Mediagazer: Netflix says it opposes Comcast/TWC merger because Comcast charges both Netflix and its customers to connect to each other (Ken Florance/Netflix US & Canada Blog)

10:35 PM ET, April 24, 2014

Top News:

FCC chairman to have net neutrality “enforceable rules” by the end of the year, mandate that ISPs “not act in a commercially unreasonable manner” — Setting the Record Straight on the FCC's Open Internet Rules — There has been a great deal of misinformation …

Tim Wu / The New Yorker Blog:

Barack Obama's Flip-Flop and the End of Net Neutrality — In 2007, at a public forum at Coe College, in Iowa, Presidential candidate Barack Obama was asked about net neutrality. Specifically, “Would you make it a priority in your first year of office to reinstate net neutrality as the law of the land?

Stacey Higginbotham / Gigaom:
The FCC doesn't want to destroy net neutrality, but it's going to anyway

Discussion: Variety, @acedtect, Ars Technica, Mashable, TechPresident, Business Insider, Kirk LaPointe's …, The Verge and Re/code

Ken Florance / Netflix US & Canada Blog:

Netflix says it opposes Comcast/TWC merger because Comcast charges both Netflix and its customers to connect to each other — The Case Against ISP Tolls — As the person at Netflix responsible for content delivery, I spend a lot of time thinking about Netflix's Open Connect CDN and its interconnection with ISPs.

Discussion: @mattjay, Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, ZDNet, Reuters, Minneapolis Star Tribune, @b_fung, @mathewi, Mashable, @ddayen, Engadget, @xpangler, @botnet_hunter, @jyarow and The Verge

Peter Kafka / Re/code:

Comcast Says Netflix Slowed Down Its Own Streams — A couple days after Netflix and Comcast fought in public, the two companies, who are supposed to be partners, are at it again. — Three days after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings publicly opposed Comcast's planned acquisition of/merger with Time Warner Cable …

Discussion: @dangillmor

Jennifer Khoury / Comcast Voices Blog:

Comcast: Neflix degraded its Comcast streams, seeks to shift its costs onto all Internet users — COMCAST RESPONSE TO NETFLIX — Netflix's argument is a House of Cards. But there is no need for us to engage in a point-counterpoint with Netflix to demonstrate the continued distortions and inaccuracies on which it relies.

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Time Warner Cable Spent $62 Million in Q1 Prepping for Comcast Merger

Discussion: TheHill, Lost Remote, Hollywood Reporter, Reuters, Wall Street Journal, Reuters and Home Media Magazine

Darrell Etherington / TechCrunch:

NYT Up To Nearly 800K Paid Digital Subscribers, Plans New Food And Opinion Apps — The New York Times is crowing about a quarterly rise in revenue today, and that comes thanks to increases in both print and digital ad revenue. Digital subscriptions saw some of its strongest growth in recent memory …

Discussion: TheMediaBriefing, Capital New York, AdExchanger, Mediaite and Digiday

The New York Times Company:
NYT reports 2.6% increase in revenue, digital advertising revenue up 2.2% to $37.8M

Discussion: New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Poynter, FishbowlNY, Capital New York, Bloomberg, @edmundlee, @pkafka, @orskov and The Huffington Post

Michael Sebastian / AdAge:
New York Times Reports First Ad Revenue Increase In Three Years

Discussion: AdExchanger, @printinthemix and @jmcduling

Glyn Moody / Techdirt:

Russia Orders Bloggers To ‘Register’; Outlaws Anonymous Blogging, Continues Clampdown On Social Media — As we've reported, Russia has been steadily trying to bring the Internet under control with ever-more stringent measures. After tackling general Web sites through powers that allow …

Discussion: The Huffington Post, Engadget, The Verge, Ars Technica and ITAR-TASS

Margaret Sullivan / New York Times:

Aftermath of Ukraine Photo Story Shows Need for More Caution — The Times led its print edition Monday with an article based in part on photographs that the State Department said were evidence of Russian military presence in popular uprisings in Ukraine. The headline read: “Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia.”

