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Old 19-02-14, 07:46 AM   #1
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Default Peer-To-Peer News - The Week In Review - February 22nd, '14

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February 22nd, 2014




Canadian Court Ruling in Teksavvy File Sharing Case a Blow to Copyright Trolls: Geist

In a decision released Thursday, the federal court granted a request for Teksavvy subscriber names connected with possible illegal file sharing but added numerous safeguards designed to discourage copyright trolling lawsuits in Canada.
Michael Geist

The outbreak of copyright trolling cases in the United States and Britain in recent years has sparked considerable anger from courts, Internet providers, and subscribers. These cases, which typically involve sending thousands of legal letters alleging copyright infringement and demanding thousands of dollars to settle, rely on ill-informed and frightened subscribers, who would rather pay the settlement than fight in court.

Canada was largely spared these cases until 2012, when Voltage Pictures, a U.S. film company, filed a lawsuit demanding that TekSavvy, a leading independent Internet provider, disclose the names and addresses of thousands of its subscribers who it claimed infringement its copyright. TekSavvy did not formally oppose the request, but it did ensure that its subscribers were informed about the lawsuit and it supported an intervention from the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic, a technology law clinic, that brought the privacy and copyright trolling concerns to the court’s attention (I sit on the CIPPIC advisory board).

The federal court issued its much-anticipated decision on Thursday, granting Voltage’s request for the subscriber names, but adding numerous safeguards designed to discourage copyright trolling lawsuits in Canada. The safeguards include court oversight of the “demand letter” that will be sent to subscribers, with a case management judge assigned to review and approve its contents before being sent to any subscriber. Moreover, the letter must include a message in bold type that “no Court has yet made a determination that such subscriber has infringed or is liable in any way for payment of damages.”

While Voltage argued that the privacy issues should not be a concern, the court was extremely troubled by the prospect of copyright trolling. It expressed fear of the “mischief” created by compelling Internet providers to reveal private information about their customers and the danger of flooding the courts with thousands of cases involving subscribers who have good defences to the alleged infringement. Further, the court noted that given recent changes to Canadian copyright law that create a $5,000 cap on liability for non-commercial infringement, the damages “may be miniscule compared to the cost, time and effort in pursuing a claim against the subscriber.”

Having cited the dangers of copyright trolling, the court ruled that where there is compelling evidence of “improper motive” of a plaintiff, it might consider denying the motion to disclose subscriber names entirely. Alternatively, if such evidence is unavailable, there are many safeguards that can be established.

In this case, the court ruled that there was some evidence that Voltage has been engaged in litigation which may have an improper purposes, but not enough to deny the motion altogether. The court therefore established safeguards such as the court oversight over the demand letter, a requirement that Voltage pay TekSavvy’s legal fees before the disclosure of subscriber information, and assurances that the information released by TekSavvy will remain confidential, not be disclosed to other parties, not be used for other purposes, and not made available to the general public or the media.

The safeguards are significant, since they ensure the active involvement of the courts in the sending of demand letters and likely eliminate unwarranted scare tactics about potential liability.

The big remaining question is whether copyright trolls will now view Canada as hostile territory. Given the cap on liability that the government implemented in the last round of copyright reform, court oversight on sending demand letters, the requirements to compensate Internet providers for their costs, and the increased expense the court involvement will create, copyright trolls may wish to look elsewhere as Canada could prove too costly for such dubious legal tactics.
http://www.thestar.com/business/2014...lls_geist.html





Owner of Russian File-Sharing Site Gets 2-Year Suspended Sentence – Report

Anton Yelesin, the owner of the ironclub.tv file hosting website, was handed a two-year suspended sentence after pleading guilty to “intentional large-scale violation of copyright law”, Russian newspaper Kommersant reported Thursday.

The sentence was handed down by a court in Tatarstan’s second largest city Naberezhnye Chelny, after Yelesin pleaded guilty.

Experts from the Russian Anti-Piracy Organization (RAPO), whose members include Disney Enterprises, Twentieth Century Fox, Paramount, Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros., Mosfilm, Mass Media System and Amedia, asked the resource owner to intervene in his illegal activity in the spring of 2013. Yelesin did not comply with the request, thus forcing RAPO to file a claim against him.

Investigators established that Yelesin uploaded movies at ironclub.tv, which were thereafter shared among website users with torrent software.
Initially, the case concerned 21 films including Titanic, The Fast and the Furious, the entire Die Hard series, City of Thieves, and Blood Diamond, as well as Soviet films Operation Y and Shurik's Other Adventures, and Courier. The rights holders assessed damages at 17.5 million rubles ($491,700). However, the verdict in this case only specified three films – Titanic, Operation Y, and The Hangover Part III. The court assessed damages at 2.1 million rubles ($59,000).

This is the first guilty verdict in a case of online copyright infringement, according to Kommersant.

The Timiryazevsky District Court in Moscow heard a similar case in 2013 involving interfilm.ru torrent tracker in which owners Andrei and Nadezhda Lopukhov received four year suspended sentences. The couple has filed an appeal against the sentence.

The anti-piracy law, which took effect on August 1, 2013 despite the protests of Internet companies, established the legal grounds and procedure for limiting access to websites that distribute movies and TV shows in violation of copyright laws. The law also specifies the rules for liability or for condoning information brokers (Internet and hosting providers).
http://rapsinews.com/judicial_news/2...270764152.html





Russians May Have to Provide ID to Access Torrents – Report

Russian online users may be required to identify themselves before downloading torrent video content. Film producer Oleg Teterin has sent a request to the Ministry of Culture to draft the respective amendments to copyright laws, Izvestia daily writes on Thursday.

Last week, the Moscow City Court restricted access to pirated copies of Teterin’s movies on five websites. Several of the involved websites (including Rutor.org and Kinozal.tv) have already received complaints from copyright holders. Specifically, Rutor.org was accused of the illegal distribution of the recent Russian blockbuster Stalingrad while Kinozal.tv was accused of infringing on Game of Thrones copyrights.

In his address to the minister of culture, the film producer suggests “compelling video hosting sites to require passport details of newly registered users in order to be able to initiate criminal proceedings against violators.” If websites containing pirated videos do not require identification they will be blocked “until a violator is identified or until the website introduces a service that blocks access to copies of movies that have received complaints from their copyright owners.”

The anti-piracy law, which took effect on August 1, 2013 despite the protests of Internet companies, established the legal grounds and procedure for limiting access to websites that distribute movies and TV shows in violation of copyright laws. The law also specifies the rules for liability or for condoning information brokers (Internet and hosting providers).
http://rapsinews.com/legislation_new...270765048.html





YouTube to Terminate Account of Scientist Who Debunked Aids Denialist Movie
Ewan Palmer

YouTube is threatening to remove the account of a scientist who made a series of videos debunking claims made in an Aids denialist movie over copyright infringement disagreement.

Myles Power, a scientist with his own YouTube channel which specialises in experiments and myth-debunking, made a mini-series in which he attacked the claims made in the controversial 2009 documentary, House of Numbers.

The documentary - starring Breunt Leung, who produced and directed the film - was condemned by scientists upon its release due to the number of theories it presents, including the belief that HIV does not cause Aids and the drugs used to treat the virus do not work.

Power said that after posting the five-part miniseries on his official YouTube channel, he began to receive a number of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) suits by one of those involved in the film, as well as its producers.

Power says that one of the complaints was filed by Liam Scheff, an author who appears in part five of the series. Scheff said Power's videos breached copyright laws and amounted to "propaganda".

According to Power, it was after Martin Penny, director of Knowledge Matters LLC, who produced House of Numbers, filed three more complaints alleging copyright infringements, that YouTube informed him his account would be terminated and he would be prohibited from creating an account in the future.

YouTube said that Power's account, which has more than 20,000 subscribers, will be removed on 18 February unless they receive a counter-notification disputing these claims against him by that date.

