BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for FRIDAY, MAY 12, 2017
The FCC Spectrum Incentive Auction: Lessons for the Future -- https://www.benton.org/calendar
CYVERSECURITY
President Trump signs cybersecurity executive order
Congress offers some early praise of Trump’s cyber executive order [links to Hill, The]
Intelligence Officials Warn of Continued Russia Cyberthreats [links to New York Times]
Warren Buffett’s cybersecurity wake-up call — are we listening? [links to Hill, The]
DEMOCRACY AND COMMUNITACTION
Commissioner O'Rielly Remarks before the Media Institute Luncheon - speech
President Trump said he was thinking of Russia controversy when he decided to fire Comey [links to Washington Post]
The White House explanations for Comey’s firing are crumbling before our eyes [links to Washington Post]
Trump says he was going to fire ‘showboat’ Comey regardless of recommendation [links to Washington Post]
20 attorneys general call for independent investigation on Russia [links to Hill, The]
Twitter CEO: Trump tweets 'really important' for transparency [links to Hill, The]
The Problems With the FBI’s Email Investigation Went Well Beyond Comey [links to ProPublica]
President Trump Attacks TV Media, Say CNN's Lemon 'dumbest person in broadcasting' [links to Benton summary]
RTDNA condemns Sec Price’s remarks about journalist’s arrest [links to Radio Television Digital News Association]
Editorial: A reporter’s arrest after he asked HHS Sec Tom Price a question sends a chilling message [links to Washington Post]
White House launches a commission to study voter fraud and suppression [links to Benton summary]
DNC Chairman Perez: Voter fraud probe a 'Trump-sponsored propaganda factory' [links to Hill, The]
Stuart Brotman: The tide turns toward an online and social media future for political advertising [links to Brookings]
Why So Many Web-Fueled Protest Movements Hit a Wall [links to Technology Review]
INTERNET/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn’s Remarks at Public Forum on Access and Affordability - speech
How One Little Cable Company Exposed Telecom’s Achilles’ Heel - op-ed
The future of net neutrality might rest on this obscure court case
Can ISPs simply opt out of net neutrality? - op-ed
Majority Say Government Should Have a “Light Touch” In Regulating Internet Access [links to Morning Consult]
Sprint sues FCC for 'capricious' deregulation of business data services
Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them [links to New York Times]
A Global Broadband Plan for Refugees - research
The Co-op’s Broadband Plan for Success - research [links to Benton summary]
What’s new with the Internet of Things? [links to McKinsey]
How Telecom Speculator Howard Jonas Made Billions From Verizon, AT&T [links to Wall Street Journal]
OWNERSHIP
Buying spree brings more local TV stations to fewer big companies - research
Remarks of Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, California Women's Conference - speech
Groups Petition FCC to Delay Reinstating Obsolete Loophole That Would Usher in a New Era of Media Consolidation - press release
Tech’s Frightful Five: They’ve Got Us - analysis
We Need More Alternatives to Facebook
PRIVACY
Taking the Fight for Digital Rights to Our Libraries
With James Comey Out at the FBI, American Privacy Could Take a Hammering [links to Technology Review]
How Trump’s NSA Came to End a Disputed Type of Surveillance [links to New York Times]
INDECENCY
FCC v. Colbert – A Controversy Based on Truth or Truthiness? [links to CommLawBlog]
President Trump objects to Stephen Colbert’s ‘filthy’ talk because ‘you have kids watching’ [links to Washington Post]
TRANSPORTATION
Will U.S. ban laptops on flights from Europe? Feds meet with airlines about it [links to Los Angeles Times]
AGENDA
FCC To Hold Open Commission Meeting Thursday, May 18, 2017 -- Agenda [links to Federal Communications Commission]
Sunshine Period in the Restoring Internet Freedom Proceeding Begins [links to Federal Communications Commission]
POLICYMAKERS
Sean Spicer under fire during crucial week for President Trump [links to CNN]
COMPANY NEWS
Associated Press Rebuts Charge That It Aided Nazi Regime [links to New York Times]
STORIES FROM ABROAD
How Australia Bungled Its $36 Billion High-Speed Internet Rollout
EU to tackle complaints over tech companies' trading practices [links to Reuters]
Uber isn’t a tech company — it’s basically a taxi company, E.U. court adviser says [links to Washington Post]
French Websites Knocked Offline in Cyber-Attack on Cedexis [links to Bloomberg]
China Tells Facebook to ‘Come Learn From Us’ on Censoring Content [links to Wall Street Journal]
CYVERSECURITY
TRUMP SIGNS CYBERSECURITY EXECUTIVE ORDER
[SOURCE: The Hill, AUTHOR: Joe Uchill]
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order on cybersecurity, an order long awaited by the cybersecurity community. Drafts of the executive order have leaked since the first days of the Trump administration. The cybersecurity executive order contains suggestions that are, by and large, considered good ideas by experts, including holding agency heads accountable for cybersecurity. A common criticism in the Senate is that the US lacks of a guiding strategy for cyber defense, beyond making ad hoc decisions. It's a complaint that dogged the Obama administration and was beginning to catch up to the Trump administration as well. The executive order begins the process of developing one, and within 90 days a bevy of agencies will produce options for development. Agencies will now follow the National Institute for Standards and Technology framework. The guidelines were developed to be adaptable to any organization and are currently popular in the private sector.
