BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5, 2011
We're catching up on stories we missed during the break. For updates from the first half of last week, see http://bit.ly/eLSiIL
AGENDA
GOP Asks Businesses Which Rules to Rewrite
Interoperability, Data on FCC's January Agenda, Not Comcast
President Obama Signs COMPETES Act, Local Community Radio Act
An Electronics Show That Media Companies Dare Not Miss
The Year Ahead for Media: Digital or Die
NETWORK NEUTRALITY
MetroPCS LTE Plans Charge More For Skype and Streaming
Network neutrality? Not at the coffee shop
The Federal Pat-Down of the Internet
Don't stifle the Internet
MORE ON INTERNET/BROADBAND
US government getting more interested in IPv6
INDECENCY
Appeals Court Tosses FCC Indecency Fine Against ABC
Third Circuit Denies Full-Court Review Of Fox Decision
MORE ON TELEVISION/BROADCASTING
Public Interest Groups Urge FCC Action To Protect TV Viewers
Moody's sees broadcast TV safe for the next decade
JOURNALISM
Internet Gains on Television as Public's Main News Source
American Media's True Ideology? Avoiding One
TELECOM/WIRELESS
Judge: Law Prohibiting Text Message Spam Not Unconstitutional
Report shows users moving from landlines to wireless
Warrantless cell phone search gets a green light in California
POLICYMAKERS
NARUC Names New Telecommunications Committee Chair
EDUCATION
Math That Moves: Schools Embrace the iPad
See also:Can eBooks help bridge achievement gaps?
COMMUNITY MEDIA
Towards a National Transition Plan for Libraries
HEALTH
Electronic Medical Record vs. Electronic Health Record: Clarifying the EHR/EMR Difference
OWNERSHIP
Facebook Deal Spurs Inquiry
Why Facebook is in no hurry to go public
MORE ONLINE
Firefox Leads in Europe, Firm Says
Attacks on company websites intensify
AGENDA
GOP ASKS BUSINESS FOR REWRITE ADVISE
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Binyamin Appelbaum]
Companies spend millions of dollars each year complaining to Congress about burdensome laws and regulations, pressing their concerns in public campaigns and in private meetings. They rarely wait for invitations. Last month a senior House Republican, Rep Darrell Issa (R-CA), nevertheless dispatched letters to 150 companies, trade groups and research organizations asking them to identify federal regulations that are restraining economic recovery and job growth. Rep Issa, incoming chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the concerns of businesses had been ignored by the Obama administration as it pursued what he described as an unprecedented regulatory expansion. The responses have been predictable but, in asking, Rep Issa also is underscoring the commitment of the new House majority to help business by curtailing government.
benton.org/node/47363 | New York Times | LATimes
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FCC'S JANUARY AGENDA
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: ]
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the following items will be on the tentative agenda for the next open meeting scheduled for Tuesday, January 25, 2011:
Interoperability Order and FNPRM: An Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to ensure that the public safety broadband network is interoperable nationwide.
Data Innovation Initiative Presentation: Presentation on the status of the comprehensive reform efforts to improve the agency's fact-based, data-driven decision-making.
benton.org/node/47348 | Federal Communications Commission
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COMPETES AND LOW POWER FM SIGNED INTO LAW
[SOURCE: The White House]
On January 04, 2011, the President Barack Obama signed into law:
H.R. 5116, the “America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education, and Science (America COMPETES) Reauthorization Act of 2010,” which reauthorizes various programs intended to strengthen research and education in the United States related to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics; and
H.R. 6533, the “Local Community Radio Act of 2010,” which modifies current restrictions on low-power FM radio stations.
benton.org/node/47346 | White House, The
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THE IMPORTANCE OF CES
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter]
When the Consumer Electronics Show officially starts on Thursday, media moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Jeffrey Bewkes will be inspecting new tablets and Internet-connected television sets and meeting with allies and partners like Google and Verizon. They will be discussing new ways to distribute content — always with an eye toward maintaining control over it. The show’s status as a media summit meeting has risen in the last few years, as has the realization that device makers can help their products stand out by cutting deals with content makers. “So many of our devices rely on the content that’s coming from Hollywood,” said Karen Chupka, a senior vice president for the electronics association. And even the simplest deal to, say, display a 3-D football game on a set at Best Buy requires handshakes and contracts.
