BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2015
Headlines have long been used as a tool in classrooms, complementing a class syllabus with the most-recent developments in the field. Benton is making it easier both to connect your students to the service and to facilitate discussion. See https://www.benton.org/headlines/classroom
UNIVERSAL SERVICE
Carriers Accept Over $1.5 Billion in Annual Support from Connect America Fund to Expand and Support Broadband for Nearly 7.3 Million Rural Consumers in 45 States and One Territory - press release
AT&T Accepts Nearly $428 Million in Annual Support from Connect America Fund to Expand and Support Broadband for Over 2.2 Million Rural Consumers in 18 States - press release [links to web]
Consolidated Telecom Accepts Nearly $14 Million in Annual Support from Connect America Fund to Expand and Support Broadband for Nearly 50,000 Rural Consumers in Six States - press release [links to web]
CenturyLink Accepts Nearly $506 Million in Annual Support from Connect America Fund to Expand and Support Broadband for Over 2.3 Million Consumers in 33 States - press release [links to web]
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Does The Tumble In Broadband Investment Spell Doom For The FCC's Open Internet Order? - op-ed
Letter from Langdon: The Co-Op Model - Daily Yonder op-ed [links to web]
Baltimore Broadband Coordinator: Municipal broadband a 'distinct possibility' [links to web]
CFO: Consolidated Communications Video Takes Backseat to Broadband [links to web]
Nine Rural Telcos Receive NTCA Gig-Capable Certification [links to web]
NTCA: Affordable video content will drive competition, broadband investment in rural markets [links to web]
GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
AP files lawsuit against DOJ over fake news story
Nice try, government officials, but this time the law is on the citizen’s side - CJR analysis [links to web]
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
LTE over Wi-Fi spectrum sets up industry-wide fight over interference [links to web]
CONTENT
Netflix Viewership Finally Gets a Yardstick
Fox News Scores Big Court Win Against TVEyes
Yes, we are the product — but what’s the problem? - Andrew McAfee op-ed
TELEVISION
Sinclair: FCC had nothing to do with retrans deal
ELECTIONS & MEDIA
Roger Ailes' real message to Trump - analysis [links to web]
Voter selfies are great, but a secret ballot is greater - SF Chronicle editorial [links to web]
Why Donald Trump’s Fox News War May Make Viewers Rage Against the Network - The Wrap analysis [links to web]
JOURNALISM
Ashley Madison hack raises Digital Era questions of media ethics [links to web]
PRIVACY
Tech group takes issue with student privacy bill [links to web]
How digital voyeurism is destroying privacy - op-ed [links to web]
DIVERSITY
The growing need for more women cybersleuths [links to web]
FCC MEETING
FCC Announces Tentative Agenda For September Open Meeting - press release [links to web]
LOBBYING
Apple Takes Washington [links to web]
COMPANY NEWS
Record 1 billion people used Facebook in a single day [links to web]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
Google Responds to European Union Antitrust Charges
'Telephone farmers' reaping the benefits of agri-tech [links to web]
UNIVERSAL SERVICE
CONNECT AMERICA FUND
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: Press release]
Ten telecommunications carriers have accepted $1.5 billion in annual support for rural broadband deployment from the Connect America Fund, which, together with the carrier’s own investment, will expand broadband to nearly 7.3 million rural consumers in 45 states nationwide and one US territory over the next few years. August 27 was the final day for these carriers to decide whether to accept the offer of support from Phase II of the Connect America Fund, a key Federal Communications Commission program to expand rural broadband. Most of the ten carriers are major national carriers, and their acceptance will infuse over $9 billion from the Connect America Fund into rural broadband over the next six years. “Today we are taking a significant step forward in narrowing the rural-urban digital divide,” said
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “Access to modern broadband is critical to life in today’s society. The financial support provided by American ratepayers through the Connect America program is an investment in the future of our rural communities that will pay dividends for all Americans for years to come.”
benton.org/headlines/carriers-accept-over-15-billion-annual-support-connect-america-fund-expand-and-support | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/BROADBAND
DOES THE TUMBLE IN BROADBAND INVESTMENT SPELL DOOM FOR THE FCC'S OPEN INTERNET ORDER?
