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Benton media news digest – August 2008

Benton headlines

 

GEORGIA CUTS ACCESS TO RUSSIAN WEBSITES, TV NEWS
 [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Niko Mchedlishvili]
Georgian authorities have blocked most access to Russian news broadcasters and websites since the outbreak of the conflict with Moscow. Russia's television news is tightly controlled by the Kremlin. Coverage of the war has heavily emphasized official statements from Moscow and the suffering of ordinary people in South Ossetia, with little coverage from Georgia proper. Georgia's Interior Ministry said his country's action was not anti-democratic, but Russian broadcasts could not be allowed to "scare our population." Georgian media, private and state-owned, are generally under the sway of President Mikheil Saakashvili, who promotes his country as a Western-style democracy. However, the country's main opposition television station was shut by the Interior Ministry at gunpoint in November and some of its equipment was smashed up. Human rights groups have criticized Saakashvili's approach to media freedom.
 http://benton.org/node/16256

CAPTURING THE BUSH LEGACY ONLINE
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Christopher Lee]
 The Bush administration will soon be packed and gone, but part of its legacy will live on in cyberspace. A consortium of government and nonprofit agencies plans to capture snapshots of every federal government Web site before Jan. 20, when the next president moves into the White House and starts remaking the federal bureaucracy to fit his agenda. The goal of the 2008 "end-of-term harvest" is to preserve millions of agency records in an online archive that librarians hope will provide a valuable trove for historians, government scholars and the public. The need for such an archive is greater than ever, librarians say. Many federal agency records exist only in digital form and are in danger of disappearing when the administration changes. Digital records are telling, they say, because an administration's policy priorities are often reflected in the face it presents to the world online.
 http://benton.org/node/16261

OBAMA'S WIDE WEB
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Jose Antonio Vargas]
 With less than three months to go before the election, Triple O -- Obama's online operation -- is the envy of strategists in both parties, redefining the role that an online team can play within a campaign. If Triple O had a motto, it would be: "Meet the voters where they're at." Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum, an online hub of how politics and technology intersect, said: "Obama's success online is as much about how our society has changed, how our media ecology has changed, just in the past four years."
 http://benton.org/node/16265
 
RIGHT VENUE, WRONG MESSAGE
 [SOURCE: AdWeek, AUTHOR: Barbara Lippert]
 [Commentary] At a time when the country desperately needed the boost, the Olympics have turned out to be a regular festival of uplift. Given the context, the largely negative political work is downright depressing. Using the venue to run upsetting and negative messages is a waste.
 http://benton.org/node/16245

FCC'S MARTIN WANTS BROADBAND ACROSS USA
 [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Leslie Cauley]
 High-speed Internet access is so important to the welfare of people in the US that America can't afford not to offer it -- free of charge -- to anybody who wants it, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin says. "There's a social obligation in making sure everybody can participate in the next generation of broadband services because, increasingly, that's what people want," he says. Chairman Martin hopes to use a chunk of wireless airwaves due to hit the auction block next year to help turn his vision into reality. Some cellphone operators are objecting. As FCC chairman, Martin is responsible for protecting the interests of US consumers. "More and more people expect and demand to have access to the Internet and new wireless technologies," Martin says. "It is important that the (FCC) try to find new ways to address" those needs. The way Martin sees it, broadband is quickly becoming what copper phone lines were for decades: the main means of communication for millions of Americans.
 http://benton.org/node/16263

VERIZON: NETWORK NEUTRALITY FANS SUFFER FROM 'PARANOIA'
 [SOURCE: CongressDaily, AUTHOR: Andrew Noyes]
 Verizon Chief Technology Officer Dick Lynch spoke at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual summit in Aspen (CO) Tuesday. He urged a "change in mindset on the part of policymakers to acknowledge the realities of the 100-megabit world" and suggested that other industry participants be pragmatic as well. "The public interest can best be served by getting as much broadband in front of as many people as possible, as quickly as possible, and ensuring that investment keeps up with demand," Lynch said. "To a large extent, this is a matter of taking down the barriers to investment and refraining from erecting new ones." He said, "We need to guard against turning technical and business decisions into political decisions." He said that for economic reasons, Verizon may need to slow down some Internet traffic that is not time-sensitive -- like file-sharing or e-mail. Some people hearing this "get all incensed and they accuse me of violating things I didn't even know that I could violate," he said. Customers who are "doing a P2P download or e-mail, they aren't going to see that 22-millisecond delay. And yet that's the kind of thing that seems to (cause) paranoia."
 http://benton.org/node/16254

FCC TO WARN TV VIEWERS: 'THIS IS ONLY A TEST'
 [SOURCE: Chicago Tribune, AUTHOR: Wailin Wong]
 If you watch an older TV hooked up to rabbit-ear antennas and your screen goes snowy for a moment this November, replaced by a message telling you to call a toll-free number, do not be alarmed. It's not Martians. One of the options to test local households' readiness is what's known as a "soft test," or temporarily turning off analog signals. In a soft test, the signal is shut down for 30 to 60 seconds. Viewers who are watching an older TV with rabbit ears or a rooftop antenna will get a snowy screen and a message telling them to call a toll-free number or visit DTVanswers.com, a Web site run by the National Association of Broadcasters.
 http://benton.org/node/16250

US CONSUMERS BUYING FEWER CELL PHONES
 [SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Peter Svensson]
 US consumers have been buying significantly fewer cell phones but paying higher prices for them, says NPD Group, a research firm. 28 million cell phones were sold in the United States in the second quarter, a decline of 13 percent from the same period a year ago. It was the third quarter in a row with a year-over-year decline, and the lowest number of phones sold since NPD began tracking the category in 2005. However, the phones that were sold tended to have more features and be more expensive, and the total value of the market was down only 2 percent from a year ago, at $2.4 billion.
 http://benton.org/node/16249

FTC COMMISSIONER TACKLES ADS FOR KIDS
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Ross Kenneth Urken]
 A Q&A with Federal Trade Commission commissioner Jon Leibowitz who was particularly outspoken in a recent FTC study on marketing to children by food and beverage companies. He urged marketers to do more to regulate themselves and saying that if they don't, the FTC could step in and do it for them. That has made him something of a lightning rod for people on both sides of the issue.
 http://benton.org/node/16262

IMPLEMENTING THE AMERICA COMPETES ACT
 [SOURCE: White House]
 President George Bush has assigned John H. Marburger III, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, to convene

$500K GRANT FOR COMMON SENSE MEDIA
 [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: ]
 Common Sense Media received a $500,000 grant from the MacArthur Foundation for digital-media education. That is on top of a $250,000 grant the group got from MacArthur last year, all of which is being used to plan and execute a media-education campaign to help kids deal with both consuming and producing an increasing range of digital media.
 http://benton.org/node/16258

VIRTUAL WORLDS GET REAL ABOUT PUNISHMENT
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Kim Hart]
 Virtual worlds have often been called the digital equivalent of the Wild West, where animated alter egos can live in a fantasy frontier. But in some of these universes, a sheriff has come to town.
 http://benton.org/node/16257
 
THE FCC PLAYS RACIAL LANDLORD
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Editorial staff]
 [Commentary] Among the conditions extracted by regulators before approving the Sirius XM satellite radio merger earlier this month was the company's promise to set aside a share of channels for minority programmers. Now we're finding out what these racial preferences mean in practice. Sirius XM informed the Federal Communications Commission that while it agreed to reserve the channels, the company doesn't want to choose the actual programmers. Sirius XM may think that this is one giant political headache, and that it's unlikely to be the final arbiter in any case. There will almost certainly be more applicants than available channels, and programmers who aren't chosen will inevitably turn to the courts and the FCC to complain. The government may as well pick the minority programmers directly. Apparently, FCC is developing procedures to determine what constitutes a "minority" programmer and which minorities are worthy of special treatment.
 http://benton.org/node/16225

PANDORA, OTHER WEBCASTERS STRUGGLE UNDER HIGH SONG FEES
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Peter Whoriskey]
 The transformation of words, songs and movies to digital media has provoked a number of high-stakes fights between the owners of copyrighted works and the companies that can now easily distribute those works via the Internet. The doomsday rhetoric these days around the fledgling medium of Web radio springs from just such tensions. Last year, an obscure federal panel ordered a doubling of the per-song performance royalty that Web radio stations pay to performers and record companies. Traditional radio, by contrast, pays no such fee. Satellite radio pays a fee but at a less onerous rate, at least by some measures. As for Pandora, its royalty fees this year will amount to 70 percent of its projected revenue of $25 million. Pandora is one of the nation's most popular Web radio services, with about 1 million listeners daily. Its Music Genome Project allows customers to create stations tailored to their own tastes. It is one of the 10 most popular applications for Apple's iPhone and attracts 40,000 new customers a day. Yet the burgeoning company may be on the verge of collapse, according to its founder, and so may be others like it.
 http://benton.org/node/16223