Powers said the film's producers are using the DMCA laws to try and censor his debunking of the film's controversial theories.

"It is very clear that these people are trying to silence my criticism," he wrote on his Facebook page.

"I want to take this time to remind people that there are multiple copies of House of Numbers uploaded to YouTube. If Martin Penny and the people at Knowledge Matters truly thought I was infringing copyright, then why are they not going after people who uploaded the entire movie?" he added.

Timothy Geigner, writer at Techdirt, described the tactics used by Knowledge Matters as "censorship in its purist form".

He added: "It's all the more egregious given that what they're attempting to censor is the debunking of a conspiracy myth that has the very real potential to hurt people. Anyone with a modicum of interest in science and the dialectic method would welcome such a conversation, not attempt to stifle it under the guise of copyright law."

IB Times UK's request for a comment from YouTube was not returned at time of publication.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/youtube-ter...-movie-1436802





Four of the Best Cloud-Based Services for Sharing Files Between Apple Devices
Erik Eckel

Apple users are familiar with a common problem, especially as so many professionals deploy more than one Apple device. How do you easily share notes, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and similar files across multiple devices?

Frequently, I encounter clients who leverage three devices -- an iPhone, an iPad, and a MacBook or iMac -- to perform their jobs. I often witness these users emailing themselves files. Email is simply the easiest method they know for transferring a file from a phone to laptop or vice versa.

Fortunately, several cloud-based services are available for sharing files between Apple devices. Here’s the skinny on four of the best services currently available.

1. Box

Box provides a secure yet scalable cloud-based file sharing service. Among the applications that can leverage Box to share data is Documents To Go, Salesforce CRM, and NetSuite. It works with both Windows and Macs, including 32- and 64-bit platforms.

The Box for iPhone and iPad app includes 50 GB of free storage. A free Personal online account includes 10 GB of file storage, plus desktop synchronization and mobile access. File-locking features and the ability to expire access permissions kick in with the Starter account online, which runs $5.00 (USD) per user, per month.

2. Dropbox

Most every business user has at least heard of Dropbox. The application is easy to use, provides desktop synchronization, offers 256-bit encryption, and includes 2 GB of storage within the free Basic account. Business users that move up to a Pro account, which costs $9.99 (USD) per month, receive 100 GB of storage.

The application can be configured to automatically back up photos and simplifies the process of sharing files between smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops. Among the applications for which Dropbox can synchronize data is the mSecure password management platform and the WriteRoom text drafting utility.

Users needing to work with sensitive or protected patient information, however, should note that Dropbox states it does not possess HPIAA or PCI certification.

3. iCloud

Apple’s iCloud service is integrated within iOS and OS X devices. iCloud makes the process of sharing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and photos exceedingly easy. Simply associate a device (using the iCloud options within Settings on an iOS device or iCloud within OS X’s System Preferences) with your iCloud account, and you can begin sharing files across multiple devices immediately with minimal fuss or configuration. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, for example, provide the option of creating and storing files within iCloud vs. On My Mac when using a Mac. By default, iOS devices store new documents, spreadsheets, and presentations within iCloud. The service also includes a web-based component for accessing the same files from a Windows machine. With 5 GB of default storage, iCloud is a no-brainer for modern business professionals needing to share files across multiple Apple devices.

4. SugarSync

SugarSync is another option for business users seeking to share files across a laptop, desktop, tablet, and/or iPhone. Download and install the application, select the folders you wish to synchronize, and you’re in business.

The SugarSync Individual account, which includes 60 GB of storage, costs $7.49 (USD) a month. The cross-platform application (it works with Macs and PCs) enables monitoring file access activity and remotely deleting data, and it automatically synchronizes file changes as they occur. Business users can also use the application to back up photos, video, and music.

Private sharing enables sharing files with selected parties, but files can also be shared with larger public audience.

Documents To Go is among the applications that can leverage SugarSync to share files between devices. The application also integrates with GeekSoft’s File Expert file manager, the GoodReader for iPhone PDF sharing utility, and OfficeSuite Pro 6+, which enables viewing, editing, printing, and sharing of Microsoft Office files, among many others.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/...apple-devices/





Even Good Films May Go to Purgatory

Old films fall into public domain under copyright law
Nicolas Rapold

They show up in discount DVD bins, or more often today online, sometimes looking a little worse for the wear. A general pall of darkness might cloud the image; the dialogue might be a bit tinnier than you remembered. Often the quality is not too shabby, though in the case of the web, it can be a surprise that they’re online at all. They’re films that have fallen out of copyright for one reason or another and must weather the wilds of the public domain.

Thanks to the curious history of motion picture copyright, a number of well-known films — and some excellent obscure ones — have ended up in this purgatory.

Among them are “His Girl Friday,” Howard Hawks’s 1940 newspaper masterpiece pitting Cary Grant against Rosalind Russell in a battle of wits.

There’s also D. W. Griffith’s controversial pillar of silent cinema, “The Birth of a Nation,” from 1915, and “Scarlet Street,” Fritz Lang’s bleak 1945 film noir starring Edward G. Robinson, Joan Bennett and Dan Duryea.

Stanley Kubrick’s first feature, “Fear and Desire,” belongs to this dubious club (although he disliked the film being shown at all). Frank Capra’s “Meet John Doe” and many of Buster Keaton’s best-known comedies, including “The General,” also fell down the copyright rabbit hole.

Nor was the phenomenon limited to prewar cinema: Stanley Donen’s 1963 “Charade,” starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, and George Romero’s 1968 “Night of the Living Dead” are two more recent examples.

And as late as the 1990s, the early British films of Alfred Hitchcock were considered to be in the public domain. These works, ranging back from “The 39 Steps” in 1935 to lesser-known titles, frequently circulated in the United States in inferior prints and subpar home video editions.

But that early work of Hitchcock — who will be the subject of a sweeping Film Forum retrospective that starts on Friday — ended up following a different trajectory because of their British provenance. Following adjustments to copyright law in 1994, the original rights holders could reassert their claims and be recognized in the United States.

Still, Bruce Goldstein, the Film Forum programmer in charge of repertory, can recall what happened when those protections lapsed.

“I remember seeing those public domain ‘39 Steps’ prints. It’s not just that the film is dupey,” he said, referring to the duplication of inferior prints without reference to an original negative. “The soundtracks were so muddy you could hardly hear them.”

That is not the case with the Film Forum retrospective, which will include the silents known as the “Hitchcock 9” that have been restored by the British Film Institute. Yet other titles are not so lucky, raising the question of why these movies wind up in this predicament in the first place.

The answers vary according to the patchwork of rules governing motion picture copyrights at different times all the way back to the silent era.

The earliest films are the easiest to explain: Those from before 1923 are in the public domain.

Until the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act in 1998, films could generally enjoy 75 years of copyright protection. Anything that had fallen out by then, however, was understood to stay in the public domain. That alone covers a wealth of film history, including much of the work of foundational filmmakers including Griffiths and Keaton.

After 1923, public-domain challenges arise when the copyright is not renewed. Later Congressional extensions of copyright complicate the matter (and have been the subject of debate), but the initial period is crucial.

“Most commonly, a film’s copyright might not be renewed after its initial 28 years of protection had expired,” Michael Mashon, head of the moving image section at the Library of Congress, wrote in an email.

He cited the examples of the Buster Keaton film “The General” (1926), “His Girl Friday,” “Meet John Doe” and “Nothing Sacred,” a 1937 screwball comedy starring Carole Lombard.

Other films didn’t follow basic rules for maintaining copyright. For instance, “The Night of the Living Dead” and “Carnival of Souls,” a Herk Harvey horror film that has since received a Criterion Collection release, both failed to display a copyright notice clearly enough in the credits.

That notification eventually ceased to be a requirement, but not before affecting Sam Peckinpah’s debut feature, “The Deadly Companions,” and “Charade.”

