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  2. December 2013

December 2013

Musicians hoping Pandora will join royalty-fee cause

Musicians battling for higher royalty payments from radio stations are lobbying former rival Pandora to join their cause. Pandora, the Internet radio company, abandoned its effort to convince Congress to lower its royalty fees.

The lobbying push had made it an enemy of advocacy groups pressing for royalty payments for musicians. Now the musician groups hope Pandora will help it press Congress to eliminate an exemption from royalty fees for AM/FM radio stations. The two sides have compelling joint interests. Musicians want the royalty fees, and Pandora wants a more level playing ground with AM/FM stations.

(Nov 30)

The Big Ten’s Bigger Footprint

Forbes magazine recently proclaimed the Big Ten conference the “cash king” of college sports. The conference generated $315 million in revenue in the fiscal year ended in June 2012, the most of any conference, and was expected to reward most of its member schools with a split of $25.7 million each the next year. The primary source of the money has been television -- most of it coming from a lucrative contract that Jim Delany, the Big Ten’s commissioner, negotiated with ESPN and from the conference’s own cable network, which Delany was mostly responsible for creating in 2007.

Delany was among the first to recognize the influence of cable, then satellite. His biggest coup has been the creation of the Big Ten Network, which is expected to produce $270 million of revenue in 2013 for the conference and its schools. And yet, for all of the TV money now in college sports, according to a recent Moody’s study, 90 percent of athletic departments at public schools require subsidies from their universities to meet their budgets. Even as the TV ratings grow, the National Collegiate Athletic Association, college sports’ governing body, faces mounting litigation and questions about the core purpose of college athletics, most prominently: Who should benefit from all of the money that college sports generate? And why do most athletic departments still run at a deficit? As Delany pushes the Big Ten into the New York and Washington metropolitan areas, he acknowledges the issues but says, “I’d rather have the problem of too much money than too little.” (Nov 30)

South Africa’s IP lesson for America

[Commentary] The US is not alone in struggling with the right policy for intellectual property. Here, the big questions revolve around the gobbling up of large numbers of patents by aggregators who aren’t innovators. But in developing nations, the questions are far more basic.

In September 2013, the South African Department of Trade and Industry issued a 44-page draft National Policy on Intellectual Property. It has become the subject of heated discussion. The policy, which could become the basis of legislation, proceeds from the premise that as a developing economy, South Africa should be able to suspend or abrogate the IP rights of patent holders from richer nations so that South Africans can make use of their inventors at low, or no, cost. Special targets are pharmaceutical and software Internet Protocol. What’s happening in South Africa is a good lesson for developed nations as well. In today’s world, IP policy counts. It can’t be held hostage to short-term political considerations or sloppy economics.

(Nov 29)

The US now has over 83 million broadband subscribers

Slowly and surely, the US is inching towards the 100 million broadband subscriber milestone. Latest figures compiled by Leichtman Research Group show that about 83.5 million folks buy broadband access from major cable and telecom companies. The data doesn’t include the number of users who subscribe to satellite broadband, wireless broadband or are customers of independent service providers. During the three months ending September 30, 2013, data shows that these big companies added a little over 520,000 new broadband connections, a majority of them going to Comcast and other cable companies that are selling faster connections compared to their phone company counterparts. Many cable company executives in recent days have said that folks are opting for their broadband-only services instead of paying for traditional television services.

  • The top cable companies accounted for 84% of the net broadband additions for the quarter and added about 440,000 subscribers.
  • AT&T and Verizon added 828,000 fiber subscribers (via U-verse and FiOS) in 3Q 2013, while having a net loss of 798,000 DSL subscribers.

(Nov 29)

The US Army got caught pirating $180 million in software. It’s settling for $50 million.