MUSIC, MOVIE LOBBYISTS PUSH TO SPY ON YOUR NET TRAFFIC
 [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
 [Commentary] Recording industry and motion picture lobbyists are renewing their push to convince broadband providers to monitor customers and detect copyright infringements, claiming the concept is working abroad and should be adopted in the United States. A representative of the recording industry said on Monday that her companies would prefer to enter into voluntary "partnerships" with Internet service providers, but pointedly noted that some governments are mandating such surveillance "if you don't work something out." "Despite our best efforts, we can't do this alone," said Shira Perlmutter, a vice president for global legal policy at the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. "We need the help of ISPs."
 http://benton.org/node/16221
 
TRACKING THE ECONOMIC SHOWDOWN
 [SOURCE: Project for Excellence in Journalism, AUTHOR: Mark Jurkowitz]
 The media's coverage of the troubled economy has shifted repeatedly in the last year from a narrative about mortgages to one about recession, a banking crisis and now largely gas prices -- a changing storyline and one that differs from medium to medium. Moreover, the connection between media coverage and economic events has often been uneven. Sometimes, coverage has lagged months behind economic activity, when the storyline was dependent on government data. Other times, coverage has tracked events erratically, as with housing and inflation. But when the story is easier to tell, as in the case of gas prices, coverage has been closely tied to what is actually occurring in the marketplace. These are some of the findings of a new detailed examination of how the American news media have covered the economic slowdown over the last two years, produced by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.
 http://benton.org/node/16210

ANDROID PHONE COULD COME IN NOVEMBER
 [SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Nancy Gohring]
 The Federal Communications Commission released documents on Monday that may indicate that the first Android phone will hit the US market in November. The documents show that the FCC has approved the sale of HTC's Dream phone, a device widely rumored to become the first to run Google's Linux-based Android software. HTC asked the FCC to keep some of the details of its filings, including photographs and the user manual, confidential until Nov.10. That may mean that the phone will come out around that date.
 http://benton.org/node/16209

GOOGLE LAUNCHES WHITE SPACES CAMPAIGN
 [SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Grant Gross]
 Google hopes a new Web site will help convince the Federal Communications Commission to allow a new generation of wireless broadband devices to connect via unused television spectrum. Google on Monday launched the Free the Airwaves campaign, in an effort to drum up public support for new wireless devices to use the so-called white spaces, empty wireless spectrum in bands controlled by US television stations.
 http://www.benton.org/node/16208

A SMART BET OR A BIG MISTAKE?
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Saul Hansell]
 In many ways, the long-term success of FiOS will depend on what new services are developed that will take advantage of the vast bandwidth of the fiber and how much customers will pay for them. Despite prices that average well above $130 for a bundle of Internet, TV and voice services, 20 percent of the homes where FiOS is available have signed up for its video service, and 24 percent buy the Internet service, which offers speeds up to five times faster than cable competitors. Still, it might be a decade before anyone really knows whether Verizon's bet on FiOS is a smart investment in the future or a multibillion-dollar black hole. The company has had to spend more than it would like on advertising and expensive giveaways, like flat-screen TVs, to get new customers. Comcast and other cable companies are preparing to bolster their own Internet speeds and digital offerings. FiOS has been particularly popular among the more sophisticated customers attracted by higher Internet speeds, said Karl Bode, the editor of BroadbandReports.com. "Deliver quality technology and cutting-edge speed, and customers respond," he said. "I'm preparing to move into a new home, and FiOS availability actually played a part in where I was willing to move. And I've probably been one of Verizon's most outspoken critics over the years."
 http://benton.org/node/16224

RETICENCE OF MAINSTREAM MEDIA BECOMES A STORY ITSELF
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Richard Perez-Pena, Bill Carter]
 For almost 10 months, the story of John Edwards's affair remained the nearly exclusive province of the National Enquirer — through reports, denials, news of a pregnancy, questions about paternity and, finally, a slapstick chase through a hotel in Beverly Hills. Political blogs, some cable networks and a few newspapers reported on it — or, more accurately, reported on The Enquirer reporting on it. Jay Leno and David Letterman made Mr. Edwards the butt of jokes on their late-night shows, but their own networks declined to report on the rumours surrounding him on the evening news. Why? A number of news organizations with resources far greater than The Enquirer's, like The New York Times, say they looked into the Edwards matter and found nothing solid enough to report, while others did not look at all. Reaction from across the political spectrum has been strong to the news, with many condemning Edwards' actions and denials. But it may also produce an unwanted aftershock for John McCain, reviving references to his own extramarital affairs back in the mid-1970s. Elizabeth Edwards released a statement in support of her husband and saying their family has been "through a lot" due to, in part, "the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences."
 http://benton.org/node/15997

 
CONSERVATIVE JOURNALISTS RIP OLD MEDIA FOR LIGHT SCRUTINY OF DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS
 [SOURCE: BroadbandCensus.com, AUTHOR: William Korver]
 Panelists and the moderator of a panel at the Young America's Foundation national conservative student conference on Thursday decried the old media's reluctance to continue to keep Reps John Murtha (D-PA) William Jefferson (D-LA) under the microscope for alleged ethical lapses. Moderator Jason Mattera, of Young America's Foundation, and panelists Kathryn Lopez of National Review Online, Mary Katherine Ham of Washington Examiner, and A.J. Rice of Talk Radio Network decried what they view as mainstream liberal bias for not giving adequate press coverage of Reps Murtha and Jefferson.
 http://benton.org/node/15995

BLOCKING OR METERING: A FALSE CHOICE
 [SOURCE: Free Press, AUTHOR: Derek Turner]
 An illustration of why the Federal Communications Commission's decision to prohibit blocking by Internet service providers is unlikely to lead to a radical, industry-wide switch to metering. Among the conclusions of the brief: 1) It is a false choice to suggest that since Internet service providers cannot arbitrarily block online content, they will be forced to meter. There are a whole host of other non-discriminatory options available to providers that are more effective at managing congestion. 2) Talk of metering is not new and has nothing to do with the FCC's laudable decision to prohibit providers from blocking applications. Cox has had bandwidth caps in place since 2003 but was still caught blocking applications. Time Warner floated plans to meter as early as 2002. 3) Metering is the wrong solution for Internet users. History shows that consumers strongly prefer simple, flat-rate pricing to metering. They do not want to look over their shoulder and face surprise higher monthly bills. This is likely to encourage all subscribers ­ not just high-bandwidth users -- to curb their Internet use. 4) Metering is bad business for Internet service providers. Not only does it decrease Internet use, it discourages the development of and demand for new and innovative applications that give the Internet its value. ISPs that meter are likely to see a subscription drop that hurts their bottom line. 5) There are strong financial incentives at play that actually make it very unlikely that ISPs will make the drastic switch to metering. Congestion should be treated as a short-term problem, while continued investments are made to keep pace with demand. Offering simplicity and abundance is the best outcome for users, providers and the future of the Internet.
 http://benton.org/node/15991

 
DINGELL TO FCC: CONSIDER LICENSING WHITE SPACES
 [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
 House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) asked the Federal Communications Commission to consider licensing the so-called white spaces between digital-TV channels. While the FCC has been considering allowing unlicensed mobile devices to use the spectrum for wireless broadband, among other things, Chairman Dingell suggested that a licensing proposal, at least for some of the spectrum, could help to mitigate the concerns of broadcasters and wireless microphone users about interference. It could also raise some money for the treasury. He noted the FCC's testing of the unlicensed devices. The FCC said Friday that it picked the Majestic Theater in New York for testing those devices' use of the white spaces between TV channels and wireless microphones. Chairman Dingell said, "As the Commission proceeds, it is my hope that it gives all due consideration to all proposals concerning the best use of the white spaces, including those proposals to license some or all of the spectrum available," in a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.
 http://benton.org/node/15989

