Mr. Murdoch Goes To Washington

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch went to Capitol Hill in Washington yesterday to win lawmakers' support for News Corp.'s bid for a controlling stake in Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTV satellite service.

Just how hard of a sell Murdoch had depends on who covered the hearing. According to Reuters, it was more of a Murdoch love-fest than a grueling cross-examination by lawmakers. "News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's attempt to gain control of the nation's largest satellite television company was warmly received by the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee on Thursday as Republican reaction to the $6.6 billion deal fell just short of fawning," the wire service reported. Nevertheless, the ever-quoteworthy Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) didn't mince words with Murdoch during his appearance. Waters, an outspoken liberal, told the media giant the "you scare the hell out of me," according to Newsday.
• Reuters: Murdoch Gets Warm Reception From Congress

The hearing's focus went beyond the merits of News Corp.'s proposed DirecTV deal. "At times, the hearing sounded more like a forum on whether Fox News Channel has a conservative bias that might become more widespread under the DirecTV plan - or is 'fair and balanced' as it claims," Newsday said. In a different spin than Reuters, Newsday's headline said: "House Committee Grills Murdoch On DirecTV Deal." The Los Angeles Times said the hearing "revealed a largely partisan split over the merits of the News Corp.-DirecTV deal. ... Republicans generally welcomed News Corp.'s move, believing the company will act aggressively to expand DirecTV's service and compete with cable providers. Democrats were more skeptical, fearing Murdoch's growing control over media properties and taking the opportunity to criticize what they see as the conservative slant of his Fox News Channel." The Wall Street Journal offered this colorful quote: "Will Fox overcharge for its programming? No, they wouldn't do anything like that!" [John Conyers (D-Mich.)] said sarcastically. Two other Democrats, Reps. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas and Jerrold Nadler of New York, warned that a conservative bent at News Corp.'s Fox News Channel could drown out other voices after a purchase of DirecTV."
• Newsday: House Committee Grills Murdoch On DirecTV Deal
• The Los Angeles Times: Murdoch Lobbies For DirecTV (Registration required)
• The Wall Street Journal: Murdoch's DirecTV Deal Spurs Criticism in Congress (Subscription required)

The Washington Post noted the concerns of Murdoch's critics: "Opponents of the merger ... say it would give Murdoch too much muscle because he would own not only popular programming -- Fox shows such as 'American Idol,' the top-rated Fox News Channel and broad-ranging sports events -- but also the pipeline to pump it into consumers' homes. Smaller cable companies are worried that Murdoch could drive customers away from cable and to DirecTV by overcharging cable companies for Fox programming or by simply denying it to cable operators. Murdoch countered by telling the committee he wants Fox programming to be seen in 'every single home we can.'" One critic is the American Cable Association, the trade group for small cable operators. "The federal government should not allow this Fox into the DirecTV henhouse," said Neal Schnog, vice chairman of the association, according to various published reports on the hearing.
• The Washington Post: Murdoch Says Pay-TV Customers Would Be Well Served by Merger

Murdoch, the Australian-turned-U.S.-citizen, argued that DirecTV deal would improve service to satellite customers and spur even more competition. But "Gene Kimmelman, a senior director at the Consumers Union advocacy group, said the proposed merger 'is truly bad for consumers' because it could lead to price increases for both cable and satellite television customers," The Associated Press reported. "Murdoch countered that the company's self-interest is to put as many channels as possible on DirecTV, and scoffed at the notion he would ever pull News Corp. programming from his possible satellite competitor, Echostar. 'It would be madness if I was to deny Echostar the Fox signal,' said Murdoch. 'It would cost us at least $400 million a year.'"
• The Associated Press via The New York Times: Murdoch Tries To Gain Support For Merger (Registration required)
• Agence France-Presse via news.au.com: Murdoch Courts Lawmakers

Federal regulators still have to approve the DirecTV deal. The track record on similar efforts has not been positive. Last year, the Federal Communications Commission put the kibosh on a proposed merger between DirecTV and EchoStar. However, The Washington Post indicated that Murdoch's bid might past muster. "Telecommunications and antitrust lawyers give this merger a better chance of going through than the EchoStar-DirecTV merger because that deal would have left only one major U.S. satellite television provider," the newspaper said.

