December 2011

Piracy legislation pits Hollywood against Silicon Valley

Film director Penelope Spheeris and Internet entrepreneur Gabriel Weinberg represent opposite camps in a congressional fight that divides California's two most glamorous and energetic industries: Hollywood and Silicon Valley.

On one side are old-media entertainment companies such as Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox, which accuse the search companies of acting as fences for private property by collecting advertising revenue from the sites where pirates lurk. On the other are new-media giants such as Google, Yahoo, EBay and Facebook, which say the proposed legislation threatens free speech and will jeopardize the technological stability of the World Wide Web "This is truly an epic battle between two huge interests that are both very, very important to our national economy," said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Menlo Park), who represents Silicon Valley. The pending bills in the House and Senate would give the Justice Department power to seek court orders requiring U.S. search engines and Internet sites to block access to foreign websites hawking pirated material. Private companies such as Paramount Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment would also be able to seek court orders preventing such sites from receiving ads and payments services from the US. The fight is curiously nonpartisan, with conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats teamed on both sides of the issue. Some of the split is based on which industry is more dominant in a lawmaker's region. Many Southern California representatives back Hollywood's position, and most Northern California members side with the Internet companies. But political philosophy also plays a role, leading anti-big-government conservatives to join with liberal civil libertarians in opposition to giving Washington what they fear would be broad censorship power over websites.

Privacy, schmivacy. I just can't get worked up over the latest freakouts over the misuse of our information. Sorry.

[Commentary] Eva Galperin, a privacy activist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation says we should be concerned that large companies and potentially the government are amassing large amounts of data about us. That information could be used against us by law enforcement, by someone in a civil suit, by a potential employer who finds something unflattering about us that we posted on Facebook many years ago. Then there are the more personal concerns. "There is stuff about you that is OK to share with friends and family, but it's not OK to share with the whole world," Galperin said. Galperin also pointed out that a woman or minority is more likely to have been harassed online, and thus has a more instinctive need to protect their privacy.

Is that the problem? Perhaps because I haven't been a victim, I just can't get upset about a hypothetical harm. Sharing personal information comes down to a trade-off: What am I giving for what I'm giving up? On the whole, Facebook offers me a reasonable trade-off. The more I share, the more I connect with people. I'm happy to have my information used as the currency that pays the bills by being used to serve up relevant ads. Still, I do agree with Galperin on one point: For people to make the right trade-offs, the rules need to be clear and unchangeable without our permission. In the case of Carrier IQ and the changes in Facebook settings, consumers were not given enough information to make a properly educated decision. "You can't get away with lying to your users," Galperin says. I agree. And yet, I can't help but feel that the sins committed were minor ones.

Antipiracy bills for Internet go too far

[Commentary] Hollywood, drugmakers and video-game designers have lived uneasily with the dark side of the Internet for years. Bootleg websites - think back to Napster and Canadian cut-rate pharmacies - offer copyrighted goods for free or next to nothing. Profits, investments and artistic achievement are lost in this hustle. But fixing this problem fairly is a challenge. Who is to blame for the abuses? And what damage do new controls pose for a free-wheeling online world, where innovation can also be destructive?

The latest example is a pair of antipiracy bills in Congress pushed by major copyright holders such as the motion picture and recording industries plus pharmaceutical firms. On the other side is most of name-brand Silicon Valley, making the issue a battle between Big Content and Big Tech. The measures, which could be considered by year's end, would oblige online services to tightly patrol their websites for links to rogue sites, chiefly overseas. If they fail to do so, these services, such as Google, Yahoo or Facebook, could face fines and extended legal trouble from the U.S. Department of Justice. Credit card firms that handle the money may also feel the heat. The law goes beyond the sensible and sound. It targets services that don't just offer unauthorized copyright materials but also "facilitate" such sales. That fateful word, critics say, opens a Pandora's box of possible targets that may only incidentally be involved in the disputed commerce.

Anderson Cooper's Talk Show Is a News Program, FCC Rules

It's official. The U.S. Government has decreed that Anderson Cooper's daytime talk show, Anderson, is a bona fide news interview program. There appears to have been some doubt about this. The show topics this week have included such journalistic queries as the ethics of spanking children, how to free one's life from clutter, and a "new trend" of parents gifting their children plastic surgery. ANE Productions requested the FCC's help in clarifying that the daytime talk show is indeed a news program. The government agency responded with a thumbs up.

When Your ISP is One of Your Neighbors

[Commentary] When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for consumers to declare their independence from large telcos, it's reassuring to know that wireless Internet service providers (WISP) are one possible option. Wireless ISP's (WISP) are usually located in rural areas not served by any other Internet service, but some urban WISP's have gained a foothold. One of these is DC Access, LLC (www.dcaccess.net) which serves sections of the Capitol Hill and Adams Morgan neighborhoods in the District of Columbia. DC Access provides a “fixed wireless” Internet service. You'll pay about the same as you would for Internet service from the big telcos (Verizon, Comcast, and so on), but you'll be treated a whole lot better when you call for support. Any small business that doesn't provide outstanding customer service is a small business on its way to being a former small business.

