Citing the commission's belief, per congressional intention, that broadcasters and cable companies have an obligation to negotiate carriage fees "in an atmosphere of honesty, purpose and clarity or process," Lake asked the companies to provide information about the nature of their current negotiations.
Specifically, Lake requested that each company describe how it "is satisfying this important statutory obligation in the context of your retransmission consent negotiations." He also asked both parties to "describe with specificity what has transpired since you initially began your negotiations, and detail the efforts your company is making to end the current impasse."
The commission requested that both parties respond with the information by close of business this Monday.
Cablevision customers in the New York area lost Fox channels on Saturday after the two companies failed to reach an agreement over how much Cablevision should pay Fox to carry its signals.
Cablevision has called Fox's request for $150 million to carry its signal "outrageous," "unfair," and an "act of corporate greed." Fox, who denies the $150 million figure, has called Cablevision "hypocritical," saying the company has a double-standard for how these negotiations should be conducted and "will say and do anything to protect its profits."
Still at an impasse after 8 days, Fox issued a public statement on Friday advising Cablevision customers to switch providers or purchase an over-the-air antenna to see the World Series.
]]>The New America Foundation hosts a 9:00 am forum on the "Internet's Mid-Life Crisis." Featured speakers include Bruce Gottlieb, former Chief Counsel of the FCC and Link Hoewing, assistant VP for Internet and technology policy, Verizon.
Tuesday
The Heritage Foundation hosts a 10:00 am discussion on "What (If Anything) Will Congress Do About Cybersecurity?" Featured speakers include Brandon Milhorn, Republican staff director and chief counsel at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
The Brookings Institution holds a 10:00 am forum on security in the cloud computing age. Featured speakers include Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology and Irfan I. Saif, principal at Deloitte & Touche
Wednesday
The Center for American Progress hosts a 12:30 pm discussion on American rights and politics in the digital age.
Friday
Arizona State hosts an 8:30 am panel on open innovation and technology. Featured speakers include Diana Wells, president of Ashoka and Chris Thomas, chief technology officer of the Intel World Ahead program at Intel.
"Data centers provide high-wage jobs to highly skilled employees, and Duffield has much to offer a company seeking a location for a data center," said Boucher, Communications Subcommittee Chairman. "It is home to the Scott County Business and Technology Park, which is fully outfitted with the water, wastewater and telecommunications infrastructure necessary to accommodate a data center. In addition, its multi-tenant Crooked Road Technology Center is available for occupancy."
TVA, according to a statement from Boucher, considered 50 sites throughout the Southeast for the distinction of "prime location" and chose 12 including Duffield. As part of a data center recruitment initiative, TVA will partner with local power distributors and economic development leaders to begin marketing the sites.
"I have been working with local officials for several years to transform the Duffield community into a prime location for technology based jobs, and today's announcement signals that our work has been successful," Boucher said.
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They are all part of the awesome swag up for grabs at the Federal Communications Bar Association charity auction next Thursday evening.
Prizes to the event, which will be held at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza in Washington, include two pairs of tickets to the Late Show with David Letterman, four tickets to a Redskins game, two tickets to a taping of The Daily Show, and many more.
The grand prize is an entertainment packing featuring and 47" 3D TV, 3D blu-ray disc player and 3D glasses.
Proceeds will benefit Project Wait No Longer, an initiative that works to find permanent homes for foster youth, and the FCBA Foundation.
Comcast, AT&T, the Consumer Electronics Association, Google, Time Warner Cable, among other tech giants, sponsored the event.
Rights holders and many government leaders are determined to crack down on Internet piracy through stricter enforcement, but public-interest groups argue that such rules can jeopardize free speech, particularly in countries without the types of safeguard measures found in American law.
The U.S. Trade Representative's Office recently released the latest text -- and possibly the final version -- of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an accord aimed at increasing international cooperation in curbing the piracy and counterfeiting of intellectual property. The current draft, which includes a section on the Internet, is the product of three years of negotiation and 11 rounds of talks.