benton.org/headlines/president-trump-signs-cybersecurity-executive-order | Hill, The | read the order | Vox | B&C
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DEMOCRACY AND COMMUNITACTION
O'RIELLY REMARKS BEFORE MEDIA INSTITUTE
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly]
Defending the First Amendment: I think you will find the current Commission to be a great partner in the effort to ensure a free press, primarily by not intervening in the area.
"Fake News” Definition & Use: But moving on to a more active controversy at the moment, it has been argued by some that urgent action must be taken to rid our media and society from the plague of “fake news.” However you want to define the “problem,” we need to be looking closer at certain highly suspect solutions being proposed and implemented.
Questionable Policing by Online Companies: Asking people to think critically about the effect of algorithm skewing is far afield from imposing government edicts and false remedies for broadband providers.
Free Market Remedy: So what is a proper solution? It should come as no surprise to anyone that, if fake news is indeed such a big problem, I would recommend a more free market approach to solving it.
benton.org/headlines/commissioner-orielly-remarks-media-institute-luncheon | Federal Communications Commission
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INTERNET/TELECOMMUNICATIONS
BROADBAND ACCESS AND AFFORDABILITY
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn]
Why is it that some of the largest communications providers in this country consistently rank among the lowest in consumer satisfaction? Could it possibly have anything to do with a lack of robust competition? Did you know that when it comes to broadband access at home, just 20 percent of Americans have a choice of two providers or more? Without real competition, are companies really incentivized to improve customer service, service quality, or pricing? And did you know that fewer than 40 percent of families regularly stay in touch with their incarcerated loved ones and one-third of families go bankrupt because of unjust and unreasonable phone rates? And while we are making progress when it comes to providing faster broadband service, including gigabit speeds in some communities, if it costs $80 or more a month for service, is broadband truly within reach? Much of our focus has been on what is lacking in rural communities, but there are problems right here in LA and over in the Cleveland, Ohio area. I mention Cleveland because a recent study concluded that a major broadband provider had “systematically discriminated against lower-income neighborhoods, in its deployment of home Internet and video technologies, over the past decade.” So what that finding makes increasingly clear, is that the broadband availability and affordability gaps are not just in our rural towns and non-urban communities. Those gaps are wide, wherever there is an absence of rich people.
benton.org/headlines/fcc-commissioner-mignon-clyburns-remarks-public-forum-access-and-affordability | Federal Communications Commission
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TELECOM’S ACHILLES HEEL
[SOURCE: Medium, AUTHOR: Susan Crawford]
[Commentary] The details of the network neutrality rules adopted by the Federal Communications Commission in February 2015 were not important to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Spectrum, or CenturyLink. What was important was the idea that any part of the government might have enforceable oversight over their data transmission services or charges. That’s what they can’t stand; that’s what they would do anything to avoid. And that’s what they are working to undo: the FCC’s classification of them as “common carriers” under “Title II” of the Telecommunications Act. That classification gave the FCC the legal authority to say something to the carriers about treating internet traffic fairly. No classification, no “net neutrality” rule. The trouble for the carriers is that the classification carries with it the risk that their businesses will be treated, someday, as the utility services they are. Net neutrality: not risky. Classification: risky. If people begin noticing that there’s no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that’s a big problem for Big Cable.
