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The New York Times will try to make it more difficult to use Internet search engines to avoid paying for frequent visits to the newspaper's website. The Times will limit Web surfers arriving through major search engines to five free articles per day, spokeswoman Kristin Mason confirmed. That restriction was only supposed to apply to traffic sent by Google Inc.'s search engine, which processes about two out of every three online queries. Now, other search engines including Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.'s Bing will be limited to five free stories apiece as well. The Times' online fees take effect in the U.S. March 28. The Times didn't explain why it decided to expand the restrictions to other search engines.
The Times has also requested Twitter to disable FreeNYTimes, a Twitter feed started to take advantage of one of the holes in the paywall: While users are allowed only 20 pageviews a month before the wall kicks in, visits to the site via social media links are unlimited.
NY Times vs Workarounds NY Times Asks Twitter to Shut Down Paywall Dodgers (Forbes)
A paper from the London School of Economics that tries to do more than just challenge the UK's Digital Economy Act, passed last year. "Creative Destruction and Copyright Protection" argues that everything Big Content says about file sharing is wrong.
In fact, it suggests that file sharing is the future, and that revenue downturns can largely be explained by other forces. "The music industry is performing better than is being claimed and declining sales can be explained by other factors in addition to illegal filesharing," say Bart Cammaerts and Bingchun Meng of LSE's Department of Media Studies. "The negative framing of the debate about file-sharing and copyright protection threatens to stifle the very same creative industry the Act aims to stimulate."
Did file-sharing cause recording industry collapse? Economists say no
AT&T’s announcement this week that it was acquiring T-Mobile USA was touted by the companies as a move that would strengthen and expand the nation’s mobile broadband infrastructure. But industry experts are at odds on what kind of impact, if any, this union of telecom giants will have on local government customers.
Although AT&T was confident competitiveness among wireless carriers would remain after the merger, citing statistics that five or more providers are available in 18 of the top 20 U.S. markets, local government advocates remain somewhat skeptical, as just three major national cellular carriers -- Verizon Wireless, AT&T and the much smaller Sprint -- are still in the market. Gerard Lederer, an attorney with Miller and Van Eaton -- a law firm that represents clients in the areas of local government and telecommunications -- said he’s recommending that his government clients think about the budget implications the merger could have on the local level. “All of the issues that consumers face apply equally to local governments, [except that] the multiplier effect of a bad deal can be that much greater,” Lederer said.
AT&T and T-Mobile Merger Could Impact Local Government Revenue
Brands have long recognized the power of cause marketing to help them stand out from the crowd and generate consumer loyalty. They have often reached out to moms in social media to engage their support. What's new is that blogger-brand cause partnerships now go both ways: The women who are heavily involved in social media are increasingly recognizing that they themselves can use their influence to initiate change to help others.
Beyond The Swag: Bloggers Use Social Media To Do Good
According to Deloitte's fifth edition "State of the Media Democracy" survey, 71% of Americans still rate watching TV on any device among their favorite media activities.
In addition, 86% of Americans stated that TV advertising still has the most impact on their buying decisions. The survey indicates that the Internet, mobile and social media channels are enhancing the overall television viewer experience, driving people to watch first-run programs and live events during their initial broadcast. And, nearly three-quarters of American consumers are multitasking while watching TV. 42% are online, 29% are talking on cellphones or mobile devices, and 26% are sending instant messages or text messages. 61% of U.S. consumers now maintain a social networking site, where constant streams of updates and discussion forums have made delaying awareness of live TV outcomes a near impossibility.
TV Advertising Most Influential
In a move by the Nielsen Company that could spark a more drawn-out legal battle, the ratings company has accused rival comScore of infringing five patents it owns that relate to measuring and displaying online content.
