Ars Technica

[Commentary] The network neutrality debate is a muddy one at best, with different people using the term in different ways. Regulatory enforcement of the idea would at best prove inadequate to achieve what people want.

At worst, it might even prove harmful to innovation and progress, potentially outlawing existing widespread and harmless practices. In addition, the current fixation on network neutrality happens to work to the advantage of the large incumbent Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

While they may oppose network neutrality regulations (or, indeed, any legislative or regulatory limitations on their business at all), so long as the debate centers around network neutrality, the largest ISPs can be confident that nothing will challenge their dominant market positions.

There is another way. Proven "unbundled access" schemes can provide the same perceived advantages as the "network neutrality" idea while avoiding the difficulties that network neutrality regulations could impose. The approach has been used around the world to establish competitive markets that ultimately rely on market forces rather than regulation to ensure that ISPs provide a quality service.

Legal experts say that the landmark Supreme Court decision protecting cell phone privacy does not have any immediate implications for the use of cell tracking devices, known as stingrays.

But the court’s ruling could point the way forward for future judicial consideration.

Relatively little is known about how, exactly, stingrays are used by law enforcement agencies nationwide, although new documents have recently been released showing how they have been purchased and used in some limited instances. Worse still, cops have lied to courts about their use. Not only can stingrays be used to determine location, they can also be used to intercept calls and text messages.

Brian Pascal, a research fellow at the University of California, Hastings, told Ars that he didn’t think that this new ruling would impact metadata gathered via stingrays. FBI spokesperson Christopher Allen sent Ars a recent affidavit outlining the agency's position on why so little information has been publicly disclosed.

Several of Germany's largest newspaper and magazine publishers have instituted legal proceedings against Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo.

They're seeking an order that would make the search engines pay them an 11 percent portion of their "gross sales, including foreign sales” that come “directly and indirectly from making excerpts from online newspapers and magazines public." That's according to new media pundit Jeff Jarvis, who published a blog post calling the demands "as absurd as they are cynical and dangerous" and part of a German "war on the link."

The move appears to be an attempt to achieve in courts what the publishers were not able to get through the German legislative process in 2013.

YouTube is getting ready to block music videos from artists that haven't agreed to the contract terms for its upcoming subscription service, the Financial Times reported.

The videos set to get the boot include those from independent record labels and artists including Adele and Arctic Monkeys. The new subscription service for videos will charge a monthly fee but will let users watch videos on YouTube without ads.

FT noted that the service will also allow users to watch videos "even when not connected to the Internet" on any device, suggesting some sort of pinning or downloading infrastructure to go with the platform.

Robert Kyncl, YouTube's head of content and business operations, told FT that record labels representing 90 percent of the music industry have agreed to the contract terms that include provisions for the subscription service. But YouTube will apparently not let the 10 percent that have resisted carry on as ad-supported-only videos, and Kyncl told FT that the blocking will begin in a matter of days.

In a key transparency case, a federal judge has ordered the United States government to hand over four orders and one opinion from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) published in secret between 2005 and 2008.

US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers will then review those documents in private.

The case, known as Electronic Frontier Foundation v. Department of Justice, hinges on which, if any, documents from the FISC should be made public.

The original lawsuit dates back to October 2011, when the EFF asked the government to handover “all reports, memoranda, guidance, presentations, legal briefs, e-mails or any other record” pertaining to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

The EFF and the DOJ faced off in federal court in Oakland, California in early June -- EFF attorney Mark Rumold asked the judge to review the FISC’s orders, and decide which ones must be released. The court is now moving in that direction.

[Commentary] A lot has been done to secure major Web services and Internet applications, particularly on the PC. But one of the lessons we have learned was that for every data leak that has been plugged by the major websites, another springs up on mobile.

And mobile devices are the ones that face the greatest risk of surveillance and attack -- not so much from the National Security Agency, but from companies and criminals looking to track and target individuals on a smaller scale.