benton.org/headlines/how-one-little-cable-company-exposed-telecoms-achilles-heel | Medium
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FTC VS AT&T
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Brian Fung]
There's a huge court case you need to hear about. It might not be on your radar yet because, frankly, some of it gets pretty technical. But the outcome is likely to have enormous repercussions for online privacy, net neutrality and the economy. For months, policymakers have been struggling with the implications of this case, FTC v. AT&T, in part because it overturned about a century's worth of established legal practice and also, analysts say, because it appeared to open a wide loophole that businesses might use to evade most federal oversight. On May 9, the federal appeals court responsible for the ruling announced that it has agreed to rehear the case, potentially opening the door to a different result. Here's everything you need to know.
benton.org/headlines/future-net-neutrality-might-rest-obscure-court-case | Washington Post
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NET NEUTRALITY OPT-OUT?
[SOURCE: American Enterprise Institute, AUTHOR: Daniel Lyons]
[Commentary] The DC Circuit denied a petition to rehear en banc its 2016 decision upholding the Federal Communications Commission’s Open Internet Order. The Supreme Court is not likely to hear the case, but while the Justices may not be listening, the telecom policy community should be. The concurrence and dissents engaged in a lengthy and scholarly discussion about broader constitutional and administrative law doctrines raised by the order. In the process, the concurrence signaled that the DC Circuit may understand the order to apply far more narrowly than anyone expected. The DC Circuit appears to view the Open Internet Order primarily as a hyper-transparency rule: If the company claims to offer an unedited internet experience, then it is required to deliver on that promise. The DC Circuit suggests that a walled garden is fine as long as the provider “mak[es it] sufficiently clear to potential customers that it provides a filtered services involving the ISP’s exercise of ‘editorial intervention.’”
benton.org/headlines/can-isps-simply-opt-out-net-neutrality | American Enterprise Institute
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BDS SUIT
[SOURCE: Kansas City Business Journal, AUTHOR: Elise Reuter]
Sprint and another Windstream filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission for the agency's recent decision on business data services.
The companies are seeking relief "on the grounds that the [FCC’s] Report and Order is arbitrary, capricious, and an abuse of discretion," according to a filing in the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Richard Levy, a law professor at the University of Kansas, said the court would not determine whether the FCC adopted the correct policy, but whether it is consistent with statute. "Those kinds of filings go the agency's way, more often than not," he said. "Occasionally, they will be able to demonstrate some sort of flaw in what the agency did." As the petitioners, Sprint and Windstream requested that the court reverse, annul or set aside the FCC's Report and Order, and provide additional relief as determined proper. If a flaw is found, Levy said, the agency still may be able to readopt the policy with a better explanation to support it or to revise the policy. Usually, the court will not completely reverse it. In Sprint's case, he added, "The best case is to have it reversed. Sometimes it's worth it even if the only impact is to delay a regulation for a couple of years."
benton.org/headlines/sprint-sues-fcc-capricious-deregulation-business-data-services | Kansas City Business Journal
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BROADBAND PLAN FOR REFUGEES
[SOURCE: Migration Policy Institute, AUTHOR: Blair Levin, Paul De Sa, Alexander Aleinikoff]
With global displacement at record levels, policymakers and humanitarian organizations increasingly recognize the role communications technology can play in facilitating protection solutions for refugees, both in transit and at destination. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has documented how mobile and Internet connectivity, specifically, enable refugees to remain safe, access health and educational services, build livelihoods, and keep in touch with families and communities. Yet significant gaps in broadband access, adoption, and usage mean that refugees are often less connected than host populations, many of which face their own connectivity challenges. Refugees living in rural areas, for example, are twice as likely as the global rural population to have no network coverage at all. And more than one-third of all refugees live in an area without the 3G network coverage needed to browse the Internet, use most apps, and conduct video calls. This policy brief draws on its authors’ diverse experiences—working to assure refugee protection, developing the U.S. broadband plan, and analyzing the economics of broadband networks—to propose a framework for the creation of a global broadband plan for refugees. Through careful scoping of localized challenges and alignment of refugee connectivity efforts with host-country broadband strategies and market forces, such a plan holds the promise of improving the connectivity of the world’s more than 21 million refugees and the communities that host them.
