November 2011

MAP, PK Call for Major Program Carriage Changes

The Federal Communications Commission has proposed changes to its program carriage rules, which included providing for standstills during program carriage disputes and price "true ups" for the winners of complaints about non-carriage, as well as a number of other changes.

In joint comments on the proposal, Media Access Project and Public Knowledge said the FCC should adopt baseball-style arbitration for program carriage disputes, as well as a shot clock for action on complaints, expedited discovery, putting the burden on complaint defendants to "establish a non-discriminatory reason for its carriage decision" -- per program access rules -- and applying the rules to online video delivery. "[L]ax and delayed enforcement of the rules added to the growing sentiment among video programming vendors that pursuing a program carriage complaint would be a moot point," said the groups in their filing. "The recent revisions of the program carriage rules, combined with the proposals in the NPRM, do much to reconcile the rules regime with Congressional intent."

ComScore: Record 42.6 Billion Online Videos Viewed in October

New data from comScore shows that 184 million U.S. internet viewers watched a record 20.9 billion online videos on Google's sites in October and that overall usage also hit new highs, with U.S. users watching 42.6 billion online videos.

That adds up to an average of 21.1 hours of online video usage per U.S. viewer for the month. Overall about 86.2% of the U.S. internet audience viewed online video at least once during the month. Google sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube, ranked as the top online video content property in October with 161 million unique viewers. Facebook ranked second with 59.8 million viewers, who watched 346 million videos, followed by VEVO with 57 million viewers who watched 827 million videos, and the Microsoft sites, which had 49.1 million viewers who watched 661 million videos.

We the People draws a curious crowd

During roughly two months since its launch, the Obama Administration's We the People online petition website has drawn environmentalists looking to kill the Keystone pipeline project, graduate students seeking more subsidized loans and immigrants advocating for a less labyrinthine visa system. It's also attracted online poker enthusiasts asking for consumer protections, Wiccans looking for legal protections and three children seeking the return of their deported mother. Curious about who was using this experiment in digital democracy, Nextgov pulled the 119 petitions posted to We the People on Nov. 14 and organized them by broad subject matter. The list includes all unanswered petitions that are less than 30 days old and have met the 150 signature threshold to be posted to the public petition site. Nextgov did not distinguish between petitions that had reached the 25,000 signature threshold for an official White House response and those that had not. Petitions that fail to meet that threshold within 30 days are removed from the site and archived.

Can We Trust The Online Ad Industry To Regulate Itself?

Internet advertisers this month took a fresh stab at persuading federal privacy regulators to leave them alone. The advertisers are touting new industry guidelines which they believe will resolve consumer concerns about data disclosure once and for all.

Why, then, does the effort still feel like wishful thinking? For anyone who missed it, the advertisers’ new initiative is an expanded set of principles to govern what they can do with the information they collect about people’s internet surfing habits. The ad companies have already provided a consumer opt-out system but the Federal Trade Commission suggested the scheme did not go far enough. The new industry rules are intended to provide additional measures of reassurance, for instance by saying that companies can’t use browsing information to help determine whether someone is eligible for credit or insurance. According to Stu Ingis, general counsel for the Digital Advertising Alliance, ad companies weren’t using the information for eligibility reasons in the first place. Still, he said in an interview, the new principles formally expand the existing guidelines and represent “a holistic response to policy makers and consumers.”

So what does all this actually mean? In a nutshell, it means the industry thinks it has done enough to allay privacy concerns by offering consumers a one-stop website where they can see which ad companies are tracking them.

Lending is the right model

Book publishers are struggling with eBook lending.

The latest to have a problem is Penguin who announced last week they would opt out of library lending programs citing security concerns. (They subsequently softened their exit to something temporary). The Penguin move specifically highlighted the Kindle lending program. Of course, this is just the latest following Harper Collins’ approach to limit lending to 26 times per year. And as many have pointed out, the problem publishers have with eBook lending is the same problem they have with book lending: it undermines their business model of relying on ownership to sell books. Here is the central fact about book publishing: lending is the natural state. Authors produce a book that is improved by others (including editors etc). Then people read the book and that is where it has primary value. Notice that there is no ‘then people buy the book’ stage in the middle or ‘then people place the book on their shelves forever more’ after these. Those are things people did because (a) they had to buy a physical copy and (b) they got used to keeping the physical copy. But for libraries, none of that was relevant. The issue book publishers face — and so many have said it I really shouldn’t bother, but I will — is that they are wedded to a strategy whereby they sell owned copies rather than reading.

Google seeks EU approval for Motorola Mobility deal

Google is seeking European Union regulatory clearance of its planned purchase of handset maker Motorola Mobility Holdings, the European Commission said. Google unveiled the $12.5 billion deal to boost its patent portfolio in August, seen as a defensive move against rivals such as Apple. The Commission will decide by January 10 whether to clear the deal.

Europe scrutinizes Facebook’s data collection — again?

Facebook is under pressure once again from European authorities over the amount of data it collects, according to a string of reports that hit over the weekend. In particular, the focus is on an meeting this week between data protection officials from across the continent that could spell trouble for the world’s most powerful social network.

According to the U.K.’s Telegraph, the signal is that they will move to curb Facebook’s collection methods: a move is led by Viviane Reding, the commissioner in charge of human rights. She is already pushing hard to stop all sorts of services collecting too much data on users… even if that data is held outside Europe.

China vows government offices will use legal software

China is introducing programs to ensure the country's local governments, from provincial down to county and municipal levels, are all using legal software, a top Chinese official said during a meeting with visiting U.S. officials.

The U.S. Commerce Department released a summary of the meeting between the U.S. and Chinese government officials, including Vice Premier Wang Qishan who leads the country's intellectual property rights enforcement. China continues to take measures to push all levels of Chinese government to use copyrighted software, Wang is reported to have said at the meeting. China's provincial governments will complete a program to move to legal software by mid-2012, while municipal and county governments will complete the program by 2013.

European Commission Presses 16 States to Implement New EU Telecoms Rules

The European Commission has written to sixteen Member States which have failed to fully implement new EU telecoms rules into national law, six months after the deadline to do so.

The new rules give EU customers new rights regarding fixed telephony, mobile services and Internet access. For instance, the right to switch telecoms operators in one day without changing their phone number and the right to clarity about data traffic management practices employed by Internet Service Providers. There is now also better protection of privacy and personal data online.

European high court rejects Internet traffic filtering as violation of fundamental rights

While Thanksgiving is an American holiday, Internet service providers and users in Europe had reason to give thanks. The highest court in the European Union overturned a ruling that would have forced a Belgian ISP to preemptively filter Internet traffic to prevent the unauthorized sharing of music files.

The European Court of Justice overturned a ruling by a Belgian court in a suit brought by the Belgian Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers (SABAM). SABAM filed it against Scarlet Extended over alleged illegal peer-to-peer filesharing by Scarlet's customers. That 2007 ruling required Scarlet to filter traffic on its network, so that it could identify and block illegal peer to peer filesharing traffic. It was based on an interpretation of Belgian copyright laws that put the burden of enforcement on ISPs.

Benton

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