February 2012

NCTA, CTIA, US Telecom Outline Cybersecurity Bill Priorities

Cable and phone companies have told Congress that regulatory second-guessing, prescriptive rules or lengthy review and approval processes would be disastrous to industry efforts to respond in real time to cybersecurity threats.

As the House and Senate consider cybersecurity legislation, the heads of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, CTIA: The Wireless Association and US Telecom wrote the leaders of the House and Senate, laying out their priorities for a national approach to cyber defense and providing some must-haves in any cybersecurity legislation. "We agree with Congress that ensuring the security of cyber space is a national imperative," they wrote, "and we share the goal of promoting a national framework for cybersecurity that enhances our economic and national security posture." But, they said, "essential to that framework is ensuring that critical infrastructure providers retain the freedom to implement all measures available to them to secure their networks and systems."

FCC Releases March Open Meeting Agenda

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced that the following items will be on the tentative agenda for the next open meeting scheduled for Wednesday, March 21, 2012.

The FCC will consider:

Review of the Program Access Rules Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking exploring whether to retain, sunset, or relax the exclusive contract prohibition of the program access rules and whether to revise the program access rules to better address alleged violations.
Creation of a Low Power Radio Service Report and Order: a Report and Order to implement a market-specific FM translator processing scheme, adopt application caps to prevent trafficking, and modify policies to expand opportunities to rebroadcast AM stations on FM translators.
Creation of a Low Power Radio Service Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Report and Order: A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking regarding proposals to implement the Local Community Radio Act and to strengthen the LPFM service, including second adjacent channel waiver procedures, interference remediation requirements, and modification of eligibility, ownership, and selection standards.
Promoting Interoperability in the 700 MHz Commercial Spectrum Notice of Proposed Rulemaking: A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking concerning the potential for harmful interference to Lower 700 MHz B and C Block operations if the Lower 700 MHz Band were interoperable and whether, if such interference exists, it can be reasonably mitigated. The NPRM also seeks comment on the best course of action should the Commission determine that interoperability would cause limited or no harmful interference to Lower 700 MHz B and C Block licensees, or that such interference can be reasonably mitigated.
Advanced Wireless Service in the 2 GHz Band Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Notice of Inquiry: A Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposing service, technical, assignment, and licensing rules for flexible terrestrial use of spectrum currently assigned to the Mobile Satellite Service (MSS) in the 2 GHz band. The Commission will also consider a Notice of Inquiry regarding an alternative band plan involving additional spectrum at 1695-1710 MHz that the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) has proposed to reallocate from Federal to commercial use.

Facebook pushes advertisers to get creative and social with ads

Facebook showed off a new suite of premium ads that it thinks will allow advertisers to interact more directly with their customers and finally brings marketing to Facebook’s mobile properties. The premium ads include bigger ads that originate from a sponsor’s page and let Facebook users “like” and comment on those ads just like on a regular post. Facebook’s mobile site and apps will now feature the same premium ads, addressing a big shortcoming for Facebook, which has 425 million mobile users but derives no revenue from that traffic.

Senator Levin claims Facebook is using loophole to avoid taxes

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) said Facebook is using a loophole in the tax code to avoid paying taxes to the federal government.

“The end result is that a profitable U.S. corporation — a success story — could end up paying no taxes at all for years, even decades,” Sen Levin claimed in a speech on the Senate floor. He said the loophole, regarding how the company reports the value of its stock, could allow Facebook to avoid $3 billion in taxes. When Facebook first gave the stocks to Zuckerberg, the company calculated their value at 6 cents per share. But the company plans to claim a tax deduction based on the current value of the stock, which could be $40 per share. “So the books show a highly profitable company — profitable, in part, because of the relatively small expense the company shows on its books for the stock options it grants to its employees,” Sen Levin said. “But when it comes time to pay taxes, to pay Uncle Sam, the loophole in the tax code allows the company to take a tax deduction for a far larger expense than they show on their books.” Sen Levin said the tax break shows the need to pass his legislation, which would bar companies from claiming tax deductions on stock options that are valued at more than what they report to shareholders. “I emphasize that Facebook’s actions are within the law,” he said. “As with so much of our tax code, it’s not the law-breaking that shocks the conscience, it’s the stuff that’s perfectly legal.” The deduction applies only to Facebook’s corporate tax rate and not the taxes individuals such as Zuckerberg will pay on their earnings.

inMobi: Mobile Users Spending More Time With Devices Than With TV

A new global study of mobile media consumption from one of the world’s largest mobile ad networks finds that mobile subscribers are spending more of their media time each day with handsets than with television.