In a lawsuit filed in a Virginia federal court, Nielsen names more than 30 different comScore products it believes are violating its patent rights. Nielsen sued several other ratings companies a few years ago, but has been quiet until now, as the Hollywood Reporter pointed out. Three of the five patents mentioned in this lawsuit are Nielsen’s own, and were granted in 2008 and 2009. Two other patents were granted in 2000 and 2002, and were originally owned by Jupiter Media Metrix, which used them to sue Nielsen. Nielsen settled that suit in 2002 by paying $15 million, and it acquired the two patents as part of the settlement. Nielsen is making a dangerous play by suing comScore. The most common strategy in responding to a patent attack is to sue back with one’s own patents, and that could mire both of these companies in expensive litigation if they don’t reach a quick settlement. Even if comScore doesn't have patents of its own to counter-sue with, it’s not terribly difficult to purchase patents for that purpose. Still, this is new territory for comScore; federal courts records indicate this is the first patent suit the company has faced.
Nielsen Sues comScore In The Battle Of The Audience-Measurement Firms
[Commentary] Google Books is a interesting project, and it has a bright future. But the future of books depends on Congress acting to fix the orphan works problem once and for all, for everyone. Public Knowledge looks forward to working with librarians, publishers, and authors, as well as Google and the rest of the high-tech community to do just that.
Google Books Rejection Highlights Need for Orphan Works Reform
T-Mobile has launched its dual-carrier high-speed packet access plus (HSPA+) effectively doubling data speeds over its ‘4G’ network. The capacity boost is owed more to a doubling up on bandwidth, not in the core throughput of HSPA+ technology. Essentially T-Mobile has taken two 5 MHz HSPA+ downlink carriers -- each of which can support theoretical speeds of 21 Mb/s -- and bonded them together. The distinction is important though as the fat channel gives T-Mobile a bandwidth pipe exactly the size of Verizon Wireless’ long-term evolution network (LTE). For the first time, we'll see an apples-to-apples comparison between LTE and a wideband-CDMA technology, something that was never possible between HSPA and CDMA EV-DO due to their vastly different carrier sizes.
Can T-Mobile's dual-carrier HSPA+ match Verizon's LTE?
The network chiefs of the three biggest U.S. mobile operators disagreed about some emerging network technologies during a panel discussion at CTIA Wireless but agreed that the wireless industry is in a period of major change.
"I've never seen a point in time where it's so open for innovation everywhere," AT&T CTO John Donovan said. The rapid growth of data traffic is forcing carriers to rethink the fundamental designs of their networks, and new technologies are emerging to help solve that traffic problem, he said. Wi-Fi, cloud-based network management, and policy-based controls are among those new tools, he said. Donovan and network heads from Verizon Wireless and Sprint Nextel disagreed about the practical value of specific technologies, but all cited the eventual need for more spectrum and current requirements to make more efficient use of current networks. Expanding capacity was one of AT&T's main motivations in making a deal to buy T-Mobile USA for $39 billion. Yet, two mobile network concepts that have drawn close attention recently received a generally cool reception from the big-carrier technology executives. The "lightweight radio" concept, highlighted last month with announcements by Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, is overhyped, according to Sprint Senior Vice President Bob Azzi and Verizon Communications Executive Vice President and CTO Tony Melone. Lightweight radios, such as the Ericsson Air (antenna integrated radio) and Alcatel's lightRadio concept, are designed to be much smaller and less power-hungry than current cellular base stations. The vendors hope to achieve this by centralizing some parts of the base-station gear and having the lightweight radios configure themselves. Proponents say the new radios ultimately could make cell towers unnecessary.
US carriers battle over cutting-edge network features
Verizon Communications became the second-largest cable-television provider in Massachusetts last year, with more than 280,000 customers statewide, though its growth slowed as it expanded into fewer new communities, according to figures compiled by the state. Comcast Corp. remained the state’s largest provider, with nearly 1.6 million customers, nearly six times Verizon’s tally. But Verizon, which markets the service as FiOS TV, has slowly chipped away at the market share for Comcast and other traditional cable providers. Verizon, long the state’s dominant telephone company, added more than 54,000 TV customers last year, an increase of 24 percent, to overtake Charter Communications Inc. as the number two cable provider in the state, according to numbers provided by the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable.
Verizon now Massachusetts’s 2d-largest cable-TV provider