As a result of these lapses, many of the films proliferated in quick-and-dirty editions on home video.

These releases vary widely in quality; some budget releases from Alpha Video, for example, use rough-and-ready prints for their source material. But others have received deluxe treatment as part of elaborate restorations.

For the Library of Congress, such films hold special appeal precisely because of their neglect.

“We typically prioritize the preservation of public domain titles here because we figure if we don’t, then no one is likely to,” Mr. Mashon wrote.

These efforts can lead to partnerships resulting in superior home-video versions. “Fear and Desire” and “The Hitch-Hiker” (by Ida Lupino) now exist on remastered editions from Kino Lorber in collaboration with the Library of Congress. Even bargain-bin releases, Mr. Goldstein says, provide an audience for lesser-known titles.

To further complicate matters, certain movies involve components with their own copyrights.

“It’s a Wonderful Life” became a fixture on television after apparently falling into the public domain, but it was often broadcast using substandard prints. Eventually, the film was brought back into the copyright fold partly via the 1939 short story on which it was based.

Oddly, even though Hitchcock’s early films have rights holders, that does not appear to have stopped versions from going on the Internet. “The 39 Steps,” “The Lodger” and others are online as supposed examples of public-domain works.

“This is an issue about rights holders policing their material on the Internet,” Bryony Dixon, curator of silent film at the BFI National Archive, wrote in an email. “A lot of the time this is not worth the labor involved.”

The issue may be increasingly moot as viewers become more accustomed to high-definition quality, which restorations like those by the British Film Institute and the Library of Congress make possible. The public domain prints of the films in the “Hitchcock 9” series, for instance, are a distant memory.

“These are now the definitive versions of the films,” Mr. Dixon wrote.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/16/mo...ef=movies&_r=0





How Gracenote Became a Big Metadata Player

When Gracenote sold for a nine-figure sum, it proved yet again that metadata is quickly becoming king.
Vijith Assar

Last week, Tribune Company completed the $170 million acquisition of Gracenote, a deal originally set in motion in late 2013. The merger is an unusual one: Gracenote owns a massive library of media metadata, and the Tribune Company is best known as the publisher of print newspapers and tabloids, most notably its flagship paper in Chicago. Five years ago, Tribune Company filed for bankruptcy as advertising revenues declined, the result of the global recession; at the time, Gracenote had just been acquired by Sony for almost $100 million more than its most recent price.

The acquisition places Gracenote directly alongside Tribune Media Services (TMS), a division within Tribune Company that syndicates both editorial content and and media metadata such as movie showtimes and television listings. Gracenote’s data is similar, although more focused on individual consumption habits rather than mass presentation. “Gracenote’s video products have been using TMS data for some time, re-distributing their data as part of our products,” said Gracenote president Stephen White, “so it was a pretty natural fit.”

That fit wouldn’t have seemed so natural for the earlier iterations of Gracenote, which got its start in the 1990s (originally under the rather awkward moniker CDDB) and was, initially, a mechanism for redistributing track listings from compact discs over the Internet, thereby saving users the trouble of typing in all the album data when using a player that could display artists and track names. During the Sony years, the company expanded into video; these days, one of Gracenote’s major pushes centers on embedded media systems in cars; White suggested that Gracenote is now used in about 50 million vehicles. To put that in perspective, that’s roughly a quarter of the new cars and light trucks that have been cumulatively sold in the United States since Gracenote first began working on car audio back in 2001, according to the auto industry analysts at Ward Auto.

Those numbers are nothing to sneeze at, and certainly open up a new market for the Tribune Company. However, there’s an elephant in the room: Apple’s “iOS in the Car” initiative, first announced at the WWDC conference in June 2014, which seeks to create a bridge between iOS mobile devices and a driver-safe in-dashboard user interface. Rumor suggests the platform will launch later this spring, at which point it might very quickly outmode other Gracenote-powered car media systems, thanks in no small part to Apple’s notorious perfectionism in interface design, as well as an (expected) plethora of iOS features.

Regardless of the Tribune Company’s specific plans for Gracenote’s datasets and technical infrastructure, it spent a hefty amount of cash on an entity devoted solely to compiling metadata about copyrightable works owned by third parties. In other words, Gracenote still commands a nine-figure price tag when its primary product, to put it bluntly, amounts to footnotes and annotations to media for which it doesn’t have licenses or rights. In 2007, the year before Gracenote was sold to Sony, the All Media Guide was purchased by Macrovision for a reported $72 million; Gracenote sold for more than twice as much. It was also the first major purchase of a metadata-hosting firm since NSA spooks made the word a familiar household term.

The “meta” in metadata is slowly fading away, however – in a world where everything is connected, all data is inherently referential. “For most people that distinction is lost,” White said. “We realized pretty early on that metadata was going to be, hugely important in a world where you’ve got this explosion of content, this explosion of connected devices that are trying to develop services and experiences around that content, and the only really way to do that is to understand what the content is.”

Case in point is a forthcoming project, known as Gracenote Rhythm, which is a personalized radio station service that compiles songs into coherent playlists; on paper, it seems a lot like Pandora with a RESTful JSON API. (In contrast, Pandora has kept their elaborate metadata system, known as the Music Genome Project, entirely proprietary.) “It leverages both editorial based and kind of machine based descriptors,” White explained, “We believe the combination of those two things, you know really differentiate the results from the perspective that they have, that human touch and that human element, that, is impossible to capture purely through machines, but then they have the scale, and the ability to cover over a hundred million tracks, which you can really only get through some of the machine learning and machine listening capabilities.” The latter curiously includes computer assessments of fundamentally human and subjective traits such as “mood,” which seems odd but was inevitable: “You have to classify mood at the track level; trying to do that editorially across a hundred million tracks is just an unscalable approach.”

It’s hard to imagine Gracenote’s custom radio stations making much of a splash, given how many alternative services already exist; but the personalization features depend on the compilation and retention of user profiles, which may have marketing value which may far exceed the simple transactional value, if any, of sending little blips of metadata to audio players and partner services. Which returns us to the realm of NSA spooks: while the titles of the songs in your playlists shouldn’t be conflated with records of your phone calls, services such as Rhythm may help Gracenote partially convert its library of media metadata into a library of user data. “We do have big hopes for that part of our business going forward,” confirmed White.

Ari Kamdar, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also sees it as potent territory, albeit in a more skeptical sense. “We’re seeing, especially with the ad space, that companies are trying to get user information from all different sources, and it’s not just what brands are looking for anymore,” he said. “They’re trying to get location data, financial data, habits, family… so I’m not surprised that audio data could be one of the big facets. It could be something that paints a bigger, more in-depth picture about these people.” And if Gracenote’s data set seems a little narrowly focused, they just need to find the right partners: “Service providers, stores, and web sites are basically there to fill in the blanks.”

White seems concerned when discussing privacy issues. “All that stuff has to be done very carefully,” he said. “We’re strong believers that if you’re not using that content in a way that is providing direct and understandable value back to the consumer, then you shouldn’t be doing it, and you’ve got to ask the consumer and be able to explain to them why you’re collecting the data you are, and what you’re doing with it, and how they benefit.” For example, Beats Music, the new service launched by Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine last month, starts its intake process with a profile questionnaire: as The Verge noted, it’s “a warm welcome to the world of Beats, since most other music apps just plop you onto a New Releases page upon signing up.” By providing useful services built atop large sets of media metadata, these companies can simultaneously build treasure troves of user metadata which may prove much more lucrative. (On the other hand, Spotify broadcasts your listening habits into a public activity feed by default, which is handy for sharing songs with friends, but may result in unintended exposure for users who tend away from exhibitionist listening.)

“The dialogue probably started for a lot of wrong reasons,” White continued. “We don’t want metadata to become demonized as a term. But I think that’s all really positive for them to be thinking about and for them to understand; I think its a great thing for the consumer to be educated.”