benton.org/headlines/global-broadband-plan-refugees | Migration Policy Institute
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OWNERSHIP
BUYING SPREE BRINGS MORE LOCAL TV STATIONS TO FEWER BIG COMPANIES
[SOURCE: Pew Research Center, AUTHOR: Katerina Eva Matsa]
The local television landscape in the US has undergone major changes in recent years, as a wave of consolidations and station purchases have made some broadcast media owners considerably larger. In 2004, the five largest companies in local TV – Sinclair, Nexstar, Gray, Tegna and Tribune – owned, operated or serviced 179 full-power stations. That number grew to 378 in 2014 and to 443 in 2016. If approved by regulators, Sinclair’s acquisition of Tribune would bring its total to 208, by far the largest among the media companies. As of 2016, these five companies owned an estimated 37% of all full-power local TV stations in the country, as identified in a Pew Research Center analysis of BIA Kelsey data.
benton.org/headlines/buying-spree-brings-more-local-tv-stations-fewer-big-companies | Pew Research Center
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CLYBURN SPEECH AT CA WOMENS CONFERENCE
[SOURCE: Federal Communications Commission, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn]
The Federal Communications Commission’s most recent report on media ownership, released May 10, revealed that women own just 8.6 percent of the 11,919 broadcast stations in this country. Across the board, deregulation and other actions since the Act was passed, have led to increased media consolidation and fewer opportunities. The result: women and minority media ownership remain at shockingly low levels. Despite the disheartening statistics I have already shared, many are still advocating to eliminate the few rules that remain in place that currently prevent the concentration of station ownership into the hands of a few large media conglomerates...and this effort is on a fast track of becoming a reality...I believe there are concrete actions that the FCC can take to promote a more diverse media landscape. My office recently released an action plan known as #Solutions2020, where we outlined several steps designed to enhance digital inclusion and encourage more opportunities for women and underrepresented entrepreneurs.
benton.org/headlines/remarks-commissioner-mignon-clyburn-california-womens-conference | Federal Communications Commission
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FREE PRESS PETITION
[SOURCE: Free Press, AUTHOR: Press release]
Free Press and a coalition of media-rights groups petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to stay its ruling reinstating an obsolete television-ownership rule. The rule in question, called the “UHF discount,” allows broadcasters to exceed the national ownership cap by discounting the actual population coverage of their UHF broadcast stations for purposes of calculating their stations’ reach. The FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai voted in April to put this rule back on the books to pave the way for runaway broadcast-industry consolidation, like the Sinclair-Tribune merger that was announced earlier this week. These conglomerates hope to exploit the discount to leap over the 39 percent national audience-reach cap Congress put in place. In their petition to the agency, Common Cause, Free Press, Media Alliance, Media Mobilizing Project, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, Prometheus Radio Project and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc. explain that this is a dangerous outcome stemming from a bad agency decision. The UHF discount is a technically obsolete loophole that allows the FCC to underestimate the true reach of broadcast companies. It’s technically obsolete because while UHF stations once had weaker signals, today stations broadcasting on these channels actually have better signals thanks to the Digital TV transition that occurred a decade ago. As the groups’ filing makes clear, “Reinstatement of the UHF discount opens the door for rapid and massive consolidation despite a congressional directive that there should be a limit on the scope of national ownership.”
benton.org/headlines/groups-petition-fcc-delay-reinstating-obsolete-loophole-would-usher-new-era-media | Free Press
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TECH’S FRIGHTFUL FIVE: THEY’VE GOT US
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Farhad Manjoo]
[Commentary] This is the most glaring and underappreciated fact of internet-age capitalism: We are, all of us, in inescapable thrall to one of the handful of American technology companies that now dominate much of the global economy. I speak, of course, of my old friends the Frightful Five: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, the parent company of Google. The five are among the most valuable companies on the planet, collectively worth trillions. (Apple reached $800 billion in market capitalization this week, the first of any public company to do so, and the others may not be far behind.) And despite the picture of Silicon Valley as a roiling sea of disruption, these five have gotten only stronger and richer over time. Their growth has prompted calls for greater regulation and antitrust intervention. There’s rising worry, too, over their softer, noneconomic influence over culture and information — for instance, fears over how Facebook might affect democracies — as well as the implicit threat they pose to the jurisdictions of world governments. These are all worthy topics for discussion, but they are also fairly cold and abstract. So a better way to appreciate the power of these five might be to take the very small view instead of the very large — to examine the role each of them plays in your own day-to-day activities, and the particular grip each holds on your psyche.