IS FAIRNESS RULE FAIR?
 [SOURCE: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, AUTHOR: Mallika Rao]
 The Religion News Service's Rao writes that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi policy that required broadcasters who sent out specific messages to set aside time for opposing views. Such a move would "really make it impossible to preach the whole counsel of God," said Rich Bott, the owner of Kansas-based Bott Radio Network, which broadcasts Christian programming across 10 states. It would also, he said, likely put him out of business. While Speaker Pelosi hasn't offered legislation to reinstate the policy, she has signaled that she supports its revival, and said a bill introduced by Rep. Mike Spence (R-IN) to permanently kill it will not be considered by the Democratic-controlled House. Most critics say the doctrine is unlikely to be reinstated, and is being used by the left as an empty threat, and by the right as a rallying cry. Still, Christian broadcasters are bracing for its reemergence, said Frank Wright, president of the National Religious Broadcasters. "This is not the time to despair," he said. "If all these bad things happen, we're going to sue immediately."
 http://benton.org/node/15993 

WEB PRIVACY ON THE RADAR IN CONGRESS
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Stephanie Clifford]
 Questions of data collection and privacy policies are attracting the attention of Congress. There is no broad privacy legislation governing advertising on the Internet. And even some in the government admit that they do not have a clear grasp of what companies are able to do with the wealth of data now available to them. "That is why Congress, at this point, is wanting to gather a lot more information, because no one knows," said Steven A. Hetcher, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School. "That information is incredibly valuable; it's the new frontier of advertising." Beyond the data question, there are issues of how companies should tell browsers that their information is being tracked, which area of law covers this and what -- if anything -- proper regulation would look like.
 http://benton.org/node/16003

YAHOO MAKES ITS GOOGLE SEARCH ADVERTISING AGREEMENT PUBLIC
 [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Dawn Kawamoto]
 Yahoo on Friday released a copy of its controversial search advertising partnership agreement with Google, marking the first time details of the deal have been made publicly available. However, it is heavily redacted. The agreement was included as an exhibit to Yahoo's quarterly financial statement, which the Internet search pioneer filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Under the agreement, Yahoo will serve up Google's advertisements alongside its own search results. Yahoo has previously said it does not believe its open-ended deal is anticompetitive, citing it is under no obligation to run a certain number of Google's ads, or give its competitor's ads favorable placement on its search results pages.
 http://benton.org/node/15979

MEDIA OUTLETS LOSING MONEY FROM A LACK OF AUTO ADS
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Tim Arango, Stuart Elliott]
 The flight of advertising dollars to the Internet is one explanation for the pain felt by traditional media. Another culprit that is increasingly to blame is Detroit. For all the discussion of new media's role in hurting profits and revenues at traditional media outlets -- newspapers, magazines, broadcast television and radio -- the sharp downturn in the auto industry is another big culprit, and is taking an increasing toll on the advertising revenue generated by the media.
 http://benton.org/node/16002

IS GOOGLE A MEDIA COMPANY
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Miguel Helft]
 Some media companies fear that Google is increasingly becoming a competitor. They foresee Google's becoming a powerful rival that not only owns a growing number of content properties, including YouTube, the top online video site, and Blogger, a leading blogging service, but also holds the keys to directing users around the Web. Money, of course, is very much at issue. The lower a site ranks in search results, the less traffic it receives from search engines. With a smaller audience, the site earns less money from advertising.
 http://benton.org/node/16001

MINOW, FOWLER: STRIP FCC OF INDECENCY ENFORCEMENT AUTHORITY
 [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
 A trio of former Federal Communications Commission chairmen, including the most iconic critic of TV content and a symbol of deregulation, joined to ask the Supreme Court to strip the FCC of its power to regulate indecency entirely, saying that it is on a "Victorian crusade" that hurts broadcasters, viewers and the Constitution. Former Democratic chairman Newton Minow may have famously dubbed TV a "vast wasteland" back in the 1960s, but he is ready to let TV programmers in this century have more say over content if the alternative is the current FCC. Seconding that opinion was former Republican chairman Mark Fowler, who once likened TV to a toaster with pictures and became a symbol of the deregulatory 1980s. Also weighing in on a brief to the court Friday was James Quello, former broadcaster and longest-serving Democratic commissioner. The trio were joined by other former FCC commissioners and staffers including Henry Geller, former general counsel at the FCC; Glen O. Robinson, a former commissioner and said to be principal author of the brief; Kenneth G. Robinson, a former FCC legal adviser; and Jerald Fritz, senior VP and general counsel for Allbritton Communications.
 http://benton.org/node/15987

ABC AFFILIATES WEIGH IN AT SUPREME COURT
 [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
 ABC stations asked the Supreme Court not to revisit the legal justification for the Federal Communications Commission's indecency-enforcement standards, but they said the FCC was clearly out of bounds to find that a Fox broadcast violated those standards. In their brief, the affiliates said the FCC policy both violated the Administrative Procedures Act and strayed too far from the narrow confines of the Pacifica decision. But they explicitly said the court did not need to address the underlying constitutionality of the FCC's indecency-enforcement powers. That differs from the filing of the ABC network and other networks, which called on the court to rethink the Pacifica decision, which is the underpinning of FCC indecency enforcement. They also differed from the networks in not asking the court to reconsider the entire broadcast-regulatory framework, saying it was also not necessary "to revisit Red Lion Broadcasting Co. vs. FCC, 395 U.S. 367 (1969), which affirmed the statutory public-trustee regulatory framework for the broadcast media."
 http://benton.org/node/15985

CANADA SAYS WILL NOT INTERFERE WITH TELECOM FIRMS
 [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: David Ljunggren]
 Canada will not interfere with the day-to-day business decisions of major telecommunications firms, despite public unhappiness over impending moves by two major companies to charge for incoming text messages, Industry Minister Jim Prentice said. He told Bell Canada and Telus that "in the current deregulated telecommunications market, our government has no intention of interfering with the day-to-day business decisions of private companies or with the choices available to consumers." Prentice said he had expressed his "serious concerns" to the firms over the possibility they would charge customers for unwanted spam text messages and said they had assured him customers could have such charges removed.
 http://benton.org/node/15976

VOICE OF AMERICA DOUBLES REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA COVERAGE
 [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: John Eggerton]
 Voice of America doubled its broadcasts to the Republic of Georgia given the fighting there between Russian and Georgian troops over the breakaway province of South Ossetia. VOA said it will start producing a 60-minute radio broadcast, up from a half-hour, featuring interviews, analysis and reporting on the ground, including from reporters and stringers inside the country.
 http://benton.org/node/15973

ALL OF US, THE ARBITERS OF NEWS
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: David Carr]
 Editors often tell young journalists "We decide what the news is." That truism still attains; it's just the meaning of the pronoun has changed. Yes, we decide what is news as long as "we" now includes every sentient human with access to a mouse, a remote or a cellphone. On Friday, NBC spent the day trying to plug online leaks of the splashy opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in order to protect its taped prime-time broadcast 12 hours later. There was a profound change in roles here: a network trying to delay broadcasting a live event, more or less TiVo-ing its own content. Consumers have no issue with time-shifting content — in some younger demographics, at least half the programming is consumed on a time-shifted basis — they just want to be the ones doing the programming.
 http://benton.org/node/16004

SEXUAL DYSFUNCTION?
 [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: R. Thomas Umstead]
 Some of the largest adult-entertainment players in cable TV are struggling online. The sheer volume of established competition is staggering, having multiplied like rabbits almost overnight. Today more than 4 million adult-oriented Internet Web sites offer pictures and video to titillate every imaginable sexual taste. As the number of sites has surged, they're increasingly being fortified with unfiltered pictures or partial video clips, creating a flood of saucy -- and free -- online content. And if the content isn't free, it's typically priced to reach a mass audience. Moreover, the category is experiencing a new influx of user-generated content. Millions of amateurs, sporting little more than digital video recorders and poor lighting, are also changing the fundamental business dynamics of the pornography industry by seeking nothing more than exhibitionist notoriety -- and not charging a cent.
 http://benton.org/node/15974

SAN FRANCISCO CASE SHOWS VULNERABILITY OF DATA NETWORKS
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ashley Surdin]
 San Francisco is being forced to overhaul security measures on the computer network that controls data for its police, courts, jails, payroll and health services, as well as other crucial information, after the technology administrator entrusted with the system blocked access for everyone but himself last month and for days refused to reveal the password, even from jail. The ordeal has spurred the city's IT department to bolster network oversight and to consider hiring outside auditors to monitor a security upgrade. City officials also will review all access to its FiberWAN network, the hub through which payroll, e-mail and criminal files flow. It has also persuaded other cities to scrutinize their own systems.
 http://benton.org/node/16000  

