July 2013

Federal Court Won't Block Dish's Hopper

A federal appeals court has declined to block Dish Network's Hopper AutoHop ad-skipping DVR function, upholding a district court's denial of a preliminary injunction.

Fox, which sued for breach of contract and copyright infringement, claims the Hopper violates copyright law and Dish's contract with the broadcaster. Fox had asked the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a California District Court's refusal to grant a preliminary injunction while the underlying suit is being decided. A three-judge panel of Ninth Circuit held that "the district court did not abuse its discretion in holding that the broadcaster failed to demonstrate a likelihood of success on its copyright infringement and breach of contract claims regarding the television provider's implementation of the commercial-skipping products." The decision was not on the merits of the case, but the court did provide some language both Dish and Fox can point to. In language that squares with Dish's and the District court's assertion that the Cablevision decision -- the ruling that remote DVR functionality was not a performance subject to copyright -- applied here.

Court says skipping ads doesn’t violate copyright. That’s a big deal.

A Q&A with James Grimmelmann, a professor at the University of Maryland Law School on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s ruling that modern digital video recorders with the ability to automatically skip commercials are permitted under copyright’s fair use doctrine.

The case pitted the satellite TV company Dish against the Fox television network. Dish had introduced a line of DVRs with two key features. The “Hopper” allows consumers to automatically skip over commercials. And the “Prime Time Anytime” feature allows consumers to automatically record prime-time shows for later viewing. In its ruling, the Ninth Circuit held that the Prime Time Anytime feature was legal under copyright’s fair use doctrine. And it held that commercial-skipping didn’t even raise copyright issues, since the features didn’t involve making copies of Fox’s content.

Initiative protests passwords and demands better ways to log in

A trio of former Pomona College students are declaring war on the password, and they’re enlisting consumers to put pressure on technology companies to adopt a more secure log-in process.

Brennen Byrne, Mark Hudnall and Jesse Pollak through their start-up Clef launched Petition Against Passwords. Though it’s already being viewed as a toothless publicity stunt, industry experts said the initiative should help consumers start to come to grips with a future in which the password isn’t at the foundation of logging into websites. Passwords can easily be cracked and they’re being stolen by hackers daily through email phishing attacks, computer viruses and snooping over shoulders.

Diginets Growing With Old Shows and New Ideas

After years of experimentation and occasional flops, the business of broadcasting specialty networks on digital subchannels is starting to draw viewers and revenue in amounts that really matter.

Nearly two dozen diginets, several with U.S. household coverage of more than 60% (see chart at bottom of story), now vie with cable networks for advertising dollars, particularly the direct response (DR) variety. Some peg the annual spend at more than $200 million. David Brenner is a partner at Marathon Ventures, a rep firm that sells ad time for a wide range of programs and networks, including NBCUniversal's Cozi and the independently owned African-American network Bounce TV. “My best estimate for combined national and local ad sales in this business in 2009 was $10 million,” Brenner says. “By 2014, it should be doing between $250 million and $300 million.” The most widely distributed diginets are Weigel’s Me-TV (84% of TV homes), MGM Television’s This TV (76%), ABC’s Live Well Network (66%), Bounce TV (61%) and Tribune’s Antenna TV (61%), according to a recent estimate by consulting firm Across Platforms.

Sports Fans Slowly Move From TV to the Internet

For sports fans, nothing beats the big screen, with 94 percent of fans watching sports on TV. However, digital media are gaining in popularity. Sixty three percent of fans went online for sports content, up from 56 percent two years ago. Mobile usage jumped too, to 35 percent from 21 percent. Meanwhile, the use of traditional media like TV and print have declined. However, the dollars aren't necessarily following the shift in consumption: only 9 percent of fans have paid to watch content online, and only slightly more (11 percent) say they're willing to do so.

FTC Finalizes Settlement in Google Motorola Mobility Case

Following a public comment period, the Federal Trade Commission approved a modified Final Order settling charges that some of Google Inc.’s business practices could stifle competition among manufacturers of electronic devices. The Final Order requires Google to abide by its commitments to license its standard-essential patents on fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory or FRAND terms.