benton.org/node/47361 | New York Times
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NETWORK NEUTRALITY
METROPCS AND NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Ryan Kim]
MetroPCS’s discounted 4G LTE mobile broadband plans were not just the beginning of a possible price war. It represented a long-talked about tactic of wireless Internet service providers charging for content at different rates and potentially favoring their own services while charging more for access to rivals. The new LTE plans raise the specter of consumers paying more for certain kinds of content and the potential for a fractured Internet experience, where users may not be free to jump easily from one site to another. And it appears poised to test the latest net neutrality rules enacted by the Federal Communications Commission, which created fewer protections for discrimination of mobile content. Free Press, a media advocacy group, has now called upon the FCC to investigate MetroPCS’s new pricing tiers. MetroPCS spokesperson Drew Crowell said the carrier is not prepared to discuss the Free Press statement or net neutrality implications of its latest service plans.
benton.org/node/47310 | GigaOm | Free Press
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NETWORK NEUTRALITY? NOT IN THE COFFEE SHOP
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
Network neutrality rules arrived just before Christmas, but they won't apply to Kindles, coffee shops, or dial-up Internet. And they won't apply to Google. The toughest rules apply only to "fixed broadband Internet access service," which can include fixed wireless links ("mobile" broadband has different, and even weaker, rules). Dial-up isn't covered, since "telephone service has historically provided the easy ability to switch among competing dial-up Internet access services" and the telephone network is still regulated under "common carrier" rules. But the Federal Communications Commission was at pains to make clear that the new rules will not apply to businesses that provide Internet access to their customers as an extra benefit. "We decline to apply our rules directly to coffee shops, bookstores, airlines, and other entities when they acquire Internet service from a broadband provider to enable their patrons to access the Internet from their establishments," the agency wrote, though it notes that the ISP providing the service to the coffee shop or bookstore does have to play by the rules. In these scenarios, the coffee shop owner is the "end user" of the Internet, even if the shop makes money charging its users for access. The coffee shop can therefore block file-sharing traffic with impunity, and it doesn't need to disclose such blocking or throttling. (Though the FCC does ask quite politely for such business to "disclose relevant restrictions on broadband service they make available to their patrons.")
benton.org/node/47334 | Ars Technica
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THE FEDERAL PAT-DOWN OF THE INTERNET
[SOURCE: FlashReport, AUTHOR: Rep Mary Bono Mack (R-CA)]
[Commentary] With so many Americans rightly focused on jobs and the economy, it is very possible that many people are unaware of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) scheme to impose a number of burdensome government regulations on the Internet. The move - while bad for consumers, innovation and investment - is not surprising because it is the fulfillment of a campaign promise made by President Barack Obama in 2008. Never mind that the Internet is a bright spot for our struggling economy and functioning just fine without what amounts to a federal pat-down of the inner workings of the Internet. Federal regulation of the Internet, also known as network neutrality, has been seen as the holy grail for the media regulation obsessed left-wing special interest groups like Moveon.org, Free Press and George Soros's Open Society Institute for the latter half of the past decade. And with these and other special interests to satisfy going into a Presidential Election, it really does not matter that only 21 percent of Americans support federal regulation of the Internet over the free market or that these regulations will deter capital investment which create private sector jobs. Despite promises to change how Washington works, this is special interest policy-making 101 and to the Obama Administration's FCC all other facts are seen as inconvenient truths. The American people should reject this power-grab and demand that government get out of the business of picking winners and losers when it comes to the Internet. As a Member of Commerce serving on the Committee with oversight of the FCC, that is what I will continue to do until this poorly conceived plan is abandoned once and for all.
benton.org/node/47332 | FlashReport
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DON'T STIFLE THE INTERNET
[SOURCE: Miami Herald, AUTHOR: Edward Wasserman]
[Commentary] The digital revolution has been shaped by blunders as much as by breakthroughs, and the course of its brief history is littered with the bleached skulls of visionary efforts undone by bad timing, bad judgment or the simple human inability to see around corners. So to the tangle of questions known as "net neutrality.'' It may not be, as Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) says, "the most important free-speech issue of our time,'' but the issues are indeed big, defining ones. They involve power, specifically how much power in shaping the online world will be allowed to the companies we pay to access it. Late last month, the Federal Communications Commission, the government's top industry regulator, issued a long-awaited order on ``Preserving the Free and Open Internet.'' It should have been a decisive inflection point in the Internet's history. It may instead wind up consigning one of the online world's signature principles to a roadside boneyard. Open access and wide opportunity to the vibrant universe of content creators have defined the Internet's continuing success. But huge power naturally flows to those who control not content, but channels. Restraining that power is essential if the promise of the Internet isn't to be yet another weathered skull.
