April 2012

Who should pay for public radio?

[Commentary] I love public radio. I listen to it every day. But sometimes, as I drive to my white-collar job in my expensive foreign car, surrounded by fellow public radio listeners driving to their white-collar jobs in their expensive foreign cars, I feel a little guilty. All of us are pretty affluent, I think to myself. Do we really need a federal subsidy?

In general, the richer the zip code, the more people tune into public radio. Public radio listeners tend to have a household income more than $30,000 above the national average. They're also whiter, better educated and more than twice as likely as ordinary Americans to work in top management. Not the profile of your average welfare recipient. Yet that's in effect what we are. Public radio receives more than $100 million a year in tax dollars. When people like something, they'll pay for it. Public radio listeners could certainly pay the whole tab for public radio. They just don't want to. Maybe, just to be decent, we should start.

A Different Kind of Twitter Revolution: Patents Will Not Be Used as Weapons

If the government can't create separate regimes for different kinds of tech, one tech firm is going to try and do it itself, and that firm is Twitter. The company announced a bold new approach to software patents called the "Innovators Patent Agreement" (IPA).

Adam Messinger, Twitter's VP of engineering, wrote:
“The IPA is a new way to do patent assignment that keeps control in the hands of engineers and designers. It is a commitment from Twitter to our employees that patents can only be used for defensive purposes. We will not use the patents from employees' inventions in offensive litigation without their permission. What's more, this control flows with the patents, so if we sold them to others, they could only use them as the inventor intended. This is a significant departure from the current state of affairs in the industry. Typically, engineers and designers sign an agreement with their company that irrevocably gives that company any patents filed related to the employee's work. The company then has control over the patents and can use them however they want, which may include selling them to others who can also use them however they want. With the IPA, employees can be assured that their patents will be used only as a shield rather than as a weapon.”

Google and Oracle battle over the future of Android

A landmark court battle between Google and Oracle has begun -- and its result will shape the future of the Android ecosystem fueling most of the world's smartphones.

Silicon Valley's power players are always in the throes of nasty patent fights against each other, but this one is especially potent. Oracle claims that Google's Android violates two patents plus several copyrights that Oracle holds on its Java software, a ubiquitous programming language powering everything from phones to websites. Although both Java and Android are open-source platforms -- neither Google nor Oracle generally charge for their use -- their licensing terms are complex and precise. When Java creator Sun Microsystems (acquired by Oracle in 2010) set Java loose as open-source software, it left significant limits in place around the mobile version. Companies building on top of Java's mobile platform typically pay to license it. Google used an elaborate workaround and essentially built its own version of a key system to avoid those licensing fees and restrictions. Oracle cried foul and hauled Google off to court -- a move some expected from the moment it agreed to buy Sun.

Google says it had Sun's full support in building Android

Google built Android using parts of Java that didn't require a license and it had the full support of Sun Microsystems in doing so, a lawyer for Google said in court.

"The source code in Android was written by Google engineers or taken from open source platforms that were available and open for use," attorney Robert Van Nest told the jury in Google's opening statement. Sun's own chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, congratulated Google when it released Android, saying it strapped a "set of rockets" to Java that would help ensure its success, Van Nest said. Van Nest delivered his opening statement on day two of the trial in Oracle's lawsuit against Google. Oracle accuses the company of infringing its Java patents and copyrights in Android. Sun's support for Android proves that Google didn't violate Sun's patents and copyrights, since Sun had ample opportunity to view the Android source code that was posted on Google's website, Van Nest told the jury.

Apple, Samsung CEOs agree to face-to-face settlement talks

Apple and Samsung are closer than ever to a possible settlement in their long-running legal showdown over smartphone and tablet technologies. Both companies agreed in a court hearing to send their respective chief executives and general counsel to meet face-to-face in San Francisco within the next 90 days. Samsung CEO Choi-Gee-sung and Apple CEO Tim Cook will meet for settlement talks before U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero in San Francisco, as ordered on April 17 by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. There’s no guarantee of a settlement, and they have three months to arrange the meeting, but this is the first time in the series of patent disputes between the companies that such high-level settlement talks have been ordered by the court.

