April 24, 2014 (FCC to Propose New 'Net Neutrality' Rules)

NEWS FROM FCC MEETING

FCC TAKES MAJOR STRIDES TOWARD FURTHER EXPANSION OF RURAL BROADBAND
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Communications Commission took significant steps toward implementing the next phase of its program for expanding robust broadband in rural America, the Connect America Fund. Phase I of the Connect America Fund has already invested over $438 million to deploy broadband service to 1.6 million previously unserved Americans. Phase I also invested $300 million to expand advanced mobile wireless service and nearly $50 million for better mobile voice and broadband on Tribal lands. Phase II the Connect America Fund will result in a nearly 70% increase in annual support for broadband and voice service in areas served by the nation’s largest traditional local providers -- known as “price cap” carriers. The effort will expand broadband access to an additional 5 million Americans who are currently unable to benefit from the opportunities of 21st century communications. Over five years, Phase II of the Connect America Fund will provide nearly $9 billion to expand broadband in rural areas.
benton.org/node/180981 | Federal Communications Commission
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FCC PHASES IN RATE FLOOR INCREASE AND PROPOSES INCREASED BROADBAND SPEED REQUIREMENTS
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Bartees Cox Jr]
The Federal Communications Commission announced that it would delay implementing an increase in the rate floor for high cost area funding until January 2015. At that point the FCC will increase the rate floor incrementally instead of increasing the rate floor from $14 to $20.46 for phone service. The FCC will also conduct a new urban rate survey, and it will not apply the rate floor increase for lines with customers using the Lifeline program. In addition to the rate floor announcement, the FCC proposed an increase in the minimum broadband speed requirements for the recipients of high cost support. "Broadband is an evolving standard and connections should become more robust to access the growing number of services that depend on ubiquitous and reliable connectivity," said John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge. "It's good to see the FCC revisit the standards an Internet connection must meet to qualify as broadband, but there is still work to be done. Broadband connections should offer fast and reliable upload as well as download capability. The FCC must continue to update its standards as the needs of the public continue to evolve."
benton.org/node/180978 | Public Knowledge
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FCC PROPOSES TO MAKE 150 MHZ OF SPECTRUM AVAILABLE FOR BROADBAND
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
The Federal Communications Commission took steps to provide more spectrum for general consumer use, carrier-grade small cell deployments, fixed wireless broadband services, and other innovative uses, through the creation of a new Citizens Broadband Radio Service. The FCC proposed rules for the Citizens Broadband Radio Service in a Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that advances the Commission’s efforts to meet the growing demand for spectrum by proposing to make 150 megahertz available in the 3.5 GHz Band. The FNPRM proposes innovative spectrum sharing techniques to unlock the value of the spectrum between 3550 MHz and 3650 MHz, and seeks comment on extending the proposed service to 3700 MHz. Specifically, the FNPRM proposes a three-tiered access and sharing model comprised of federal and non-federal incumbents, priority access licensees, and general authorized access users. Together, the proposals seek to promote flexibility and innovation by leveraging advancements in technology to facilitate sharing between different users and uses, including incumbent government uses. Federal and non-federal incumbents would be protected from harmful interference from Citizens Broadband Radio Service users. Targeted priority access licenses would be made available for a variety of uses, including mobile broadband. General authorized access use would be permitted in a reserved amount of spectrum and on an opportunistic basis for a variety of consumer or business-oriented purposes, including advanced home wireless networking. Access and operation within the 3.5 GHz band would be managed by a spectrum access system, a dynamic database or databases that incorporates technical and functional requirements necessary to manage access and operations across the three tiers. In addition, the FNPRM seeks comment on technical, auction, and allocation rules.
benton.org/node/180997 | Federal Communications Commission | Chairman Wheeler | Commissioner Clyburn | Commissioner Rosenworcel | Commissioner Pai | Commissioner (O’Rielly
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FCC SPECTRUM PROPOSAL
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: John Leibovitz]
In a speech in March at the Brookings Institution, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler issued a challenge -- let’s confront change in spectrum policy and reorient our perspective from what was to what can be. Now, the FCC is leading by example. The Commission is issuing a detailed proposal for a new service in the 3.5 GHz Band -- the Citizens Broadband Radio Service -- representing a watershed for innovative spectrum sharing policies. 3.5 GHz is an ideal “innovation band.” Because the federal use in this band occurs primarily around the coasts, it is a great opportunity for intensive wireless broadband use on a shared basis. If the Commission is successful in creating a regulatory environment that encourages the Citizens Broadband Radio Service to flourish, it will simultaneously meet the demands of myriad spectrum uses and users. To be clear, we still have much work before us. The proposal is just that, a proposal. The Commission established a healthy comment cycle to allow for a spirited discussion of the many technical and policy details in the proposal. We are, however, reaching the end of this first chapter in the story of the 3.5 GHz Band. We hope that on the basis of this discussion in response to the proposal the Commission will be able to establish the new Citizens Broadband Radio Service in the rule books. Then the real work can begin, as the private sector invests in technology and networks that bring the service to life.
