May 2012

Ex-Sun editor cites EU rules against BSkyB

A familiar voice will be raised in complaint over the way television rights to English football are sold, as Kelvin MacKenzie says he plans to report British Sky Broadcasting and the Football League to Ofcom, the broadcasting regulator.

The former editor of The Sun also dismissed the tender process announced by the Premier League as a “racket” that would do nothing to reduce what he claims are anti-competitive conditions that disadvantage broadcasters such as his own new Sports Tonight business. MacKenzie is usually a supporter of companies such as BSkyB that are controlled by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and he is more accustomed to being a scourge of Ofcom and its European counterparts. But now, as the founder of a small sport-focused TV channel, he claims BSkyB’s deal with the Football League is anti-competitive, constitutes “warehousing” – overpaying for rights which are then never used – and breaches European Union directives.

KPN Jumps After America Movil Makes $3.4 Billion Offer

America Movil SAB, the wireless carrier owned by the world’s richest man, Carlos Slim, offered 2.6 billion euros ($3.4 billion) to increase a stake in Royal KPN NV in its biggest investment outside Latin America.

KPN jumped as much as 22 percent to 7.94 euros after America Movil, which already has a 4.8 percent holding in the largest Dutch phone operator, offered 8 euros a share to boost the stake to as much as 28 percent. The alliance will pave way for agreements such as roaming, marketing and joint purchasing, America Movil Chief Financial Officer Carlos Garcia-Moreno said. Slim, 72, is taking advantage of Europe’s debt crisis to find bargains there, fulfilling a plan to expand beyond his Latin American phone empire. The KPN offer follows failed attempts in the past decade to enter Spain and Italy, and Mexico City-based America Movil also considered purchases in the past 18 months in Poland and Serbia.

Trans-Pacific trade talks latest IP battleground

Intellectual property proponents are looking to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement talks opening this week to help thwart growing trade in counterfeit goods and content overseas — and to reclaim the messaging from protesters framing IP protection as a threat to Internet freedom.

Supporters of TPP are trying to get out in front of the talks to counter opposition groups following an EU leader’s admission that a global anti-counterfeiting pact is unlikely to be ratified after months of protests. “Right now, the trade agreements are the best and most active ways to raise the global profile of intellectual property,” said Steven Tepp, chief intellectual property counsel for the Chamber of Commerce’s Global IP Center. Tepp decried “fringe groups opposed to IP” that helped discredit the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, an accord that sought international standards for IP rights enforcement, by framing it as another SOPA and making it a cause célèbre for the Internet freedom set.

Campaign Text-Donation Plan Gets a New Push

Political campaigns are already raising millions of dollars via the Internet. Now, two political consulting firms are pushing a bipartisan plan to make online giving even easier by letting cellphone users make small donations with a single text.

Federal election law currently bars text-message donations, but officials are weighing a shift. "There's no rational reason that campaign contributions should not be part of the texting industry," said Craig Engle, an election-law attorney at Arent Fox who helped develop the plan. If the idea goes through, candidates could urge supporters to text a word, like "donate," to a five-digit number. Then a fixed amount—generally in the range of $5 to $20—would be billed to the donor's cellphone account. The Federal Election Commission is expected to make a decision in June.

Cable TV Ads All But Catch Broadcast for the First Time

Ad spending on cable is now on par with that allocated to broadcast TV, according to data from Nielsen.

Ad spending on English-language cable-TV networks came to about $21 billion in 2011, roughly even with ad spending on English-language broadcast networks' $21.1 billion, according to Nielsen. The figures mark the first time, according to the market-research company, that cable has achieved parity of a sort with its longtime rival. Spending on cable TV has increased steadily over the last few years, up 42% since 2007. How did cable achieve its growth? The medium has matured, developing more original, quality programming, and winning greater share of audience.

Bill Would Have Businesses Foot Cost Of Cyberwar

Business executives and national security leaders are of one mind over the need to improve the security of the computers that control the U.S. power grid, the financial system, water treatment facilities and other elements of critical U.S. infrastructure. But they divide over the question of who bears responsibility for that effort.