In a survey of over 20,000 device users across eight major regions, respondents claimed to spend 27% of their media time in a typical day on devices but 22% in front of a TV screen. And yet both TV and phone still fall behind the 32% of time spent in front of a connected computer. In all users who are spending a total of 7.2 hours a day consuming media, 119 minutes is with the phone.

PointRoll Sued For Circumventing Privacy Settings

Texas resident Lourdes Villegas has sued ad company PointRoll and search giant Google for allegedly circumventing the no-tracking settings on the Safari browser.

While Google has been hit with several other lawsuits for allegedly tracking Safari users, Villegas appears to be the first Web user to sue Gannett's PointRoll for the potential privacy violations. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose (CA), accuses the companies of violating federal computer fraud laws and wiretap laws, as well as California state laws. Villegas is seeking class-action status. The litigation centers on a report published two weeks ago by researcher Jonathan Mayer, who found that Google, PointRoll, WPP's Media Innovation Group and Vibrant Media were dropping cookies on Safari users despite the fact that the browser blocks third-party cookies.

How 105 Companies are Tracking Me on the Web

This morning, if you opened your browser and went to NYTimes.com, an amazing thing happened in the milliseconds between your click and when the news about North Korea and James Murdoch appeared on your screen. Data from this single visit was sent to 10 different companies, including Microsoft and Google subsidiaries, a gaggle of traffic-logging sites, and other, smaller ad firms. Nearly instantaneously, these companies can log your visit, place ads tailored for your eyes specifically, and add to the ever-growing online file about you. There's nothing necessarily sinister about this subterranean data exchange: this is, after all, the advertising ecosystem that supports free online content.

All the data lets advertisers tune their ads, and the rest of the information logging lets them measure how well things are actually working. And I do not mean to pick on The New York Times. While visiting the Huffington Post or The Atlantic or Business Insider, the same process happens to a greater or lesser degree. Every move you make on the Internet is worth some tiny amount to someone, and a panoply of companies want to make sure that no step along your Internet journey goes unmonetized. Even if you're generally familiar with the idea of data collection for targeted advertising, the number and variety of these data collectors will probably astonish you. Allow me to introduce the list of companies that tracked my movements on the Internet in one recent 36-hour period of standard web surfing. My complete list includes 105 companies, and there are dozens more than that in existence. You, too, could compile your own list using Mozilla's tool, Collusion, which records the companies that are capturing data about you, or more precisely, your digital self.

Broadband stimulus scandals: Missteps in the buildout, and what's at stake

How are broadband stimulus funds being used in the United States? Are providers and contractors meeting the goals set out in their respective network buildouts? While many broadband expansion projects are moving forward, others never got off the ground. Let's take a look at some notorious missteps in U.S. broadband expansion.

Louisiana dithers, and loses an $80.5 million grant
North Florida jeopardizes its middle mile build
Political opposition ends funding in Tallahassee
Wisconsin hands their funding back

Moving Forward with the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights

At the request of the White House, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration will soon begin convening interested stakeholders -- including companies, privacy advocates, consumer groups, and technology experts -- to develop and implement enforceable codes of conduct that specify how the principles in the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights apply in specific business contexts. But first we want your input.

We are seeking your views on what issues should be addressed through the privacy multistakeholder process and how to structure these discussions so they are open, transparent, and most productive. As you will see in our Request for Public Comments, we think the first topic for stakeholder discussion should be a discrete issue that allows consumers and businesses to engage and conclude multistakeholder discussions in a reasonable timeframe. We list some options for an initial topic, including how to apply the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights’ Transparency principle to the privacy notices for mobile apps. We also invite commenters to discuss lessons learned from existing multistakeholder processes in the Internet policy and standards realms as we finalize the arrangements for the privacy discussions.

Do-Not-Track Plan a Good First Step for Digital Privacy

[Commentary] The recent agreement between the White House and tech companies on a voluntary “do-not-track” (DNT) system for web browsing — accompanied by a framework for a more comprehensive vision of the nation’s privacy policies — is a modest but positive step forward in the broader context of personal data privacy.

Most importantly, this announcement articulates a clear set of values and goals from the highest level of government, and establishes an institutional precedent that brings public and private interests together, prior to any legislative action. The DNT agreement is by no means a comprehensive fix-all, but it provides a meaningful entry point to address the broader issues that have evolved over several decades. If this first step is not followed by movement toward real legislation, it will leave important privacy issues unresolved. But this is the clearest vision of a privacy mission to come from a U.S. administration, and it established a multi-stakeholder process to get the ball rolling, two important prerequisites to real action. It also places the burden of proof with those who want something different.

Benton

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