GEORGIA STATES COMPUTERS HIT BY CYBERATTACK
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Siobhan Gorman]
 Georgian officials and international security experts say the Georgian government was hit by repeated cyberattacks just as Russia launched military action against the country, a move that illustrates the potential of cyberwarfare to augment a military attack. The leading suspect behind the attacks, which disabled key government Web sites, is a cybercriminal organization known as the Russian Business Network. That organization, however, is believed to act only as a carrier for criminal activities online. It may not be possible to determine who is ultimately responsible. The attacks on Georgia's public-information infrastructure have been particularly stinging in a conflict in which President Mikheil Saakashvili has tried to mount an aggressive media offensive on the airwaves.
 http://benton.org/node/16036

FBI'S USE OF PHONE RECORDS SHOWS NEED TO PROTECT PRESS, SENATORS SAY
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Eric Lichtblau]
 Sens Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (D-PA), the top-ranking members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Monday that they were troubled by the FBI's collection of the phone records of four reporters at The New York Times and The Washington Post and that the episode showed a "pressing need" for legislation pending in the Senate that would provide greater legal protection for journalists. Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation disclosed to the two newspapers that it had improperly obtained the phone records of reporters in their Indonesian bureaus in 2004 by using emergency records demands from telephone providers as part of an investigation. Robert S Mueller III, the director of the bureau, made personal calls to Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, and Leonard Downie Jr, executive editor of The Post, to apologize. In a letter sent to Mr Mueller on Monday, the two senators said they wanted formal staff briefings on the episode to address unanswered questions. The phone records were apparently obtained as part of a terrorism investigation, but the agency has not explained what it was investigating or why the reporters' phone records were considered relevant.
 http://benton.org/node/16035

POLITICAL SPOTS NOW A BARGAIN
 [SOURCE: TVWeek, AUTHOR: Ira Teinowitz]
 In the annals of political advertising, the unthinkable is happening: TV spots are getting cheaper as the November election approaches. Faced with a recession as well as advertising cutbacks by automakers and financial services providers, TV stations have sliced the price of political spots, political ad buyers say. In some markets, prices are as much as 15% to 20% lower than two years ago. Reductions aren't hitting every station or every market, and it's difficult to say whether prices will rebound.
 http://benton.org/node/16025

WHAT OBAMA CAN TEACH YOU ABOUT MILLENNIAL MARKETING
 [SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Peter Feld]
 The unabashed embrace of select brands by millennials, from technology to beverages to fashion, has made this decade a true golden era of marketing for those who know what they're doing. And when it comes to marketing, the Barack Obama campaign knows what it's doing. Obama's brand management, unprecedented in presidential politics, shows pitch-perfect understanding of the keys to appealing to the youngest voters. Obama's packaging might discomfit older generations, who may think of themselves as immune to mass marketing. But it is "no problem" for millennials. John McCain's early-August success in erasing Obama's lead, with a campaign that directly attacks the Obama brand by mocking his celebrity status, shows that branding can cut both ways.
 http://benton.org/node/16024

OBAMA FLOODS FLORIDA AIRWAVES
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Aaron Rutkoff]
 Sen Barack Obama's campaign has aired 9785 local broadcast TV commercials in Florida while Sen John McCain's campaign has aired none. The Obama campaign has spent about $6.5 million on TV advertising in Florida, according to the Campaign Media Analysis Group, a unit of media tracker TNS Media Intelligence. In part, the spending can be attributed to the Democrat's late start there. He refrained from campaigning in Florida during the primary season after the Democratic Party penalized the state for holding its primary early. A spokesman for Sen. McCain declined to discuss why the campaign hasn't run TV ads in Florida, but said the Republican is investing heavily in the state and is doing well. In total, Sen. Obama has spent about $36.6 million on television ads across the country since the end of the Democratic nomination fight, with Florida so far taking the biggest share of any single state. The Obama campaign is also alone on the airwaves in North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia and southern Virginia.
 http://benton.org/node/16034

BROADBAND GROWTH PLUMMETS IN 2Q, CABLE STRONGER
 [SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: ]
 The number of new broadband Internet subscribers in the United States fell in the second quarter to the lowest level in at least seven years. The 20 largest cable and telephone companies added a net 887,000 high-speed Internet subscribers in the three months ending June 30. The number of new customers is half that of the second quarter of 2007. Saturation of the marketplace, along with the slowing economy, are likely reasons for the slowdown. Leichtman Research believes the decline in new customers was likely exacerbated by decisions at the two largest phone companies, AT&T and Verizon, to emphasize faster, more expensive services over entry-level DSL. Cable companies did much better than phone companies in the quarter. While the two industries have usually divided new broadband customers evenly between them, 76 percent of the new business went to cable companies in the quarter.
 http://benton.org/node/16029 

SOME WEB FIRMS SAY THEY TRACK BEHAVIOR WITHOUT EXPLICIT CONSENT
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
 Several Internet and broadband companies have acknowledged using targeted-advertising technology without explicitly informing customers, according to letters released yesterday by the House Commerce Committee. And Google, the leading online advertiser, stated that it has begun using Internet tracking technology that enables it to more precisely follow Web-surfing behavior across affiliated sites. The revelations came in response to a bipartisan inquiry of how more than 30 Internet companies might have gathered data to target customers. Some privacy advocates and lawmakers said the disclosures help build a case for an overarching online-privacy law.
 http://benton.org/node/16033 

DIGITAL CROSSROADS: PAINFUL AS SLANDER MAY BE, DON'T TURN SERVICE PROVIDERS INTO SPEECH POLICE
 [SOURCE: San Jose Mercury News, AUTHOR: Larry Magid]
 [Commentary] Although the Supreme Court struck down most of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, the Court let stand Section 230, which immunizes Internet service providers from being held liable for what their members post by stating that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." The section is analogous to holding phone companies harmless for obscene phone calls made by their customers or shielding the post office from liability for illicit material sent through the mail. But Section 230 has also been used to protect social-networking companies and other Web sites with user-generated content whose business plans weren't even on the drawing board when the law was written back in the mid-'90s.
 http://benton.org/node/16030
 
SERVICE PROVIDERS' PRODUCT STRATEGIES HAVE LEFT THE HOME WORKER MARKET SEGMENT UNTAPPED
 [SOURCE: Forrester, AUTHOR: Sally Cohen]
 Driven by economic changes like the rising cost of gas, social trends like work-life balance, and the proliferation of collaboration technologies, consumers are changing the way that they work. Rather than commuting to a central office every day, 9% of consumers telecommute from home for an external employer, and 22.8 million run a business out of their home. When it comes to their telecommunications services, these home workers have distinct needs that are a combination of their personal and work activities. Yet telcos, cablecos, and ISPs have not focused on this attractive segment of "prosumer" home workers and thus have not yet capitalized on their unique market value. To do so going forward, providers need a designated prosumer product strategist who can mix product offerings, feature sets, and marketing messaging from the consumer and business worlds.
 http://benton.org/node/16016

CYBERATTACKS ON GEORGIAN WEB SITES ARE REIGNITING A WASHINGTON DEBATE
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Siobhan Gorman]
 The cyberattacks in Georgia are re-energizing a debate over whether the laws of war apply in cyberspace. Among the biggest questions: When is a cyberattack an act of war? Cyberweapons are becoming a staple of war. The Georgian conflict is perhaps the first time they have been used alongside conventional military action. Governments and private cyberwarriors can exploit Internet security gaps to not only take down government Web sites but also take control of power grids and nuclear reactors. US officials have begun to consider the legal and policy problems that cyberwarfare presents, but cybersecurity experts said the government has been slow to resolve them in the face of an increasing likelihood that cyberattacks will be used to augment, or even supplant, typical military action.
 http://benton.org/node/16112

CONVENTIONAL NONSENSE
 [SOURCE: Slate, AUTHOR: Jack Shafer]
 [Commentary] With just one exception over the last three decades, the two major parties have known the identity of their likely presidential candidate weeks or even months before gaveling their national political conventions open. For that reason, one way to improve coverage of the four-day, quadrennial conventions of Republicans and Democrats would be for the TV networks to assign sportscasters like Bob Costas, Joe Morgan, and John Madden instead of political journalists to report on the gatherings. They know how to make a game with a foregone conclusion seem entertaining. A still better way to improve convention coverage would be to withdraw all reporters and force the curious to rely on a C-SPAN feed: Unless a brokered convention threatens to break out, these political gatherings tend to produce very little real news. Yet the networks, the newspapers, the magazines, and the Web sites continue to insist on sending battalions of reporters to sift for itsy specks of information.
 http://benton.org/node/16109

