Topic: Regulation
AT&T and Verizon just got a free pass from the FCC to divide up the internet – The Verge (Feb 3, 2017)
The Verge is what I call a strict net neutrality advocate – the only conception of net neutrality it considers acceptable is one under which there is no prioritization and no differential charging of broadband traffic for any reason. As such, it has taken a hard line on programs like T-Mobile’s Music Freedom and BingeOn programs, and especially on programs such as AT&T’s zero-rating of DirecTV traffic and Verizon’s zero-rating of its Go90 video service. The FCC began looking into these approaches towards the end of last year, but hadn’t reached any final conclusions, and new FCC chair Ajit Pai has now closed the investigations without taking any action except to void the preliminary conclusions that were reached. The FCC’s own NN order from 2015 explicitly contemplated but didn’t ban zero-rating and sponsored data, saying only that it would address these as and when they breached other standards such as “no-unreasonable interference/disadvantage”. It was under that broad remit that the FCC was investigating the carriers in late 2016, but Pai always opposed these investigations and has now closed them down. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, how you feel about this depends on how strict you feel the definition of net neutrality should be – if, like the Verge, you’re a strict NNer, then you’re outraged, especially because this might be the beginning of a broader dismantling of net neutrality. If you take a narrower view of what NN should mean, this is not a problem per se.
via The Verge
Uber bows to government pressure and suspends its service in Taiwan – TechCrunch (Feb 2, 2017)
One of those rare occasions when Uber isn’t able to bulldoze its way through local regulations and ultimately gets what it wants (see also Austin, Texas). In this case, it looks like Uber followed its standard playbook of working in a market despite opposition and even fines from a government which wanted better compliance with laws and regulations, but despite some recent concessions wasn’t able to convince the government to let it operate legally. As such, Uber is now backing out of Taiwan, and it’s not clear when it will be allowed back. Uber’s approach ruffles feathers, but it is often able to use pressure from drivers and riders to overturn opposition. Uber often paints those opposing its entry or presence in a market as wanting to thwart progress, and there’s no doubt the Uber experience is often an improvement over what it replaces, but that doesn’t always justify taking a stubborn approach to flouting local regulations, and occasionally that approach backfires. (On the same topic today, Uber is also struggling with regulation in India’s Karnataka province)
via TechCrunch (see also Uber’s blog post)
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Scraps Set-Top Proposal – Variety (Jan 31, 2017)
This was inevitable – the STB proposal was one of two issues, along with net neutrality, which the incoming chair of the FCC was expected to dump as he took the helm. And along with net neutrality, these were popular issues championed by consumer rights groups and some big consumer technology companies. However, it’s also true that the impact of ditching these policy issues may not be as widespread as feared – I wrote a piece last week about the real likely impact of net neutrality rules being dismantled, and I’ve always been skeptical that the STB reforms proposed would actually bring about meaningful change in the industry. Previous attempts (see CableCard) had failed, and it wasn’t clear to me that the new approaches would be more user friendly or likely to deliver greater openness around the boxes we get to use to watch TV. Realistically, positive change in the TV market is more likely to come from increasing competitive pressure leading to concessions by major legacy players to the new world order (though we’re not there yet) – and now that the FCC has dropped STB reform that’s the only kind of progress we’ll see regardless.
via Variety
SpaceX, Uber Reach New Heights In Lobbying Spending – BuzzFeed (Jan 25, 2017)
These numbers get crunched every year, and are always an insight into the sometimes complex relationship between tech companies and the US government, as well as the very different strategies pursued by the various companies – Apple spends far less than some of its peers (less even than Facebook, which is a fraction of its size), while Google is always a big spender. The other thing I’m always struck by is the relatively tiny size of the spending – even Google’s $15.4m lobbying spending is minuscule in the context of its overall business – Apple’s spend was a fraction of a hundredth of a percent of its revenue for the year. It’s also interesting to see which issues the companies lobbied on: Apple lobbied mostly on technical issues directly related to its business, while Google lobbied more broadly on trade and immigration policy as well as several technical topics. All this will obviously potentially get a lot more complicated under the new administration, which has so far had a much more adversarial tone towards big tech companies than its predecessor.
via BuzzFeed
Google Privacy-Policy Change Faces New Scrutiny in EU – WSJ (Jan 24, 2017)
Europe continues to be the locus of a lot of regulatory effort aimed at paring back perceived privacy invasions by big US online advertising companies, notably Facebook and Google. In this case, Oracle is part of a coalition that seeks controls on Google’s tracking of user data, and the focus of the current complaint is the change Google made to its terms and conditions last June, pursuant to which it now combines data on its users across its various services and DoubleClick. No action has been taken yet by European regulators, so this is only a complaint by one of Google’s biggest foes at this point, but this area has proven a thorny one for Facebook already, and could yet become one for Google too.
