In The Midst Of A Pandemic And Widespread Unrest, Senate Republicans Think It's Time To Use Copyright To Make The Richest Musicians Richer

from the read-the-fucking-room-guys dept

There's kind of a lot going on in America right now -- what with widespread protests about police violence (leading to more police violence), and we're still in the middle of the largest pandemic in a century. You'd think some of those things would be priorities for Congress, but instead, Senate Republicans have decided that now is the time to pushing ahead with helping Hollywood by examining how to make copyright worse. Even the Washington Post is completely perplexed as to how this could possibly be a priority right now.

“I don’t think we have yet felt the urgency of acting immediately” on further help for those devastated by the pandemic, McConnell said two weeks ago. Now, with 100,000 dead and 40 million out of work, he still talks of waiting a month.

So what makes Senate Republicans feel the urgency of acting immediately? What would make them Take It to the Limit?

Don Henley would.

I Can’t Tell You Why.

Actually, I can. The Eagles singer and drummer has been summoned by the Senate Judiciary subcommittee to testify Tuesday about the functioning of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “Notice-And-Takedown System.”

Henley, of course, is one of the wealthiest musicians in history, considering that he was a founding member of the Eagles, a band that literally has both the best selling album of all time AND the third best selling album of all time. Yes, in the top 3 best selling albums of all time, Don Henley's on two of 'em.

If Don Henley is hurting for money, I'm going to suggest that it ain't copyright that's the problem. But this is the same Don Henley who has been attacking the internet for at least a decade, when he whined that it was all copyright infringement that anyone might take any of his songs and build on it in doing a remix or a mashup.

Henley blasted all unauthorized uses of his music, whether by politicians or just amateurs making remixes, mash-ups, and similar unlicensed uses on sites like YouTube. "I don't condone it," he said of such practices. "I'm vehemently opposed to it. Not because I don't like parodies or satires of my work. But it's simply a violation of U.S. copyright law."

[....]

"People in my age group generally don't like it. Songs are difficult to write; some of them take years to write. To have them used as toys or playthings is frustrating."

Really, none of this makes any sense. You'd think (1) that right now wouldn't be the time to focus on copyright, (2) that Republican Senators wouldn't be in such a rush to aid Hollywood (which is generally not known for its support of the GOP), and (3) that of all the possible people to testify, they'd pick a rich rocker who's big complaint about the internet is that it allows the kids these days to be creative. But for whatever reason, this is what the Republican leadership in the Senate feels is most important right now. Helping super rich rockers who dislike the kids get even richer at the expense of the public.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, dmca 512, don henley, internet, mitch mcconnell, notice and takedown, pandemic, protests, senate

Beware Of Op/Eds Falsely Claiming The US Internet Only Works During A Pandemic Because Lobbyists Neutered The FCC

from the willful-delusion dept

In recent weeks, the telecom sector and FCC allies have been busy trying to claim that the only reason the US internet still works is because the FCC killed net neutrality rules in 2017. That repeal, you'll recall, not only killed net neutrality protections, but the FCC's ability to hold giant telecom monopolies responsible for pretty much anything, be it obvious billing fraud or kicking disabled people offline during a crisis.

The pandemic has been making it very clear that might not have been a great idea. It has also brought renewed attention to the fact that 42 million Americans lack access to any broadband whatsoever despite the US having thrown endless billions at US telecom monopolies. There are millions more who can't afford service because captured regulators have intentionally turned a blind eye to monopoly domination of the sector and the lack of competition, high prices, and terrible customer service that routinely results.

To try and shift the focus away from, you know, reality... this new bumbling telecom-backed PR campaign has tried to change the subject. Namely, by insisting the only reason the US internet is working at all is because of our mindless, repeated pandering to telecom lobbyists. It's a missive that keeps popping up around the telecom policy ecosystem, including the AEI, Wall Street Journal, FCC Commissioners, and the FCC General Counsel:

Like most telecom industry PR efforts, the narrative was then shoveled to various paper op/ed sections via industry allies. Last week, it was USAToday's turn to run a factually-dubious editorial claiming that the only reason US broadband works during quarantine is because the Trump FCC kissed the ass of telecom giants:

"For most of the past 25 years, the United States has strategically minimized regulatory interference in a sector of the economy that empowers innovators, entrepreneurs and consumers. This light-touch regulatory environment has encouraged private companies to invest tens of billions of dollars in building the internet’s superstructure while opening the doors to innovators and entrepreneurs."