[SOURCE: Forbes, AUTHOR: Hal Singer]
[Commentary] They said it wouldn’t happen. They offered assurances from three Wall Street analysts, who insisted that Internet service providers (ISPs) would continue to invest at the same levels regardless of the regulatory climate. AT&T’s capital expenditure (capex) was down 29 percent in the first half of 2015 compared to the first half of 2014. Charter’s capex was down by the same percentage. Cablevision’s and Verizon’s capex were down ten and four percent, respectively. CenturyLink’s capex was down nine percent. Although the Federal Communications Commission’s Order failed to perform any cost-benefit analysis, a companion statement issued by the agency pursuant to the Congressional Review Act speculated that the Open Internet rules would generate $100 million in annual benefits for content providers. Given the roughly $78 billion in ISP capex in 2014, Title II would need to scare off a mere 0.13 percent of ISP capex (equal to $101 million) to generate net losses for the economy. On December 4, some unfortunate FCC attorney will have to defend the Open Internet Order before a panel of judges on, among other things, cost-benefit grounds. With luck, a judge will ask about those assurances from the three Wall Street analysts.
[Hal Singer is a principal at Economists Incorporated and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute]
benton.org/headlines/does-tumble-broadband-investment-spell-doom-fccs-open-internet-order | Forbes
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GOVERNMENT & COMMUNICATIONS
AP FILES LAWSUIT AGAINST DOJ OVER FAKE NEWS STORY
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Julian Hattem]
The Associated Press is bringing a lawsuit against the Department of Justice seeking information about the government’s use of a fake news story to catch a teenager suspected of calling in bomb threats. Along with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the AP asked a district court to force the department to turn over records regarding the FBI’s impersonation of a journalist and creation of a fake story in 2007. Reporters from the two organizations submitted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests soon after news of the sting came to light in October but have not received any records in response, they said. "We cannot overstate how damaging it is for federal agents to pose as journalists," said Katie Townsend, the litigation director for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. “This practice undermines the credibility of the independent news media, and should not be tolerated. Yet while the public clearly has a strong, compelling interest in knowing more about the FBI’s use of this tactic, the FBI seems determined to withhold that information,” she added. “We have been left with no choice but to look to the court for relief." In October 2014, federal documents revealed that an FBI agent had pretended to be an AP reporter in order to target a teenager suspected of making bomb threats to a local high school in 2007. The agent fabricated a draft of an AP story and placed it on a website made to look like The Seattle Times in order to plant malicious software on the suspect’s computer.
benton.org/headlines/ap-files-lawsuit-against-doj-over-fake-news-story | Hill, The
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CONTENT
NETFLIX VIEWERSHIP FINALLY GETS A YARDSTICK
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Joe Flint, Ben Fritz]
Netflix is notoriously secretive when it comes to sharing audience viewing information -- be it with content providers, the media or Wall Street -- arguing that since it doesn’t have advertisers to please, ratings for its subscription streaming service are irrelevant. But now Hollywood is getting its first real peek inside the black box of online video streaming. In recent months, measurement specialist Nielsen has been scaling up a program to track viewing on Netflix and other online services like Amazon’s Prime Instant Video and Hulu. Nielsen said it is now tracking nearly 1,000 shows. Most major TV studios are receiving detailed readouts on how their own programming is performing, including the total viewers for any episode and basic demographics such as age and gender, Nielsen said. Netflix has been dismissive of Nielsen’s efforts, noting that the company still doesn’t provide ratings for content viewed on tablets and phones and that its numbers wouldn’t include viewing of shows outside the US. Netflix does share some viewing information with select studios. Studios that do large content-licensing deals with Netflix have been able to negotiate for data such as the number of times a show has been streamed on a monthly basis and some tracking info to see how a show is retaining an audience over multiple episodes, people familiar with the matter say. But Netflix doesn’t provide demographic breakdowns or how many people watch any individual episode.