benton.org/node/181023 | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND

THE BROADBAND REVOLUTION IS NOT NIGH
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Vikas Bajaj]
[Commentary] Is America on the cusp of a broadband revolution? You might get that impression from AT&T’s announcement that it is considering providing Internet service of up to 1 gigabit, or 1 billion bits, a second to 21 metropolitan areas including Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The company’s plans sound impressive and ambitious. But if you happen to live in the cities AT&T is talking about, you might want to keep your Champagne on ice. Even if the company were ready to start laying new fiber-optic lines tomorrow, it would take many months of digging before it would be in a position to provide super-fast broadband connections. A better way to understand what AT&T is doing is to look at it as a salvo in the company’s war of words with Google. Neither company will necessarily get around to expanding in all of the cities they’ve mentioned, however. Meanwhile, cable companies have been trying to consolidate control of the market. Most Americans currently have few choices for high-capacity Internet service; nearly 60 percent of households buy broadband from their local cable companies, according to the Leichtman Research Group. It would be great if competition between Google Fiber and AT&T ended up providing Americans with more choices. But it would be naïve to believe that a broadband revolution is coming as long as a handful of cable companies dominate this important market.
benton.org/node/181011 | New York Times
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FCC TO PROPOSE NEW 'NET NEUTRALITY' RULES
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Gautham Nagesh]
The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal. The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on "commercially reasonable" terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis. Companies such as Skype or Netflix that offer phone or video services that rely on broadband connections could take advantage of such arrangements by paying the broadband providers to ensure that their traffic reaches consumers without disruption. Those companies would be paying for preferential treatment on the "last mile" of broadband networks that connects directly to consumers' homes. The proposal does not address the separate issue of back-end interconnection or peering between content providers and broadband networks. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler indicated he planned to issue new open Internet rules in February after a federal court threw out the FCC's previous rules. The court's ruling sketched out a legal pathway through which the FCC could try and achieve the same goals, and Chairman Wheeler has said he plans on following that road map.
benton.org/node/181005 | Wall Street Journal | Revere Digital
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WHEELER STATEMENT
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: Sean Hollister]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler insists that there has been "no turnaround in policy" concerning Open Internet rules and calls April 23’s reports on new network neutrality rules "flat out wrong." Here's the FCC chairman's full statement:
"There are reports that the FCC is gutting the Open Internet rule. They are flat out wrong. Tomorrow we will circulate to the Commission a new Open Internet proposal that will restore the concepts of net neutrality consistent with the court's ruling in January. There is no 'turnaround in policy.' The same rules will apply to all Internet content. As with the original Open Internet rules, and consistent with the court's decision, behavior that harms consumers or competition will not be permitted." The problem, which Wheeler's statement doesn't refute, is that the FCC intends to say that it's okay to discriminate against traffic if content providers don't pay the ISPs a "commercially reasonable" fee.