There's nothing in this paragraph that's actually true. And when's the last time you saw AT&T or Comcast do much of anything to "empower innovators or consumers?" That's not what these companies do, and these editorials always originate from a false premise: that US broadband is some kind of amazing success story, and you just didn't notice.

For one, the telecom market has never been a "free market." It's an increasingly deregulated pile of regional telecom monopolies that all but own state and federal government due to regulatory capture. They don't try particularly hard to compete on price, upgrade their networks, improve shaky customer service, or expand broadband to rural or less affluent areas because there's no competition driving such efforts, and most local, state, and federal lawmakers are in their pockets (ensuring the regulatory and cost burdens to upstart competitors remains high).

The end result of this is obvious: the US routinely ranks in the middle of the pack in nearly every broadband metric that matters, while US consumers pay some of the highest prices in the world. There's an entire chorus of folks employed by the telecom sector to try and pretend this isn't true.

The article's headline -- "Virus shows internet is too important for government to run" -- also ignores the fact that many communities have built some of the most popular and fastest broadband networks on the backs of apathy at market failure. And like several previous op/eds of this ilk, the author tries to claim that the pandemic has crushed European networks (completely false), but not US networks (false) because deregulation has triggered a massive wave in US investment (guess what: false) not seen in Europe:

"Unlike here, European networks are more heavily regulated. This has led to less investment and worse performance for consumers for years. American consumers are being generally well served by the private sector. Hundreds of service providers have signed up for the FCC’s COVID-19 pledge related to retail practices and prices. Wireless providers are giving out more data and the use of more hotspots for free."

You mean that entirely voluntary pledge that big ISPs are ignoring because they know the FCC just eliminated its authority to do anything about it? Again, the US internet has held up generally well, but it's largely thanks to smart engineers and well designed core transit routes used to handling massive events like the Superbowl. Out at the "last mile" of the network, where many Americans are still stuck on 5Mbps DSL lines from 2003, the results have been less impressive. Less impressive still are the sky high prices Americans pay for service, something industry apologists will literally never mention in the hopes of making the fact go away.

Lawmakers, economists, think tankers, and others loyal to companies like AT&T and Comcast repeatedly ignore hard data in a bid to strip away consumer protections, claiming this leads to miraculous outcomes that never arrive. It's an incredible 30 year history of delusion that never results in the projected and promised outcomes. Yet like some purgatorial version of Charlie Brown and Lucy football, we keep repeating the same mistakes and parroting the same delusions, certain that this time, pandering to telecom monopolies will surely drive the fast, cheap networks we were all promised 30 years ago.

This kind of circular, rose-colored glasses policy has long ensured US broadband remains mired in mediocrity. But using a pandemic to prop up and justify this obvious dysfunction is a particularly new and grotesque touch. There's a reason the telecom industry and its allies are pushing this nonsense, and it's to try and distract you from the fact that a generation of pandering to telecom monopolies has resulted in patchy, expensive broadband networks at a time when reliable, affordable connectivity is more important than ever.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, covid-19, eu, fcc, net neutrality, oversight, pandemic, us

As Some Are Requiring People To Give Up Their Info To Dine, Stories Of Creeps Abusing That Info Come Out

from the the-privacy-conundrum dept

I think many of us are going to avoid eating at sit-down restaurants for the foreseeable future, even if governments deem them to be "safe." However, I find it at least somewhat unnerving to see Governor Jay Inslee in Washington say that in order for a restaurant to offer dine-in services, it will need to keep a log of all diners for 30 days, including their telephone and email contact info.

Under Gov. Jay Inslee's new statewide orders, Washington restaurants that offer sit-down service will be required to create a daily log of all customers.

The restaurants must maintain that log for 30 days, including telephone and email contact information and the time they were in the restaurant. The state wants this information to facilitate any contact tracing that might need to occur.

I fully understand why this requirement is there. Since contact tracing is so important, it's much more difficult to do contact tracing in situations like these where there's no way to tell who else was in the same small space where a COVID-positive person dined. But... at the same time, it seems to raise a number of privacy questions.