MCDOWELL: FAIRNESS DOCTRINE, NET NEUTRALITY LINKED
 [SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Joel Topcik]
 Following a speech to bloggers at the conservative Heritage Foundation, in which he discussed Internet policy and the Federal Communications Commission's recent ruling against Comcast, Commissioner Robert McDowell warned that an effort to reimpose the defunct Fairness Doctrine could sync up with efforts to regulate network management, resulting in "government dictating content policy" on the Web. "This [presidential] election, if it goes one way, we could see a reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine," Commissioner McDowell told BMI, the economic arm of the conservative Media Research Center. "I think it'll be intertwined into the [Network Neutrality] debate ... because there are a few isolated conservatives who might be cherry-picked in a Net Neutrality effort, and I think the fear is that somehow, large corporations will censor their content, their points of view. I think the bigger concern for them should be if you have government dictating content policy -- which, by the way, would have a big First Amendment problem -- then whoever's in charge of government is going to determine what is 'fair' under a so-called Fairness Doctrine." Visit B&C and see video of the statement.
 http://benton.org/node/16090

MCDOWELL'S SCARE TACTICS REACH NEW LOW
 [SOURCE: SavetheInternet.com, AUTHOR: Josh Stearns]
 [Commentary] FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell increasingly sounds like a man stranded on a desert island, willing to say anything to get a ride back to shore. In recent remarks, Commissioner McDowell has tried to tie Network Neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine (which at one time regulated equal airtime for diverse perspectives in broadcast media), saying they are both about content regulation. But contrary to these misleading assertions, Net Neutrality has nothing to do with empowering the FCC to regulate content. Net Neutrality is the First Amendment of the Internet, and has been part of the Net since its inception. It says that no one -- government agency or corporate giant -- should be able to tell consumers what legal content they can access and share online. It is absurd to equate Net Neutrality -- a principle that promotes and protects free speech on the Internet -- with any effort to regulate speech.
 http://benton.org/node/16089

STUDY SHOWS US BROADBAND SPEEDS CONTINUE TO LAG
 [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Marguerite Reardon]
 The average download and upload speeds for broadband services across the U.S. have remained relatively unchanged over the past year as the U.S. continues to lag behind other countries in terms of broadband speeds, according to a report published by the Communications Workers of America labor union. The report consists of data from 230,000 online speed tests across the U.S. In its Speed Matters blog announcing the study's results, the group highlighted that the average download speeds increased only 0.4 megabits per second to 2.3Mbps. By contrast, the average download speed in Japan is 63 Mbps and in South Korea the average download speed is 49 Mbps. As for upload speeds, the average in the U.S. was only 435 kilobits per second.
 http://benton.org/node/16087

WHY WE NEED FAT PIPES: THE TOP 5 BANDWIDTH-HUNGRY APPS
 [SOURCE: GigaOm, AUTHOR: Stacey Higginbotham]
 The debate over managing networks can seem hopelessly abstract. To help the rest of us understand why fast networks with a lot of capacity are so important, here's a list of the top bandwidth-needy applications. 1) High-definition telepresence requires 24 Mbps and about a 50 millisecond latency to recreate the feeling of sitting in a room speaking with people. 2) Telemedicine and Remote Surgery. 3) Video Instant Messaging and Video Presence. 4) High-Definition Television requires between 8 and 5 Mbps to deliver crisp video to consumer's televisions. 5) Real-Time Data Backup require speeds of up to 2 Mbps and 10 milliseconds of latency, and they may become more necessary as enterprises begin to store and save data in the cloud.
 http://benton.org/node/16086

RESIDENTS "OWN" LAST MILE IN CANADIAN BROADBAND TRIAL
 [SOURCE: ComputerWorld, AUTHOR: Johna Till Johnson]
 Canadians generated one of the most innovative ideas ever for last-mile connectivity. In an experiment led by Bill St.Arnaud, researcher at Canarie, a Canadian government-funded institution, 400 houses are being wired with optical fiber -- for which the homeowners will pay an estimated $2,700. The fiber connects up to the nearest network access point, and homeowners own it outright -- meaning they can resell it with their homes, or lease out capacity to their neighbors. Here's why this is a great idea.
 http://benton.org/node/16100

RULING IS A VICTORY FOR SUPPORTERS OF FREE SOFTWARE
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
 A legal dispute involving model railroad hobbyists has resulted in a major courtroom victory for the free software movement also known as open-source software. In a ruling Wednesday, the federal appeals court in Washington said that just because a software programmer gave his work away did not mean it could not be protected. The decision legitimizes the use of commercial contracts for the distribution of computer software and digital artistic works for the public good. The court ruling also bolsters the open-source movement by easing the concerns of large organizations about relying on free software from hobbyists and hackers who have freely contributed time and energy without pay. It also has implications for the Creative Commons license, a framework for modifying and sharing creative works that was developed in 2002 by Larry Lessig, a law professor at Stanford.
 http://benton.org/node/16099

CONGRESS TO PUSH WEB PRIVACY
 [SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Heather Green]
 Rep Ed Markey (D-MA) says he and others plan to introduce comprehensive online privacy legislation in the coming congressional session. Dubbed the Online Privacy Bill of Rights, the law may require companies to get approval from consumers before collecting information about their Web-surfing habits, a process known as behavioral targeting that helps Web sites more strategically place ads. The legislation may also demand that companies disclose more information on how they collect and use people's Web-use data. "There is a reasonable chance that we will see something in the next Congress," says Michael Hintze, an associate general counsel at Microsoft.
 http://benton.org/node/16104

ADVERTISERS WILL SEE YOU READ THIS
 [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: John Gapper]
 [Commentary] If you feel like a shock, try finding out how many online advertising companies are tracking you every time you use the Internet. One way to do so is to go to the Network Advertising Initiative site in the US (www.networkadvertising.org <http://www.networkadvertising.org> ) and click on the opt-out button that allows you to evade their surveillance. It also tells you how many have been watching you already. Worries about online surveillance and privacy are growing. The US Congress is investigating Internet "behavioral targeting" of this kind and Yahoo last week tightened controls on personalized advertising. There is plenty to be worried about.
 http://benton.org/node/16103

WOMAN TO WOMAN, ONLINE
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Claire Cain Miller]
 Sites aimed primarily at women, from "mommy blogs" to makeup and fashion sites, grew 35 percent last year — faster than every other category on the Web except politics, according to comScore, an Internet traffic measurement company. Women's sites had 84 million visitors in July, 27 percent more than the same month last year, comScore said. Advertisers are following the crowd, serving up 4.4 billion display ads on women's Web sites in May, comScore said. That is more than for sites aimed at children, teenagers or families. The rapid growth in advertising and traffic to women's sites has attracted the attention of major media companies and venture capitalists.
 http://benton.org/node/16102

UK ONLINE AD SPENDING OVERTAKES MAINSTREAM TV
 [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Georgina Prodhan]
 Spending on online ads overtook advertising on mainstream TV in Britain last year, growing 40 percent to $5.3 billion and accounting for 19 percent of all advertising, UK regulator Ofcom said.
 http://benton.org/node/16101

CLASSIC SHOWS COULD FIND NEW LIFE IN DIGITAL TV
 [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: David Lieberman]
 Everyone knows that the national transition to digital broadcast television will promote sexy new technologies including high-definition TV (HDTV). But few could have imagined that it might also revive some of the creakiest movies and series ever committed to celluloid, including The Lone Ranger, McHale's Navy and The Addams Family. Vintage reruns and other inexpensive shows are in vogue, though, as stations and programmers rush into a potentially important new business: multicast networks. Multicast services piggyback on digital signals from local stations, including those offering HDTV versions of ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and PBS. Most stations also have room in the airwave spectrum the government has allocated to transmit two standard-definition channels. That could mean up to a dozen stations for a moderate-size market.
 http://benton.org/node/16107