benton.org/node/47320 | Miami Herald
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MORE ON INTERNET/BROADBAND
NEW IPV6 PUBLICATIONS
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Iljitsch van Beijnum]
The US federal government seems to have IPv6 on the brain as of late: both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) came out with IPv6-related documents recently. The FCC document is a collection of previously known information -- it's not about FCC policy -- but they managed to include a few things we weren't aware of. It discusses the transition from NCP, the protocol used with the original ARPANET, to the current TCP/IP back in the early 1980s: "The NCP-to-IPv4 transition had two characteristics that distinguish it from the current transition: a flag-day transition date and a clear directive from an authority that could back it up. On January 1, 1983, NCP would be turned off. Those networks who had failed to prepare -- there were a significant number of them -- fell offline, and proceeded to spend several panicked months attempting to upgrade their computers and regain connectivity."
The meatier NIST document is intended for federal agencies, but "may be used by nongovernmental organizations on a voluntary basis." It goes into much detail about the differences between IPv6 and IPv4, and how those differences impact security. For instance: "Reconnaissance attacks in an IPv6 environment differ dramatically from current IPv4 environments. Due to the size of IPv6 subnets (264 in a typical IPv6 environment compared to 28 in a typical IPv4 environment), traditional IPv4 scanning techniques that would normally take seconds could take years on a properly designed IPv6 network."
benton.org/node/47331 | Ars Technica | FCC press release | read the FCC paper
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INDECENCY
COURT TOSSES NYPD BLUE FINE
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Juliana Gruenwald]
A federal appeals court tossed out the Federal Communications Commission's $1.2 million fine against ABC and its affiliates for briefly airing a female character's nude buttocks during a 2003 episode of the now defunct program "NYPD Blue." The FCC found in 2008 that ABC violated the commission's indecency rules and fined ABC and its affiliates a maximum $27,500 penalty each for airing the episode. In its decision to toss the fine, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York cited a ruling the same court issued last year that struck down the FCC's indecency policy for violating "the First Amendment because it is unconstitutionally vague."
benton.org/node/47313 | National Journal | Broadcasting & Cable | Court Opinion
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FOX DECISION HEADED TO SUPREME COURT
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
A Federal court will not review its decision that the Federal Communications Commission's indecency enforcement regime is unconstitutional. Buried on page five of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision vacating the FCC's indecency fine against ABC stations over NYPD Blue was the news that the court back in November had rejected the FCC's request for a full-court hearing of its finding that the FCC's indecency enforcement regime is unconstitutionally vague. That finding came in the Third Circuit's review of the FCC's indecency finding against Fox for swearing on awards shows. After the Supreme Court ruled that the Third Circuit was wrong to rule that the FCC's regime was arbitrary and capricious, the High Court remanded the decision back to the circuit. The court was free to go to the constitutionality of the decision, which it did in ruling it too vague to pass muster. It was that finding that led the court summarily to vacate the ABC fine as well for stemming from an impermissibly vague standard, citing the Fox decision as its reason for doing so. But arguably the bigger news was that the court had already decided not to re-hear the Fox case, which means the FCC's next step is taking it to the Supreme Court. Nov. 22 also starts the 90-day countdown for the FCC and Justice to file that appeal
benton.org/node/47328 | Broadcasting&Cable
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MORE ON TELEVISION/BROADCASTING
PROTECT TV VIEWERS
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: ]
Public Knowledge, New America Foundation and Benton Foundation urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take strong action to protect consumers caught up in disputes between cable companies and broadcasters over program carriage. The groups told the FCC that, “Commission’s current actions and rules are insufficient to protect members of the public from losing access to important and popular programming.” In 10 years, the FCC has found a violation of the “good faith” standard only once, and has never enforced a forfeiture penalty, the groups noted. Instead, the three organizations emphasized that the FCC has more authority than it has been exercising previously, whether to make certain cable and broadcasters negotiate in “good faith” as the law requires, and to protect consumers from rate increases: “We write to reemphasize that the Commission has clear authority to act in this docket, both to enforce the ‘good faith’ requirement and fulfill the Commission’s responsibility to ensure that fees for retransmission consent do not unreasonably raise the basic rate consumers pay for cable.”