via WSJ
Trump’s new FCC chief is Ajit Pai, and he wants to destroy net neutrality – The Verge (Jan 23, 2017)
It’s the nature of the beast that all regulatory appointments quickly get seen through the very narrow lens of a single issue that’s important to the tech industry, and that’s the case here. Ajit Pai is, as is the case with the rest of the FCC commissioners, a smart guy with a set of nuanced views on a variety of complex subjects. Yes, he’s clearly going to do what he can to overturn the FCC’s net neutrality rulings, but his time at the FCC will be about far more than that. On net neutrality, how you feel about this appointment will depend on how you feel about net neutrality – not just whether you’re in favor of it in a vague, general sense, but the specifics of what you think it should cover. The reality is that there has never been much danger of the major US broadband providers doing some of the things basic NN regulations would prevent even in the absence of regulation. But there are NN purists who insist that any unequal treatment of traffic is unacceptable, and they likely will be disappointed by what happens under a Pai Commission – AT&T’s preferential treatment of DirecTV content, for example, will definitely be just fine with the incoming FCC. On the other hand, I don’t think we’ll see any carriers blocking competing content or anything else along those lines even if the net neutrality rules are thrown out.
via Trump’s new FCC chief is Ajit Pai, and he wants to destroy net neutrality – The Verge
Proposed state law would require emissions-free autonomous vehicles, and tax them by the mile – The Boston Globe (Jan 20, 2017)
As regulators and governments seek to provide a legal framework for autonomous driving, we’ll see something of a dichotomy between those who try to be as welcoming as possible to experiments and development of the technology, and those who see this as yet another opportunity to drive tax revenue or other separate goals. These lawmakers in Massachusetts seem to be taking the second approach, proposing that autonomous cars pay a per-mile road tax and produce zero emissions. Contrast this with Arizona’s governor, who has been very open to testing of autonomous vehicles and famously invited Uber’s self-driving cars to his state when they were banned from San Francisco. San Francisco, of course, is somewhere in the middle, largely open to testing of the technology, but with reasonable limits. Just as there will be fierce competition between tech companies around autonomous driving, there will be competition between states and cities around the technology too. Policies such as those being advocated in Massachusetts are likely to do little to endear the state to would-be autonomous driving companies.
NHTSA Finds No Fault in Tesla Autopilot With Regard to May 2016 Fatal Crash – NHTSA (Jan 19, 2017)
This is NHTSA’s report on the Tesla Autopilot crash in May 2016, which was investigating whether the Autopilot system was at fault. The headline from Tesla’s perspective is that the Autopilot system wasn’t at fault, because it (a) operated as expected, and (b) wasn’t intended to be able to avoid such cross-traffic collisions. That’s good for Tesla, because it exonerates its system, and also because NHTSA determined that its Autosteer system increases safety by 40%. Incidentally, the report also classifies Autopilot as a Level 2 system, whereas I’ve seen some people incorrectly refer to its as Level 3. The key here is that Level 3 systems allow the driver to stop paying attention, whereas Level 2 systems require full driver attention at all times. The problem in this crash was that the driver treated the system as a Level 3 system (which the term Autopilot somewhat implies), and paid insufficient attention to notice the truck crossing the car’s path. Tesla’s system may not have been at fault, but there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it’s not doing enough to train drivers not to treat its Level 2 system as something more – though NHTSA didn’t address that point in its report.
via NHTSA Finds No Fault in Tesla Autopilot With Regard to May 2016 Fatal Crash – NHTSA (PDF) – see also news coverage of the report on Techmeme
Uber to Pay $20 Million to Settle FTC Charges on Earnings Claims for Drivers – WSJ (Jan 19, 2017)
Uber has often been willing to flout regulation in order to stake a foothold in a market, at which point it typically turns its customers into advocates and makes arguments about the contribution it’s making to the local economy in a bid to win formal approval from local authorities. This case brought by the FTC alleged that Uber had exaggerated those benefits significantly – it claimed NYC Uber drivers earned a median income of over $90,000, but the FTC found that under 10% of drivers earned that much, for example. Because Uber settled the case without admitting formal wrongdoing, there is no legal confirmation here that Uber lied, but that almost doesn’t matter. To the extent that Uber gets a reputation (accurate or otherwise) for lying about its economic benefits, its whole “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” strategy starts to break down.
via Uber to Pay $20 Million to Settle FTC Charges on Earnings Claims for Drivers – WSJ
Microsoft tries to soothe regulators and critics with new privacy controls | ZDNet (Jan 10, 2017)
Microsoft has been rapped over the knuckles by regulators and attacked by privacy advocates over its data collection in Windows 10. Over-collection of data combined with lack of notification for users have to be the most common twosome in privacy abuses among tech companies. Tech companies often collect far too much data by default, and then fail to inform users what’s being collected or why. This change is a positive one, but I’d hope that Microsoft (and others) will learn from the backlash here and do better from the outset in future releases of Windows and other products.