Blogging From Baghdad Again?

The mysterious Baghdad blogger is back, or at least it looks that way. The author of "Dear Raed," a Web diary that drew much media attention in the run-up to the Iraq war, is back online after weeks of silence. "To make up for the days when he could not post, the Dear Raed web logger has updated his journal with 15 entries covering the invasion of Baghdad and the immediate aftermath," BBC News reported. "The new entries detail what life has been like in Baghdad as American troops approached, entered and took over the city. The blog details several narrow escapes that Salam, his friends and relations have suffered."

Whether the blog is truly written by an Iraqi living in Baghdad is not clear, but it still makes for interesting reading. From a posting today: "Prices of weapons on the market have been going up. At one point you could get a hand grenade for 500 dinars, that's a quarter of a dollar. A Kalashnikov for $200 and a brand new Uzi for a bit more. These are on display on the roads. In Baghdad-al-Jadida and al-baya districts but the cheapest could be found in Thawra (revolution) district (It used to be called Thawra then Saddam now they are calling it al-Sadir district). It is like a militarized zone in Thawra. If you don't live there you better not go. The streets markets look like something out of a William Gibson novel."
• BBC News Online: Baghdad Blogger Re-Appears
• Wired: Baghdad Blogger Returns To Net

Passport Protection

Microsoft's Passport, the company's highly touted service to help users manage their online identity, had a flaw that was spotted on Wednesday. The company said the glitch was fixed by yesterday morning and only affected a tiny number of the service's 200 million accounts, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. "The flaw may have allowed some people who exploited it to spend money belonging to legitimate users of one Passport service called Wallet, though no users had reported such thefts yesterday, said Passport product manager Adam Sohn," according to the newspaper. "It definitely allowed some outsiders to assume the identity of some legitimate Passport users, he said, declining to provide numbers."

The Federal Trade Commission could end up slapping Microsoft with fines over the breach. "The incident was yet another embarrassing lapse for Microsoft. ... The episode occurs in the midst of Microsoft's 'trustworthy computing initiative' to improve security for all its software products and services," The Associated Press noted.
• The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Passport Security Flaw Could Be Costly To Microsoft
• The Seattle Times: Microsoft Fixes Another Security Flaw

Qwest For a Settlement

Qwest Communications International and the Securities and Exchange Commission are working to "settle potential fraud charges stemming from the phone concern's 'swaps' of fiber-optic capacity with other telecommunications firms, according to people familiar with the matter," The Wall Street Journal reports today. "Swaps were at the center of a $2.2 billion revenue restatement that Qwest announced last year, after its auditor found the company had inappropriately recognized $1.6 billion from three years of swap sales ending in 2001. Qwest has, however, never admitted to accounting fraud, and both its past and current managements have said the deals had clear business purpose and weren't done to simply engineer financial results."
• The Wall Street Journal: Qwest, SEC Discuss Settlement In a Case Involving Swap Deals (Subscription required)

Late last week, Qwest's hometown paper, The Denver Post, said the SEC had started looking at deals involving investments by Qwest executives into start-up companies that sold equipment to Qwest. The paper cited unnamed sources.
• The Denver Post: Qwest Investments Investigated

Hundred Years War?