"The general trend of ACTA is to shift enforcement standards from civil to criminal, from private parties to government entities, and to lower the evidentiary threshold for enforcement," said Sean Flynn, associate director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property at American University. "All those shifts create more opportunities to use copyright enforcement as a pretext for censorship."
According to a USTR spokesperson, American officials crafting ACTA understand the concerns about free speech and address them in the agreement. Enforcement procedures in the digital environment must "preserve fundamental principles such as freedom of expression, fair process, and privacy," the text reads.
Read more here (subscription required)
Williams was fired for telling Fox News host Bill O'Reilly that when he boards an airplane and sees "people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.''
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee and possible 2012 presidential contender, took to her Facebook account, as she often does when making news, to blast NPR's action.
"If NPR is unable to tolerate an honest debate about an issue as important as Islamic terrorism, then it's time for 'National Public Radio' to become 'National Private Radio,'" Palin wrote. "It's time for Congress to defund this organization."
Her comments were echoed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who also is weighing a 2012 White House bid. He said he would decline future interview requests from NPR. "It is time for the taxpayers to start making cuts to federal spending, and I encourage the new Congress to start with NPR," Huckabee wrote on his Facebook page.
Free Press President Josh Silver denounced such calls. "It is time to stop playing politics with our nation's public media system," Silver said in a statement. "Calling for Congress to defund NPR is nothing more than political opportunism by public figures who have built a career on such shenanigans. Regardless of what you think about Juan Williams' dismissal, calling for the defunding of NPR is like asking for the death penalty in small claims court."
]]>The coalition urged Leahy to push for Senate approval of the legislation when Congress returns in mid-November for a lame-duck session after the November midterm elections.
The legislation would give the Justice Department new authority to file a civil action against a domain name linked to a website trafficking in illegal copyrighted content or counterfeit goods. Under the bill, the company that sold the domain name registration to the website could be forced to revoke the domain name of the site if it is being used for copyright infringement or counterfeiting.
The Judiciary Committee was set to mark up the bill in late September but postponed action on the measure when the Senate recessed for the midterm elections.
"Rogue websites - many of which are hosted outside of the U.S. - have become
increasingly sophisticated in both design and operation, and often deceive consumers into believing they are legitimate," the letter said. "We believe that the tools S. 3804
would provide are essential to helping address these illegal websites and ensuring that the Internet is a safe and vibrant marketplace."
The letter was signed by such groups and companies as the Association of American Publishers, NBC Universal, the Recording Industry Association of America, Sony Music Entertainment, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Critics worry that the measure will hamper free speech, and by allowing domain names to be shut down, it could set a bad precedent that other countries might seek to immitate in order to stifle government critics.
The coalition of businesses and groups dismissed such claims, saying, "some foreign countries have engaged in political censorship long before this bill was introduced and they will continue to do so regardless of whether this legislation is enacted."
]]>During a speech at the Federal Communications Bar Association, NTIA Director Lawrence Strickling said the recommendation is included in a report for freeing up spectrum that is being reviewed by Obama administration officials. The plan is aimed at helping the administration meet a five-year goal, included in the FCC's national broadband plan, for freeing up 500 megahertz of spectrum for wireless broadband technologies.
Strickling said the report, which will provide more detail on freeing up spectrum to meet the administration's goal, is working its way through the interagency evaluation process and would be released "soon."
Of the spectrum recommended by NTIA for reallocation, 100 megahertz is held by the Department of Defense and used primarily for radar systems for naval vessels. The additional 15 megahertz recommended for reallocation is held by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and used for weather balloons and satellites. Strickling said the agency also examined another chunk of spectrum in the 1755 band that has been attractive to industry, but he said the spectrum is being used be several federal users and will need to be examined more closely to see if it can be reallocated for commercial use.
If the NTIA recommendations are accepted, it will be up to the FCC to implement them, Strickling noted.
Strickling acknowledged that the spectrum recommended for reallocation is not "prime real estate." He added that "when we can identify spectrum that is suitable for wireless broadband and made available with minimal disruption, we think it's important ... to put it into the bank so industry knows there will be spectrum available in the future."