benton.org/node/47304 | Public Knowledge | read the letter
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BROADCAST TV OK FOR 10 YEARS
[SOURCE: TVBR.com, AUTHOR: ]
The evolution of wireless technology and growing demand for faster connections and rapid access to the Internet are key trends that will shape the US telecommunications, media and technology sectors this decade, said Moody's Investors Service in a new report. Looking specifically at television, though, Moody’s isn't buying the idea that over-the-top (OTT) broadband video competition is going to wipe out broadcast and cable operators anytime soon. “Even with the advent of Internet TV, the broadcast and cable networks that invest heavily in exclusive content rights to popular programming and sporting events that command high viewership ratings will be protected from online competition over the next 10 years,” wrote Sr. VP Neil Begley in his section of the far-ranging Moody’s report, “2020 Vision: U.S. Telecom, Media and Technology. “The economics associated with the existing mass-market TV-advertising and carriage-fee model are so strong that it is the primary reason a new online model will not be embraced by the networks or the content producers that own them, a high barrier that will help insulate the industry’s profits and cash flow over the decade,” Begley concluded. The “wild card,” he noted, is whether Google or Apple will be willing to make the financial commitment to compete for sports-content rights and invest in production to put their own programming on the web in competition with the traditional content companies. “But this is not highly likely as they would need to create or buy a lot of programming to be successful, which would be very costly and outside their traditional area of expertise,” he noted.
benton.org/node/47302 | TVBR.com
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JOURNALISM
INTERNET AS NEWS SOURCE
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, AUTHOR: Andrew Kohut et al]
The Internet is slowly closing in on television as Americans’ main source of national and international news. Currently, 41% say they get most of their news about national and international news from the Internet, which is little changed over the past two years but up 17 points since 2007. Television remains the most widely used source for national and international news 66% of Americans say it is their main source of news but that is down from 74% three years ago and 82% as recently as 2002. The national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Dec. 1-5, 2010 among 1,500 adults reached on cell phones and landlines, finds that more people continue to cite the Internet than newspapers as their main source of news, reflecting both the growth of the Internet, and the gradual decline in newspaper readership (from 34% in 2007 to 31% now). The proportion citing radio as their main source of national and international news has remained relatively stable in recent years; currently, 16% say it is their main source. An analysis of how different generations are getting their news suggests that these trends are likely to continue. In 2010, for the first time, the Internet has surpassed television as the main source of national and international news for people younger than 30. Since 2007, the number of 18 to 29 year olds citing the Internet as their main source has nearly doubled, from 34% to 65%. Over this period, the number of young people citing television as their main news source has dropped from 68% to 52%. Among those 30 to 49, the Internet is on track to equal, or perhaps surpass, television as the main source of national and international news within the next few years. Currently, 48% say the Internet is their main source up 16 points from 2007 and 63% cite television down eight points.
benton.org/node/47327 | Pew Research Center for the People & the Press
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THE VIEW FROM NOWHERE
[SOURCE: National Public Radio, AUTHOR: David Folkenflik]
In a media landscape littered with opinionated talk show hosts and ideology-driven websites, strong points of view are hardly tough to find. But media critic Jay Rosen says mainstream news reporters don't disclose what they believe enough of the time. "I'd like to know something about their background –- like where they're from," says Rosen, an associate professor of journalism at New York University. "If they've been covering a beat for a while, I'd like to know what fascinates them about their beat, what they think are the biggest challenges facing the nation, who some of their heroes and villains are, and any convictions — deeply held convictions — they've developed by reporting on the story over a long period of time." Rosen says there would be a real benefit to such disclosure. "We can tell where the person is coming from and apply whatever discount rate we want to what they're saying," Rosen says. "I also think that it's more likely to generate trust. And this is the main reason why I recommend 'here's where I'm coming from' replace 'the view from nowhere.'" That phrase — "the view from nowhere" — is what Rosen calls the media's true ideology: not exactly on the right, and not exactly on the left. It is, he says, the way news organizations falsely advertise that they can be trusted because they don't have any dog in the fight.