These are all probably necessary pivots for a company facing stiff competition from Apple, Spotify, and even the intrinsic metadata tags included on most modern media files, which usually mean the simple textual track data supplied by the earliest versions of the CDDB service no longer need to be imported at all. But White points to Gracenote’s 16 billion queries per month, sometimes peaking around 800 million per day, from a worldwide userbase of 200 million people, and even plenty of regular old CD ripping operations in countries where Internet access is only now becoming commonplace. “If we were a search engine, we’d be the second largest search engine in the world,” he noted. All of which is to say that Gracenote’s Rhythm radio station service is one of the first with a developer API. The recent decrease in Gracenote’s price tag notwithstanding, there may still be a market for sophisticated media metadata and the associated tech infrastructure. Someone just has to build it first.
http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/graceno...tadata-player/





Here’s What Reformers Say is Missing from Congress’ Cellphone Unlocking Bill
Timothy B. Lee

Almost everyone agrees that unlocking your cellphone should be legal. But crafting legislation to give consumers the freedom everyone agrees they should have is surprisingly difficult.

The debate over cellphone unlocking started about a year ago, when a ruling by the Library of Congress suggested that unlocking your cellphone to take it to another wireless carrier could run afoul of copyright law. That triggered a grassroots backlash, prompting members of Congress and even the White House to support overruling the Librarian's ruling.

But crafting legislation to permit cellphone unlocking has been surprisingly complicated. Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced legislation permitting consumers to unlock their cellphones. But that legislation has gotten lukewarm support from public interest groups who say it doesn't go far enough in recognizing consumer rights.

On Friday, the advocacy group Public Knowledge announced it was withdrawing support from Goodlatte's bill after the chairman introduced a new version. The new version includes language permitting individuals to unlock their cellphones. But the legislation states that "nothing in this subsection shall be construed to permit the unlocking of wireless handsets or other wireless devices, for the purpose of bulk resale."

The problem, according to Public Knowledge's Sherwin Siy, is that the DMCA shouldn't apply to phone unlocking—"bulk" or otherwise—in the first place. The DMCA was supposed to be about preventing piracy, not limiting what consumers do with their gadgets. The new Goodlatte bill "doesn't prevent bulk unlocking but it certainly seems to suggest Congress thinks it's already prohibited," Siy says. That could be a step backwards.

The issue has significance well beyond cellphones. More and more of the products in our daily lives have computers embedded in them. If it's illegal to unlock your cellphone, it might be illegal to modify or repair a wide variety of other products. For example, all modern cars have computers embedded in them, and repairing a car increasingly requires accessing its onboard software. Could car manufacturers invoke the DMCA to prevent unauthorized repair work?

An aide to the judiciary committee insists that critics like Siy are over-reading the legislation. The bill is intended to allow cellphone unlocking, the aide says, without affecting broader questions about the scope of the DMCA. Those broader issues will be tackled later, as part of a broader review of U.S. copyright law.

But the current furor over cellphone unlocking represents a rare opportunity to craft DMCA reform that could actually pass Congress. If Congress passes narrow legislation fixing only the most obvious abuse of the DMCA, there might not be enough political capital left for a broader reform later on.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another public interest group that favors overhauling the DMCA, shares Siy's concern. "We are deeply concerned that the bill has new language excluding bulk unlocking," EFF's Corynne McSherry says. "Unlocking, whether individually or in bulk, makes reuse and repair possible, and is a public benefit. It should be clearly lawful."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...nlocking-bill/





U.S. Judge Gives Broadcasters Injunction Against Aereo Online TV
Dan Levine

A federal judge in Utah on Wednesday barred online television service provider Aereo from retransmitting programs in a handful of U.S. states, ahead of a closely watched Supreme Court hearing this year between the company and major broadcasters.

U.S. District Judge Dale Kimball in Salt Lake City issued an injunction, ruling that broadcasters including Twenty-First Century Fox Inc had shown a likelihood that they could prove Aereo committed copyright infringement. The ruling will largely impact Aereo customers in the Salt Lake City and Denver metro areas.

Aereo, backed by billionaire Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp, does not pay broadcasters for use of programming that it retransmits to subscribers. Its users pay a low monthly fee to watch live or recorded programs on their computers or mobile devices.

Last year a federal appeals court in New York ruled in favor of Aereo in a similar lawsuit. Broadcasters appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last month agreed to hear the case. A decision is expected by the end of June.

Kimball put the remainder of the Utah case on hold pending the high court's decision, with the injunction in place. Beyond Utah, Colorado and Wyoming, the injunction also covers New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas and parts of Montana and Idaho, though Aereo had not offered its services in those latter five states.

Aereo Chief Executive Officer Chet Kanojia said the company is "extremely disappointed" that the Utah federal court came to a different conclusion than every other court that has reviewed Aereo's technology. Kanojia also said in a statement that Aereo would "pursue all available remedies to restore (customers') ability to use Aereo."

In a separate statement, Fox said the ruling is "a significant win for both broadcasters and content owners."

Aereo subscribers can stream live broadcasts of TV channels on mobile devices using miniature antennas, each assigned to one subscriber. The service was launched in March 2012 in the New York area. The company has since expanded to about 10 cities and plans to enter several more.

The broadcasters claim the service violates copyrights on TV programs, and threatens their ability to control subscription fees and generate advertising.

Traditional cable television providers are also watching the issue. Cablevision Systems Corp has said the legal theory advanced by broadcasters to the high court would spell trouble for cloud-based content services and threaten Cablevision's ability to offer its customers DVR recording.

In court filings in Utah, Fox argued that "free-riders like Aereo" could deprive residents of programming like local news. Randall agreed in his ruling.

PUBLIC INTEREST DEBATED

"Original local programming, covering local news, sports, and other areas of interest, costs millions of dollars to produce and deliver to the public," he wrote, "and the public interest plainly lies in enjoining copyright infringement that threatens the continued viability of such local programming."

In his statement, Aereo's Kanojia said consumers have a "fundamental right" to watch over-the-air television via an antenna.

"The Copyright Act provides no justification to curtail that right simply because the consumer is using modern, remotely located equipment," Kanojia said.

The case in U.S. District Court, District of Utah is Community Television of Utah LLC et al. vs. Aereo Inc., 13-910.

(Reporting by Dan Levine in San Francisco; Editing by David Gregorio and Cynthia Osterman)
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/0...A1I2BD20140220





Stealthily, Comcast Fortifies Its Arsenal
David Carr

Big media companies are generally warships, bristling with firepower and declaring their might long before they attack. But Comcast, which is headed toward being one of the biggest of them all, is much more like a submarine, silently running beneath the waves and making its presence known only when it is too late for its targets.

Last year, John Malone kicked Time Warner Cable into play through sheer bluster, using his investment in Charter Communications as a vehicle to stalk the much larger cable company. Last week, Brian Roberts, chief executive of Comcast, finished what Mr. Malone started. Mr. Malone lowballed, Comcast closed.

Comcast’s proposed $45 billion deal to buy Time Warner Cable surprised many, including me, but it probably shouldn’t have.

There is a game over the game, one that doesn’t show up in headlines, which Comcast plays better than anyone. Preoccupied by its 2011 purchase of NBCUniversal, Comcast had been uninterested in cable expansion, but it ended up in talks with Mr. Malone about Time Warner Cable with some kind of partnership in mind. At some point, Comcast decided that it did not need a middleman and quit taking calls from its would-be partner.

In a matter of weeks, it was clear that Mr. Malone, who had served as Mr. Roberts’s mentor earlier in his career, had been bested by his former protégé.

Even critics of the proposed deal — and there are many — cannot help being impressed by the quiet audacity of Mr. Roberts and the company he leads. It is a giant on cat’s paws, remaking the media landscape with little fanfare.