When I tweeted about this, some pushed back and said it wasn't much different from ordering online or from an app (or even, potentially, paying with a credit card). All of those give up some level of privacy. Yet, as I've been saying for years, privacy is about trade-offs and a big part of that is understanding the benefits and the risks. And when we're ordering with an app or using a credit card, there are reasonable systems in place that make it unlikely that your info will be abused. These are not perfect, and there are some cases where there are risks. But, for most people, the "threat model" suggests it's not that risky.

Yet, it's unclear if that's the case with something like a "restaurant log," like the one that Washington State is requiring. As an example of why that might be problematic, we can just head down to New Zealand (which appears to have almost entirely contained COVID-19) to hear of a story about a restaurant worker using the contact tracing info a customer left to hit on her:

"I had to put my details on their contact tracing form which I didn't think anything of. It asked for my name, home address, email address and phone number so I put all those details down," she tells Newshub.

Except in Jess's case she didn't just take away a sandwich from the Subway restaurant she was at. She also got a Facebook request, Instagram request, Facebook messenger approach and a text from the guy who served her, using her contact tracing details.

"I felt pretty gross, he made me feel really uncomfortable," she says.

"He's contacting me, I didn't ask him to do that, I don't want that.

"I'm lucky that I live with quite a few people because if that was me by myself at home - he knows my address you know - I'd feel really, really scared. Even now I feel a bit creeped out and vulnerable."

The article does note that the Subway employee who did that digital stalking "has now been suspended" (is that New Zealand for fired?), but it can't make anyone very comfortable.

And that's a much bigger issue than just for that woman. If people are afraid that their private info can be misused, they're less likely to give it. In other words, the nature of the privacy trade-offs are vastly different than they might otherwise be. Not understanding that leads to bad results, and yet that seems to be what's happening in Washington.

After receiving some pushback, Inslee is now saying that the logs should only be kept for 14 days and that privacy "protocols" are developed. But that's the kind of thing that need to be built up initially, not after such a plan is announced:

“This is something that we have to make sure that we build protocols around privacy so that any of this information can only be used for this purpose, can be expunged after 14 days so that this is only a minor inconvenience. No one is looking to make this a federal crime. We’re trying to save some lives here,” Inslee added.

Again, he means well, and there's obvious value in contact tracing done correctly. But you can't ignore the privacy issues, and you can't tack them on after things are already messed up. Any system needs to develop the concept with privacy built in from the very start -- and there's no indication that Washington state has done so.

Update: Late this evening Governor Inslee announced that this would no longer be a requirement, though suggested that restaurants set up a voluntary system. It appears he listened to some of the criticism.

Filed Under: contact tracing, dining, pandemic, privacy, restaurants, tradeoffs, washington

Bill Would Ban Broadband Shutoffs Until COVID-19 Pandemic Eases

from the going-nowhere-fast dept

A few weeks back, the Trump FCC put on a big show about a new "Keep America Connected Pledge." In it, the FCC proudly proclaimed that it had gotten hundreds of ISPs to agree to not disconnect users who couldn't pay for essential broadband service during a pandemic. The problem: the 60 day pledge was entirely voluntary, temporary, and because the FCC just got done obliterating its authority over ISPs at lobbyist behest (as part of its net neutrality repeal), it's largely impossible to actually enforce.

Shockingly, numerous ISPs immediately proceeded to ignore that promise, and began kicking customers offline. Several ISPs even kicked disabled folks offline, despite repeatedly promising not to. And despite making a big stink about the pledge, the Ajit Pai FCC's response to this was to do nothing. Not only has the FCC done nothing, it has tried to claim that the reason we're seeing a surge in these complaints is somehow thanks to the FCC's half-assed efforts on this front:

"Although we have received some disconnection complaints recently, we think it may reflect increased attention on the FCC's work to keep people connected," the spokesman said."

That's of course nonsense. ISPs were never going to adhere to a voluntary promise pushed by a feckless, captured FCC with no authority to punish them. A powerless FCC was their reward of the recent, scandal-plagued net neutrality repeal. It's also worth noting that the FCC doesn't track disconnection complaints, because, well, America.

Enter a new bill sponsored by Senators Ron Wyden, Bernie Sanders, and Jeff Merkley that would make it illegal to terminate the connections of broadband subscribers during the pandemic (barring instances of network abuse). From the announcement:

"Now—as millions of Americans hunker down, work from home, and engage in remote learning—would be the absolute worst time for Americans to lose a critical utility like internet service,” said Merkley. “Oregonians and people across America deserve to know that as we weather the social and economic consequences of this storm together, they will still have be able to go to work, go to school, buy groceries, and stay connected to loved ones—all of which many depend on the internet to do. Congress should include this protection in the next coronavirus response bill."