benton.org/node/181027 | Verge, The
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IT'S TIME FOR THE FCC TO STAND UP FOR AMERICANS INSTEAD OF RUINING THE INTERNET
[SOURCE: The Verge, AUTHOR: TC Sottek]
[Commentary] The Internet is screwed, and the US government is making it worse. Political cowardice caused the Federal Communications Commission to lose its first battle for net neutrality regulation: the rules that keep the Internet as you know it free and open. The idea of net neutrality is that all traffic is created equal -- whether you’re a movie streaming from Netflix, or a WhatsApp message, or a Tweet, or a bulletin board message. But according to a report from the Wall Street Journal, instead of trying to correct the errors it made in open Internet rules the first time around, the FCC will consider enacting new rules that directly destroy the principles of net neutrality. The proposal would allow profit hungry behemoths like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon to become gatekeepers that give preferential treatment to companies that pay the most for special access to customers. If cowardice caused the FCC to lose its first major net neutrality battle, complicity with the ISP industry is leading to its second major failure. The proposed rules would mark a complete capitulation to the monied Internet interests, harming consumers in the short and long-term. The ISPs that control the "last mile" of the Internet -- the pipes that connect to your home -- would love nothing more than to extract tolls from companies. Netflix’s surrender to Comcast sits in the murky waters of "peering," where major ISPs connect to one another, but the new rules could mean that similar deals are made in the last mile of the Internet where net neutrality thrives. The government is too afraid to say it, but the Internet is a utility. The data that flows to your home is just like water and electricity: it’s not a luxury or an option in 2014. The FCC’s original Open Internet rules failed precisely because it was too timid to say that out loud, and instead erected rules on a sketchy legal sinkhole that was destined to fail.
benton.org/node/181006 | Verge, The
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NET NEUTRALITY RUNNING OUT OF LIVES
[SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Levi Sumagaysay]
[Commentary] Open Internet. Net neutrality. Whatever you want to call it, it appears to be dying. And if you’re wondering whether you should mourn its death, might as well get that black suit ready. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler appears poised to propose rules (to be voted on at a May 15 meeting) that would officially make preferential treatment of network traffic OK. That is, content providers that want to make sure their online offerings are delivered smoothly and quickly would pay ISPs for the pleasure. However the FCC and others try to paint the new rules, the codifying of what essentially are faster lanes to certain content violates the concept of net neutrality. It could lead to degraded speeds and quality of the flow of content from providers that won’t or can’t pay Comcast, Verizon, AT&T or others. What, then, could that mean? It means that the Googles and Apples and Yahoos and Facebooks and even Netflixes of the world would pay (some of them already do) to play. But what about the startups and smaller companies that have the potential to be the next Netflix? This is what longtime net neutrality proponents have been talking about: Pay to play could kill innovation. And if the tolls start to hurt the big Internet companies’ bottom lines, it wouldn’t be a stretch to expect them to pass along those costs to us, their users, whether that’s in the form of higher subscription fees or downgraded or canceled services. In other words, we lose. And the double-dipping ISPs win.
benton.org/node/181026 | San Jose Mercury News
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FASTER INTERNET FOR LA?
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
[Commentary] AT&T's announcement that it might extend ultra-high-speed broadband service to Los Angeles and dozens of other communities across the country was greeted with no small amount of skepticism from the digital punditocracy. And there does seem to be a bit of gamesmanship going on between AT&T and Google, which has also made a habit of announcing potential, rather than actual, deployments of gigabit-speed Internet services. Nevertheless, state-of-the-art broadband lays the foundation for new businesses and provides a competitive advantage for communities. Officials in Los Angeles should take the opportunity seriously and find out what it would take to persuade AT&T to upgrade its network here. Gigabit Internet service makes the most sense today around college campuses and medical centers, near research hubs and in clusters of high-tech entrepreneurs. At this point, one can only imagine the sort of bandwidth-hogging application that would lead the typical consumer to want that much capacity. But there's a "Field of Dreams" quality to the Internet, with each leap in connection speed quickly being met by an explosion in ways to use it. AT&T is offering Los Angeles a chance to start making that leap, and we can't afford to miss it.
benton.org/node/181024 | Los Angeles Times
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PORTLAND’S BEING A PUSHOVER TO SNAG GOOGLE FIBER
[SOURCE: Seattle Times, AUTHOR: Brier Dudley]
[Commentary] As Seattle tries to figure out how to improve its broadband situation, it ought to keep an eye on its sister to the south. Portland is getting hot and heavy with Google, which may bring its fast fiber broadband service to the Rose City as early as 2015. Portland recently reached a preliminary franchise agreement with the online giant and will begin public deliberations on the deal in May, according to The Oregonian. Google announced in February that it plans to bring its fast-fiber broadband and cable-TV service to Portland and five surrounding cities. But first Portland and the neighboring cities must sort through the same neighborhood issues that Seattle now faces with CenturyLink and other broadband providers demanding special treatment and more access to public property. Google may be an exciting newcomer to the telecom business but in its dealings with cities, it acts like a crusty old player in the industry. In Portland, Google is twisting arms by offering its fast broadband in return for city handouts, just as CenturyLink is doing in Seattle. Cities are pushovers when it comes to broadband. The way politicians talk about it, you’d think their constituents were stuck in the dark ages and broadband was as important as the fire department. Google Fiber is appealing and has plenty of cheerleaders on social media and at City Hall. Yet Google is a mixed blessing. The majority of residents in any city would probably rather get broadband service from a public utility that’s accountable to them, instead of from a fairly opaque company that makes its money delivering hypertargeted advertising. Privacy concerns are offset by the prospect of a wealthy company stepping in to help address a complicated infrastructure challenge. Still it’s a business, not a gift, and city officials should push to make sure all of their residents benefit from the deals they make.
