable service -- leaving the start-up in a legal no-man’s land where it is likely to die.

The situation sums up the surreal world of TV regulation, which is built on an outdated set of rules that serve to entrench the current model of TV distribution. Under this model, broadcasters charge to stick consumers with bloated bundles of channels, and newer internet services like Aereo get frozen out altogether. Used as a sword, the retransmission consent rules mean the broadcasters can cause a channel to “go dark’ for months until a cable service agrees to pay a fee.

News stories about a child rapist, a shoplifter and a financial scandal have all gone missing from Google search results in recent weeks -- but now links to the stories have reappeared on “Hidden from Google,” a website that is archiving examples of Internet censorship that are taking place under a controversial new law.

Three weeks after the Supreme Court shut down Aereo for streaming TV over the Internet without permission, a court in California has given the green light for satellite TV company Dish to continue selling a service that does much the same thing.

In a short ruling, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused a request by Fox to shut down “Dish Anywhere,” which lets consumers record the broadcasters’ shows on a DVR and then beam them over the Internet to a computer or mobile device.

In its ruling, the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court’s finding that Fox was unlikely to suffer serious harm if Dish Anywhere was not shut down pending a copyright trial.

New York Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has upped the stakes in the debate over how the Federal Communications Commission should regulate broadband Internet providers, by calling for them to be reclassified as so-called “common carriers.”

Sen Schumer invoked “Title II,” which has been a third rail in discussions on telecom policy, because it would require companies like Comcast to behave more like public utilities. His Facebook post reads in part: “Like a highway, the Internet must remain free and open for all; not determined by the highest bidders … Title II reclassification is the best way to for us to preserve the Internet as an unfettered tool for communication and the sharing of ideas.”

In response to the post, prominent figures from the tech world, including Reddit’s Alexis Onanain and lawyer Marvin Ammori, left comments hailing Sen Schumer’s plan as an important step for startups.

[Commentary] 24 hours later and I’m still furious. When news of Aereo’s demise broke, I did my best to calmly explain why six people used the law to kill the most innovative TV service in a generation. But now I might as well say how I really feel.

The Supreme Court, which ruled 6-3 that Aereo’s streaming service infringed on broadcasters’ copyright, was not just wrong. It was terrible, stupid and misguided. In crippling Aereo, the six judges made a choice to entrench the current, badly broken model of TV. That model has let the TV business largely defy the logic of digital distribution, and instead impose a form of cartel pricing on consumers -- requiring people to buy a slew of channels they don’t want in order to watch the handful of ones they do.

Now, we’re stuck instead with the TV industry’s over-priced bundles and, in the case of mobile, a confusing and convoluted “TV everywhere” system that seeks to replicate an out-of-date form of linear TV watching that no one wants in the first place.

The “Internet of things” refers to the idea of turning everyday objects around us into responsive data devices. It’s one of the hottest ideas in tech right now -- even if we’re totally lacking the resources we need to support it.

For Tamara Budec, an executive with data services provider Digital Realty, the building of the physical layer for the Internet of things has barely begun, and moving forward will require constructing new clusters of data centers and also and freeing up more wireless spectrum.

There are also questions of how to build in global security and privacy controls, according to Jai Menon, VP and chief research officer at Dell Research. The challenge is especially daunting, Menon said, given the sheer scale of data that can now be collected. He pointed out that capturing all the information points generated by New York City’s taxi fleet would produce an unmanageable 26 exabytes a year.

Menon also noted that building an infrastructure for the Internet of things will involve constructing not only physical plant, but next-generation analytic tools that are not just predictive, but prescriptive too -- for instance, sensors that would not just predict a storm tomorrow, but also be capable of sending emergency responders to meet it.