Spoilsports, like me, might point out that a company still digesting NBCUniversal should not subsequently gain control over so much additional distribution. With this deal, Comcast would not only lock up 30 percent of the cable market (and an ever greater share of broadband), but pricing leverage in all directions — with customers, with traditional programming providers like networks and cable networks, and with over-the-web providers like Netflix.

For consumers, cable is not just television anymore, it is where the Internet comes from. And should this deal go through, more people who want to cut the cable cord will still have to buy their broadband from a cable company where prices go only one way — up.

It is akin to leaving a house that is on fire and having it chase you down the street.

If you are Apple or Netflix, it’s good to hear that Comcast will abide by the principle of net neutrality — all content treated equally — in its expanded universe, but there have been growing problems with streaming speeds because of less than optimal arrangements with so-called peering companies, intermediaries that are paid to deliver streaming traffic. Might Comcast, with its bigger presence, start to squeeze web-enabled programmers like Netflix by charging more for those peering arrangements that make sure programming is not a stuttering mess? In terms of streaming speeds, Comcast has been a laggard, delivering slower speeds than Time Warner Cable and limiting how much data consumers are able to stream.

Comcast wins most battles most of the time because it stays under the radar, routinely turning profits. When it does strike, it has a way of making the unthinkable sound reasonable. In an investor call on Thursday when the deal was announced, Mr. Roberts said that the proposed merger was “pro-consumer, pro-competitive and strongly in the public interest.”

Saying that does not make it so, but Comcast has suggested that it expects the merger to be approved within a year, and Time Warner Cable did not demand a breakup fee in the event the deal is blocked, which suggests that it believes that Comcast has the connections and wherewithal to push the deal through. They both have reasons to be confident.

Foremost, Comcast already has a huge regulatory win in the bank. Its proposed acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2009 was met with abundant skepticism, with consumer advocates contending that control over both so much content and distribution gave it too much market power. The company maneuvered its way past those hurdles and won approval by making some concessions and commitments, and it is in an even stronger position today.

Consider that one of the Federal Communications Commission regulators who approved the NBCUniversal deal, Meredith Attwell Baker, now works for Comcast as a lobbyist. Since that deal, there has been a change in leadership at the commission, and it is now run by Tom Wheeler, who was previously a chief lobbyist for the cable industry. (Comcast is among the biggest spenders on lobbying, having written checks for $18 million in 2013 alone.)

President Obama should be paying attention to a deal that has such significant consumer and business implications, but he needs no introduction to the players involved. Mr. Roberts has golfed with the president and hosted him at his residence on Martha’s Vineyard.

David L. Cohen, who oversees the company’s relationship with regulators in Washington, has been a big bundler of donations for the president and staged a fund-raiser for him at his home in Philadelphia that raised $1.2 million. In recognition of those close ties, Mr. Cohen was one of the guests at a state dinner at the White House for the French president, François Hollande, last week.

With these kinds of relationships working in its favor, it won’t come as a surprise if Comcast is given the benefit of the doubt in this whopper of a merger.

Cable is a necessary evil that works best when we can exercise consumer choice. I live in northern New Jersey and used to be a Comcast customer — I dumped it after one of its technicians pointed to the cable running through the trees and said I might not have a great connection when the wind was blowing. I switched to Verizon FiOS’s fiber-optic service and have been very happy since. (Not cheap, but it works.) When, you might ask, will the fiber-optic future arrive at your house? How about never? Does never sound good?

No, it does not. But much of the cable market has already been divided up — as the executives behind the merger noted, Time Warner and Comcast do not overlap in any markets, and Verizon has previously agreed not to expand. Comcast, which will now have less competition, will have less motivation to invest in building out infrastructure like fiber-optic networks at the expense of its shareholders.

Discussing the scale of the deal, even Mr. Cohen acknowledged that “It may sound scary.” It doesn’t sound scary, it is. As Craig Aaron, president of the consumer advocacy group Free Press, told my colleague Edward Wyatt, “No one woke up this morning wishing their cable company was bigger. This deal would be the cable guy on steroids — pumped up, unstoppable and grasping for your wallet.”

Comcast’s move to consolidate power will probably beget further consolidation among programmers and other cable providers who seek to match its growing might, which is never a good thing for consumers.

Cable and broadband connectivity is a public good in private hands, and how it evolves is a significant issue for American businesses and consumers. By asserting so confidently that its acquisition is lawful, fair and all but a foregone conclusion, Comcast has cocked the gun. Its answer to those who believe it should not acquire such a big footprint is clear: Well, we just did, so let’s start from there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/bu...s-arsenal.html





Not a Typo, Monopsony in Spotlight in U.S. Cable Deal
David Ingram

If U.S. antitrust enforcers decide to challenge the proposed $45 billion merger of Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable Inc, it may be because of an idea with a funny-sounding name that has been gaining currency in government offices.

The idea is monopsony power, the mirror image of the better-known monopoly power but a concept that is just as old.

A monopoly is one seller with many buyers, while a monopsony (pronounced muh-NOP-suh-nee) is one buyer with many sellers. A textbook example is a milk processor that is the only option for dairy farmers to sell to, and that then forces farmers to sell for less.

The U.S. Justice Department's Antitrust Division is all but certain to examine the potential monopsony power, or buying power, that a combined Comcast and Time Warner Cable would have over media companies that provide TV programming, according to lawyers with expertise in antitrust law.

The combined company would have a near 30 percent share of the U.S. pay television market, Comcast has said, as well as be a major provider of broadband Internet access.

"It's a potential concern," said Maurice Stucke, a former Justice Department antitrust lawyer who is now a University of Tennessee professor and of counsel at the law firm GeyerGorey.

"It's not as much in the limelight as monopoly, but monopsony has always been part of the antitrust laws," he said.

Monopsony concerns tend to have a lower profile because they may not directly affect consumers. The harm to the market comes if suppliers go out of business, which reduces society's overall output, or if suppliers have less money to invest in new technology, equipment and expansion.

Consumers may even benefit from monopsony if a company cuts its prices, although the savings are not always passed along. In the case of Comcast-Time Warner Cable, it could be argued that a more powerful pay TV operator may be able to lower fees if it can negotiate lower programming costs with the TV studios.

"It's a monopsony problem when it threatens to decrease output. If all it does is reduce cost, it's a good thing," said Herbert Hovenkamp, a University of Iowa law professor.

He added: "Monopsony is one of those things that is frequently claimed and rarely proven."

GETTING BETTER DEALS

Princeton University economist Paul Krugman criticized the proposed Comcast-Time Warner Cable merger in a February 15 post on his New York Times blog titled, "Monopsony Begets Monopoly, And Vice Versa."

Comcast "is able to extract far more favorable deals from content providers than smaller rivals," Krugman wrote. "And if it's allowed to acquire (Time Warner Cable), it will be even more advantaged."

Others say it is hard to see how a media conglomerate like Walt Disney Co, or even smaller content providers, would feel much pain from slightly lower payments or from one fewer way to distribute shows.

"Given the rapidly increasing number of avenues for distributing content, I think that's far-fetched," said Jeffrey Eisenach, an economic consultant who has done work for Comcast in the past but is not working on the merger.

Asked about the possibility of a monopsony challenge, a spokeswoman for Comcast pointed to a 2009 federal appeals court ruling that said there was "overwhelming evidence" that the communications marketplace was competitive. The ruling threw out a regulation designed to limit market share among companies such as Comcast to 30 percent.

"Today there are even more types of video competition than when the court threw out the case," Comcast spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice wrote in an email.

She said TV networks can distribute their programs to consumers in many ways, such as DirecTV's satellite service or Verizon's FiOS video service. There are also video streaming sites, such as Netflix and Hulu.

Antitrust experts said Comcast and Time Warner Cable may be able to address some government concerns by extending the terms of a settlement that Comcast signed with the Justice Department in 2011 to secure approval to buy NBC Universal. For instance, Comcast promised to make programming, such as cable news channel CNBC, available to competing pay-TV companies.