Public Wi-Fi has become an integral part of how mobile devices’ apps work. Apple and Google have both configured their mobile services to leverage Wi-Fi networks to improve their location services, and mobile and broadband companies offer public (and unencrypted) Wi-Fi networks to either offload users from their cellular data networks or extend the reach of their wired network services. Comcast, for example, has been expanding its Xfinity broadband networks by turning access points at homes and businesses into public Wi-Fi hotspots for subscriber access.

That’s great for customers’ convenience, but it also opens up a potential vector of attack for anyone who wants to get in the middle of broadband users’ Internet conversations. We demonstrated one potential Wi-Fi threat during our testing -- using a rogue wireless access point broadcasting the network ID (SSID) “attwifi” prompted AT&T iPhones and Android devices with default settings to automatically connect to them.

DigitalGlobe, the only American provider of high-resolution satellite imagery, announced that it had received permission from the United States Department of Commerce to sell its “highest-quality” images.

DigitalGlobe already has two orbiting satellites that can provide images of 41 cm and 46 cm and will be able to release new images from those satellites immediately. The company has another satellite launch planned for August 2014; that satellite can image objects with a resolution of 31 cm (just over a foot). Under the new government regulations, however, DigitalGlobe won’t be able to sell imagery from the new bird until six months after launch.

The Colorado-based firm is one of the top providers of satellite images to the United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (USNGIA).

In April, ARIN, the (North) American Registry for Internet Numbers, announced that it had reached "phase 4" of its IPv4 countdown plan, with fewer than 17 million IPv4 addresses remaining.

LACNIC, the Latin American and Caribbean registry, reached a similar threshold of a little more than four million remaining IPv4 addresses.

APNIC and the RIPE NCC, Europe’s registry, will give ISPs and other network operators one last block of 1024 addresses, the rules for LACNIC are similar, and ARIN is tightening the address supply but still allows ISPs to come back for more.

In a ruling, the European Union’s General Court rejected Intel’s appeal of a €1.06 billion ($1.44 billion) penalty for antitrust violations. Instead, the EU General Court upheld the record-breaking penalty against the US computer chip giant, which had been issued in 2009 by the EU Commission.

Intel had been seeking annulment of the large penalty for what the EU Commission previously ruled to have been the company's antitrust infringement actions. But the General Court determined that Intel, the predominant player in the computer microchip market -- holding a market share of roughly 70 percent or more -- had acted anticompetitively in attempting to squeeze out AMD, its main rival, between 2002 and 2007.

Specifically, the Court explained that Intel paid bribes to a large German retail chain called Media-Saturn, so that it only stocked computers with Intel chips, rather than those using AMD’s microprocessors. This, the Court argued, constituted clear antitrust abuse. “The General Court finds that those payments were capable of making access to the mark more difficult for AMD,” and that Intel strategically chose this approach to achieve such an effect.

With Verizon struggling to bring FiOS to every corner of New York City as promised, the company has been arguing with landlords about gaining access to buildings where tenants might want to buy Verizon's fiber-based Internet, phone, and TV service.

Verizon's fiber now passes buildings in "90 percent of the Bronx, 89 percent of Brooklyn, 94 percent of Manhattan, 90 percent of Queens and virtually the entirety of Staten Island," the company says. That's short of the 100 percent Verizon was supposed to achieve by June 30, 2014 according to its franchise agreement. And the percentage of buildings where residents can actually buy FiOS is lower.

Verizon now blames Sandy but claimed it was "ahead of schedule" after the storm.

"The various percentages refer to the amount of fiber in the streets and avenues, our obligation. The numbers have nothing to do with building penetration," Verizon spokesperson John Bonomo said.

Verizon has been filing petitions with the State Public Service Commission to gain access to several hundred buildings in order to conduct pre-installation surveys and then wire up the buildings. In some cases these petitions have allowed Verizon access, but other attempts were plagued by miscommunications and mistakes.