Of course the bill will never, ever pass thanks to a Senate slathered in telecom campaign contributions. But I guess it's the thought that counts.

Filed Under: account shutoff, ajit pai, authority, bernie sanders, covid-19, fcc, jeff merkley, keep america connected, pandemic, ron wyden

Ohio Government Asks Companies To Snitch On Employees, Gets Hit With Auto-Generated Bogus 'Tips' Instead

from the defeating-a-fraud-portal-with-fraudulent-submissions dept

Asking citizens to snitch on other citizens never seems to work out very well. The federal government has been doing it for years, maintaining "See Something, Say Something" hotlines that have mostly collected tips from people concerned about what their browner neighbors are doing. The same thing happens in the private sector. Ring's proprietary app -- Neighbors -- collects the same sort of garbage, empowering bigots to feel like they're acting on behalf of the common good.

With lockdown orders in effect and social distancing rules in place in several cities and states around the country, local governments are asking residents to pitch in with enforcement efforts by reporting those who are breaking the rules. New York City opened a tip line for reports of social distancing violators and collected a bunch of Hitler-related memes, videos of the mayor going to the gym, extended middle fingers, and dick pics instead.

The state of Ohio is asking for the same trouble. Its unemployment fraud portal is supposed to collect reports from businesses about employees of theirs that are collecting unemployment rather than coming into work. Some employees are opting out of potential infection when employers haven't shown the willingness to protect them by enforcing social distancing rules and/or providing them with personal protective equipment.

The state is now going to have to sift through a whole lot of algorithmically-generated crap to find genuine reports of work shirkers, thanks to the efforts of one anonymous coder.

The script, which began circulating on social media earlier this week, automatically fills out a “fraud reporting” form on the state of Ohio’s unemployment insurance website. State officials created the form to encourage companies to snitch on workers who are refusing to work under unsafe conditions, drawing outrage from workers and labor rights advocates. The script’s creator says the goal is to overwhelm the site with a flood of fake submissions, making it harder to process claims and thus deny people their benefits.

Flooding government websites with garbage data isn't the ideal solution but this will possibly make it more difficult for businesses to punish employees they're putting in harm's way by refusing to protect them from potential infection. The downside is this may also delay processing of legitimate claims from people who've been laid off. But if claims continue to be paid while investigations are still ongoing, it's probably a net win for employees who'd rather not roll the dice on dying while the pandemic runs its course.

The state is now aware of the scripted submissions and has deployed a new CAPTCHA that's a bit more difficult to defeat with a script. But the coder is already working on a way to bypass it so the flooding should resume momentarily. Unfortunately, there's no way to personalize submissions with dick pics or Hitler memes, but it should at least slow the roll of vindictive employers who'd rather see their employees punished than protected.

Filed Under: covid-19, lockdown, ohio, pandemic, safety, snitching, tipline, unemployment, workers

ISPs Finally Lifted Data Caps. It Only Took A Global Pandemic

from the oh-is-that-all-it-took? dept

During the catastrophic 2018 wildfires in California, Verizon made a painful and memorable gaffe: It throttled the Santa Clara Fire Department’s supposedly “unlimited” broadband data, causing the department to have to pay twice as much as usual to restore internet speeds that allowed it to deploy critical wildfire response.

Now, with the entire globe gripped by the coronavirus pandemic, internet service providers don’t want to repeat Verizon’s mistake. Several major ISPs all over the world have announced that, among other measures, they’re suspending data caps for the duration of the crisis.

It’s something consumers and activists have been calling for — for years. And it only took a global pandemic for ISPs to start listening.

But will data caps come back as soon as countries ease their lockdowns and workplaces and schools start going back to normal? Will ISPs resume their data capping practices even sooner than that?

We have plenty of reason to believe this is temporary. Rather than letting ISPs off the hook right now, we should be preparing ourselves for when some (or all) of them inevitably return to their old tricks. It only takes looking at the history of ISPs and consumer satisfaction to see why.

What Is Data Capping, and Why Do ISPs Get Away with it?