ANTITRUST STANDARD

Review of the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal is expected to take several months. Either the Justice Department or the Federal Trade Commission will examine it for antitrust compliance, while the Federal Communications Commission will rule on whether it is in the public interest.

The antitrust standard is whether the deal would substantially lessen competition. If government lawyers believe it would, they could sue in federal court. Sometimes even the threat of a suit is enough to scuttle a deal.

Monopsony has been getting more attention within the Justice Department. A senior staff economist, Gregory Werden, wrote a paper in 2007 arguing that the original U.S. antitrust law, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, was designed to protect sellers as well as end-user consumers.

In 2010, the department drew attention to monopsony concerns when it released revised guidelines for corporations considering mergers. The guidelines replaced a document from 1997 and included an expanded discussion of monopsony.

When suppliers do not have "numerous attractive outlets for their goods or services," the two agencies "may conclude that the merger of competing buyers is likely to lessen competition in a manner harmful to sellers," the guidelines said.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc has routinely faced criticism that it has monopsony power because of its ability to drive down the prices it pays suppliers. But the retail giant's defenders say there is little evidence that suppliers are hurt, and Wal-Mart's low prices for customers also make it popular.

Monopsony is most often an issue in agriculture.

In 1999, the Justice Department feared that Cargill Inc's plan to acquire part of Continental Grain Co would concentrate the market for buying corn, soybeans and wheat, and it approved the acquisition only after the global commodities trader agreed to sell off grain elevators.

The Justice Department sued in 2008 to block the combination of two of the top four U.S. beef packers, JBS SA and National Beef Packing Co, saying it would have hurt both cattle suppliers and consumers. The companies abandoned the deal four months later.

In the context of the pay TV market, a key question is how a channel would fare if it were not carried by a merged Comcast-Time Warner Cable.

"If you're told you can't reach 30 percent of a potential market, how significant is that for a competitor who wants to produce? That's a technical question," said Peter Carstensen, a University of Wisconsin law professor.

"You've got to put the data together. You've got to come up with a plausible story, with witnesses, with the econometrics, to make that case," he said, "and whether that can be done convincingly, I don't know."

(Additional reporting by Diane Bartz; Editing by Howard Goller and Tiffany Wu)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A1K1VI20140221





Cable TV Operator Charter to 'Wisely' Pursue Deals
Soham Chatterjee and Jennifer Saba

Charter Communications Inc, whose bid to take over Time Warner Cable Inc was thwarted earlier this month, plans to grow its subscriber base through more deals, its chief executive said on a call with analysts on Friday.

Charter CEO Tom Rutledge made few remarks about the company's failed pursuit of Time Warner Cable after having mounted a proxy battle last week.

"Notwithstanding everything that has happened, we are still interested in wisely acquiring subscribers through M&A when that opportunity arises," Rutledge said.

Charter was outmaneuvered in its $37.3 billion bid to acquire Time Warner Cable when Comcast Corp offered $45.2 billion.

Rutledge declined to comment when asked if he was worried about the size of Comcast, already the No. 1 cable provider in the United States, if regulators allow the Time Warner Cable deal to go through.

Executives with satellite operators Dish Network Corp and DirecTV voiced concern during their earnings calls on Thursday and Friday over the competitive landscape if the Comcast merger with Time Warner Cable is completed.

Charter is the No. 4 U.S. cable company and is backed by billionaire John Malone.

On Friday, it reported net income of $39 million, or 35 cents per share, for the fourth quarter, compared with a loss of $40 million, or 41 cents per share, a year earlier. Quarterly revenue rose 12.3 percent to $2.15 billion.

The company acquired Bresnan Broadband Holdings for $1.6 billion in February 2013, adding 670,000 homes and about 375,000 residential and business customers.

Charter shares were trading down 5.2 percent to $125.02in early afternoon.

The company said its adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose about 3 percent to $764 million.

Analysts had expected a profit of 24 cents per share on revenue of $2.16 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Video revenue, which accounts for about half of total revenue, rose 12.8 percent. Internet revenue, which accounts for more than a quarter of total revenue, rose 22.4 percent. Revenue from sales to small and medium-size businesses and to carrier customers rose 28.8 percent.

The company added 93,000 residential Internet customers compared with 59,000 customers a year ago. Charter's residential customers grew by 63,000 in the quarter, up from 24,000 in the same period year ago.

Revenue per customer relationship rose 2 percent to $107.97.

Charter said it expects to boost spending by 19 percent to $2.2 billion in 2014 as it digitalizes set-top boxes and invests in its commercial business.

(Reporting By Soham Chatterjee in Bangalore and Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Ted Kerr, Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and Leslie Adler)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A1K0Z920140221





Wireless System Could Offer a Private Fast Lane
Nick Wingfield

In a spacious loft across the street from the Bay Bridge, Steve Perlman did something last week that would ordinarily bring a cellular network to its knees.

Around him was a collection of eight iPhones, a pair of television sets with superhigh-resolution 4K displays and an arsenal of other devices. Mr. Perlman played high-definition movies from Netflix on a half-dozen or so devices at once, wirelessly transmitting all the video to them. Instead of stumbling under the strain of so much data jamming the airwaves at once, the video played on all the screens with nary a stutter.

The demonstration showed off a technology that Mr. Perlman, a serial entrepreneur and inventor who sold WebTV to Microsoft for more than $500 million in the late 1990s, contends will give mobile users far faster cellular network speeds, with fewer dropped phone calls and other annoyances, even in stadiums and other places where thousands of people use mobile phones at the same time.

“This is as big a change to wireless as tubes-to-transistor was to electronics,” Mr. Perlman said recently.

The technology, called pCell, is one of many techniques that companies are looking at to address the rising public appetite for mobile data, especially video.

Watching movies, TVshows and other clips on the go is catching on in a big way, as mobile devices with bigger, sharper screens become popular and more video is available online.

But because of the increasing demand, cellular networks are regularly overloaded. In the United States last year, the average mobile phone user consumed 1.2 gigabytes of data a month over cellular networks, nearly double the average amount in 2012, Chetan Sharma, a consultant for wireless carriers, estimated. In a recent report on mobile data trends, Cisco, the networking equipment maker, said mobile video accounted for 53 percent of all mobile data by the end of 2013, after surpassing 50 percent for the first time in 2012.

That leaves wireless carriers scrambling for ways to make sure all that video does not clog their networks. Late last year, executives at Verizon conceded that data speeds on its wireless network were beginning to suffer from a jam of new mobile devices using the latest LTE networking technology, especially in tech-saturated cities like New York and San Francisco.

Verizon is adding more antennas to its network, forming smaller wireless cells with stronger coverage and rolling out service on new segments of the wireless spectrum, the digital equivalent of opening new lanes for traffic. Sprint is introducing a service called Sprint Spark that increases access speeds if customers have devices that can use multiple wireless frequencies at once.

If pCell works as promised, Mr. Perlman’s technology could result in much bigger gains in wireless speeds. In traditional cellular networks, antennas placed around a city transmit wireless signals to all of the mobile devices within their area. As more people enter an area, they share the wireless network with everyone else there, resulting in slower speeds. Wireless carriers cannot simply solve the problem by putting antennas everywhere because their signals can be disrupted if they are too close together.

With a network of pCell antennas, someone with a mobile device will get access to the full wireless data speed in the area, regardless of how many other people are sharing that network, Mr. Perlman said. His system does this by embracing the interference caused by nearby antennas, rather than avoiding it. Behind the scenes, data centers connected to the antennas perform fast mathematical calculations to create a unique and coherent wireless signal for every person on the network (the “p” in pCell stands for personal).

“I don’t think there’s any other system out there doing anything like this,” said Pieter van Rooyen, an electrical engineer and former academic who has founded wireless start-ups. Mr. van Rooyen, now the chief executive of a genomic start-up, has known Mr. Perlman for 10 years and is an informal adviser to him.

