Regulators worried that would thwart competition and mean higher prices for consumers.
“All that scale would give Comcast enormous discretion over what reaches Americans, what Americans pay, information flows, customer service—really unlimited power,” says Susan Crawford is co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
There are suspects that the deal was put off because Time Warner might strike a deal better than the one they were getting from Comcast. CEO Charter Communications is looking into the possibility of placing a bid on Time Warner Cable.
The deal whether it went ahead with Comcast or may go ahead with some other broadcast company; it will be the consumers who are affected. According to Susan P. Crawford, director at Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard said, “If you’re selling consumers something they can’t live without, and you’re subject to neither oversight nor competition, consumers aren’t going to be happy.”
No sooner had the door shut on the Comcast deal last Thursday than reports emerged that Charter Communications, the regional cable operator backed by the billionaire John C. Malone, was exploring a new bid for Time Warner Cable, its second in less than two years.
Some predict consumers will lose no matter who buys whom.
“If you’re selling consumers something they can’t live without, and you’re subject to neither oversight nor competition, consumers aren’t going to be happy,” said Susan P. Crawford, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.
via Comcast-Time Warner Cable Deal’s Collapse Leaves Frustrated Customers Out in the Cold – NYTimes.com.
“If you’re selling consumers something they can’t live without, and you’re subject to neither oversight nor competition, consumers aren’t going to be happy,” Susan P. Crawford, co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, told the newspaper in an interview.
via Customers unhappy after Time Warner Cable-Comcast deal fails – Fortune.
Zeynep Tufekci is an assistant professor at the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a faculty associate at Harvard’s Berkman Center. Tufekci studies how people use social media to organize social movements. Tufekci is regular contributor to The New York Times’ Opinion Blog.
via Zeynep Tufekci: Why Are Social Causes Easy To Launch But Hard To Win? : NPR.
“That was just huge,” said Susan Crawford, a co-director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. “It signaled that the cable industry was no longer calling the shots.”Not long after the president’s video, the F.C.C. made good on his promise to regulate Internet service providers more rigorously when it voted to raise the speed required for broadband Internet connections. The decision was a nod to the fact that more than one person is often online at the same time in many of today’s households.
via Once Comcast’s Deal Shifted to a Focus on Broadband, Its Ambitions Were Sunk – NYTimes.com.
On the other hand, Rey Junco, an associate professor of education and human computer interaction at Iowa State University and a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, argues in his article for WIRED, that Yik Yak is a way for students to unleash their creativity.
via Yik Yak continues to cause controversies | The Butler Collegian.
But other scholars, like Rey Junco, a faculty associate at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, at Harvard, say social media merely raises the profile of behavior that used to take place out of the view of the public.
“We don’t see, statistically, an uptick in riskier behaviors,” Dr. Junco said.
via Social Media Publicity Turns Wild Parties Into Trouble That Can’t Be Ignored – NYTimes.com.
On March 31st Greatfire.org pinned the blame for the recent attacks on the CAC, saying that the Great Firewall could not have been used without its approval or that of Lu Wei, the minister in charge. But attribution is hard to prove. According to Nathan Freitas of the Berkman Centre for Internet & Society at Harvard University, there is no smoking gun implicating the Chinese government—but the authorities should be asked how they allowed critical internet infrastructure to be “compromised by criminals”.
Co-founded by Felipe Heusser, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the concept for this service was inspired while exploring independent media coverage of the 2011 Chilean Student Protests. The idea is that every day, countless events happen that so many people don’t have the opportunity to see — and even when someone is able to record them, it often takes too much time to share or post that content.
via Live Video Streaming App Rhinobird Boston Marathon Launch Planned | BostInno.