Discussion: Mediaite, Consortiumnews.com, @jayrosen_nyu and Pressing Issues

Vice:

Simon Ostrovsky Has Been Released — VICE News is delighted to confirm that our colleague and friend Simon Ostrovsky has been safely released and is in good health. We would like to thank everyone for their support during this difficult time. Out of respect for Simon and his family's privacy …

Discussion: Variety, New York Times, Gawker, New York Magazine, @simonostrovsky, @bishopk, The Huffington Post, Mashable, Politico, Guardian, Poynter, Talking Points Memo, Capital New York, The Week, Globe and Mail, TIME, Committee to Protect … and Associated Press

Simon Rogers / Mother Jones:

Hey Wonk Reporters, Liberate Your Data! — When it comes to data journalism, everyone's a critic. — The launch of three major data journalism operations in only a few weeks—the revamped 538, Vox, and the New York Times' The Upshot—have produced a slew of opinion pieces.

Discussion: @jayrosen_nyu, @newswhip, @jayrosen_nyu, @albertocairo and @smfrogers

Alexander Howard / Tow Center for Digital Journalism:
Publishers Can Afford Data Journalism, Says ProPublica's Scott Klein

Discussion: @beckybowers, @towcenter and @macloo

Andy Mitchell / Facebook:

Facebook partners with Storyful to launch FB Newswire, a news feed for journalists on Facebook and Twitter — Announcing FB Newswire, Powered by Storyful — Every day, news is made on Facebook. More than one billion people use our platform to discover, explore and participate in news-making events around the world.

Ingrid Lunden / TechCrunch:

Automattic Buys Scroll Kit, A Code-Free Website Builder That Once Got Legal Heat From The NYT — WordPress maker Automattic's acquisition spree to build out its platform continues apace. Today comes news that it has acquired Scroll Kit, a New York-based startup that had developed a platform …

Discussion: VentureBeat, @kraykray and @codybrown

Steve Dollar / Wall Street Journal:

Tribeca Film Festival Is Showing Online-Only Productions for First Time — Works Range From Documentaries to Comedies — Not every work spotlighted at the Tribeca Film Festival plays in a theater. — For the first time this year, the festival features online-only productions …

Bloomberg:

Forbes Sale Said to Founder With Axel Springer Not Bidding — Forbes Media LLC's effort to find a buyer is running into trouble, with one potential bidder officially out of the running and two others no longer in active talks, people with knowledge of the matter said.

Discussion: FishbowlNY, @pkafka, Capital New York, @danprimack and @sherman4949

Mike Masnick / Techdirt:

Why Do So Many People Describe Aereo ‘Complying’ With Copyright Law As The Company ‘Circumventing’ Copyright Law? — We mentioned this briefly in our writeup of the oral arguments at the Supreme Court in the Aereo case, but I wanted to focus in on one particularly annoying issue that has come …

Discussion: Radio & Television …

Frederic Lardinois / TechCrunch:

Amazon Beats Street In Q1 With Net Sales Up 23% To $19.74B, $0.23 EPS — Amazon today reported its results for the company's first financial quarter of 2014. Amazon reported net sales up 23 percent to $19.74 billion compared to $25.59 billion last quarter and $16.07 billion in the year-ago quarter.

Discussion: Amazon.com, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, BuzzFeed, Gigaom and Pocket-lint

Daniel Denvir / Philadelphia City Paper:

What does the fight over Philly.com mean for the future of Philly journalism? — “Two writers say stuffed Bigfoot is legit” and “I've never had sex with my husband” are the sort of headlines on Philly.com that fill Philadelphia Inquirer reporters with dread and despair.

Discussion: @jasonnark and @jmikelyons

Peter Sterne / Capital New York:

Columbia student paper plans to drop daily print edition — The Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper distributed daily at Columbia University and in surrounding Morningside Heights, plans to switch to a weekly edition starting in the fall, editor-in-chief Abby Abrams told staff earlier this evening.

Discussion: @niemanlab, @juliamkern, College Media Matters, @charlesornstein, @jimmyvielkind, @miriamkrule and New York Magazine

Janko Roettgers / Gigaom:

Hulu adds Chromecast-like mobile remote control features to Xbox One, PS3 and PS4 — Hulu is the latest company to go all-out on Chromecast-like multiscreen features: Hulu Plus subscribers can now access the video service through their Android and iOS devices on Microsoft's Xbox One as well as Sony's PS3 and PS4.

Discussion: Hulu Blog, Engadget, The Next Web, CNET and TechCrunch