December 2012

They Know What You're Shopping For

The widening ability to associate people's real-life identities with their browsing habits marks a privacy milestone, further blurring the already unclear border between our public and private lives. In pursuit of ever more precise and valuable information about potential customers, tracking companies are redefining what it means to be anonymous. The use of real identities across the Web is going mainstream at a rapid clip.

A Wall Street Journal examination of nearly 1,000 top websites found that 75% now include code from social networks, such as Facebook's "Like" or Twitter's "Tweet" buttons. Such code can match people's identities with their Web-browsing activities on an unprecedented scale and can even track a user's arrival on a page if the button is never clicked. In separate research, the Journal examined what happens when people logged in to roughly 70 popular websites that request a login and found that more than a quarter of the time, the sites passed along a user's real name, email address or other personal details, such as username, to third-party companies. One major dating site passed along a person's self-reported sexual orientation and drug-use habits to advertising companies.

On Legacy iPhones and Cannibalization

By continuing to sell legacy iPhones after the debut of the device’s latest iteration, Apple, which has long catered to the higher end of the markets it plays in, is extending its reach to price-sensitive consumers. That’s a great way to spur iPhone adoption, but is it a source of cannibalization as well?

While offering consumers legacy iPhones for lower prices might limit the number of full-priced iPhones Apple can sell, it’s pretty clear that it is also bringing customers that might not have otherwise purchased an iPhone into Apple’s ecosystem. And presumably a few will stay there — assuming the iPhone retains its current appeal or isn’t surpassed by another device and platform. Better to have consumers buy legacy iPhones at cheaper prices than competing smartphones on rival platforms.

Apple Joins Google in $500 Million-Plus Bid for Kodak Patents

Apple and Google have joined forces to offer more than $500 million to buy Eastman Kodak’s patents out of bankruptcy, said two people with knowledge of the situation.

The two companies, competing for dominance of the smartphone market, have partnered after leading two separate consortia this summer to buy Kodak’s 1,100 imaging patents, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private. Unlikely partnerships are typical in patent sales because they allow competitors to neutralize potential infringement litigation. The Apple-led group pursuing Kodak’s patents included Microsoft and Intellectual Ventures Management as of this summer, the people said, while Google’s consortium included patent aggregation firm RPX Corp. and Asian manufacturers of Google’s Android phones.

USPTO may invalidate another of Apple's key multitouch patents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued a first Office action declaring all twenty claims of one of Apple's key multitouch patents invalid. The decision isn't final, but Apple will have its work cut out for it in order to overturn the initial ruling before it's set in stone.

US Patent #7,479,949, claiming a "[t]ouch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics," essentially covers iOS's ability to respond when a user is trying to scroll vertically in a document, or trying to move around within the document in multiple directions. It also covers iOS's ability to discern the difference between swiping among images in a gallery, or panning or zooming within the image. The patent is sometimes referred to as the "Steve Jobs patent," as Jobs' name is listed first among the many Apple engineers cited as inventors of the patented claims.

How Amazon's All-You-Can-Scroll Kindle Content Is Bad For Kids

Amazon has enabled something that on the surface sounds great for kids: A child-centered service that runs alongside a family's Kindle Prime membership and gives kids aged 3 to 8 unlimited access to Prime content on a Kindle Fire tablet. But even in this enlightened digital age there's a clear question whether unlimited content is more than kids can handle.

They Want to do What Now? The FCC’s Media Ownership Proposal

[Commentary] An issue that has been simmering in Washington has finally boiled up to the surface. And, no, we’re not talking about the fiscal cliff. This issue is media ownership in the U,S. As longtime Headlines readers know, this has been a recurring, major issue, especially in the last ten years or so. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to wrap up a review of its ownership rules as is required by law every four years. This particular review began in 2010 and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hoped to complete the proceeding by the end of 2012, but that ain’t gonna happen.

Facebook Likely to End Experiment With Democracy

A half-million Facebook users have told the social network they do not want the company to change its privacy policy. Sounds impressive, right? Well, the only way that crowd will get its way and the status quo remain intact is if an additional 300 million people vote thumbs down before Dec 10. Odds of that happening? About zero.

But the really interesting change is that Facebook is proposing to end this system of direct voting, which was implemented in early 2009 after a major privacy flap. The problem was that more than 30 percent of all Facebook users had to vote against a proposal for it to be binding. In the last vote, in June, the no’s outweighed the yeses by a ratio of six to one, but the total votes were less than one half of 1 percent of the users. That made the vote simply advisory. And so Facebook went ahead and implemented the changes anyway.

Pay Wall Push: Why Newspapers Are Hopping Over the Picket Fence

When The Wall Street Journal broke the news that The Washington Post was likely to start charging for online content sometime next year, it should not have come as a surprise, but it did.

The shock had something to do with the certainty that Donald Graham, chairman of the Washington Post Company, has always displayed on the subject. He has long had serious reservations about putting the work of his company’s journalists behind a wall. But now The Post is contemplating a model in which the homepage and section fronts will be free, but the rest will require a subscription, which is a pretty nifty way to allow for snacking while hoping that people stick around to eat. So what changed? Everything and nothing. The Post, give or take elections, is still a regional business. But the newspaper has been working the cost side of the ledger relentlessly and reaching diminishing returns. New revenue had to become part of the picture at some point.

DC Federal Appeals Court Extends Comment Deadline in Network Neutrality Challenge

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has granted Verizon and MetrocPCS' request for two more weeks beyond its previous Dec. 6 deadline to file reply briefs in their challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's open Internet order, as well as a few more words to make their case. The court extended the deadline for the briefs to Dec. 21 and replies to those replies on Jan. 4, with final briefs Jan. 18. The court has yet to schedule oral argument.

NTIA Suspends EAGLE-Net Broadband Construction

The National Telecommunications and Information Administration has temporarily suspended the EAGLE-Net Alliance's broadband build-out, to schools and libraries, which is being partially underwritten by stimulus funding under NTIA's Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP).

"Yesterday, EAGLE-Net Alliance (ENA) was instructed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to temporarily suspend current construction activity while we provide them additional information about our project," the alliance said. "We take this very seriously and are working closely with the NTIA to provide this information in order to resume construction as quickly as possible." But ENA suggested it was not a big deal anyway. "Although construction has been temporarily postponed, it was already winding down for the 2012 build schedule. Our non-construction related operations will not be affected." “NTIA has suspended the project and required EAGLE-Net to stop work in order to address concerns about its adherence to environmental and cultural resources requirements," said Anthony Wilhelm, who heads up the BTOP broadband stimulus funding program. "Our expectation is that ENA will resolve these issues so that the project can quickly resume and continue to deliver broadband benefits to communities statewide."

Benton

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