April 2012

Google Fiber in Kansas City Makes Hollywood Nervous

In 2010 Google announced plans to bring super-high-speed Internet access to select communities in America and in 2011 picked Kansas City to start. The search giant has said it hopes to spur innovation among cable companies and Internet service providers by demonstrating what’s possible with Internet speeds 100 times faster than the U.S. average. The project could also foreshadow dramatic changes for Hollywood, both because of the specter of piracy and Google’s possible experiments with new ways to distribute content legally.

Google Fiber spokeswoman Jenna Wandres stresses that Google Fiber isn’t meant to empower pirates: “We hope higher speeds will actually make it easier to deliver and download more authorized content,” she says. Nonetheless, Howard Gantman, spokesman for the Motion Picture Association of America, notes that piracy is always a concern of the entertainment industry. Google Fiber “could be a great opportunity for consumers whose access to creative content is often hampered by slow speeds,” he says. But in South Korea, “the home entertainment marketplace was decimated by digital piracy” enabled by the widespread availability of high-speed Internet.

FTC Hires Ex-Fannie Mae Counsel to Run Google Probe

The Federal Trade Commission hired a top Washington litigator to run its antitrust investigation of Google, signaling the agency may be preparing a lawsuit against the world’s largest search engine. The FTC is bringing in Beth Wilkinson, a partner with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, who is known for winning the death sentence against Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and litigating for companies including Pfizer and Philip Morris International General counsel of Fannie Mae from 2006 to 2008, Wilkinson, 49, had never lost a case she tried through mid-2010, according to the National Law Journal.

Google Street View Investigation by U.S. Declared Closed

Google said the Justice Department closed an investigation last May into the company’s use of specially equipped autos that collected wireless data for its Street View project. Google’s disclosure about the inquiry was in a filing with the Federal Communications Commission April 26. The FCC proposed on April 13 fining the owner of the largest search engine for delaying the commission’s probe into improper data collection. The Justice Department concluded last year that “it would not pursue a case for violation of the Wiretap Act,” Google said today in the FCC filing. The company said it “acted in good faith at all times” and will pay the FCC’s $25,000 penalty “to put this investigation behind it.”

Amazon Kindle Fire is 54.4% of US Android tablets

Amazon's Kindle Fire now makes up the absolute majority of the Android tablet platform in the US, comScore found in a fresh study. The e-reader and tablet crossover represented 54.4 percent of all Android tablets sold in the country.

At second place, the entire Samsung Galaxy Tab lineup comprised just 15.4 percent of Android slates. No other manufacturer got above 10 percent, with Google's reference tablet, the Motorola Xoom, stopping at seven percent. Despite its size as a company, Sony only netted 0.7 percent for the Tablet S. The share was a virtual doubling of the Kindle Fire's stake from December and had seen every other manufacturer's share shrink as a result. Researchers didn't attempt to explain the shift, but the increasing bias suggested that the $199 price was again the determining factor and that devices trying to compete more directly in the iPad's price and category sold in low numbers.

DirecTV Complains To FCC on Tribune

DirecTV has accused creditors of Tribune Company of taking control of certain local television stations without getting a green light from regulators, escalating the latest spat over TV-programming costs.

The satellite-TV company filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission asking it to intervene in the dispute, which is over the fees DirecTV pays to carry Tribune's 23 TV stations in 19 cities. The stations, which include affiliates of the CW and Fox networks, have been blacked out on DirecTV's service since the weekend. Fox is owned by News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal, while CW is jointly owned by CBS and Time Warner.

The UN, Internet Regulator?

[Commentary] Mayan prophecy predicts that the world will end on Dec. 21, 2012, but Internet users should be more worried about what will happen just a few weeks before. The World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) meets in Dubai Dec. 3-14 to consider proposals that would grant authority for Internet governance to the United Nations and impose new regulations on Web traffic.

If adopted, these proposals could upend the Web as we know it, undermining it as an engine for growth and dynamism for the world. Since 1988, the Internet has been governed by private bodies. ICANN, which manages domain names under the rather benevolent oversight of the U.S., is fully devoted to multiple-stakeholder participation. Government representatives only sit on an "advisory committee," while business and civil society shape the rules. However, recent events (such as the controversial creation of a dedicated .xxx domain for adult content and Icann's plan to expand top-level domains) have created concerns among national governments—even those, such as the U.S. and the European Union, that remain fully committed to protecting the multiple-stakeholder model.

Oracle, Google suit: Details of Google’s first phone released

Details of the first prototype Google phone surfaced in court in the trial over whether Google improperly used Oracle’s Java programming language to build Android. The original prototype featured a full keyboard, small landscape screen, 2 MP camera and a miniSD card for storage. Google pitched the phone to T-Mobile in 2006, according to a report from Slashgear, and had even had plans to subsidize the cost of customers’ unlimited data plans to give them service for $9.99 per month. The result looked something like a BlackBerry or the “Facebook phone,” the HTC Status, which has a full keyboard and small touchscreen, though with only 64 MB of RAM and a much worse display. The prototype’s specs may look anemic now, but would have been impressive in 2006.

Facebook teams with security outfits to blacklist malicious URLs

As it closes in on 1 billion users, Facebook has formed partnerships with five security software outfits to crack down on pfishing schemes. Facebook said that Microsoft, McAfee, Trend Micro, Sophos and Symantec will join the fight to keep its users from sharing links to sites that install malware. Facebook also has its own tools in its arsenal and a vast database of malicious URLs.

White House tech official: No need to ‘sacrifice privacy for cybersecurity’

The White House remains ready to work with Congress on cybersecurity legislation despite the veto threat issued for legislation in the House, an administration official said. Danny Weitzner, the White House’s chief technology officer for Internet policy, said the administration is opposed to the House bill partly because "we don't need to sacrifice privacy for cybersecurity."

Speaker Boehner says Obama wants government to 'control the Internet'

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) fired back at President Barack Obama after the White House threatened to veto a House cybersecurity bill. “The White House believes the government ought to control the Internet, government ought to set standards and government ought to take care of everything that’s needed for cybersecurity," Speaker Boehner said during his weekly press conference.

Speaker Boehner warned that "we can’t have the government in charge of our Internet." He said CISPA and other cybersecurity bills the House will vote on this week are "commonsense steps that will allow people to communicate with each other, to work together, to build the walls that are necessary in order to prevent cyber terrorism from occurring." "There are more steps that are going to have to be taken beyond these, but this is a fundamentally different approach than what the White House and some want to do in terms of creating this monster here in Washington that could control what we’re going to see or not see on the Internet," Speaker Boehner said.

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