After the speech, Strickling told reporters that "more and more" federal spectrum users will have to find new ways to share spectrum, saying the days when big chunks of prime spectrum could be auctioned off for commercial use are gone. He also stressed the need for research and development into ways to make better use of existing spectrum.
The drive for additional spectrum is being pushed by the growing consumer demand for new wireless devices such as smart phones, e-readers and tablet computers. The FCC released a report Thursday that found there will be a shortage of spectrum of as much as 300 megahertz in the next five years.
"Additional spectrum is not only essential for the wireless industry, it is vital in meeting the needs of hundreds of millions of wireless customers," AT&T Senior Vice President Robert Quinn said in a statement. "More wireless spectrum will also support economic growth and job creation at an important time."
]]>The FCC's spectrum forecast found that "the amount of mobile data demanded by American consumers is likely to exceed capacity of our wireless networks in the near-term."
Driving the demand for spectrum is growth of the mobile technologies such as smart phones, tablet computers and e-books like the iPad and Kindle. The paper estimates that mobile broadband traffic will increase by 35 times the amount of recent levels.
Spectrum is the "oxygen of our mobile communications infrastructure," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said, emphasizing the importance of meeting the growing demand.
The value of this exploding spectrum market is about $120 billion, the paper found.
The paper was released in conjunction with a spectrum summit held Thursday at the FCC. Forecasting spectrum is far from an exact science, Morgan Stanley telecom analyst Simon Flannery said at the event, calling it something of a "dark art."
]]>The first item will be a notice of proposed rulemaking for implementing spectrum incentive auctions in anticipation of Congress approving such a measure. The incentive auction rule would explore a licensing framework to allow for channel sharing.
A notice of proposed rulemaking to expand experimental spectrum licensing will be the second item. The goal of this proposal is to accelerate innovation and reduce the amount of time it takes for an idea to "get from the lab to the market," Genachowski said.
The chairman noted that under traditional avenues, it can take six to 13 years to repurpose spectrum licenses.
The third item up for discussion at the November meeting is a notice of inquiry to accelerate the "opportunistic" uses of spectrum. This is an attempt to advance the use of secondary markets for spectrum through dynamic leasing, among other measures.
The High Tech Spectrum Coalition applauded the FCC for supporting voluntary incentive auctions as a means of bringing more spectrum to market. The HTSC counts the Consumer Electronics Association, the Information Technology Industry Council and the Telecommunications Industry Association, among their members.
Genachowski's remarks came at a spectrum summit held at the FCC Thursday.
"Electronic health records possess the ability to help improve both the quality and efficiency of medical care accessible by minorities," David Blumenthal, the national coordinator for health information technology, wrote in a letter to the vendor community in his Coordinator's Corner blog. Yet providers serving uninsured black and Hispanic or Latino populations are less likely to have adopted electronic health records, he noted.
Racial and ethnic minorities are disproportionately affected by chronic illness, Blumenthal wrote, citing data from the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey. Those illnesses, he said, contribute to "intolerably high" mortality and morbidity rates.
"It is absolutely necessary that the leading EHR vendors work together, continuing to provide EHR adoption opportunities for physicians and other healthcare providers working within underserved communities of color," Blumenthal said. He urged Regional Extension Centers and EHR vendors to coordinate with the government to "focus substantial efforts on these priority populations." To read more, click here.
]]>The Internet firm said Thursday that nearly a quarter of a million Germans have asked to opt-out of having their homes revealed on Google's Street View service, which provides street-level photos of addresses as part of Google Maps. Google has agreed to blur the photographs of the homes of those German citizens who sign up to opt-out of the service.
Google acknowledged in May that its Street View cars had mistakenly collected personal information from unsecured Wi-Fi networks as they photographed addresses. Google agreed to provide an online opt-out tool after Germany's data protection authority raised concerns about the Wi-Fi incident.
Google is preparing to launch Street view in 20 German cities and so far 244,237 of the 8.4 million homes that would be included in the service have opted out, Andreas Turk, Google's product manager for Street View in Germany, wrote in a blog post.
"We worked closely with the Data Protection Authorities to ensure all the right German privacy standards were met," Turk said.