TIME WARNER FEARS CABLE INDECENCY RULES
 [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Ted Hearn]
 Time Warner is concerned that banning fleeting indecency on broadcast TV could be used to justify regulating cable television programming for indecency for the first time. The company, a major owner of cable TV systems and programming networks, stated in an Aug. 8 filing in the U.S. Supreme Court that government regulation of television content shouldn't be allowed to spread to the cable medium. "This court should never lose its vigilance to prevent restrictions on broadcast speech from spawning copycat restrictions on non-broadcast speech," the company said. Time Warner noted in the court brief that prominent individuals such as Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin have called for greater content regulation of the pay TV industry.
 http://benton.org/node/16105

ALTERNATIVE-DELIVERY HITS ALL-TIME HIGH; CABLE FALLS TO 18-YEAR LOW
 [SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: Linda Moss]
 More U.S. TV households are receiving programming via an alternate delivery system, such as satellite, than ever before while wired cable's penetration hit an 18-year low in July, according to a Television Bureau of Advertising analysis of Nielsen Media Research data. ADS penetration -- which includes direct-broadcast satellite and satellite master antenna -- reached 28.4% of TV households in July, an all-time high that is up from 27.5% in July last year. It now represents 32.1% of subscription television customers (those paying for video delivery), another all-time high.
 http://benton.org/node/16083

WANTED: WRITERS FOR DC TECH LOBBY GROUP, SECRECY MANDATORY
 [SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Declan McCullagh]
 [Commentary] Op-eds of dubious provenance are nothing new in political circles, and fake grassroots "astroturf" campaigns enjoy a long, although hardly distinguished, history. One of the most influential practitioners of this art is the LawMedia Group, which has emerged as a behind-the-scenes Washington advocate for Comcast in its Net neutrality tussle with the FCC. In May, the LMG began representing Microsoft in its attempt to use the political process to sabotage a Google-Yahoo advertising deal. Even by Washington standards, the LawMedia Group is highly secretive. Until recently, nearly all pages on its Web site were password-protected. No clients are listed. Perhaps the oddest aspect is that not one employee's name--not even the identity of its founder or principals--is publicly disclosed.
 http://benton.org/node/16098

THE GREAT UNTETHERING
 [SOURCE: San Francisco Chronicle, AUTHOR: Mark Morford]
 [Commentary] The land-line telephone is marked for imminent obsolescence. The phone companies are adding mountains of wireless customers as fast as they're losing land-liners, as millions of young whippersnappers switch to using their cell phones exclusively (or, more accurately, never order up a land-line in the first place).
 http://benton.org/node/16097

YAHOO TO MAKE TARGETED ADS OPTIONAL
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Peter Whoriskey]
 Internet giant Yahoo is set to announce today that it will allow users to shut off targeted advertising on its Web sites, a move that comes as a congressional committee continues to air concerns about consumer privacy. Last week, the House Commerce Committee asked Yahoo and 32 other Internet companies to provide more information about the surfing data they collect from Web users and how the data are used to customize advertising. As many media companies struggle to make money from their Web sites, members of Congress and the industry appear to be in the early stages of a high-stakes negotiation over what kind of advertising ought to be allowed. While Yahoo's new policy may make it harder for the company to make money from ads -- targeted pitches generally fetch higher prices -- company officials said offering more privacy options could attract more users.
 http://benton.org/node/15960

FASTER, HIGHER, STRONGER -- AND DIGITAL
 [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Bruce Horovitz, Laura Petrecca, Theresa Howard]
 Millions of Americans will watch the Olympics but never turn on a TV set. The Beijing Games will be the first Olympics in which a chunk of viewers — up to 5% — will watch their Olympic coverage via personal computers or mobile phones, estimates Dean DeBiase, CEO of TNS Media, which measures media outlets globally. And those viewers are the coveted trendsetting ones marketers want to reach. The best place to reach them: social media. Some 73% of Americans who have Internet access viewed video online in May, according to a recent Nielsen study. More than 154 million Americans will watch online videos this year, up 12% from last year, according to eMarketer's latest report. More than one in three mobile phone owners have video-capable cellphones, Nielsen reports. More than 147 million people worldwide now participate in a social network via their mobile phones, eMarketer reports. Here's how savvy Olympic marketers will digitally tap in: digital games; blogging; sharing videos; sharing ideas digitally; snatching search terms; and advertising in cabs.
 http://benton.org/node/15958

LIBRARIES STEP INTO THE AGE OF iPOD
 [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Paul Thomasch]
 Hoping to draw back readers, libraries have vastly expanded their lists of digital books, music, and movies that can be downloaded by their patrons to a computer or MP3 player -- and it doesn't cost a cent. Available in thousands of libraries across the country, the programs work like this: First you need a library card, access to the web, and some easily downloadable software -- the Adobe Digital Editions, the Mobipocket Reader or the OverDrive Media Console. At that point, just browse around the library's website, select some titles, add them to a digital book bag and click the download button. If the title isn't available, it can be placed on hold for downloading later. Depending on the library and title, the item remains on your computer for one to three weeks before disappearing, meaning you don't have to bother with returning a book, CD or DVD to the actual library.
 http://benton.org/node/15950

OBAMA FATIGUE -- 48% HEARING TOO MUCH ABOUT HIM
 [SOURCE: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, AUTHOR: Andrew Kohut et al]
 Sen Barack Obama (D-IL) has received a lot of press coverage in this election -- is it starting to catch up with him? Close to half (48%) of Pew's interviewees say that they have been hearing too much about Sen Obama lately. And by a slight, but statistically significant margin - 22% to 16% - people say that recently they have a less rather than more favorable view of the Democratic nominee. In contrast, if anything, Pew's respondents said they want to hear more, not less about the Republican candidate. Just 26% in the poll said they had heard too much about Sen John McCain (R-AZ), while a larger number (38%) reported that they had heard too little about the Republican candidate. However, as for Obama, a slight plurality reports that recently they have come to have a less favorable view of McCain rather than a more favorable view of him - (23% to 18%). While Obama has dominated McCain as the candidate citizens say they have heard the most about in the news, roughly equal numbers say that they are aware of commercials on behalf of each candidate. About six-in-ten have seen commercials for both candidates. Most of those who are aware of Obama's commercials say they are mostly positive messages about the candidate (38%), while fewer (13%) characterize them as negative messages about McCain. The balance of opinion about McCain's commercials is the opposite - a plurality (31%) sees them as negative messages about his opponent, with fewer (19%) describing them as positive ads.
 http://benton.org/node/15919

BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS REPORTS BIG DROP IN TECH JOBS
 [SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Ephraim Schwartz]
 Employment statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the Department of Labor for the month of July, as well as its employment statistics comparing July 2007 versus July 2008, indicate a significant decline in information technology employment. Employment in the information industry declined by 13,000 in July and by 44,000 over the past 12 months. Telecommunications lost 5,000 jobs in July. Some of the lost jobs have gone to outsourcers, with companies increasingly outsourcing the lower to middle management layer of IT. The other jobs are simply going away, either due to cost-oriented automation efforts or due to increasing the remaining staff's workload. It appears that organizations are in cost-containment mode and not aggressively looking to expand technology. At the same time, there is no new must-have technology that is forcing companies to reengineer the way they are doing things.
 http://benton.org/node/15906

INSTITUTE OF INTERACTIVE JOURNALISM MOVES TO AMERICAN UNIVERSITY
 [SOURCE: Editor&Publisher, AUTHOR: ]
 The Institute for Interactive Journalism announced Wednesday that it had moved to American University's School of Journalism, where it hopes to expand its operations following a $2.4 million grant by the Knight Foundation. The Institute, also known as J-Lab, was started in 2002 by Jan Schaffer at the University of Maryland-College Park. Schaffer says the mission of J-Lab is to "help transform journalism for today and reinvent it for tomorrow." The move to American became official in June. American's School of Communication is headed by former Benton Foundation president Larry Kirkman.
 http://benton.org/node/15905

NBC BLOWS OLYMPIC COVERAGE
 [SOURCE: Silicon Valley Insider, AUTHOR: Henry Blodget]
 NBC, through its unprecedented Internet coverage, will be broadcasting the Olympics on a larger scale than ever before. Even so, Silicon Alley Insider's Henry Blodget says, the company is still producing the content "for themselves and their legacy TV business, not you." How so? If NBC really cared about providing the best coverage of the Games, Blodget says it would make NBCOlympics.com a comprehensive on-demand directory of all events, searchable by day or event. For those events that the network isn't covering, NBC could link to a partner company's video, giving partners access to their video in return. "As it is," Blodget says, "we suspect we'll spend most of the Olympics cursing NBC for forcing us to watch the Olympics according to their schedule and style, not ours."
 http://benton.org/node/15879

