Digital Content

With net neutrality fresh on the minds of many in the United States, it seems that the data speeds at which Verizon Wireless customers can stream Netflix videos have quietly been capped in some instances. Until one or both companies provide clarification, it’s a bit early to point the finger at Verizon. Verizon rivals AT&T and T-Mobile include some level of video “optimization” (better described as throttling) as part of their base unlimited data plans. Sprint does not, and Verizon has never given any indication that it would put a limit on video streaming speeds for unlimited customers.

A bipartisan bill has been introduced to establish copyright protections for performances of pre-1972 musical works. Reps Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) are sponsoring the Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act (HR 3301).

“This an important and overdue fix to the law that will help settle years of litigation and restore some equity to this inexplicable gap in our copyright system," Issa said. “For years, we have been working to ensure royalty payments for artists who recorded many of our great musical classics before 1972," said Nadler. The new bill is an adjunct to the legislators' Fair Play Fair Pay Act music licensing bill introduced earlier this year and has been introduced in the past.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) faces persistent fundamental change in its strategic and operating environments. This report suggests this reality is the product of the United States entering or being in the midst of a new, more competitive, post-US primacy environment. Post-primacy conditions promise far-reaching impacts on US national security and defense strategy. Consequently, there is an urgent requirement for DoD to examine and adapt how it develops strategy and describes, identifies, assesses, and communicates corporate-level risk. From a defense strategy and planning perspective, post-primacy has five basic defining characteristics including: Hyperconnectivity and the weaponization of information, disinformation, and disaffection.

The European Union’s top court is set to decide whether the bloc’s “right to be forgotten” policy stretches beyond Europe’s borders, a test of how far national laws can—or should—stretch when regulating cyberspace. The case stems from France, where the highest administrative court on July 19 asked the EU’s Court of Justice to weigh in on a dispute between Alphabet's Google and France’s privacy regulator over how broadly to apply the right, which allows EU residents to ask search engines to remove some links from searches for their own names.

At issue: Can France force Google to apply it not just to searches in Europe, but anywhere in the world? The case will set a precedent for how far EU regulators can go in enforcing the bloc’s strict new privacy law. It will also help define Europe’s position on clashes between governments over how to regulate everything that happens on the internet—from political debate to online commerce. France’s regulator says enforcement of some fundamental rights—like personal privacy—is too easily circumvented on the borderless internet, and so must be implemented everywhere. Google argues that allowing any one country to apply its rules globally risks upsetting international law and, when it comes to content, creates a global censorship race among autocrats.

[Commentary] Fakes in the world of print publishing are relatively easy to discredit if not always to spot. Inconsistencies, errors, and—perhaps most importantly—widely accessible originals, make the job of persuasively forging content a significant challenge. In digital publishing, however, even maintaining original content cannot be taken for granted.

Being able to identify genuine digital material is “a huge issue,” says David Schulz, a prominent First Amendment lawyer and director of the Media Freedom & Information Access Clinic at Yale Law School. Given the increasing sophistication of fake digital content, Schulz asks, “How do you prove something was ‘out there’? How do you prove it’s authentic?” If reputable news organizations digitally sign their content, it would increase the difficulty of creating fake news by raising doubts about material that isn’t similarly authenticated. Likewise, developing such a standard would support archives that can withstand attempts to reauthor history. Although the technical challenge is substantial, it’s also one that is important to take on, as new organizations strive to rebuild public trust and set their work apart from that of content mills and fake news factories.

[Susan McGregor is Assistant Director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism and Assistant Professor at Columbia School of Journalism.]

According to our preliminary research, there is some form of zero-rating in 20 out of 28 European nations. Zero-rating spans European Union economies of all sizes, from the United Kingdom to Romania, Germany, and Spain. This finding is consistent with Digital Fuel Monitor’s reports: in 2014, European Internet Service Providers offered at least 75 zero-rated apps; in 2015, they offered at least 35 zero-rated apps; and in 2016, they offered at least 62 zero-rated apps. Our preliminary research has found that today, in 2017, there exists at least 73 zero-rated apps across the continent.