Mr. Perlman began working on the technology more than a decade ago through the Rearden Companies, an incubator Mr. Perlman formed in San Francisco that has spawned an eclectic mix of start-ups, some of which have not been commercial successes despite innovative products. He left his last start-up, OnLive, a cloud game service, after it struggled to get rights for games from publishers. The service still operates.

He began talking about the technology, then called DIDO, for distributed input distributed output, in 2011 when it was essentially a science experiment. With help from a small team, it has advanced to where he is ready to introduce it commercially with one or more partners.

Mr. Perlman has formed a start-up that he plans to announce on Wednesday, Artemis Networks, to bring the technology to market, with the first deployment planned for late 2014.

His team got pCell working with available LTE handsets, including the latest iPhones and Samsung smartphones, so that people would not need to buy new devices if their carrier uses his technology. He will conduct a public demonstration of it at Columbia University, his alma mater, on Wednesday afternoon.

Because he has described the technology only in broad terms and very few people have been able to evaluate it firsthand, some doubt that Mr. Perlman’s technology will perform as he says. Steven Crowley, a wireless engineer who mostly consults with carriers outside the United States, said that several performance claims Mr. Perlman outlined in a paper on the technology “seem difficult to achieve in practice.”

Thomas Pica, a spokesman for Verizon, said its engineers were aware of Mr. Perlman’s efforts. “Our network engineering teams regularly assess future technologies,” Mr. Pica said, “while deploying existing technology that helps to meet customers’ increasing appetites for video, Internet access and other high-speed data applications.”

But he did not suggest whether Verizon would adopt pCell, and it is possible that all the big carriers could shun Mr. Perlman’s technology. John Sculley, a former chief executive of Apple who has invested in wireless start-ups, including Metro PCS, said a newcomer to the wireless business could build an ultrafast network using Artemis’s technology for far less money than a traditional cellular network, partly because there is more flexibility about where its antennas can be placed.

“This is one of those rare things that happens in Silicon Valley every 20 or 30 years,” said Mr. Sculley, who is an adviser to Mr. Perlman, whom he has known since Mr. Perlman worked at Apple in the 1980s. “It has the potential to change the whole cast of players of the wireless telecommunications industry.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/19/te...fast-lane.html





Google Prepares 34-City Push for Ultra-Fast Fiber Service
Edwin Chan

Google Inc is exploring a major expansion of its super-fast "Fiber" TV and Internet service, which could extend the nascent network to 34 more U.S. cities and pose a competitive threat to home broadband providers.

Google executives told reporters on Wednesday the search company has reached out in recent weeks to cities from nine metropolitan areas around the country, including San Jose, Atlanta and Nashville, to discuss the feasibility of building out Fiber, which Google says delivers the Internet at speeds up to 100 times faster than average networks.

As Google delivers more music, videos and other content to mobile devices, it is increasing investment in ensuring it gets the bandwidth it needs. Web-access projects like Fiber could also help grow revenues beyond its maturing search business, and give it more insight into consumers' online habits -- which, in turn, is crucial to making ads more effective.

Google had initially billed its first Fiber broadband offer, launched in Kansas City last year, as a test project to spur development of Web services and technology. But industry observers speculate that the one-gigabit-a-second high-speed Internet service could become a viable business for the company, prompting traditional rivals such as AT&T to mount a defense.

"We continue to believe that Google Fiber is an attempt by Google to build a profitable, stand-alone business," argued Carlos Kirjner, senior Internet analyst for Bernstein Research.

"Google is taking the long view and we think in five or more years, it could turn out to be a significant, profitable business for Google and headwind for incumbents."

AT&T Inc said last year it was ready to build its own one-gigabit-per-second fiber network in Austin, provided it got the same treatment from local authorities as Google. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson said in September he expects the telecoms carrier to expand that offer to "multiple markets" in coming years.

And Comcast Corp, which will become the largest cable provider in the country if it passes antitrust scrutiny for its proposed $45 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable, argued to regulators this month that Google Fiber could threaten its business over time.

Google now provides Fiber service, at up to $120 a month, in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Last year, it announced plans to expand in Provo, Utah and Austin, Texas in 2014.

The consumer response so far in Kansas City has been "overwhelming," Kevin Lo, General Manager of Google Fiber, told reporters on a Wednesday conference call. He did not elaborate.

DISRUPTION AND EXPENSE

To make a difference to Google's overall business, which is expected to generate roughly $70 billion in revenue this year, Fiber needs to expand dramatically.

In a city of one million households for example, Google would reap a modest $288 million a year in subscription revenue if 20 percent of families were to sign up for its $120 monthly service. If it were able to enlist half the homes in the city, that could mean $720 million in annual revenue.

Fiber may not prove feasible for every one of the 34 cities under consideration. The company will make a final decision on which of those get Fiber by the end of the year, Lo said.

Building high-speed networks is a cumbersome process that typically requires tearing up streets and working with local governments to get access to utility poles and approvals.

Unlike in the past, when networks expand over time, Google's approach will be to build out all at once in specific urban markets.

Kirjner has estimated the cost of making Fiber available to 300,000 homes in the greater Kansas City region at $170 million. Expanding to 20 million U.S. homes, which Kirjner says is not likely for now, would cost $10 billion to $15 billion.

To minimize disruption to locals, Google will work with city leaders to make use of existing infrastructure -- such as conduits, and water, gas or electricity lines, Lo added.

"We plan to share what we learn in these 34 cities," vice president of Google Access Services Milo Medin wrote in a blogpost. "It might not work out for everyone. But cities who go through this process with us will be more prepared for us or any provider who wants to build a fiber network."

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Alden Bentley)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A1I1ZT20140220





Official The White House Response to
Restore Net Neutrality By Directing the FCC to Classify Internet Providers as "Common Carriers".

Reaffirming the White House's Commitment to Net Neutrality
Gene Sperling and Todd Park

Thank you to everyone who has signed on to this petition in support of a free and open Internet. Since his days as a United States Senator, President Obama has embraced the principle of net neutrality. As the President recently noted, his campaign for the White House was empowered by an open Internet; it allowed millions of supporters to interact with the President and each other in unprecedented fashion. That experience helped give rise to the creation of this very platform -- the We The People website -- where Americans can express their opinions on any topic and receive a response from the White House. Rights of free speech, and the free flow of information, are central to our society and economy -- and the principle of net neutrality gives every American an equal and meaningful opportunity to participate in both. Indeed, an open Internet is an engine for freedom around the world.

Preserving an open Internet is vital not to just to the free flow of information, but also to promoting innovation and economic productivity. Because of its openness, the Internet has allowed entrepreneurs -- with just a small amount of seed money or a modest grant -- to take their innovative ideas from the garage or the dorm room to every corner of the Earth, building companies, creating jobs, improving vital services, and fostering even more innovation along the way.

Absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries. The resulting decline in the development of advanced online apps and services would dampen demand for broadband and ultimately discourage investment in broadband infrastructure. An open Internet removes barriers to investment worldwide.

A wide spectrum of stakeholders and policymakers recognize the importance of these principles. In the wake of last month's court decision, it was encouraging to hear major broadband providers assert their commitment to an open Internet.

It was also encouraging to see Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, whom the President appointed to that post last year, reaffirm his commitment to a free and open Internet and pledge to use the authority granted by Congress to maintain a free and open Internet. The White House strongly supports the FCC and Chairman Wheeler in this effort.

The petition asked that the President direct the FCC to reclassify Internet service providers as "common carriers" which, if upheld, would give the FCC a distinct set of regulatory tools to promote net neutrality. The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet -- a principle that this White House vigorously supports.