BROADCASTER USURPS NEWSPAPERS, ONLINE POISED TO DOMINATE
 [SOURCE: MediaDailyNews, AUTHOR: Joe Mandese]
 Despite broader issues in the overall economy, the media industry continues to be among the fastest growing industrial sectors in America. Long-term secular shifts, however, are altering the role of some major media and forms of advertising and marketing services. Long the dominant U.S. advertising platform, has fallen behind broadcast TV this year, which itself is poised to be usurped by the Internet within the next three years. This year, Veronis Suhler Stevenson estimates that traditional media operators will account for nearly half (49.5%) of the $86 billion Americans will spend advertising and accessing content online. That share is up from less than a third (29.1%) in 2002, and is projected to take a dominant position by 2011 when pure-play Internet operators will account for less than half of all Internet revenues. The migration of media operators mirrors that of major advertisers who have been slashing traditional media budgets and shifting a greater share of their total marketing spending online, and into alternative forms of marketing.
 http://benton.org/node/15878

E-MAIL HACKING CASE COULD REDEFINE ONLINE PRIVACY
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Ellen Nakashima]
 A federal appeals court in California is reviewing a lower court's definition of "interception" in the digital age, in a case that some legal experts say could weaken consumer privacy protections online. The case, Bunnell v. Motion Picture Association of America, involves a hacker who in 2005 broke into a file-sharing company's server and obtained copies of company e-mails as they were being transmitted. He then e-mailed 34 pages of the documents to an MPAA executive, who paid the hacker $15,000 for the job. The issue boils down to the judicial definition of an intercept in the electronic age, in which packets of data move from server to server, alighting for milliseconds before speeding onward. The ruling applies only to the 9th District, which includes California and other Western states, but could influence other courts around the country. In August 2007, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, in the Central District of California, ruled that the alleged hacker, Rob Anderson, had not intercepted the e-mails in violation of the 1968 Wiretap Act because they were technically in storage, if only for a few instants, instead of in transmission.
 http://benton.org/node/15884

NET ACCESS IN THE WAKE OF FCC VS. COMCAST
 [SOURCE: InfoWorld, AUTHOR: Ephraim Schwartz]
 [Commentary] In the wake of the Federal Communications Commission's decision that Comcast interfered with "Internet users' right to access the lawful Internet content and to use the applications of their choice," network providers such as Comcast will likely turn to one of two models to manage their networks: metered access or QoS (quality of service). Metered access would give network providers the capability to charge more if you use more. The QoS model would create service tiers from which customers could choose.
 http://benton.org/node/15877

QUESTIONING THE COMING INTERNET CLOG
 [SOURCE: TelephonyOnline, AUTHOR: Ed Gubbins]
 One of the nation's top authorities on global Internet traffic growth says his latest data show no reason to fear network capacity shortages, as traffic growth may even be slightly decelerating. Updating data collected from Internet exchanges around the world, professor Andrew Odlyzko, director of the University of Minnesota's Interdisciplinary Digital Technology Center, reported late last week that Internet traffic rates in the US and globally are continuing to grow at a rate between 50% and 60% (largely unchanged from recent years) -- rapid growth that nonetheless belies dire predictions of an escalation that would clog today's networks. Among the factors limiting Internet traffic growth, Odlyzko said, are the pace of broadband deployment, which he said is "not that fast" in some countries, including the US.
 http://benton.org/node/15875

WIFI NEARING TAKEOFF
 [SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Sholnn Freeman]
 Wireless Internet access is about to move out of coffee shops and airport lounges and into airplanes. After years of talking about what customers wanted and waiting for new technology, Delta Air Lines said it will begin offering broadband Internet service on domestic flights as early as October. Delta is trying to outmaneuver rival JetBlue, known for outfitting planes with satellite TV, and American Airlines, which is planning to launch Internet service later this year. Other airlines, including Continental, Southwest and Virgin America, are planning tests or have them underway. Yesterday's announcement makes Delta the first large U.S. airline to commit its main fleet of jets to a technology that lets passengers surf the Net while flying. The service will be available for a $9.95 flat fee on flights of three hours or less, and $12.95 on longer flights.
 http://benton.org/node/15885

NEW FEARS ARISE ON OLYMPIC PRESS FREEDOMS
 [SOURCE: Associated Press, AUTHOR: Dikki Sinn]
 The beating of two Japanese journalists by police in western China drew an official apology Tuesday, but Beijing also set new obstacles for news outlets wanting to report from Tiananmen Square in the latest sign of trouble for reporters covering the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee, which last week only partially succeeded in getting China to unblock some Internet sites after journalists raised a furor, said it would look into the new rules that require reporters to make appointments to do reports at Tiananmen.
 http://benton.org/node/15871

ANOTHER TV DUOPOLY IS A BAD IDEA IN MIAMI
 [SOURCE: Miami Herald, AUTHOR: Fred Grimm]
 [Commentary] Will it be in the public interest if two Miami television stations that have for decades competing in local news are owned by the same company? The Federal Communications Commission has been approving TV duopolies willy-nilly (South Florida has three) over the last decade, mostly of the big-fish-eat-little-fish variety. And the FCC seems likely to approve the latest proposal from Post-Newsweek. The FCC buys into the argument, pushed hard by the National Association of Broadcasters, that consolidation enables local stations to create super-duper news operations. "We think it's a terrible idea," said Marvin Ammori of Free Press, a public interest watchdog. Ammori said "the weight of the evidence" shows that the 80 or so TV duopolies blessed by the FCC usually resulted in a net loss in local news coverage. Mark Cooper, director of research for the Consumer Federation of America, said, "Our concern is that they tend to save money by cutting back on reporters. You get fewer reporters on certain beats. You lose competition. You lose diversity in news coverage. Discourse is diminished. We're convinced it hurts the public interest." "We're unhappy with consolidation, in general, but the prospect of two network affiliates owned by one company in a major market is especially unsettling," said Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, yet another advocacy group worried that the FCC is putting industry wants ahead of the public interest. Schwartzman said, "Our experience is that duopolies have produced few if any palpable benefits for the public." But he predicted the FCC would again say yes.
 http://benton.org/node/15839

WATCHDOGS FILE BRIEF IN MYSPACE CASE
 [SOURCE: CongressDaily, AUTHOR: Andrew Noyes]
 The Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Citizen and a group of 14 law professors filed a joint friend-of-the-court brief arguing that violating an Internet service's "terms of service" agreement isn't a criminal offense under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The brief submitted in United States v. Lori Drew explains the legal theory behind the government's indictment of Drew would effectively criminalize the actions of millions of Web users. The suburban St. Louis mother allegedly created a false profile on the popular social networking site MySpace, posing as a teenage boy, to engage a 13-year-old neighborhood girl, Megan Meier, in conversation. Drew's conversations with Meier were allegedly cruel and harassing and Meier hanged herself.
 http://benton.org/node/15837

AD SPENDING FORECAST TO SHIFT MORE TO DIRECT MARKETING
 [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: David Lieberman]
 Consumers will foot more of the bill for the media they want over the next five years as advertisers shift their spending from traditional media to direct marketing, according to the latest edition of private-equity firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson's Communications Industry Forecast. The annual report, a fixture on the desks of many media executives, should cheer video game and cable and satellite TV companies and Internet service providers (ISPs). But it could complicate efforts by ad-dependent broadcast TV and radio stations, consumer magazines, and especially newspaper companies to characterize their current struggles as a temporary blip in an anemic economy. "You could call (2008) a tipping point," with consumers poised for the first time to spend more on media than advertisers will, says James Rutherfurd, VSS managing director.
 http://benton.org/node/15847

VIOLENT FILMS VIEWED BY MILLIONS OF CHILDREN, STUDY FINDS
 [SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Swati Pandey]
 In a study published in the August issue of Pediatrics, Dartmouth Medical School researchers found that violent movies attract, on average, 12.5% of 10- to 14-year-olds in the country, with boys, minorities and children whose parents don't restrict viewing habits seeing the most gore. Researchers noted that as movies become more accessible, it's important to take note of the extent of kids' exposure to violence, especially since the ratings system can seem vague in describing how a film earned its rating.
 http://benton.org/node/15846

