June 2014

For Email Newsletters, a Death Greatly Exaggerated

[Commentary] E-mail a radical publishing technology that is catching on in news media companies big and small. Email newsletters, an old-school artifact of the web that was supposed to die along with dial-up connections, are not only still around, but very much on the march. How can that be?

With social media, mobile apps and dynamic websites that practically stalk the reader, how can something that sometimes gets caught in a spam filter really be taking off? Newsletters are clicking because readers have grown tired of the endless stream of information on the Internet, and having something finite and recognizable show up in your inbox can impose order on all that chaos.

Samsung fails to eliminate Chinese labour violations

Samsung Electronics’ Chinese suppliers have continued to commit legal and safety violations that the company had vowed to eliminate by the end of 2012, the technology company revealed.

In its annual “sustainability report”, Samsung divulged the results of an independent audit that it commissioned after admitting violations by its suppliers in September 2012. Working conditions have become a vulnerable point for the group, the world’s largest technology company by sales, which has been hit by a series of damaging allegations about its Chinese supply chain from the non-profit group China Labor Watch. Separately, South Korean courts have determined a link between some Samsung employees’ working conditions and subsequent terminal illness, sparking controversy in the company’s home market.

EU slams US over Microsoft privacy case

A US attempt to force Microsoft to hand over emails held on servers in Ireland has drawn a strong rebuke from Brussels in one of the first tests of cross-border privacy raised by cloud computing.

The US demand could contravene international law and should have been handled through the official channels normally used for law enforcement between different regions, according to Viviane Reding, vice-president of the European Commission. The demand for information held in a different location from the people it relates to could “hurt the competitiveness of US cloud providers in general”, Microsoft warned in a lawsuit challenging the order this year.

BT baffled by nationwide broadband failure

BT has apologised after customers across much of the UK suffered Internet connection problems on June 28. The company, which provides broadband to seven million UK subscribers, was unable to say how many customers had been affected by the outage nor what had caused the problem. Downdetector, a website that monitors broadband services said outage reports originated mainly from London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow as well as other towns and cities across the UK.

Stung by Supreme Court, Aereo Suspends Service

Aereo, the start-up firm that threatened to upend the television industry, has hit the pause button.

Three days after the Supreme Court ruled that Aereo had violated copyright laws by capturing broadcast signals on miniature antennas and transmitting them to subscribers for a fee, the company suspended its service.

“We have decided to pause our operations temporarily as we consult with the court and map out our next steps,” Chet Kanojia, Aereo’s chief executive, said.

Aereo said that the service would not be available after 11:30 a.m. on June 28 and that it would give users a refund for their last paid month. The company had fewer than 500,000 subscribers in about a dozen metropolitan areas.

The good, the bad and the Aereo

[Commentary] Some initial thoughts on the Aereo decision:

It seems pretty remarkable, given how Aereo came to be in the first place, that the only mention of the Cablevision remote-DVR case in the court’s 6-3 ruling comes in the dissent.
Legal scholar James Grimmelmann told the website Vox “the reasoning of Cablevision is dead.” How long before the broadcasters’ decide to test that proposition by going after cloud DVRs?
Bad cases make bad law, and Aereo is a case in point. Notwithstanding its self-conscious pose as a champion of (now martyr to) innovation, there was nothing particularly innovative about what Aereo did or how it did it, apart from the legally innovative workaround to copyright law on which it based its business model.

[Sweeting is Principal, Concurrent Media]

Broadcasters buy time after Aereo defeat

In ruling against Aereo, the US Supreme Court may have just bought broadcasters more time.

With Aereo announcing in a tweet that it would pause operations, questions linger as to what similar -- but legal -- alternatives will come to consumers who want to divorce their cable companies and still get reliable local TV. One can always monkey around with rabbit-ear antennas.

But broadcasters will be better served if they take the initiative to further develop their streaming options for those without cable, says Richard Doherty, technical director for the Envisioneering Group, a tech consulting firm.

"Broadcasters have their mandate, and they're under attack (by upstarts)." The nation's broadcasters have been given free spectrum to deliver free over-the-air broadcasts and have a responsibility to "make it easier for people to get their stuff," Doherty says. If they don't, "I dare say, people inside the Beltway may decide it for them."

The TV networks have a case of the Innovator's Dilemma here. Push forward with live streaming on their own, and they stand to trigger the ire of cable and satellite distributors that pay dearly to distribute their content. Ignore the savvy cord-cutters who vent on Twitter their frustration at the lack of streaming options, and the networks will increasingly come to look like slumbering giants interested only in retaining revenue streams.

Is the Aereo decision a setback for innovation?

[Commentary] One of the big questions preceding the Supreme Court’s decision in the Aereo case earlier was whether a holding against Aereo would put cloud services into such a legally precarious position that the innovation and investment climate would chill.

While the decision clearly makes Aereo’s use of its technology illegal, one should not be too quick to foretell a drastic impact on all hosted services. Since the court found that Aereo’s service was “substantially similar” to cable systems, Aereo, its successors, or other players in the space could look to monetize the technology while paying the compulsory licenses that Section 111 of the Copyright Act spells out in dizzying complexity.

Or the broadcasters and other content stakeholders could acquire Aereo-like technology and use it to supplement the other means of content delivery currently at play.

In either scenario, the needs for investment and innovation in providing infrastructure (as well as the need for clarity on network neutrality) remain firmly intact. The court’s decision expands the class of online intermediaries who may be liable for direct copyright infringement. In that respect, the case differs from other important technology-provider copyright cases like the Betamax case, Grokster and the Cablevision case.

After Supreme Court Ruling, Aereo’s Rivals in TV Streaming Seize Opening

The day after the Supreme Court ruled against Aereo in a copyright case brought by the nation’s major broadcasters, Mark Ely was trying to scoop up Aereo customers by promoting his start-up, Simple.TV, on social media.

“Former Aereo customer? Join the Simple.TV Family,” the company wrote on Twitter. “We’re telling Aereo customers: ‘Your favorite service is going away. Here’s an idea that isn’t,’ ” Ely, who started his company in 2011, said.

The television establishment still has much to worry about after its Supreme Court victory over Aereo, the digital start-up that had threatened to upend the economics of the media business. “Television is a castle filled with money,” said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief strategy and innovation officer at Vivaki, the Publicis Groupe’s digital marketing unit. “People are trying to get into that castle and take some money.”

Eager for a piece of the $167 billion American television market, dozens of companies are offering options for the growing number of viewers known as cord cutters, who are canceling their traditional pay-television subscriptions. The providers range from Hulu, which the broadcasters own, to bigger services like Amazon, Google and Netflix, all of which offer cheaper streaming alternatives.

NBC, Dish Talks Ease Tensions Over Ad-Skipping

Dish Network is in discussions with NBC over Dish's ad-skipping digital video recorder, say people familiar with the situation, the latest sign that a two-year-old standoff between Dish and major broadcasters is easing.

While the talks are under way, NBC has put its lawsuit against Dish on hold, the people say. NBC is one of three major networks still in litigation with Dish over several features on its "Hopper" digital video recorder, including one that makes it easier to automatically skip commercials.

In early March Dish settled a lawsuit over the same issue with Walt Disney's ABC as part of a broader deal in which Dish renewed its right to carry Disney-owned TV networks on its satellite TV service.

It's unclear whether NBC and Dish are anywhere near close to resolving their differences, but the mere fact that the talks are under way at all highlights how the ground may be shifting in the long-running battle between the broadcasters and Dish. The Supreme Court ruling on Aereo may become a factor, as some lawyers say the ruling could complicate Dish's legal case.

Benton

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