benton.org/node/181010 | Seattle Times
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REGULATORS APPROVE SETTLEMENT WITH VERIZON OVER BROADBAND ROLLOUT
[SOURCE: The Record, AUTHOR: Linda Moss]
Citing what it called misunderstandings and misinformation about Verizon's 1993 promise to roll out high speed Internet service statewide, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities unanimously approved a controversial settlement that critics claim reduces some of the commitments that the telecom company made 21 years ago. BPU President Dianne Solomon said that there was "clearly confusion" over Verizon's original broadband obligations, with the board saying that the company was never required to deliver broadband via fiber. The agency and its staff said that the settlement will avoid potentially years of litigation over Verizon's broadband agreement, called Opportunity New Jersey, and how rural areas in the southern part of the state will be serviced. "Verizon is getting a free pass," said Gregory Facemeyer, a member of the Hopewell Township Committee, a town without wired broadband service. Under one of the settlements most-debated clauses, Verizon will be permitted to substitute high-speed wireless service, so-called 4G, instead of delivering broadband service over copper or fiber-optic lines, in some areas.
benton.org/node/181009 | Record, The
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THE STATE OF THE INTERNET IS UNDER ATTACK
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
Akamai released data detailing a plethora of attacks against its clients as well as the increase in broadband speeds seen around the world. Its quarterly State of the Internet report for the fourth quarter of 2013 is chock-full of data about broadband speeds, IPv6 deployment and new types of website attacks. According to the report, the fourth quarter of 2013 saw a rise in the number of denial of service attacks. For the most part these attacks came from inside the US, hit one website and if they didn’t find a weakness, moved on. The report also gave an update on IPv6 adoption (it’s getting better, but is still not the majority of traffic on any network except Google’s Fiber network). Overall the global average connection speed reached 3.8 Mbps in the fourth quarter with 5.5 percent quarterly growth and 27 percent growth for the year. The US ranked tenth globally this time around with average connection speeds hitting 10 Mbps, a 25 percent improvement from the year before. Most notably, the US also saw its fastest broadband get faster, with the average peak broadband speeds hitting 43.7 Mbps. Finally, on the mobile side speeds are improving and we’re seeing a lot more traffic. Based on traffic data collected by Ericsson, the volume of mobile data traffic increased by 70 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2013, and grew approximately 15 percent between the third and fourth quarters of 2013. Overall, Akamai is seeing more people on the Internet with faster speeds. And in the US its data is showing that broadband is getting better, even in the areas where it’s relatively slow today.
benton.org/node/180966 | GigaOm
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THE INTERNET IS GOING PRIVATE. IT’S ALSO GROWN TO 138 TBPS OF CAPACITY
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
The world is still sucking down bandwidth like it’s an elixir of the gods, with global bandwidth demand reaching 138 Tbps in 2013, a 4.5 fold increase from the 30 Tbps of capacity from five years before. But it’s the mix of that growth that’s worth noting, according to a report out from Telegeography. Traffic on private networks owned by Facebook, Amazon, Google and other web giants is driving the majority of that growth -- about 55 percent of it averaged over that five-year period between 2009 and 2013. The remainder comes from public network traffic operated by carriers like AT&T, Comcast, Level 3 and others. Those public carriers still make up most of the traffic, however.