Data capping is a fairly common practice in the internet service provider industry, in which ISPs restrict how much data customers can use with their plans. This can take a couple different forms:

• Tiered plans, in which customers pay for a certain amount of data, and then have to pay overage charges if they exceed the cap.
• Throttling, in which customers pay for “unlimited” plans, but ISPs slow down their internet speeds if they exceed a certain amount of data transfer.

Historically, ISPs have asserted that data caps are necessary to conserve network capacity, but as technology and infrastructure have improved, industry experts have argued that that’s no longer the case.

More recently, ISPs that still use data capping have said it’s to make their services more “fair,” and prevent certain bad actors from “hogging” a network’s bandwidth. Some big players who have continued to use aggressive data capping — including AT&T and Comcast — have subscribed to this philosophy, justifying their caps by telling customers it’s how they address the “unfairness” of some customers using more internet than others.

But those arguments are tenuous at best. We know that data caps aren’t strictly necessary simply because some ISPs have refused to adopt them altogether. And the fact that companies are able to immediately suspend caps in times of crisis further reinforces that there’s no real reason for them — other than for ISPs to make more money from overage charges.

Why Are ISPs Suspending Data Caps Right Now?

On March 12, Vice’s Motherboard published an opinion piece that was pretty critical of ISPs who were still data capping amid the growing coronavirus crisis. Just hours later, AT&T announced it would suspend data caps “until further notice.”

The next day, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Ajit Pai called for ISPs and phone service providers to sign his “Keep Americans Connected” pledge, which called on companies to open Wi-Fi hotspots to anyone who needed them, and not terminate service or charge late fees to customers who were unable to pay their bills due to the coronavirus crisis. The pledge didn’t say anything about data caps, but what followed was a wave of ISPs who not only signed the pledge, but suspended data caps, raised their speeds, and began offering free service to qualifying low-income customers.

It’s clear that amid growing pressure from the public and lawmakers, ISPs have, at least for now, answered the call to do something to help consumers weather the pandemic. None of them want to repeat Verizon’s mistake during the 2018 wildfires.

But are these moves really as pro-consumer as they seem? That would depend on whether data caps are coming back, and we have nothing but evidence that points to some (if not all) ISPs eventually reinstating them.

Are Data Caps Gone for Good?

Some industry experts think the pandemic will spell the end of data caps — permanently.

TechCrunch reported that “Coronavirus could force ISPs to abandon data caps forever.” Fast Company wrote, “The coronavirus might have just killed ISP data caps.”

We’re a little less optimistic than that, and it’s all because of the history and track record of the ISP industry.

2013 was the first year that the American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) included ISPs on its yearly survey of consumers. But that year, ISPs came in dead last out of the 43 industries ACSI surveys about — behind even health insurance providers, the postal service, and airlines.

Since then, ISPs have shown consistent year-over-year improvement in their marks on ACSI’s surveys, yet still came in dead last in the telecommunications industry in 2019. As the 2019 report put it, ISPs are “still falling short of providing good service at an affordable price.”

Online complaints and reviews complete the picture of how much trouble consumers have with their internet service providers. This map of the most hated ISPs in each state shows pretty alarming trends in why people feel so strongly about hating ISPs: They report unrelenting billing problems, deceptive pricing, slow speeds, poor service, and misleading sales tactics, even from the biggest ISP companies out there.

This history of bad acting by ISPs gives us pause when we see headlines applauding their efforts to keep people connected during the coronavirus pandemic. If ISPs want to truly do better by their customers, they need to make sweeping, long-lasting changes — like eliminating data caps altogether and for good.

ISPs Have a Long Way to Go

We’re certainly not criticizing ISPs for making things easier on their customers during a crisis.

But while this move is ultimately pro-consumer, the history of consumer dissatisfaction with ISPs should make us skeptical, or at the very least, cautiously optimistic, about how ISPs will act in the future. We have to remember they’re likely to go back to their old tricks, which means more money in their pockets, and a less free internet for all of us.

Christina Marfice has been a professional, freelance writer since college. She covers arbitration and consumer issues for FairShake. When she's not traveling the world or waiting in line at Disney World, she can be found at home snuggled up with her two cats and a cupcake.