These standard-essential patents are needed to make popular devices such as smart phones, laptop and tablet computers, and gaming consoles. The agency alleged that Google had reneged on these commitments and pursued – or threatened to pursue – injunctions and exclusion orders against companies that need to use standard-essential patents held by Google’s subsidiary, Motorola Mobility LLC (MMI), in their devices and were willing to license these patents on FRAND terms. After considering the 25 public comments that were submitted, the FTC made technical modifications to several provisions in the Order, including those pertaining to the arbitration process established to resolve disputes over FRAND terms. In a letter sent to the commenters, the agency also provided further explanation for the basis and the rationale behind several other provisions in the Google-MMI Order. The Commission vote approving the final order and the letter was 2-1-1, with Commissioner Maureen K. Ohlhausen voting no and Commissioner Joshua D. Wright recused.

House Members Urge FCC to Move on 5 GHz Wi-Fi

Reps. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Bob Latta (R-OH) sent a letter to Acting Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn urging the FCC to move swiftly to free up 195 MHz of spectrum in the 5 GHz band for unlicensed use. (That is the band cable operators already use to deliver Wi-Fi hotspots to their customers on the go.) "Given the immediate economic and consumer benefits of expanding Wi-Fi in the 5 GHz band," they wrote, "we believe the FCC should proceed expeditiously with collaborative testing of promising spectrum sharing solutions involving both incumbents and the Wi-Fi industry."

Five Fundamentals for the Phone Network Transition

Public Knowledge released its first white paper on America's phone transition titled, "."

The paper looks at the transition from a copper based infrastructure to an Internet Protocol (IP) based network. The paper explains how the phone network is transitioning into new technologies, but that does not change the needs of Americans nor does it change the responsibilities of carriers. This paper gives important background information on the history of the phone network and the policies that were enacted to bring a phone to every farm and electricity to every home. Public Knowledge's white paper shows that adhering to basic fundamental values we take for granted, could ensure that our next phone system meets the needs of American's.

The basic five fundamentals discussed in the paper are:

Service to All Americans
Competition and Interconnection
Consumer Protection
Reliability
Public Safety

AT&T is Crushing Cable: Is Super Fast Broadband Really Necessary?

If you take a look at broadband subscriber metrics over the past year, AT&T is outperforming all of the cable operators -- by a long shot.

AT&T is first to report 2Q13 numbers, during which they added 641,000 net broadband subscribers. If 2Q13 compares in any way to the previous three quarters, AT&T is crushing their faster cable competitors. For the past three quarters, AT&T has more broadband net adds than three of the top five cable companies -- Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Charter – combined. Most, if not all, of those net adds are U-Verse broadband, considering AT&T (and Verizon) lose considerable legacy DSL subscribers every quarter. AT&T’s best U-Verse offer is 24 Mbps, for now anyway. That compares with DOCSIS 3.0 offers from their cable competitors that can range from 50 Mbps to 305 Mbps, on the high end. If higher speed broadband tiers are so important, how is it AT&T is adding more broadband subscribers than three of the top five cable MSOs combined?

Report Slams Universal Service Fund Cap Methodology

In a study titled “An Economic Analysis of the FCC’s Modifications to the High-Cost Local Loop Support Mechanism,” University of Southern California professor and former Federal Communications Commission Chief Economist Simon Wilke finds that US carrier investment in broadband infrastructure has decreased as a result of caps imposed on high-cost Universal Service support.

The methodology employed by the FCC cannot be predicted in advance, making it difficult for an individual company to determine whether it is in danger of exceeding the cap. As a result, carriers are delaying or canceling planned network upgrades, Wilke said. As an alternative to the current methodology, Wilke and representatives of the three telecom association research sponsors recommended that the FCC use caps as a trigger for a further review. The research was commissioned by rural broadband association NTCA, U.S. Telecom Association and the Western Telecommunications Alliance.

Benton

Search