benton.org/headlines/techs-frightful-five-theyve-got-us | New York Times
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ALTERNATIVES TO FACEBOOK
[SOURCE: Technology Review, AUTHOR: Brian Bergstein]
As the head of the Federal Communications Commission observed in a 1961 speech to broadcast executives, the industry’s revenue, more than $1 billion a year, was rising 9 percent annually, even in a recession. The problem, the FCC chairman told the group, was the way the business was making money: not by serving the public interest above all but by airing a lot of dumb shows and “cajoling and offending” commercials. “When television is bad, nothing is worse,” he said. That speech would become known for the pejorative that the FCC chairman, Newton Minow, used to describe TV: he called it “a vast wasteland.” It’s a great line, but there are other reasons to revisit the speech now, about 10 years after the emergence of another communications service—Facebook—that has become ubiquitous in American homes, a staggering financial success, and a transmitter of a lot of pernicious schlock. What’s striking today is why Minow said the vast-wasteland problem mattered—and what he wanted to do about it. As for why it mattered, Minow told the TV executives: “Your industry possesses the most powerful voice in America. It has an inescapable duty to make that voice ring with intelligence and with leadership. In a few years, this exciting industry has grown from a novelty to an instrument of overwhelming impact on the American people. It should be making ready for the kind of leadership that newspapers and magazines assumed years ago, to make our people aware of their world.” On that point in particular, Mark Zuckerberg apparently would agree.
benton.org/headlines/we-need-more-alternatives-facebook | Technology Review
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PRIVACY
DIGITAL RIGHTS AND LIBRARIES
[SOURCE: New America, AUTHOR: Seeta Peña Gangadharan]
Increasingly, the library is the place where people trust—and use—not just the librarian at the help desk, but also the search engine, online catalogs, digital archives, and electronic databases. So when patrons come into the library to find out about a sexually transmitted disease, for example, they will likely find themselves interacting with the online library—a messy mixture of library-specific digital tools and broader Internet resources that create all sorts of privacy risks for patrons. Here’s how the library encounters privacy risks. Increasingly, the library contracts with a number of third parties to run various services, for example, OverDrive for e-book services, Bibliocommons for interactive catalogs, and ProQuest for electronic and magazine databases. Companies like these have the power to set their terms of service. That includes protecting the details of what patrons do when they use such tools or not. Not too long ago, library professionals caught Adobe Digital Editions transmitting patrons’ e-reading information in an unencrypted manner. Designed to seamlessly integrate with a library’s website, most services don’t make it obvious to a patron that a private company makes choices about her user data.
benton.org/headlines/taking-fight-digital-rights-our-libraries | New America
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STORIES FROM ABROAD
AUSTRALIA BROADBAND ROLLOUT
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Andrew McMillen]
Australia, a wealthy nation with a widely envied quality of life, lags in one essential area of modern life: its internet speed. Eight years after the country began an unprecedented broadband modernization effort that will cost at least 49 billion Australian dollars, or $36 billion, its average internet speed lags that of the United States, most of Western Europe, Japan and South Korea. In the most recent ranking of internet speeds by Akamai, a networking company, Australia came in at an embarrassing No. 51, trailing developing economies like Thailand and Kenya. The problem goes beyond sluggish Netflix streams and slurred Skype calls. Businesses complain that slow speeds hobble their effectiveness and add to their costs. More broadly, Australia risks being left behind at a time when countries like China and India are looking to nurture their own start-up cultures to match the success of Silicon Valley and keep their economies on the cutting edge. The story of Australia’s costly internet bungle illustrates the hazards of mingling telecommunication infrastructure with the impatience of modern politics. The internet modernization plan has been hobbled by cost overruns, partisan maneuvering and a major technical compromise that put 19th-century technology between the country’s 21st-century digital backbone and many of its homes and businesses.
benton.org/headlines/how-australia-bungled-its-36-billion-high-speed-internet-rollout | New York Times
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