ELECTION YEAR RAINS MILLIONS ON MEDIA OUTLETS
 [SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Evan Tracey]
 [Commentary] While there are less than 100 days left to the election, there are still billions of dollars to be spent on ads. With the countdown to Election 2008 upon us, below is your viewing guide to all things political advertising -- from what we have seen to what we expect will keep us talking. The forces that have set the stage for this season's record-breaking ad spending can be traced back to elections from the past two decades. The Clinton 1996 stealth strategy was the precursor to the early-advertising strategies we see today. Fundraising increases and group tactics can be traced back to changes in the campaign finance laws in 2003. Heavy use of Internet fundraising began in the 2000 election. Joe Lieberman's primary loss in 2006 sparked incumbent insecurity. All of these forces have come together to create today's political environment of considerable ad spending and an ever-lengthening ad cycle.
 http://benton.org/node/15800

MEDIA OUTLETS ARE STILL SEEKING A CAMPAIGN BOUNCE OF THEIR OWN
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Brian Stelter, Richard Perez-Pena]
 Capitalizing on the interest in this year's election has been hot or miss for mainstream news media. Cable news ratings are up as are the views of their online video. But media companies are struggling to translate campaign coverage into repeat readers, viewers -- and revenue. Televised debates and magazine covers with candidates on the front cover over temporary bumps, but no long term gains. Broadcast television newscasts are still losing viewers. The Pew Internet and American Life Project estimates that 17 percent of Americans now learn about the campaign via the Internet on a typical day -- more than double the number that did back in 2004.
 http://benton.org/node/15799

FCC'S COMCAST RULING OPENS A CAN OF WORMS
 [SOURCE: BusinessWeek, AUTHOR: Olga Kharif]
 [Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission's ruling against Comcast is not the end just the beginning of the so-called Network Neutrality debate about whether network providers have the right to manage Web traffic. The decision is likely to open a whole new can of worms. If the courts throw out the FCC decision, Congress may need to get involved in the net neutrality debate.
 http://benton.org/node/15798

FREE THE WEB -- FROM THE FCC!
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Gordon Crovitz]
 [Commentary] There are a few holy articles among the Web faithful: The Internet is the most liberating force in generations, freeing people to use and share information however they like; the digital world has grown through innovation and risk-taking by entrepreneurs and companies; and government's role is to get out of the way and stay out. We have happily sung from this hymnal for years, but the gospel is breaking down on the issue of government involvement. Many Internet activists now want the federal government to regulate the Web. They do so in the hope of maintaining the open Web. But they should be careful what they wish for, lest they instead get micromanagement, tariffs and a Web clogged by politics. Government's role on the Web is to ensure more competition and more consumer choice, not less competition and diminished consumer choice by turning the Web into a regulated industry. The Internet has become one of the most powerful innovations of our time, in part because it hasn't been burdened by government intervention. Those of us who want to keep the Web free should remember that the best way to keep an industry free is simply to keep it free.
 http://benton.org/node/15797

MUSIC INDUSTRY 'SHOULD EMBRACE ILLEGAL WEBSITES'
 [SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson]
 The music industry should embrace illegal file-sharing websites, according to a study of Radiohead's last album release that found huge numbers of people downloaded it illegally even though the band allowed fans to pay little or nothing for it. "Rights-holders should be aware that these non-traditional venues are stubbornly entrenched, incredibly popular and will never go away," said Eric Garland, co-author of the study, which concluded there was strong brand loyalty to controversial "torrent" and peer-to-peer services. Radiohead's release of In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-want basis last October generated enormous traffic to the band's own website and intense speculation about how much fans had paid. He urged record companies to study the outcome and accept that file-sharing sites were here to stay. "It's time to stop swimming against the tide of what people want," he said.
 http://benton.org/node/15793

NEWSPAPERS COULD BE BARGAINS, BUT FEW ARE BUYING
 [SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Richard Perez-Pena]
 Who wants to buy a newspaper? No, not just today's -- the whole company. While all publicly traded newspaper companies have seen their share prices fall in the last year -- drops of 50 to 70 percent are commonplace -- some have tumbled so far that any number of bargain hunters could snap up a controlling interest, despite the credit squeeze. But they haven't. The weak economy and tight credit market have slowed buying in all sorts of media, but the drop-off is especially pronounced in newspapers. Experts say the lack of interest reflects a sharp shift in the last year toward a more pessimistic long-term view of the industry. The loss of ads has accelerated, and few expect a rebound even when the economy recovers.
 http://benton.org/node/15794

LAWMAKERS QUERY INTERNET FIRMS ON AD TARGETING
 [SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Peter Kaplan]
 Senior members of the House Commerce Committee wrote to broadband Internet providers and other online companies on Friday, asking whether they have "tailored, or facilitated the tailoring of, Internet advertising based on consumers Internet search, surfing, or other use." The request comes amid rising scrutiny of the practice, known as deep-packet inspection, or DPI, by lawmakers and consumer advocates. The letters were sent to more than 30 online companies, including large broadband providers such as Comcast Corp, AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, as well as search giant Google Inc and Microsoft. The letter asks where any ad-targeting practices have been used, how many consumers have been subjected to it and whether those people were ever notified about it, among other things. "We are interested in the nature and extent to which you engage in such practices, and the impact it could have on consumer privacy," said the letter from Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) and ranking committee Republican Joe Barton (TX).
 http://benton.org/node/15783

ONE FIFTH OF MARKETERS BUY ADVERTISING FOR NEWS COVERAGE
 [SOURCE: WebProNews, AUTHOR: Jason Lee Miller]
 One in five senior American marketers polled said they had bought advertising in return for a news story about their company or product, according to a survey sponsored by PRWeek and Manning Selvage & Lee. implicit/nonverbal agreement with a reporter or editor for favorable coverage of their company or product in return for buying advertising. One in 12 provided valuable gifts in exchange for coverage.
 http://benton.org/node/15772

BOEHNER: KEEP THE INTERNET FREE OF NEW WASHINGTON REGULATION
 [SOURCE: US Congress, AUTHOR: House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)]
 House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin urging him to keep the Internet free of new Washington regulation. Saying the Internet has flourished because engineers, not regulators, have solved its problems, Rep Boehner writes, "Your heavy handed attempts to inject the FCC into the middle of that process threaten to hijack the evolution of the Internet to everyone's detriment. It will also deter the very broadband investment we need for the Internet to continue growing to meet the increasing demands being placed upon it." Rep Boehner also questions the FCC authority to enforce violations of its Internet policy principles. Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn responded saying, "It is a shame that the harm Comcast has done to the Internet has not been appreciated by Leader Boehner."
 http://benton.org/node/15740

BROADBAND ADOPTION AND NOT AVAILABILITY IS KEY CHALLENGE, SAYS ONE ECONOMY
 [SOURCE: BroadbandCensus.com, AUTHOR: William Korver]
 Although broadband is largely available in low-income communities in the United States, many of the poor do not see a reason to subscribe, said One Economy Vice President for External Affairs Alec Ross. For the first time in the history of telecom, adoption rates among the poor fell, said Ross. The Pew study reported that among adults living in households with annual incomes of less than $20,000 annually, the percentage dropped from 28 percent in March 2007 to 25 percent in April/May 2008. The decline in adoption is likely a result of the declining economy and a culture that causes many to worry about privacy and identity issues online, Ross said.
 http://benton.org/node/15739

AS PAPERS CUT, TRIBUNE UPDATES TV NEWS
 [SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sam Schechner]
 Tribune Company is slashing staff and space at newspapers across the country. But in another old-media business -- local television news -- it's moving in the opposite direction. Nearly half of Tribune's 23 broadcast stations are expanding or launching local news operations, many of them hiring staff as a result. The biggest investment is in KSWB-TV in San Diego, which has hired a staff of nearly 50 to produce the station's first in-house news broadcasts in nearly three years.
 http://benton.org/node/15748

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(c) Benton Foundation 2003. Redistribution of this email publication -- both internally and externally -- is encouraged if it includes this message:
Communications-Related Headlines are compiled, summarized and edited by Rachel Anderson (rachel@benton.org), Andy Carvin (andy@benton.org) and Charles Meisch (charlie@benton.org) of the Benton Foundation -- we welcome your feedback. Based in Washington DC, the Benton Foundation's mission is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. Other projects at Benton include:
Digital Divide Network (www.digitaldividenetwork.org)
Digital Opportunity Channel (www.digitalopportunity.org)
OneWorld US (www.oneworld.net/us)
Sound Partners for Community Health (www.soundpartners.org

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