[Commentary] Despite its name, the California Broadband Internet Privacy Act, awaiting votes in the state Senate, won’t do anything meaningful to protect consumer privacy on line. Instead, it will curb innovation and reduce competition, hurting consumers whose interests it purports to protect.

The measure, AB 375 by Assemblyman Ed Chau (D-Monterey Park), is intended to crack down on internet service providers that are allegedly selling sensitive personal web browsing information without consumers’ consent. Its backers argue that it will fill a supposed “privacy gap” left when Congress repealed Federal Communications Commission draft rules adopted during Barack Obama’s administration. Here’s why they’re wrong. First, the proposal attacks a nonexistent problem. Internet service providers have committed that they will seek permission from consumers before using sensitive personal information, such as health and financial data. Customers will have to affirmatively “opt in” before any such transaction could take place. So no one’s personal data is being sold. Second, even if a problem exists, there are legal tools to combat it. In short, there is no legislative privacy gap. Third, the state bill is based on a flawed proposal by the FCC. Don’t take my word for it. Ask America’s top privacy cop, the FTC.

[Jon Leibowitz, a partner at Davis Polk & Wardwell, was Federal Trade Commission chair from 2009-2013. He is co-chair of the 21st Century Privacy Coalition, a trade group of broadband providers.]

Personality quizzes have some sort of perennial appeal. Facebook newsfeeds are filled with BuzzFeed quizzes and other oddball questionnaires that tell you which city you should actually live in, which ousted Arab Spring ruler you are, and which Hogwarts house you belong in. But these new online quizzes have a dark edge that their analog predecessors didn’t.

In the wake of the US election, a secretive data firm hired by Donald Trump’s campaign boasted that it has been using quizzes for years to gather personal information about millions of voters. Its goal: the creation of digital profiles that can predict—and possibly exploit—Americans’ values, anxieties, and political leanings. Whether this firm, Cambridge Analytica, has actually used predictive profiles to influence people isn’t certain; reports suggest it hasn’t, at least not directly. But the company’s methods nonetheless expose the growing scale of personality analysis online—and the dangers that come with it. On the internet, anything you do is like taking a personality quiz: Everywhere you click reveals something about you. And you’re not the only one who sees the results.

Seven people blocked by President Trump from seeing or interacting with his Twitter account filed a lawsuit against him, arguing that barring them from his popular social-media feed violates the First Amendment to the Constitution. The lawsuit, which raises interesting questions about what constitutes a public forum, as well as the boundaries of free-speech rights on the Web, comes as Trump continues to draw concern about his novel and erratic use of social media.

“President Trump’s Twitter account, @realDonaldTrump, has become an important source of news and information about the government, and an important public forum for speech by, to, and about the President,” the lawsuit said. “In an effort to suppress dissent in this forum, Defendants have excluded — 'blocked' —Twitter users who have criticized the President or his policies. This practice is unconstitutional, and this suit seeks to end it." The Twitter users, represented by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said that Trump's actions violated their Constitutional rights in several ways. They argued that the president has restricted their participation in a public forum, their ability to access official public statements made by him and their capacity to petition the government to air their grievances.

The Twitter users said they brought the lawsuit to seek a declaration that Trump's actions were unconstitutional and to get an injunction requiring President Trump to unblock their accounts and preventing him from blocking other people because of their views.

The House of Representatives adopted the Email Privacy Act in February to modernize the protections afforded electronic communications that would require obtaining a search warrant in almost every case. That proposal met resistance in the Senate in 2016 when Attorney General Jeff Sessions, then a senator from Alabama, sought to add a provision allowing law enforcement to skip the warrant requirement in emergency situations. Whether the legislation can get through the current Senate is an open question, and it is not clear whether President Donald Trump would sign off if the Justice Department opposes the bill. That may mean the Supreme Court will have to establish the broad parameters of digital privacy while Congress tries to deal with the intricacies of a world of electronic communication that continues to evolve rapidly.

Devices connected to the internet, from cellphones to watches to personal training trackers that facilitate our personal habits and communications, are a fact of daily life, and the Supreme Court will have to start drawing clear lines around what types of electronic information are — and are not — protected by the Fourth Amendment. Simply asserting that there is a right to privacy does not provide much help in determining how far that protection should extend in a digital world.