June 2012

Google's Motorola Mobility unit has made offers to Microsoft in hopes of settling a pair of contentious patent infringement suits in which Motorola's smartphones were using Microsoft's patented ActiveSync software, while Microsoft's Xbox 360 was using Motorola's patented video compression system.

Motorola offered to pay 33 cents to Microsoft for every smartphone it ships with ActiveSync software in order to avoid an import ban from the International Trade Commission. ActiveSync was developed by Microsoft to push e-mail and other notifications to smartphones, and in 2010 Microsoft sued the phone company (then unaffiliated with Google) for infringement. At the time Microsoft specifically accused the Droid 2 and the Charm of infringing patents. Motorola has also offered an olive branch of sorts to Microsoft, lowering its demands for licensing fees on the proprietary video compression software found on devices running Windows to 50 cents per unit that uses the software. In addition, Motorola is asking for 2.5 percent of the retail price on each Xbox 360.

Syrian rebels and Tibetan rights activists were the targets of two major cyberwarfare attacks in the past week--both of which used novel methods.

Syrian opposition members were attacked by a Skype trojan that allowed outsiders to spy on their computers, while Tibetan activists were hit by a spoofed European Union email that hid malware on their systems. The two attacks happened within days of each other, and highlight an unfortunate truth. Just as mail bombs were used in prior conflicts to silent dissidents, cyberattacks are being used in 2012. In the Tibetan attack, over 80 prominent activists in the Tibetan rights community received an email that appeared to be a copy of a June 14 European Parliament resolution on Tibetan self-immolations--a legitimate document. However, the email came from an unknown organization called the “Tibetan Welfareoffice” and was written in broken English.

If Congress were to zero-out federal appropriations to public broadcasting, 54 public television stations in 19 states and 76 public radio stations in 38 states would be at "high risk" of shutting down, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) reported in "Alternative Sources of Funding for Public Broadcasting Stations," a comprehensive revenue analysis produced by Booz & Company and delivered to Capitol Hill June 20.

Lawmakers requested the research paper in December 2011 when they approved CPB's fiscal 2014 advance appropriation for $445 million. The report identifies five new or alternative funding options for public media — TV advertising, radio advertising, retransmission consent fees, paid digital subscriptions and digital game publishing — but says none of these offer "a realistic opportunity to generate significant positive net revenue that could replace the current amount of federal funding that CPB receives." "A shift from a noncommercial model to a commercial advertising model," the report says, "would have dramatically negative consequences for many of the communities that public broadcasters serve. In the absence of federal funding, there are small urban stations, small-market stations, rural stations and stations that serve diverse communities that will likely fail because they do not have the capacity to either shift to a commercial model or raise the revenue to replace the loss of CPB funding."

Jason Kilar, chief executive officer of Hulu, said he believes the future of TV lies in a personalized viewer experience.

"When you turn on a screen, it is going to be a very unique experience for you," Kilar said. As for the future of viewing entertainment, Kilar said the most minutes of broadcasting are likely to still be consumed in a living room, but the format, he said, isn't going to matter because "television can be in your pocket with a smartphone. It can be up on a wall. It can be in a little tablet."