BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2011
Today, the 3rd Annual Communications Summit. Tomorrow, House Panel to Vote on 'Disapproving' Network Neutrality Rules
INTERNET/BROADBAND
Republicans: No compromise possible on net neutrality
When the Internet Nearly Fractured, and How It Could Happen Again
ICANN: No government veto over controversial top-level domains
Obama administration joins critics of U.S. nonprofit group that oversees Internet
Don't Believe the Hype — Few Muni Broadband Networks Fail
WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
NAB To Congress: Check Into Spectrum Hoarding By Time Warner Cable, Dish
Wireless Broadband -- A New Infrastructure Axis
Member of Congress? There's an app for that.
Social media not so hot on the Hill
Mobile App Revenue to Reach $38 Billion by 2015, Report Predicts
AT&T, Faced With Verizon Threat, Becomes More Like Groupon
Mobile learning: Not just laptops any more
Microsoft Wants You to Control Your Phone by Touching Yourself
TELEVISION
Retransmission rulemaking could help pay-TV providers
OWNERSHIP
Department of Justice threatens to nix Google merger
Antitrust chief focuses on innovation
China Tops List for Online, Offline Piracy
COMMUNITY MEDIA
How the Public Perceives Community Information Systems
MORE ONLINE
Health Systems Must Boost Patient Education On EHRs
INTERNET/BROADBAND
NO COMPROMISE ON NETWORK NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Nate Anderson]
House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) has no intention of finding any compromise on network neutrality. If he can't override the new rules, he will work to defund their enforcement. And if that doesn't work, he will continue railing against a "government takeover of the Internet" in speeches until something gets done. Speaker Boehner gave his first speech outside of Washington DC as Speaker of the House, appearing at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville Tennessee. The speech moved quickly from a discussion of that morning's sermon text (“No man can serve two masters”) to a discussion of God's love of humility to an assertion that America was founded on said humility and that this in turn led to the freedoms that Americans enjoy. Those freedoms are now “under attack by power structure in Washington populated with regulators who have never set foot inside a radio station or television studio." That's right -- network neutrality is Boehner's top bogeyman, reminding us just how seriously Republicans take the issue. Speaker Boehner also told the NRB that some members of Congress and "the federal bureaucracy" are still trying to reinstate "and even expand" the fairness doctrine. The fairness doctrine is the FCC policy -- abandoned in 1987 as unconstitutional -- that required broadcasters to seek out opposing viewpoints on issues of national importance. Speaker Boehner said that he expects the House to act on legislation that would make sure it was not revived.
benton.org/node/51576 | Ars Technica | Broadcasting&Cable | see the speech | Broadcasting&Cable - Fairness
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COULD THE INTERNET FRACTURE?
[SOURCE: The Atlantic, AUTHOR: Nancy Scola]
When the entire country of Egypt was forced offline by its government last month, it served as a global wake-up call that the Internet is a more fragile medium than we imagine it to be. What happened in Egypt was particularly striking, but other, subtler tests of the Internet's resilience abound. Turn your eye to the domain name system, for example. Commonly referred to as DNS, the domain name system is the obscure but almost unimaginably important process whereby memorable names like "TheAtlantic.com" get translated into the numbers that actually pinpoint The Atlantic's place on the Internet. There, in the innards of the Internet, there's controversy brewing. The Department of Homeland Security's Immigrations and Customs Enforcement division and the Department of Justice have been targeting domain names for takedowns, and the United States Senate is considering a bill that would empower the Attorney General to blacklist website names from the Internet's directories. But this isn't the first time that DNS has been a contested space. In one particularly curious episode from the modern Internet's early days, a man named Eugene Kashpureff ignited a battle over the future of the global network that brought him face-to-face with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
benton.org/node/51564 | Atlantic, The
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ICANN AND TOP-LEVEL DOMAIN NAMES
[SOURCE: ars technica, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
Less than two weeks away from the conference for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), representatives from the organization's Government Advisory Committee have rejected a US Department of Commerce proposal that would give GAC members veto power over new domain endings. The Department of Commerce plan would have allowed governments to object to a generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) "for any reason." On top of that, "if it is the consensus position of the GAC not to oppose objection[s] raised by a GAC member or members, ICANN shall reject the application," the proposal added. Critics like information studies Professor Milton Mueller of Syracuse University warned that the provision would let individual governments scrap gTLDs like .humanrights or .gay. But the GAC's scorecard on recommendations to ICANN proposes government "advice" rather than veto power over gTLDs.
benton.org/node/51578 | Ars Technica
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ADMINISTRATION CRITICIZES ICANN
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ian Shapira]
The California nonprofit organization that operates the Internet's levers has always been a target for such global heavies as Russia and China that prefer the United Nations to be in charge of the Web. But these days, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is fending off attacks from a seemingly unlikely source: the Obama administration. Concerned about the growing movement to cede oversight to the UN, the U.S. government, which helped create ICANN in 1998, has been reprimanding the nonprofit group to give foreign nations more say over the Web's operations. The battle has come at a sensitive time for ICANN, which this month is meeting with foreign governments as it pulls off the biggest expansion ever of Web suffixes - including .gay, .muslim and .nazi. Also this fall, the nonprofit organization is seeking to hold on to its federal contract to oversee the Web's master database of addresses - a sweeping power that governments fear could be used to shut down foreign domains that the United States finds unsavory.
benton.org/node/51599 | Washington Post
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WIRELESS/SPECTRUM
SPECTRUM HOARDING?