benton.org/node/180980 | GigaOm
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM

JAPAN ATTACK ON WIRELESS 'OLIGOPOLY' AWKWARD FOR SOFTBANK'S US PLANS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Yoshiyasu Shida]
For Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, who wants to build the world's largest mobile Internet company, criticism of his operations from regulators in his home market could not come at a worse time. The feisty entrepreneur is lobbying skeptical Washington officials to let him buy a second US mobile operator, saying he would help to break up a cozy US wireless oligopoly. Son says he is an outsider who stirred up a price battle that benefited consumers after he took over Vodafone's failing Japanese operation in 2007. So it must be galling to hear regulators in Tokyo chide his SoftBank Corp, along with NTT DoCoMo, Japan's mobile industry leader, and No.2 KDDI Corp, for lack of competition in the domestic smartphone market. "You could say the mobile market is an oligopoly of the three big companies," Communications Minister Yoshitaka Shindo said at a regular news conference in April. His ministry is preparing long-term proposals to bring lower prices and faster services, including fostering growth of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), cut-rate providers that lease network access from the big carriers. The sniping will not help Son's plans to acquire T-Mobile US.
benton.org/node/181008 | Reuters
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OWNERSHIP

WHY YOU SHOULD BE DEEPLY DREADING THE COMCAST-TIME WARNER MERGER
[SOURCE: Salon, AUTHOR: Zaid Jilani]
[Commentary] In its public interest statement filed with the Federal Communications Commission, Comcast touts the many supposed benefits of its acquisition of Time Warner Cable, even arguing that joining with TWC would be “pro-consumer, pro-competitive, and… generate substantial public interest benefits.” But a review of the facts shows exactly how wild this claim is. One Monopoly To Serve Them All. The problem with this argument is that Amazon and Microsoft, as vast as their empires are, don’t control people’s basic access to cable television and broadband (which is more or less a necessity for Internet users in 2014). The Xbox One offering Netflix doesn’t prevent users from accessing the service on dozens of other competing devices, but the same is not the case for access to basic information that TWC and Comcast’s cable networks provide. If the merger were to go through, tens of millions of Americans would be locked into less competitive cable and broadband markets, unable to vote with their feet and choose competitors who offer different services.
Broadcasting Influence. Aside from lobbying efforts in Congress, the biggest possible tool of influence that Comcast has is its own media empire. Following its merger with NBCUniversal, Comcast now owns networks like CNBC and MSNBC, some of the networks that are traditionally turned to for business reporting and corporate accountability. In news discussion about this merger, it goes without saying that these networks will be effectively neutered. But they’re not unbeatable. When lobbying giant AT&T sought to buy T-Mobile, press freedom and anti-trust activists fought back, successfully killing the $39 billion deal. The campaign against that merger could prove a model for those trying to fight Comcast today, and there are signs there’s already a broad coalition ready to contest the creation of this new monopoly. [Jilani is a Syracuse University graduate student and freelance writer]
benton.org/node/180961 | Salon
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COMCAST-TWC AND ONLINE TV
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Janko Roettgers]
[Commentary] The news that Dish aims to launch its online TV service this summer highlighted an interesting factoid: In some cases, big media mergers actually do foster competition -- as long as they come with a solid side of regulatory-imposed conditions, that is. Dish first announced its plans to launch an internet TV service in March, when the satellite operator struck a far-reaching licensing pact with Disney. Dish’s plan is to stream a smaller and less expensive package of live TV programming to subscribers unable or unwilling to sign up for a full satellite package. Bloomberg reported that the operator is aiming for a $20 to $30 monthly price tag, and that it is targeting younger viewers who prefer to watch their programming on mobile devices. Think of it as pay TV for cord cutters, if you will. The service won’t be completely unbundled, meaning that consumers won’t be able to pick and choose the three networks they’re interested in watching. Dish’s pact with Disney already called for ABC and ESPN to be part of “an Internet delivered, IP-based multichannel offering,” and Bloomberg explained that Dish will have to have contracts with at least two of the four big broadcasters, and at least ten of the highest-rated cable networks, before the new service can launch. It looks like that second broadcaster will most likely be NBC. That’s because the merger between NBC Universal and Comcast in 2011 came with a bunch of conditions imposed by the FCC and the Justice Department, including the requirement to make the same channels it is licensing to traditional cable or satellite operators also available to online video services. In addition to that, NBC is bound to follow the leads of others in this space.