Filed Under: broadband, competition, data caps, pandemic

Arrest Numbers Show The NYPD Is Handling Pandemic Enforcement With The Same Biased Enthusiasm It Put Into Stop And Frisk

from the at-least-the-selective-enforcement-is-consistent dept

You can take the stop-and-frisk out of the NYPD, but you can't remove the biased policing, as the old saying goes. The NYPD may have been forced to stop pushing every minority up against the nearest wall/fence/cop car after a federal court determined this to be a violation of their rights, but they're apparently continuing to enforce laws very selectively.

On Thursday night, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office became the first prosecutor in the city to release statistics on social-distancing enforcement. In the borough, the police arrested 40 people for social-distancing violations from March 17 through May 4, the district attorney’s office said.

Of those arrested, 35 people were black, four were Hispanic and one was white.

More than a third of the arrests were made in the predominantly black neighborhood of Brownsville. No arrests were made in the more white Brooklyn neighborhood of Park Slope.

So, this is more than just anecdotal evidence. It's, you know, evidence evidence. Plenty of anecdotal evidence exists of inconsistent social distancing enforcement is available, if you're interested in seeing that as well.

This bothers Mayor Bill De Blasio -- the man who won the election by promising to be someone other than Mike Bloomberg, who loudly and proudly supported the NYPD's "right" to harass and detain minorities. But he's not upset enough. And he's upset incorrectly. Critics are calling this selective enforcement of pandemic efforts a new stop-and-frisk. De Blasio is only upset about the terminology.

“What happened with stop and frisk was a systematic, oppressive, unconstitutional strategy that created a new problem much bigger than anything it purported to solve,” he said. “This is the farthest thing from that. This is addressing a pandemic. This is addressing the fact that lives are in danger all the time. By definition, our police department needs to be a part of that because safety is what they do.”

That's just talking around the problem. Yes, the pandemic response isn't "systematic," but the ingrained habits that have resulted in minorities being disproportionately targeted by NYPD officers certainly are. And his siding with the NYPD aligns him more with the man he replaced than the public that elected him. Both De Blasio and Police Commissioner Dermot F. Shea claim this enforcement has been deployed "sparingly and fairly." It's hard to square "fairly" with the numbers released by the Brooklyn DA.

It also doesn't square with the total arrest numbers provided by the NYPD.

Citywide, black people make up 68 percent of those arrested on charges of violating social-distancing rules, while Hispanic people make up 24 percent, a deputy police commissioner, Richard Esposito, said late on Thursday night.

Only seven percent of the social distancing arrests citywide involved Caucasians.

The police union spoke up, because of course it did. The head of the PBA made one halfway decent point about bad laws and the problems inherent in enforcing them…

Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, declined to comment on Officer Garcia’s actions, but noted he and his colleagues “did not create the poorly conceived social-distancing policy they were sent out to enforce.”

… but followed that up by defending an officer who has been sued seven times and cost the city more than $200,000 in settlements. Officer Francisco X. Garcia was involved in a controversial social distancing arrest in which he punched a man onto the ground and then sat on him as he was handcuffed. Garcia has been removed from duty while this arrest is being investigated, which is apparently the equivalent of hanging this sinless man on the cross.

[Lynch] said City Hall was blaming Officer Garcia for carrying out the policy it had created. “Once again, our leaders are poised to trample a police officer’s rights in order to protect themselves,” he said.

Ah yes. Let's not "trample" those rights. But the rights of everyone else can be trampled while the NYPD fumbles its way through the pandemic, making minorities pay the price for the social distancing sins of an entire city.

Filed Under: bias, biased policing, civil liberties, nypd, pandemic, policing, social distancing

Twitter Making It Easier To Study The Public Discussions Around COVID-19

from the good-to-see dept

There has been a lot of talk about how this moment in history is going to be remembered -- and as Professor Jay Rosen has been saying, a key part is going to be an effort by the many people who failed to respond properly to rewrite the history of everything that happened:

There is going to be a campaign to prevent Americans from understanding what happened within the Trump government during the critical months of January to April, 2020. Many times Donald Trump told the nation that it has nothing to worry about because he and his people have the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus well in hand. They did not. He misled the country about that.

“It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control,” he told CNBC on January 22. “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China,” he told Sean Hannity on February 2. On February 24, Trump tweeted that “the Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”

He misled the country. This basic fact is so damning, the evidence for it so mountainous, and the mountain of evidence so public — and so personally attached to Donald Trump — that the only option is to create confusion about these events, and about the pandemic generally, in hopes that people give up and conclude that the public record does not speak clearly and everything is propaganda.