The disagreement stands as an obstacle to passage of major cybersecurity legislation backed by senators Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), among others. Many intelligence and security officials who worked under President George W. Bush, as well as those serving under President Obama, are backing stricter government regulation of cybersecurity, a key part of the Lieberman-Collins legislation. Business leaders, however, generally oppose those provisions. "The major concern is the vast regulatory structure that would be set up at the Department of Homeland Security," says Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, an association of major U.S. companies with interests in the cybersecurity debate.

Senate Confirms FCC Nominees

The Senate on Monday approved the nominations of Republican Ajit Pai and Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel to serve on the Federal Communications Commission.

The two nominees were approved by unanimous consent. Pai is a former FCC attorney who served on the staff of Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) when he was a senator. Rosenworcel served for many years as the communications counsel for the Senate Commerce Committee, now led by Rockefeller. She also worked for former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps (D). Pai said he is "honored" to take his place at the FCC. Rosenworcel's one-time boss at the FCC, former acting FCC chairman and commissioner Michael Copps (D) said he was "pleased" that the Senate had confirmed "two especially well-qualified individuals." Copps said Rosenworcel, who served as his senior legal advisor, "brings a breadth and depth of telecom knowledge" he called "remarkable and, perhaps, unparalleled."

Google infringed on Oracle copyrights, jury finds, but leaves key question unanswered

A federal jury found that Google's popular Android mobile software infringes on copyrights held by tech rival Oracle, but it deadlocked on the question of whether Google was excused under the legal concept of "fair use.''

While rejecting some allegations brought by Oracle, the jury found that the code in two files and the structure and design of certain elements in Android, known as Application Programming Interfaces or APIs, were substantially similar to APIs used in Oracle's copyrighted Java programming tools. But jurors were unable to reach a unanimous verdict on Google's argument that using the APIs was justified under a legal concept that permits "fair use'' of short excerpts from a copyrighted work under certain circumstances. That leaves a mixed result in the case: Google's attorney immediately moved for a mistrial on the API question, which is key to the bulk of Oracle's claim for nearly $1 billion in damages. U.S. District Judge William Alsup asked for both sides to file arguments on that motion later this week, but he did not say when he will rule.

Just-in-time Information through Mobile Connections

The rapid adoption of cell phones and, especially, the spread of internet-connected smartphones are changing people’s communications with others and their relationships with information. Users’ ability to access data immediately through apps and web browsers and through contact with their social networks is creating a new culture of real-time information seekers and problem solvers. The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project has documented some of the ways that people perform just-in-time services with their cell phones. A new nationally representative survey by the Pew Internet Project has found additional evidence of this just-in-time phenomenon.

Some 70% of all cell phone owners and 86% of smartphone owners have used their phones in the previous 30 days to perform at least one of the following activities:

Coordinate a meeting or get-together -- 41% of cell phone owners have done this in the past 30 days.
Solve an unexpected problem that they or someone else had encountered -- 35% have used their phones to do this in the past 30 days.
Decide whether to visit a business, such as a restaurant -- 30% have used their phone to do this in the past 30 days.
Find information to help settle an argument they were having -- 27% have used their phone to get information for that reason in the past 30 days.
Look up a score of a sporting event -- 23% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days.
Get up-to-the-minute traffic or public transit information to find the fastest way to get somewhere -- 20% have used their phone to get that kind of information in the past 30 days.
Get help in an emergency situation -- 19% have used their phone to do that in the past 30 days.

Sen Franken to FCC, DOJ: Do Better Job of Enforcing Comcast/NBCU Conditions

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), long a Comcast/NBCU and general media concentration critic, wrote to the Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice to say that the government needs to better monitor and enforce the conditions it applied in the Comcast/NBCU deal -- including public interest conditions from the FCC and competition-related conditions, including network neutrality, levied by DOJ in its settlement with the companies. He also took the opportunity to say that given what he argues has been "Comcast's questionable compliance record to date and its penchant for challenging all conditions-related complaints," he doubts the FCC can impose sufficient behavioral conditions on Comcast's and other cable operators' proposed sale of spectrum to Verizon to prevent future competitive harms, a deal he has also been critical of.

Benton

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