For the Army to function, it needs to keep track of where its soldiers are deployed. So in 2004, it hired a software company to help locate its units down to their exact positions, even if they were in a moving transport vehicle. The Army allegedly liked the solution so much that it wound up installing the program thousands of times more than it was supposed to -- and didn't pay for it. Oops. Now the government is handing Apptricity $50 million to settle the developer's copyright infringement case, a fraction of what the government would actually owe based on the number of missing licenses. (Nov 29)

Bloomberg Code Keeps Articles From Chinese Eyes

In early 2011, during a period of heightened tension between the Chinese government and foreign journalists, Bloomberg News created coding to give editors the ability to categorize stories under a new class, called 204. Such stories would not show up on Bloomberg terminals in mainland China.

Managers did this after Chinese officials stressed to top editors in Hong Kong that the license granted to Bloomberg by the State Council allowed the company to publish only financial data and news on its terminals, not political news, employees said. Within Bloomberg, the code has its critics. “I think of this as self-censorship,” said one journalist, who added that editors choose to apply the code to any article that might offend senior Chinese officials. The code’s defenders, though, explained to their colleagues in internal conversations that Bloomberg must abide by the definition of its State Council license -- or at least by the narrowest definition put forward by Chinese officials. Two Bloomberg spokespeople have declined to comment on the code.

(Nov 29)

Data proves we pay for things on mobile, but we're still nervous about security

Jumio, a young firm backed by Facebook billionaire Eduardo Saverin, has just published research on how consumers are using their mobile devices to pay for things.

Among the data are two key facts: We're using our smartphones to pay for all sorts of goods and services, and, at the same time, we're aware of the security risks those transactions carry. While 60% of consumers surveyed plan to use their smartphones or tablets "even more" in the future to "conduct important activities" like banking, bills, service management and so on, only 48% of people currently use their device to check bank details and 32% pay bills online.

(Nov 29)

NFL TV blackout rule flagged by lawmakers

Lawmakers and regulators are pushing back on behalf of consumers in the battle over sports blackouts -- where fans have their television access blocked if the local team doesn’t sell out.

At the center of the controversy is a 1975 Federal Communications Commission regulation that prevents pay-TV operators from airing a sporting event if it is blacked out on local TV stations. Such blackouts are drawing increased scrutiny from Washington policy makers concerned that high ticket prices put games out of the reach of many consumers and that the FCC rule isn’t keeping pace with the explosion of new ways people consume sports, including on iPads and other devices. Recent “retransmission” disputes between media giants -- like the kind that pitted CBS against Time Warner Cable earlier this year -- have also threatened consumers with programming blackouts in major cities, sparking further public backlash against the practice. (Nov 28)

Broadband firms set to get easier sewer access across Europe in upcoming rule change

Broadband rollouts in parts of Europe are likely to get substantially cheaper and easier, after a committee of the European Parliament backed plans to encourage access to existing infrastructure.

When you’re laying fiber in the ground, it’s a bit of a no-brainer to do it in ducts that already exist -- sewage pipes and drainage systems, for example -- particularly as most of the cost of a rollout lies in civil works. Countries such as the UK and France already promote this kind of infrastructure-sharing, but now the same idea seems set to spread across the EU. The European Parliament’s industry committee said it had just approved a draft law that would give broadband firms the right to “access ‘promptly’, via a single information point, at least information on the location, route, size, type and current use, name of owner and a contact point for existing infrastructure.”

(Nov 29)

Google's privacy policy violates Dutch data protection law, Dutch DPA says

Google's practice of combining personal data from different Google services violates the Dutch data protection act, the Dutch data protection authority (DPA) said. But Google will not face any enforcement actions for now.

In March 2012, Google introduced a new privacy policy that allows Google to share personal data across all its products and services. However, Google made the changes without having adequately informed users, and without asking for their consent, the Dutch DPA said. "The investigation shows that Google does not properly inform users which personal data the company collects and combines, and for what purposes," it said. By doing this, Google "spins an invisible web of our personal data, without our consent," which is forbidden by law, the DPA said. Just inviting users to agree to a general privacy policy and terms of service does not suffice, the Dutch DPA said. "It is almost impossible not to use Google services on the Internet," the DPA said.

(Nov 28)

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