benton.org/headlines/netflix-viewership-finally-gets-yardstick | Wall Street Journal
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FOX NEWS SCORES BIG COURT WIN AGAINST TVEYES
[SOURCE: Hollywood Reporter, AUTHOR: Eriq Gardner]
On Aug 26, Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York gave Fox News a partial win in an important copyright dispute that could influence the future of the news business. Fox News has been taking on a media monitoring service called TVEyes, which is probably unfamiliar to most but has been a resource for many well-known journalists, politicians and corporations who wish to track what cable news is saying about a given topic. The cable news network has argued that a company that records some 1,400 television and radio stations and charges customers $500 a month for access to a near real time index of clips -- with the ability to share such videos -- threatens its revenues and violates its copyrights. Last September, TVEyes convinced Judge Hellerstein that the core part of its service relating to indexing and excerpting was protected as a fair use. The judge noted that TVEyes was the only company offering such a comprehensive service and held up its transformative value. However, the judge wanted more discussion on some of TVEyes' other features. In particular, those relating to letting subscribers download, archive, e-mail and search for clips. And on the verge of the decision, the controversy led outsiders to file friend-of-the-court briefs including from CNN, NBC and CBS taking Fox News' side despite some evidence they or their reporters were customers for TVEyes. Judge Hellerstein has now decided that the archiving functions also fall under fair use but expresses concern about its sharing function and rules that features related to downloading and searching by date and time are not covered as fair use.
benton.org/headlines/fox-news-scores-big-court-win-against-tveyes | Hollywood Reporter
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WE’RE THE PRODUCT – WHAT’S THE PROBLEM
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Andrew McAfee]
[Commentary] What is going on these days between some of the world’s largest tech companies and their users is either the biggest bargain of the modern era, or the biggest scam. It’s true that all the information about me and my social network that these companies have could be used to help insurers and credit-card companies pick customers and price discriminate among them. But they already do that, and do it within the confines of a lot of regulation and consumer protection. I’m just not sure how much “worse” it would get if Google, Facebook and others started piping them our data. Blackmail would be another lucrative future business — I’d be willing to pay a lot not to have my entire search history exposed to the world — but this would turn users, governments, advertisers and lawyers alike against the web companies, so they’re not going to do it.
[McAfee is a principal research scientist at MIT.]
benton.org/headlines/yes-we-are-product-whats-problem | Financial Times
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TELEVISION
SINCLAIR: FCC HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH RETRANS DEAL
[SOURCE: Katy on the Hill, AUTHOR: Kathryn Bachman]
Sinclair Broadcast Group shot down claims by the Federal Communications Commission that the agency’s intervention was the reason that Dish and Sinclair finally hammered out a new retransmission consent agreement. In a statement, Sinclair said, “We understand the temptation for the FCC to take credit for resolving this impasse, but their intervention had nothing to do with it. We were very close to a resolution well before Chairman Wheeler got involved. In fact, the FCC process actually delayed the resolution, because it added more issues to negotiate, which lengthened DISH’s service interruption, not shortened it. And it is important to remember that our stations never went off the air in any of those markets, but were consistently available free of charge to our viewers, as well as through DISH’s competitors.”
benton.org/headlines/sinclair-fcc-had-nothing-do-retrans-deal | Katy on the Hill
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
GOOGLE RESPONDS TO EUROPEAN UNION ANTITRUST CHARGES
[SOURCE: The Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sam Schechner, Natalia Drozdiak]
Google rebuffed the European Union’s demand that it change the way it ranks online comparison-shopping services in its search results, setting up a potentially drawn-out legal battle between the search company and a regulator empowered to levy billions of euros in fines. In a formal response to antitrust charges the EU filed spring 2015 against the California company, Google said it has argued the bloc’s antitrust regulators erred in their analysis of the fast-changing online-shopping business, misconstrued Google’s impact on rival shopping-comparison services, and failed to properly back up their legal claims. In particular, the company argues that the EU’s charges -- detailed in a document called a Statement of Objections, or SO -- fail to take into account the fast growth of companies like Amazon.com and eBay. Google executives have said these firms pose a new competitive threat, which undermines the case that Google has harmed comparison-shopping companies like Nextag and LeGuide. Google also argues that asking it to make changes to the way it ranks comparison-shopping sites would require legal justifications the EU doesn’t have.
benton.org/headlines/google-responds-european-union-antitrust-charges | Wall Street Journal, The
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