benton.org/node/181022 | GigaOm
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WELCOME TO COMCAST COUNTRY
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Daniel Denvir]
[Commentary] Comcast argues that its acquisition of Time warner Cable will not decrease competition among cable television or broadband Internet providers because the two companies do not directly compete -- though the reason for that is that they already maintain virtual monopolies in many of their service areas. In Comcast’s case, that monopoly is predicated upon exerting overwhelming political control. Starting in Philadelphia, Comcast built a hometown political machine and turned it into a national juggernaut. In 2013, the company spent $18.8 million on federal lobbying, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s more than all but six other corporations. The company is also a major donor, making nearly $5.5 million in federal political contributions during the 2012 cycle. Recipients of Comcast’s largess include President Obama and Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation in Washington, a veritable Comcast caucus. The effort to sideline concerns about consumer protection was pioneered in Philadelphia in 1999, when Comcast was aided by City Hall in keeping a rival company, RCN, out of the local cable market. Philadelphia is a digital-age company town where the proper relationship between business and government has been turned on its head. Welcome, indeed, to Comcast Country. [Denvir is a senior staff writer at Philadelphia City Paper]
benton.org/node/181025 | New York Times
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TELEVISION

THE SUPREME COURT STRUGGLES TO FIND AN ANALOGY FOR AEREO
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Babette Boliek]
[Commentary] The Supreme Court pondered whether or not Aereo is engaged in the impermissible public performance of copyrighted material or whether it was doing, well something else. And that seems to be the rub; the court seemed to struggle with exactly how to categorize what Aereo is doing. More specifically, the Justices tried to do what all lawyers do: find an analogy that helps them fit the facts of the present case into the factual bucket of a prior case. There are two, strong potential prior case candidates: Sony Corp. v. Universal (Betamax) and Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings (CableVision). In the Betamax case, the Supreme Court decided that Sony did not violate the copyright laws by selling a video recording device to an individual who used the device to record video transmissions or play back material that may or may not have been illegally copied. The CableVision case -- decided by the Second Circuit and therefore not binding on the justices – involved the use of a remote storage digital video recorder or RS-DVR. The Second Circuit relied heavily on its own CableVision case in deciding in favor of Aereo, but both the Tenth and Ninth Circuits rejected similar arguments. So now it’s up to the Supreme Court to figure out what exactly is Aereo. Is it Betamax or is it CableVision? Like all Supreme Court oral arguments there was something for everyone. There did seem to be emphasis on Aereo’s lack of payment of royalties at any point of the distribution -- a different business model than CableVision or Netflix. This might be the easiest way for the justices to distinguish Aereo from the Second Circuit’s CableVision case. [Boliek is an associate professor of law at Pepperdine University School of Law]
benton.org/node/180991 | American Enterprise Institute
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“FREE TO AIR” REALLY MEANS THAT BROADCASTERS HAVE NO CASE
[SOURCE: Digitopoly, AUTHOR: Joshua Gans]
[Commentary] In the Aereo case, it is very clear what is happening: broadcasters are seeking to keep a rent stream going that was essentially handed to them historically by license agreements with the government. They are using copyright law to do this where it is clear that the license agreement was intended to restrict those sources of revenue in the first place and to limit their options. Broadcasters have a simple choice: they can keep to the terms of the license agreement or just stop and give up the licenses and restore to themselves the full range of options under copyright. It is not Aereo who are confused but the broadcasters. And from what I can gather the lawyers are doing a good job of keeping the Justices confused as well.
benton.org/node/180963 | Digitopoly
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JOURNALISM

MEDIA BIAS EXPLAINED IN TWO STUDIES
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Robert Samuelson]
[Commentary] The University of Chicago’s Matthew Gentzkow and Jesse Shapiro have some interesting ideas about the modern media, which they culled by studying traditional media. Namely, newspapers. They examined the ideological “slant” of newspapers by identifying various words and phrases favored by liberals or conservatives. By tallying newspapers’ use of liberal and conservative phrases, Gentzkow and Shapiro determined papers’ political slant. This compromised their “objective” pursuit of the news. But why are some papers more liberal and others more conservative? This is how the media resemble ice cream, Gentzkow said. Just as ice cream makers give customers the flavors they want, newspapers give their readers the stories and slant they want. It’s a market phenomenon. Ice cream makers strive to maximize ice cream consumption and profits. Papers try to maximize readership and profits. Newspapers are commercial enterprises that respond to economic signals and incentives. Editors, producers and reporters sense what appeals to their readers and try to satisfy these tastes. Applied to cable news channels and the Internet, these same forces polarize politics. Cable and the Internet have splintered media audiences and, thereby, created ferocious fights for ever-larger shares of ever-smaller fragments of the old mass market. The logic is powerful that the commercial imperatives of the new technologies will deepen the country’s political divisions. People will stick to their familiar political flavors and disparage those who choose differently.
benton.org/node/181002 | Washington Post
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SENIORS

WHO WILL CRACK THE CODE ON TECH FOR SENIORS?