$6 Billion in ‘Cyber Week’ U.S. Online Spending Sets New Weekly Record

comScore reported holiday season retail e-commerce spending for the first 32 days of the November – December 2011 holiday season. For the holiday season-to-date, $18.7 billion has been spent online, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year.

The most recent week saw three individual days eclipse $1 billion in spending, led by Cyber Monday, which became the heaviest online spending day on record at $1.25 billion. Tuesday, November 29 reached $1.12 billion, while Wednesday, November 30 reached $1.03 billion. These three billion dollar spending days currently rank as three of the four heaviest online spending days in history (with Cyber Monday 2010 being the other).

Nielsen Corrects TV-Viewing Data

Nielsen Holdings NV said it erred late last month when it reported an overall increase in the number of children watching television this fall, but it continues to be in disagreement with Viacom over the accuracy of its TV ratings for Viacom's Nickelodeon children's channel.

The TV-ratings giant now estimates the number of children ages 2 to 11 that watched traditional television channels at any given minute this TV season through Nov. 19 fell 2.9% when compared with last fall, rather than rising 1.7%, as it had initially indicated in data prepared for The Wall Street Journal. Nielsen's prior estimate of the audience increase had put the spotlight on Viacom, which has suffered a recent sharp drop in viewership for Nickelodeon, a big source of ad revenue for the company. Viacom has described that drop as a "glitch." Other TV channels aimed at children haven't experienced similarly steep declines. Nielsen detected a mistake in the overall-viewing data provided to the Journal after Viacom contacted the ratings company to question its numbers, Nielsen and Viacom executives said. Nielsen explained the error by saying it had neglected to "apply a standard adjustment" to fall 2010 data in order to make it comparable with this fall's numbers.

Xbox Live Challenges Cable Box

The old-fashioned cable television set-top box — long the hub of living-room entertainment for most people — is about to become less relevant. Beginning on Dec 6 and continuing through the month, Microsoft will give a face-lift to its Xbox Live online entertainment service that will allow subscribers to watch a wide array of mainstream television programming from the Xbox 360 console.

In addition, rather than fumbling with traditional remote controls and the primitive program guides of cable boxes, Xbox Live users will be able to search for shows using voice commands and hand gestures, if they also have the popular Kinect peripheral for the Xbox. Later this month, Microsoft will begin adding dozens of other sources of programming to the service, including Verizon FiOS, Comcast’s Xfinity and HBO. On Dec 6, the few online video services that have been on Xbox Live for some time, including Netflix and Hulu Plus, will be able to be retrieved using voice searching and other methods. Microsoft’s deal with cable and content providers stops short of making it possible for people to ditch their traditional pay-television packages; people will still need to pay the cable providers to get channels through the Xbox. They will also have to pay the roughly $60 a year Microsoft typically charges for a premier membership to Xbox Live. And the Xbox won’t be a true substitute for everything viewers can get through their cable boxes because content rights will have to be negotiated for some shows before they can be watched through the console. But the agreement is nonetheless significant because there are more than 35 million worldwide subscribers to Xbox Live, making the Xbox one of the most common Internet-connected boxes in living rooms. And it is part of a growing effort by media companies to bring some 21st-century pizazz to the experience of navigating and watching television, a medium that is largely watched using traditional remote controls and set-top boxes that have changed little in the past 10 years.

EU eyes big fines for privacy breaches

Businesses breaching European Union privacy rules will face fines of up to 5 per cent of their global turnover under sweeping proposals to be unveiled next month.

In the first significant update of data protection legislation since 1995, companies found to have mishandled any personal data they hold – be it of their customers, suppliers or their own employees – will face the highest levels of fines, which could extend to billions of euros for large multinationals. The measures are being finalized within the European Commission. They will have to be approved by national governments, some of which – especially Germany – will be reluctant to lose oversight on privacy matters to Brussels. The process is likely to take at least two years, with another two before the measures come into effect. The proposals would bolster significantly the EU’s powers on combating data protection breaches, such as when companies sell customer data to third parties without authorization or fail to adequately protect information held by social networks and “cloud computing” services. Companies would have 24 hours to notify data protection authorities and the effected parties in cases where private data are compromised

Brussels homes in on Google antitrust case

The European Commission is homing in on a list of concerns about Google’s business practices that could form the basis of an antitrust complaint against the US internet search group.

The narrowing of the investigation to issues red flagged by Brussels marks a turning point in an inquiry that has been running for almost two years. However, the commission has yet to decide whether to bring a formal complaint against the company or lay out its concerns in detail, said people familiar with the situation. News that the European case has moved into a more advanced phase comes just days before Eric Schmidt, Google’s chairman, is due to meet Joaquín Almunia, the European competition commissioner.

Benton

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