Turk added, however, that given the complexity of the project, "there will be some houses that people asked us to blur that will be visible when we launch the imagery in a few weeks time. We've worked very hard to keep the numbers as low as possible but in any system like this there will be mistakes." Turk noted that some Germans who asked to opt out may not have provided the precise location.
Meanwhile, Google has come under scrutiny in other countries as well for the Wi-Fi incident. Canadian Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart said Tuesday that Google had violated Canadian privacy laws when its cars mistakenly collected personal data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks in Canada and has given the firm until February to comply with recommendations outlined by her office.
And Spain's data protection authority announced Monday that it is suing Google for violating that country's privacy laws when its Street View cars collected data from unsecured Spanish Wi-Fi networks, Agence France-Presse reported. The company could face fines of up to $840,000 for each of the five offenses it is facing in Spain.
Several U.S. attorneys general also have launched investigations into the incidents of Google's Wi-Fi snooping in the United States.
Google has repeatedly said the Wi-Fi collection incidents were a mistake and has pledged to work with authorities investigating the matter.
]]>The FCC supports an auction, as do some members of Congress, including the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee. The FCC's proposal calls for using the proceeds from the D-block auction to help fund the creation of the public safety communications network.
Weiser's remarks came at a forum convened by the Brookings Institution about the "looming shortage of wireless spectrum." Much of the shortage is due to a growing demand for wireless broadband.
Weiser said it's unclear whether the nation's ability to meet spectrum demand is hindered more by red tape or actual scarcity. Part of the issue, Weiser noted, is that nobody knows how technology will evolve.
Adele Morris, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that government control of spectrum has created "a mismatch between supply and demand."
At issue are the fees that Cablevision pays to Fox to provide its programs to the cable operator's subscribers in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York. Fox is demanding twice as much for its programming than what Cablevision currently pays, according to Cablevision. Fox pulled its programming from Cablevision's 3 million subscribers in the New York area on Friday after the two sides failed to reach agreement on a new retransmission agreement.
Copps, a Democrat, noted that the FCC's role in the dispute is limited by law to ensuring both sides are engaging in "good faith" negotiations. But he added that the commission may have a role to play in protecting consumers.
"I believe the commission should take a very serious look at whether 'good faith' negotiations are indeed occurring," Copps said. "What, indeed, does 'good faith' mean in the dog-eat-dog world of big media? If such talks are not taking place, we should move promptly to protect consumers."
Fox has tried to enlist the support of members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee in urging the FCC not to intervene in the dispute. Cable companies, meanwhile, would like to see Congress overhaul the whole retransmission process. Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., proposed draft legislation Tuesday that would allow the FCC to intervene more directly when retransmission talks break down.
Copps also linked the retransmission dispute to his call for network neutrality rules aimed at prohibiting broadband providers or others from discriminating against or blocking access to Internet content. He argued that Fox's decision to briefly block Cablevision Internet subscribers from reaching Fox Web sites highlights the importance of protecting the openness of the Internet.
"For a broadcaster to pull programming from the Internet for a cable company's subscribers, as apparently happened here, directly threatens the open Internet," Copps said. "This was yet another instance revealing how vulnerable the Internet is to discrimination and gate-keeper control absent clear rules of the road."
Fox did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
]]>The report from Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine's office examined the status of the FBI's Sentinel case management system and found "significant additional issues that we believe can affect the full and successful implementation of Sentinel." The report is the seventh in a series of IG reports that have monitored the progress of the $450 million Sentinel system, which was estimated to be completed in December 2009.
"Our review found that as of August 2010, after spending about $405 million of the $451 million budgeted for the Sentinel project, the FBI has delivered only two of Sentinel's four phases to its agents and analysts. Moreover, we believe that the most challenging development work for Sentinel still remains," the IG report found. "In addition, we found that while Sentinel has delivered some improvements to the FBI's case management system, it has not delivered much of what it originally intended."
In a statement, Leahy voiced concern that the latest IG report once again found problems with Sentinel and pledged continued oversight of the system until it is "working as it should be."
"Information exchange is critical to protecting our national security," Leahy said. " These stumbles continue to be alarming."
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