benton.org/node/47345 | National Public Radio
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TELECOM/WIRELESS
OK TO PROHIBIT TEXT SPAM
[SOURCE: MediaPost, AUTHOR: Wendy Davis]
Clearing the way for a potential class-action lawsuit regarding wireless spam, a judge has rejected two marketing companies' argument that a federal law banning text message spam is unconstitutional. US District Court Judge Claudia Wilken in Seattle ruled last week that the federal Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which has been interpreted to require that companies obtain users' "prior express consent" before sending them text ads, is not too vague to be enforced. The companies had argued that the federal law did not adequately define the term prior express consent. But Wilken ruled that previous court decisions and rulings by the Federal Communications Commission provided "ample guidance" about how to determine whether users had given marketers permission to send text ads. The decision means that Illinois resident Christopher Kramer can move forward with his lawsuit against mobile ad company B2Mobile and lead-generation company LeadClick for allegedly sending ads to his cell phone.
benton.org/node/47306 | MediaPost
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CONSUMERS MOVING TO WIRELESS
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Gautham Nagesh]
According to a new report from the Federal Communications Commission, as of one year ago less than half (47.9 percent) of the 1.4 billion phone numbers available to carriers have been assigned to customers. Local carriers saw their utilization rate decrease from 48.8 percent to 47.3 percent over the previous six months. Wireless utilization rose 0.6 percent to 66.7 percent over the same period. Since the government began allowing users to port their phone numbers to new accounts in November 2005, more than 163 million people have taken advantage of the option. Of those, four million switched their landline number to a wireless phone, while only 200,000 did the reverse. The rest switched their number from one wireless account to another or from landline to landline. The most utilized area codes in the U.S. were Michigan's 947, which covers Oakland County, with 91.6 percent of numbers assigned, followed by 646, which covers Manhattan in New York and has 79.8 percent of available numbers assigned.
benton.org/node/47319 | Hill, The
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WARRANTLESS CELL PHONE SEARCH
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Jacqui Cheng]
The contents of your cell phone can reveal a lot more about you than the naked eye can: who your friends are, what you've been saying and when, which websites you've visited, and more. There has long been debate over user privacy when it comes to various data found on a cell phone, but according to the California Supreme Court, police don't need a warrant to start digging through your phone's contents. The ruling comes as a result of the conviction of one Gregory Diaz, who was arrested for trying to sell ecstasy to a police informant in 2007 and had his phone confiscated when he arrived at the police station. The police eventually went through Diaz's text message folder and found one that read "6 4 80." Such a message means nothing to most of us, but it was apparently enough to be used as evidence against Diaz (for those curious, it means six pills will cost $80). Diaz had argued that the warrantless search of his phone violated his Fourth Amendment rights, but the trial court said that anything found on his person at the time of arrest was "really fair game in terms of being evidence of a crime."
benton.org/node/47317 | Ars Technica
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POLICYMAKERS
NEW NARUC CHAIR
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has named John Burke to chair its telecommunications committee effective Jan. 17. Commissioner Burke, a member of the Vermont Public Service Board, has been a member of the committee for the past decade. He succeeds Ray Baum as chair. Baum was named last week to be senior policy adviser to the House Communications Subcommittee headed by Greg Walden (R-OR).
benton.org/node/47315 | Broadcasting&Cable
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EDUCATION
SCHOOLS EMBRACE IPADS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Winnie Hu]
As students returned to class this week, some were carrying brand-new Apple iPads in their backpacks, given not by their parents but by their schools. A growing number of schools across the nation are embracing the iPad as the latest tool to teach Kafka in multimedia, history through “Jeopardy”-like games and math with step-by-step animation of complex problems. As part of a pilot program, Roslyn High School on Long Island handed out 47 iPads on Dec. 20 to the students and teachers in two humanities classes. The school district hopes to provide iPads eventually to all 1,100 of its students. The iPads cost $750 apiece, and they are to be used in class and at home during the school year to replace textbooks, allow students to correspond with teachers and turn in papers and homework assignments, and preserve a record of student work in digital portfolios.
benton.org/node/47358 | New York Times
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COMMUNITY MEDIA
NATIONAL TRANSITION PLAN FOR LIBRARIES
[SOURCE: PCWorld, AUTHOR: Phil Shapiro]
[Commentary] Public libraries are undergoing huge changes in the shift from analog to digital media. Some large city libraries have hired digital strategists to help them take appropriate steps in this transition. Smaller or poorer libraries don't have the benefit of having a full-time staff person working on the transition. To keep those libraries from falling behind, it makes sense to devise a national plan for this transition a plan that will unfold in increments over the next ten years. With such a plan in place, libraries and the communities they serve will have a good idea of where their own libraries are in the transition. Truth is, nobody really knows what public libraries will look like in 2020. That doesn't stop us from imagining how they could best serve the community in the digital age. And the time for having conversations about that topic is now. We can't wait until 2015 to discuss these kinds of things. At the heart of a National Library Transition Plan is a broad understanding of the core purposes of public libraries. Yes, public libraries are about books, but they are also about so much more than books.