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
In a letter to the leadership of both the House and Senate Commerce Committees, National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith wrote that Congress should look into what NAB calls spectrum speculation and/or hoarding by satellite and cable companies, singling out Dish Network and Time Warner Cable. Smith referred to various reports that cable and satellite operators are warehousing spectrum, and have admitted as much on calls with investors, while the government is asking broadcasters to give up more than a third of their remaining spectrum holdings (120 MHz) for wireless broadband. The issue has gained momentum with the President's call for a National Wireless Plan to reach 98% of Americans with 4G wireless broadband within five years. Smith said broadcasters would not oppose voluntarily relinquishing spectrum, but would strongly oppose a forcible return and forced relocation to bandwidth that would "harm viewers ability to receive full high-definition TV, niche programming choices via multicasting, and live and local mobile digital television." The FCC is proposing to move broadcasters into the VHF band, where reception is not as good as UHF for DTV signals. The commission is also looking for ways to improve VHF. Smith recommended that the Government Accountability Office review Spectrum hoarding/speculation to find out how companies and government are "using or warehousing" spectrum.
benton.org/node/51574 | Multichannel News
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OWNERSHIP
JUSTICE REVIEW OF GOOGLE-ITA
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Wasserman]
Apparently, the Justice Department has made it clear to Google that it’s willing to go to court to block its acquisition of travel software-maker ITA and Google has responded by stepping up negotiations to save the deal. Sources say that a deal between Google and DOJ’s antitrust lawyers could be “days away,” but others also warn that negotiations about the $700 million acquisition could fall apart at any time. Among conditions on the table are possible provisions under which Google would license ITA software to rivals and others aimed at easing industry concerns that Google will use its search dominance to unfairly disadvantage rivals in the online travel business.
benton.org/node/51559 | Politico
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VARNEY PROFILE
[SOURCE: Politico, AUTHOR: Elizabeth Wasserman]
A veteran of the tech industry’s antitrust wars, Christine Varney was in the middle of another one last year as cable giant Comcast was seeking Justice Department approval for its acquisition of NBC Universal. The nation’s top antitrust enforcer, Varney zeroed in immediately on the potential competitive hurdle to the deal at a meeting with public interest groups in her office. “She very quickly honed in on the online video problem,” Corie Wright, policy counsel for Free Press, recalled of the meeting last summer. “That was a good sign. That showed she was being proactive in looking at the far-reaching implications of the merger.” Varney’s office impressed public interest lawyers by working with the FCC to wrangle concessions out of Comcast and NBC that recognized the emerging online video market as a potential competitor to cable in the digital age. The companies agreed to requirements to make programming available to online video distributors on the same terms they offer to cable providers. “We don't have a particular dog in that fight or a particular vision of how it should turn out,” Varney said, “but what we are concerned about is that the market — and the market participants — be able to continue to innovate.”
benton.org/node/51557 | Politico
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CHINA TOPS LIST FOR PIRACY
[SOURCE: National Journal, AUTHOR: Juliana Gruenwald]
US Trade Representative Ron Kirk released a report reaffirming China's role as the world's leading source of counterfeit goods - both online and offline. The "Notorious Markets" report cites four websites and dozens of shopping areas on the mainland and in Hong Kong as hubs of pirated products. But the report also underscores that copyright infringement is a global problem, with Canada, Ecuador, Philippines and Russia (which ranks second after China) among the countries doing brisk business in illicit products. "The United States urges the responsible authorities to intensify efforts to combat piracy and counterfeiting in these and similar markets, and to use the information contained in the Notorious Markets List to pursue legal action where appropriate," the document states. The list used to be part of a more comprehensive analysis of intellectual property protection known as the "Special 301" report, published annually in late April. For the first time, it has been published as a separate document to highlight the growing piracy problem.
benton.org/node/51597 | National Journal
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COMMUNITY MEDIA
COMMUNITY INFORMATION SYSTEMS
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, AUTHOR: Lee Rainie]
When people think about issues in their communities, they usually frame those issues through practical questions they would like to see addressed. Is the town budget too high or too low? Are teachers doing a good job? Are the streets safe? Do emergency responders have the right training? How can traffic congestion be eased? Does the library have the best technology for patrons? Do zoning rules work the best way? Are all the people in the community getting fair access to social services? The way that people address questions like those is to gather, share, and act on information. Yet there is not much knowledge about how the parts of a community’s information system work and fit together. Believing it would be useful for communities to examine how well their own information systems were performing, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation asked the Monitor Institute to explore key components of local information systems in three communities with advisory help from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. This report is the fruit of an eight-month research effort pilot testing several research methods in Macon, Philadelphia, and San Jose to probe key parts of those systems. Some of findings, especially in surveys conducted in the communities, were notable and surprising:
Those who think local government does well in sharing information are also more likely to be satisfied with other parts of civic life such as the overall quality of their community and the performance of government and other institutions, as well as the ability of the entire information environment in their community to give them the information that matters.
Broadband users are sometimes less satisfied than others with community life . That raises the possibility that upgrades in a local information system might produce more critical, activist citizens.
Social media like Facebook and Twitter are emerging as key parts of the civic landscape and mobile connectivity is beginning to affect people’s interactions with civic life . Some 32% of the Internet users across the three communities get local news from social networking site; 19% from blogs; 7% from Twitter. And 32% post updates and local news on their social networking sites.
If citizens feel empowered, communities get benefits in both directions. Those who believe they can impact their community are more likely to be engaged in civic activities and are more likely to be satisfied with their towns.
benton.org/node/51594 | Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
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