via Microsoft tries to soothe regulators and critics with new privacy controls | ZDNet
Europe proposes expanding telco data privacy rules to WhatsApp, Facebook et al | TechCrunch (Jan 10, 2017)
Europe continues to take a harder line on privacy for online services, and is also finally caving to long-term pressure from telecoms operators to force online communications providers to comply with a more consistent regulatory framework. Both individual European countries and the EU have come down on Facebook recently for its attempted integration with WhatsApp following the merger, and the region is likely to continue to be more challenging for online providers operating there. This, in turn, may provide a small advantage for those providers that collect less user data and offer more protections by default.
via Europe proposes expanding telco data privacy rules to WhatsApp, Facebook et al | TechCrunch
Uber asked a lot of Pittsburgh for its self-driving cars, and offered back very little — Quartz (Dec 29, 2016)
As I’ve said previously, Uber has a pretty complex relationship with the municipalities where it operates, often flouting taxi regulations and more recently also self-driving ones. In the case of Pittsburgh, Uber has at least worked with the city, but it now appears that it has been something of a one-way relationship. Ironically, the dynamic here is reminiscent of that between Google Fiber and cities, in which the latter have bent over backwards to help Google, whereas in autonomous driving Google (now Waymo) has been more cooperative, while Uber borrows its Fiber playbook.
via Uber asked a lot of Pittsburgh for its self-driving cars, and offered back very little — Quartz
South Korea slaps Qualcomm with record-setting $850M fine – Ars Technica (Dec 28, 2016)
Following action in China in early 2015, Korea initiated similar action against Qualcomm in late 2016, with similar allegations about anticompetitive practices with regard to patent licensing. The Chinese action was easily (perhaps too easily) dismissed a being part of a Chinese government crackdown on US companies, but similar action in Korea is slightly less so, and of course subsequent action by the US FTC has no similar explanation. Yes, Samsung and LG are two of Qualcomm’s biggest customers, and so there may have been an element of protectionism in Korea too, but this was the first real sign of fire behind the smoke.
via Ars Technica
Commentary: A new vision for self-driving cars – John Krafcik & Steve Adler (Dec 27, 2016)
A transparent attempt to shape the narrative around Waymo and Alphabet’s self-driving car technology, in an editorial jointly written by the head of Waymo and the mayor of Austin. It’s interesting to contrast Uber and Waymo’s relationships with municipalities – Waymo has largely gone out of its way to work with them, while Uber has a more mixed record (notably in San Francisco recently).
via Commentary: A new vision for self-driving cars
Uber stops San Francisco self-driving pilot as DMV revoked registrations | TechCrunch (Dec 22, 2016)
This seemed inevitable, and you have to wonder what Uber was trying to prove here. Uber’s cavalier attitude towards regulation has generally served it well, but I’ve felt ever since this imbroglio started that this was a step too far – fighting the taxi lobby is one thing, but rejecting oversight of potentially dangerous technology is quite another.
via Uber stops San Francisco self-driving pilot as DMV revoked registrations | TechCrunch
Google facing FTC scrutiny over privacy — yet again | The Washington Post (Dec 19, 2016)
The alleged privacy violations at issue here aren’t new, but the threat of formal action over them is. But of course this also taps into the long-running narrative about advertising and privacy and Google’s role in particular. Whether you care or not depends on your overall view of the tradeoffs between business models and privacy, though awareness of (and to some extent concern over) these is rising.
via Google facing FTC scrutiny over privacy — yet again – The Washington Post
Uber plans to keep its self-driving cars on San Francisco roads despite DMV’s demand to stop – Recode (Dec 16, 2016)
This story has been characteristic of Uber’s disregard for regulations, which in the past have mostly been designed to protect the taxi lobby, but with self-driving cars moves into the realm of protecting drivers, passengers, and other road users. I suspect Uber will get a lot less sympathy from its users over these issues, and this approach will eventually backfire.
China Hits Qualcomm With Fine – The New York Times (Feb 9, 2015)
The context for this fine against Qualcomm is a broader crackdown by the Chinese authorities on US-based companies which compete with local ones or which are perceived to be gaining an overly dominant position in China. It would therefore also be easy to dismiss this action as more representative of a broader Chinese policy than of any wrongdoing on Qualcomm’s part. However, given all that’s happened since in Korea, the US, and China, it’s now somewhat harder to dismiss this case as being utterly without merit. There’s still the question of whether Qualcomm has genuinely done something wrong or whether Apple is merely flexing its muscles through seeking common cause with friendly regulators, but this Chinese action can now be seen as the beginning of something much bigger rather than a one-off, even if it took quite some time for that to become clear.
via New York Times