benton.org/node/47301 | PCWorld
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HEALTH
EHR OR EMR -- WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
[SOURCE: HealthITBuzz, AUTHOR: Peter Garrett]
What’s in a word? Or, even one letter of an acronym? Some people use the terms “electronic medical record” and “electronic health record” (or “EMR” and “EHR”) interchangeably. But here at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), you'll notice we use electronic health record or EHR almost exclusively. While it may seem a little picky at first, the difference between the two terms is actually quite significant.The EMR term came along first, and indeed, early EMRs were “medical.” They were for use by clinicians mostly for diagnosis and treatment. In contrast, “health” relates to “The condition of being sound in body, mind, or spirit; especially…freedom from physical disease or pain…the general condition of the body.” The word “health” covers a lot more territory than the word “medical.” And EHRs go a lot further than EMRs. Electronic medical records (EMRs) are a digital version of the paper charts in the clinician’s office. An EMR contains the medical and treatment history of the patients in one practice. But the information in EMRs doesn't travel easily out of the practice. In fact, the patient’s record might even have to be printed out and delivered by mail to specialists and other members of the care team. In that regard, EMRs are not much better than a paper record. Electronic health records (EHRs) do all those things—and more. EHRs focus on the total health of the patient—going beyond standard clinical data collected in the provider’s office and inclusive of a broader view on a patient’s care. EHRs are designed to reach out beyond the health organization that originally collects and compiles the information. They are built to share information with other health care providers, such as laboratories and specialists, so they contain information from all the clinicians involved in the patient’s care.
benton.org/node/47300 | HealthITBuzz
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OWNERSHIP
FACEBOOK DEAL DRAWS SCRUTINY
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Jean Eaglesham, Aaron Lucchetti]
The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun examining whether disclosure rules for privately held firms need to be rewritten as a result of recent deals allowing investors to buy shares in Internet companies such as Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc., according to people familiar with the situation. The review is at an early stage, these people cautioned, and SEC officials looking at the recent deals haven't concluded that any of them run afoul of the 47-year-old rules governing private companies. The rules require firms with 500 or more shareholders of record in a given type of stock to publicly disclose certain financial information. The requirement is designed to protect investors from risking money on companies that say little about their operations and performance. Still, Facebook's agreement with Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to create an investment vehicle that will allow some of the securities firm's richest clients to buy as much as $1.5 billion of equity in Facebook is causing the SEC to re-examine a key dividing line between public and private companies. While SEC officials could decide the rules need to be updated in order to provide adequate protection for investors, the agency is trying to balance that with the demands of private companies that want to raise capital. As part of the investigation, SEC officials plan to scrutinize special-purpose vehicles like the one being created by Goldman and Facebook to determine if they are being designed primarily to circumvent the so-called 500-shareholder rule.
benton.org/node/47356 | Wall Street Journal | Holman Jenkins | Washington Post
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FACEBOOK IN NO HURRY
[SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Benny Evangelista]
"Facebook is in an enviable position because there's such a big secondary market for shares where you can achieve liquidity without going public," said Victor Shum, a San Francisco attorney who counsels emerging growth high-tech firms. "Why invite public scrutiny if you don't have to?" Without burning cash on marketing gimmicks like sock puppets, Facebook has already amassed more than 500 million active members worldwide and is expected to report revenue of $2 billion for 2010. Facebook has become an online powerhouse rivaling Google Inc. of Mountain View, and its projected valuation would place it above the market capitalization of publicly traded firms like Yahoo Inc. and eBay Inc. That's quite a difference from the dot-com companies that "went IPO and bust" because they "had no revenues, just a dream and eyeballs," said Shum, a partner at Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP. Venture capitalists who "made their investments wanted to go IPO as soon as possible because they wanted their 10 times return on investment," he said. Despite speculation that a future IPO was in Facebook's corporate profile, co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has stated that building a better company remained a higher priority. Remaining private also means companies aren't bound by Securities and Exchange Commission regulations - made more complex in the last decade by the Sarbanes-Oxley and Dodd-Frank bills - requiring full disclosure of minute details of financial operations, including revenue figures and business strategies.
benton.org/node/47354 | San Francisco Chronicle
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