For years, plenty of folks (including the Government Accountability Office) have been pointing out that the way the FCC measures broadband competition is very flawed. It simply assumes that if a single household in a zip code is offered broadband by provider A, then every household in that zip code can get broadband from provider A. In an extreme version of this, say provider A offers broadband to a single household, and provider B offers broadband to a different household and everyone else has no broadband at all. Under the current FCC measurements, that's an area that has full broadband competition. See the problem? For some reason, the FCC hasn't done much about this measuring problem, but it appears that the Commission is finally recognizing it has a problem and saying it needs to change the way it measures things. Commissioner Michael Copps points out: "Our statistical methodology seems almost calculated to obscure just how far our country is falling behind many other industrialized nations in broadband availability, adoption, speed and price." Of course, who knows if what comes next will be any better, but at least admitting you have a problem is the first step...

Clear Channel Communications, the huge broadcasting conglomerate, has spent a lot of effort lobbying the government to relax media ownership rules that have limited what Clear Channel can own within a specific market. The company and its lobbyists consistently make arguments for why it should be allowed to continue to gobble up radio stations, and how the media market can't just be defined by terrestrial radio stations. Of course, Clear Channel has also clearly said that it competes with satellite radio, and therefore wants to burden the satellite radio providers with additional regulations. Therefore, the latest move by Clear Channel should come as no surprise. It has come out strongly against the proposed Sirius/XM merger. Like the NAB, Clear Channel is put in something of an awkward position. First, it needs to explain why it's even concerned about the merger if it claims that Sirius and XM would create a monopoly. If it's truly a monopoly, then terrestrial radio stations shouldn't care. Second, it has to explain away earlier statements about competition from satellite radio that were, in part, used to justify the requests for easing media ownership rules. Finally, it would be nice to explain why all of the other arguments that Clear Channel has used to claim relaxed ownership rules make sense for terrestrial radio don't also apply to satellite radio. So far, the company's best answer appears to be admitting that it's arguments "might be a little skewed toward our specific goals." Shocking.

Hacked cluster serves up addresses

Lax security at Indiana University appears to have played a key role in highly targeted phishing attack last year that hauled in confidential information on as many as 80 account holders of the school's credit union. The finding, gleaned through public records unearthed by a university student, provides an interesting case study in the resourcefulness phishers bring to their trade.