The battle over rewriting history is going to take many forms in many different ways -- and so it's good to see a company like Twitter making it easier for researchers to look at the actual history of the public conversation during these months.

To further support Twitter’s ongoing efforts to protect the public conversation, and help people find authoritative health information around COVID-19, we’re releasing a new endpoint into Twitter Developer Labs to enable approved developers and researchers to study the public conversation about COVID-19 in real-time.

This is a unique dataset that covers many tens of millions of Tweets daily and offers insight into the evolving global public conversation surrounding an unprecedented crisis. Making this access available for free is one of the most unique and valuable things Twitter can do as the world comes together to protect our communities and seek answers to pressing challenges. 

It would be interesting to see if others (cough Facebook cough) would do the same thing as well. How the history of these times is written is going to be important in seeing how we deal with the next such crisis.

Filed Under: conversation, covid-19, history, pandemic, truth
Companies: twitter

Cable TV Customers Are Rightfully Pissed They're Still Paying For Cancelled Sports Programming

from the pay-a-lot,-get-a-little dept

For years, consumers have been bitching about the high cost of sports programming as it pertains to your monthly cable bill. Especially for those who don't watch sports, but are often forced to pay the sky high prices for sports programming as part of a bloated cable bundle anyway. One survey a few years ago found that 56% of consumers would ditch ESPN in a heartbeat if it meant saving the $8 per month subscribers pay for the channel. The "regional sports fees" tacked on to subscriber bills have also long been a point of contention because they're often used to help falsely advertise a lower rate.

This is the "norm" in more normal times. During a pandemic, sports have largely been cancelled, but consumers are still shelling out big bucks for sports programming that costs them an arm and a leg. That's resulted in a spike in complaints to NY Attorney General Letitia James, who this week announced she would be asking the nation's six biggest traditional cable providers to reduce or eliminate fees related to sports programming while there's, you know, no sports:

"At a time when so many New Yorkers have lost their jobs and are struggling, it is grossly unfair that cable and satellite television providers would continue to charge fees for services they are not even providing,” said Attorney General James. “These companies must step up and immediately propose plans to cut charges and provide much needed financial relief. This crisis has brought new economic anxiety for all New Yorkers, and I will continue to protect the wallets of working people at every turn.”

Many users pay upwards of $20 in monthly fees for sports programming that no longer exists. That's in addition to the $40 to $50 of each $100 cable bill sports programming is responsible for. But when users call to complain or ask for refunds, they're just ignored. Cable providers aren't exactly thrilled either, with Dish Network saying it wants a break from the $80 million to $100 million fees it pays ESPN for April sports broadcasts given there, well, aren't any. While many sports networks have adapted to the pandemic by airing a lot of reruns, they're not actually airing the content everybody pays an arm and a leg for.

And while cable providers may not like it, they can at least pass those costs along to the consumer, whom experts say is the real loser in the equation:

"One would think that sports network programmers would credit distributors for channels paid for when they can't deliver the content that was promised," LightShed says. Unfortunately, "distributors such as Comcast have to pay sports network programmers regardless if what content airs, and in turn, the consumer is the loser."

That said, charging for services you don't actually provide has long been the MO of the cable and broadcast sector.

Cable TV has, for more than a decade, been plagued by obnoxious feuds between broadcasters and cable providers that routinely end up with consumers losing access to content they pay for. Broadcasters repeatedly want more money for the same programming (often sports), then demand higher rates from cable providers. Cable providers balk, the two sides pout and black out content, and consumers repeatedly lose access to content they pay for. Almost never do you see refunds, and regulators usually treat these feuds as "boys will be boys" behavior between gentlemen, not worthy of intervention.

The problem is that unlike broadband, cable TV is becoming an increasingly competitive market thanks to the rise of streaming alternatives. For many, sports was one of the only reasons to still subscribe to traditional cable TV. With no sports, analysts expect the rate of cord cutting to increase. Traditional cable and broadcast executives already had an extreme allergy to competing on price and channel bundle flexibility, and without their ace in the hole and many consumers facing economic hardship, the sector is going to find charging an arm and a leg for bloated cable TV bundles a far more difficult proposition than ever.

Filed Under: cable tv, covid-19, fees, laticia james, pandemic, sports, subscriptions