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Barb Darrow]
While dozens of startups pour time and money into developing mobile health devices for the young, hale and hearty, they might be better off going grayer. The opportunity to sell technology to senior citizens is huge now and will only get bigger as more of us age into that segment. Which vendors will be best positioned to capitalize on this opportunity -- a handful of early movers that are already in the market, or vendors like Fitbit or Jawbone that focus on younguns? “Developers making technologies for the 20- and 30-somethings are missing a huge opportunity to supply the 100-million-plus people aged 50 and over in this country,” Laurie Orlov, an analyst with Age In Place Technology, said in an interview. She estimates that this market is worth $2 billion now and will hit $20 billion by 2020. Semico Research puts the number higher, forecasting that the market for gear like remote health monitors, oximeters, glucose monitors, medication reminders, heart rate monitors, safety alert bracelets, etc. will hit $30 billion by 2017. You want more evidence? Research released in October conducted by Oxford Economics for the AARP said that Americans over 50 spend $4.6 trillion annually, with the ripple effect of that spending hitting $7.1 trillion per year.
benton.org/node/180979 | GigaOm
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POLICYMAKERS

THE AEREO CASE IS BEING DECIDED BY PEOPLE WHO CALL ICLOUD ‘THE ICLOUD.’ YES, REALLY.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
[Commentary] In the end, the Supreme Court's ideal frame of reference was the phonograph. The fact that their first instinct was to turn to an invention created 137 years ago speaks gigabytes for how well the Justices approach the day's most important technology cases. It's easy to poke fun at the bench. Justice Sonia Sotomayor kept referring to cloud services alternately as "the Dropbox," "the iDrop," and "the iCloud." Chief Justice John Roberts apparently struggled to understand that Aereo keeps separate, individual copies of TV shows that its customers record themselves, not one master copy that all of its subscribers have access to. Justice Stephen Breyer said he was concerned about a cloud company storing "vast amounts of music" online that then gets streamed to a million people at a time -- seemingly unaware of the existence of services like Spotify or Google Play. And Justice Antonin Scalia momentarily forgot that HBO doesn't travel over the airwaves like broadcast TV. Yes, it's fun to mock Justices who seem clueless about technology. But the truth is that the laws themselves are often far behind technology. When a justice asks about a phonograph, it's because he is trying to go back to the most basic examples that support the current legal framework. And if a Justice truly doesn't understand the basics of some technology, you wouldn't want them not to ask these questions out of fear of ridicule.
benton.org/node/181000 | Washington Post
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STORIES FROM ABROAD

BRAZILIAN CONGRESS PASSES INTERNET BILL OF RIGHTS
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Anthony Boadle]
Brazil's Senate unanimously approved groundbreaking legislation that guarantees equal access to the Internet and protects the privacy of Brazilian users in the wake of US spying revelations. President Dilma Rousseff, who was the target of US espionage according to documents leaked by former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden, plans to sign the bill into law. She will present it at a global conference on the future of the Internet, her office said in a blog. The legislation, dubbed Brazil's "Internet Constitution," has been hailed by experts, such as the British physicist and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee, for balancing the rights and duties of users, governments and corporations while ensuring the Internet continues to be an open and decentralized network. To guarantee passage of the bill, Rousseff´s government had to drop a contentious provision that would have forced global Internet companies to store data on their Brazilian users on data center servers inside the country.
benton.org/node/180972 | Reuters
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HOW CHINA AND RUSSIA ARE TRYING TO UNDERMINE THE INTERNET, AGAIN
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
The last time the world got together to talk about how the Internet should work, China and Russia proposed making it easier for individual governments to control what their citizens can see on the Web. Now they're at it again, this time at a major international conference in Brazil. The conference, known as NETMundial, is expected to produce a set of nonbinding, international principles that countries can use in their management of the Internet. The issue has grown more prominent lately as the United States signaled its intent to relinquish its largely symbolic role in overseeing the Web's global name and numbering system. Unlike many of the other 180-odd proposals submitted by other countries and organizations, China and Russia are plainly preoccupied by how Internet governance could affect state authority.
benton.org/node/181001 | Washington Post
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April 24, 2014 (FCC to Propose New 'Net Neutrality' Rules)