Congressional and state lawmakers are jumping on the anti-spam bandwagon with new legislation. ISPs are suing spammers and offering new spam squashing tools. Consumers are angrily hitting delete as they scan their in-boxes. Does it help? The Boston Globe ran a front-page article yesterday about the spam problem and how it seems to only get worse. "Technological advancements in antispam software, ironically, are also fueling the influx. Expecting to have many of their advertisements blocked, spammers are flooding the e-mail system with many more messages to increase their chances of some getting through the toughest barriers. E-mail users with weaker defenses get inundated. The extra traffic has forced companies and schools to buy more computers and network bandwidth, and to devote more employee time to e-mail administration. Deleting each message that sneaks through also hurts worker productivity. Spam is projected to cost organizations in the United States $10 billion this year, according to San Francisco-based Ferris Research Inc."
• The Boston Globe: Technology Can't Stop The Spam Tide

Earlier this week, USA Today wrote about AOL's efforts to fight spam, profiling the company's spam-fighting team: "With miniblinds drawn in an unlit room, [Anna] Ford and a small army of twenty- and thirtysomething AOL technicians quietly patrol the network of the world's largest Internet service provider. They sit behind six-foot-high cubicle dividers so as not to offend passersby with screens sometimes filled with adult material. They don't gasp in disbelief or horror at what crosses their screen. Nor do they cheer when they zap yet another spammer. They're locked in an unglamorous and tedious battle against a band of tireless renegades who often manage to stay a step ahead of their pursuers."
• USA Today: AOL Tech Army Goes On Hunt To Find, Zap Spam

Sounding Board: Spam I Am (Not)

More readers have chimed in with thoughts on ways to curb spam (see yesterday's Filter for more). Thanks to all readers who took the time to write in. Here are some edited excerpts from a few reader e-mails:

• "It amazes me that no one has mentioned one sure-fire way to stop spammers: never, ever buy anything from any of them. If no one was buying things from these mass e-mailings, the market for spammers would dry up entirely. It's not that I don't believe in filtering and penalties and the protection of one's own e-mail address. But I also firmly believe consumers need to take some responsibility for the spam problem themselves and one way to do this is by never responding to spam or purchasing the products advertised in it." -- Melissa Pechan, Newport News, Va.

• "I run USOpt, a Virginia company with a challenge/response-based whitelisting system that totally eliminates spam. We attended, or conferenced into, every session of the FTC spam forum and noticed a trend. The board had representatives from companies and organizations who primarily wanted to decide what you and I as consumers will get to read. Government representatives spoke of laws that may control who gets to mail me. Spam control activists spoke of those laws, and other methods such as blacklists, that may control who gets to mail me and what I get to read. Service providers spoke of efforts to stop mail before it goes into my mailbox, even if it does stop innocent e-mail (not spam). Now, I ask you, what sounds strange about these concepts? Could it be that the recipient is not an issue or consideration here? What if we changed the word e-mail to mail and we were considering [having] the U.S. Post Office screen all of our mail? What if my postman got to decide whether or not to deliver this month's issue of my favorite magazine or unlabeled letter from a friend? Or my cable company got to decide what TV shows I got to watch this week? Or the phone company got to decide who could call me? At USOpt, we feel that the important thing to focus on is that there needs to be huge walls put up in front of spam to control it. The only solution that we are aware of, a challenge/response based whitelisting system, seemed to scare some of the panelists. In the case of the not-so-reputable marketers, this may be a good thing." -- George Knauf

• "A good watch dog will bark when strangers approach and will recognize your friends and family. A good e-mail filter should be able to be trained to do essentially the same. How? First, teach the program to recognize the e-mail addresses you use when you send e-mail. Second, teach it to recognize the e-mail addresses on mail you read but do not delete right away (maybe within 30 minutes of it being marked as read). Any other e-mail should go into a holding bin. If I see an e-mail in the holding bin from a legitimate business with whom I have a relationship, I should be able to right-click the sender address and tell the program it's OK." The reader also suggested creating an e-mail key ("If I could give you a passkey into the foyer where my mailbox is, you could get in anytime and drop me a message. Same thing with e-mail."), and "ISP networks should be subjected to a trusted e-mailers registry for volume senders." -- Tony McMullen, Dallas, Tex.

Filter is designed for hard-core techies, news junkies and technology professionals alike. Have suggestions, cool links or interesting tales to share? Send your tips and feedback to cindy.webb [at] washingtonpost.com.




© 2003 TechNews.com