Meet the mobile patent kings: Samsung and Nokia

Google, Apple and Samsung get all of the attention in the mobile patent wars, but it turns out only one of them is true powerhouse in terms of mobile intellectual property. Samsung and fellow handset maker Nokia lead the overall mobile patent portfolio rankings, followed by infrastructure makers Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent and software giant Microsoft, according to a new study from Chetan Sharma Consulting.

Apple and Google, who have come to dominate the mobile landscape in recent years, don’t even make Sharma’s list, which is based on an analysis of 7 million patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the European Patent Office over the last two decades. Only when Sharma breaks those patents into categories do Apple and Google make an appearance, showing up eighth and ninth respectively in the list of mobile platform patent strength. Their operating systems may dominate the smartphone market, but when it comes to the intellectual property behind smartphone operating systems, old school players like Samsung, Microsoft and IBM still rule.

China calls Australia ban on Huawei "unjust"

Australia earlier decided to ban Huawei from taking part in a broadband project because of security concerns. China's Ministry of Commerce said it was deeply concerned with the Australian government's refusal to allow Huawei to supply equipment to a national broadband project, calling the action "unjust".

Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said the Chinese company has supplied broadband equipment and services to many countries across the globe, according to a ministry statement. In Huawei's Australia office, 90% of the employees are Australian, and the company has operated without a bad record in the country for the last decade, he added.

European Commission Expresses Serious Concerns About High Mobile Rates in Estonia

The European Commission put a hold on a proposal by the Estonian Competition Authority (ECA) to impose some of the highest mobile termination rates (MTRs) in the European Union from mid-2012 until mid-2015. MTRs are the rate mobile networks charge other networks for delivering voice calls. The Commission is concerned that ECA's proposed pricing methodology does not fully follow the method set out in EU telecoms rules and will lead to excessive MTRs and ongoing consumer harm. The 2009 Termination Rates Recommendation requires cost-efficient rates to be in place by 1 January 2013. For example, ECA proposes MTRs at 3.89 euro cents per minute in the first half of 2013, well above the cost-efficient rate of around 1 euro cent per minute.

Broadcasting Board of Governors

Friday, April 20, 2012
10AM
Radio and TV Marti
Miami, Florida

The Board will discuss the status of the consolidation plan for BBG-sponsored grantees; the implementation of the Governors’ long-term strategy; and proposed amendments to BBG By-Laws, along with other matters from the Governance Committee’s March meeting. In addition, the Board will receive a budget update and hear reports from the International Broadcasting Bureau Director and BBG broadcast executives regarding agency activities and programming coverage.

The public may attend this meeting as seating capacity allows. Members of the public wishing to attend in person must register at http://bbg.eventbrite.com/ by 10:00 a.m. on April 19. This meeting is also available for public observation via streamed webcast, both live and on-demand, on the BBG’s public website

Read more about Broadcasting Board of Governors (April 2012)

Netflix CEO’s Comcast Complaints Draw in FCC

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings’ complaints about Comcast’s Web traffic policies appear to have drawn attention from the Federal Communications Commission, which says it is monitoring the situation.

The FCC said late April 16 it “takes seriously any allegations of violations of our open Internet rules.” Currently, the FCC’s Open Internet rules allow for Internet service providers to treat traffic moving over their private Internet networks differently to traffic on public networks. But the FCC has acknowledged, in December 2010 when it outlined its rules about what it calls the Open Internet, that there are risks involved with allowing Internet service providers to provide “specialized services,” which “share capacity with broadband Internet access service over providers’ last-mile facilities.” The FCC said then that the Open Internet “may be weakened” if Internet-service providers “constrict or fail to continue expanding network capacity” allocated to other Internet services, and instead simply provide more capacity for their specialized services. If that occurs and if those services grow as “substitutes for the delivery of content, applications, and services over broadband Internet access service,” the FCC wrote, “the Internet may wither as an open platform for competition, innovation, and free expression.”

Benton

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