Gene Sperling is Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Todd Park is the United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President.
https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/pet...riers/5CWS1M4P





Statement by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on the FCC's Open Internet Rules

STATEMENT BY FCC CHAIRMAN TOM WHEELER ON

THE FCC’S OPEN INTERNET RULES


FEBRUARY 19, 2014

In its Verizon v. FCC decision, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
invited the Commission to act to preserve a free and open Internet. I intend to accept that invitation by
proposing rules that will meet the court’s test for preventing improper blocking of and discrimination
among Internet traffic, ensuring genuine transparency in how Internet Service Providers manage traffic,
and enhancing competition. Preserving the Internet as an open platform for innovation and expression
while providing certainty and predictability in the marketplace is an important responsibility of this
agency.

The D.C. Circuit ruled that the FCC has the legal authority to issue enforceable rules of the road to
preserve Internet freedom and openness. It affirmed that Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of
1996 gives the FCC authority to encourage broadband deployment by, among other things, removing
barriers to infrastructure deployment, encouraging innovation, and promoting competition. The court
recognized the importance of ensuring that so-called “edge providers,” those that use the network to
deliver goods and services, can reach people who use the Internet. And it upheld the Commission's
judgment that Internet freedom encourages broadband investment and that its absence could ultimately
inhibit broadband deployment.

Recently in Los Angeles, I talked to start-up entrepreneurs who produce video to meet consumers’
growing desire for programming. Their companies may succeed or they may fail depending on whether
they are truly creative and innovative. But they and other innovators cannot be judged on their own merits
if they are unfairly prevented from harnessing the full power of the Internet, which would harm the
virtuous cycle of innovation that has benefitted consumers, edge providers, and broadband networks. This
is why the FCC’s exercise of its authority to protect an open Internet is important.

Today we initiate several steps to ensure that the Internet remains a platform for innovation, economic
growth, and free expression.

1. Propose new rules. I intend to ask my fellow commissioners to:

Enforce and enhance the transparency rule.

The Court of Appeals has affirmed the Open
Internet Order’s transparency rule, which requires that network operators disclose how they
manage Internet traffic. This is more significant than many people may realize. We should
consider ways to make that rule even more effective. For example, an explicit purpose of the rule
is to afford edge providers the technical information they need to create and maintain their
products and services as well as to assess the risks and benefits of embarking on new projects.

Fulfill the “no blocking” goal.

The D.C. Circuit recognized the importance of the Open Internet
Order’s ban on blocking Internet traffic, but ruled that the Commission had not provided
sufficient legal rationale for its existence. We will carefully consider how, consistent with the
court opinion, we can ensure that edge providers are not unfairly blocked, explicitly or implicitly,
from reaching consumers, as well as ensuring that consumers can continue to access any lawful
content and services they choose.

Fulfill the goals of the non-discrimination rule
.
We will carefully consider how Section 706
might be used to protect and promote an Open Internet consistent with the D.C. Circuit’s opinion
and its earlier affirmance of our Data Roaming Order. Thus, we will consider (1) setting an
enforceable legal standard that provides guidance and predictability to edge providers,
consumers, and broadband providers alike; (2) evaluating on a case-by-case basis whether that
standard is met; and (3) identifying key behaviors by broadband providers that the Commission
would view with particular skepticism.
2. Keep Title II authority on the table. As the Court of Appeals noted, as long as Title II – with the
ability to reclassify Internet access service as a telecommunications service – remains a part of the
Communications Act, the Commission has the ability to utilize it if warranted. Accordingly, the
Commission’s docket on Title II authority remains open.
3. Forgo judicial review of the Verizon decision. In light of the Court’s finding that the Commission has
authority to issue new rules under Section 706 and the ongoing availability of Title II, the Commission
will not initiate any further judicial action in connection with the Verizon decision.
4. Solicit public comment. A new docket is opened today called “Protecting and Promoting the Open
Internet,” so that all public input on the court’s remand of the Open Internet decision will be collected and
available. I will recommend to my fellow commissioners that the Commission seek comment through a
formal rulemaking on the specific rules for preserving and protecting the open Internet. The focus of this
docket will be on issues raised by the D.C. Circuit opinion.
5. Hold Internet Service Providers to their commitment. Major Internet service providers have
indicated that they will continue to honor the safeguards articulated in the 2010 Open Internet Order.
That’s the right and responsible thing to do, and we take them up on their commitment – which will
continue to provide protection for the Open Internet until new rules are put in place.
6. Enhance competition. The Commission will look for opportunities to enhance Internet access
competition. One obvious candidate for close examination was raised in Judge Silberman’s separate
opinion, namely legal restrictions on the ability of cities and towns to offer broadband services to
consumers in their communities.
When the earlier rules were adopted in 2010, some predicted that they would stifle investment and
innovation. They were wrong. In fact, investment increased for both edge providers and in broadband
networks. In particular, since 2009, nearly $250 billion in private capital has been invested in U.S. wired
and wireless broadband networks. The FCC must stand strongly behind its responsibility to oversee the
public interest standard and ensure that the Internet remains open and fair. The Internet is and must
remain the greatest engine of free expression, innovation, economic growth, and opportunity the world
has ever known. We must preserve and promote the Internet.
http://www.fcc.gov/document/statemen...internet-rules





The FCC Has a Plan to Save Net Neutrality, But No One Likes It
Adi Robertson

The FCC has announced its intention to pursue a new version of the Open Internet order that was struck down by a judge last month. In a statement, agency chair Tom Wheeler says that he will begin taking public input on an updated set of net neutrality rules. The FCC will not pursue an appeal in the case it lost against Verizon in January, opting instead to use the authority that the court granted in its decision. "Preserving the internet as an open platform for innovation and expression while providing certainty and predictability in the marketplace is an important responsibility of this agency," says Wheeler.

The FCC won't appeal in its case against Verizon

The FCC's original case relied on a piecemeal set of arguments that Judge David Tatel found unconvincing. Now, it's taking the shard of hope he gave it and digging deep. The court said the FCC could regulate the internet under Section 706, which lets it make rules to promote broadband deployment, and Wheeler will be proceeding with this plan. In principle, the new framework sound very much like the old one: wired broadband providers shouldn't be able to block lawful sites and services on their networks, they shouldn't discriminate against content, and they should make their network management plans public. According to a senior FCC official, wireless broadband providers will likely still be given looser rules. But the commission is just now considering proposals, and we don't know exactly what we'll end up with.

The original rules failed because they were too much like those for "common carrier" services like phone companies, which can be regulated more strictly. As he made this decision, though, Tatel said that internet providers did have strong incentives to abuse their power and unfairly favor their own services — and that net neutrality rules could therefore promote broadband adoption and competition. Wheeler has said over and over that he's going to "accept that invitation," but it's still a relatively limited one, and the commission will have to work around that. One of major sticking points is non-discrimination, a contentious rule that was explicitly struck down. Wheeler suggests that companies that violate non-discrimination rules could be evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than outright censured. An FCC official said that doing this could avoid making a bright-line test that was too much like a common carrier rule, shoehorning it into Section 706. But even a milquetoast set of rules could still end up going on trial again.

There's another option: the FCC could just define broadband providers as common carriers. An earlier decision to classify them differently is what doomed the FCC's old policy, and the change would be a surefire way to make sure any new net neutrality rules would stand up. It would also be political poison. Wheeler has said he's leaving this possibility open, but it's clearly not one that the FCC wants to resort to right now. President Barack Obama has all but said the same in his support of the FCC. Nonetheless, the rules have yet to be actually written, so it's not clear that the FCC will be able to bend broadband competition rules to fit its needs. If it can't, reclassification is effectively the only way forward.

"It appears that the FCC is tilting at windmills here."

At least two other commissioners have come out against Wheeler's decision. "Today's announcement reminds me of the movie Groundhog Day," writes Commissioner Ajit Pai. "In the wake of a court defeat, an FCC Chairman floats a plan for rules regulating internet service providers' network management practices instead of seeking guidance from Congress." He's referring to the Comcast v. FCC net neutrality case that ended in a loss for the agency just before a new set of rules were introduced. "Net neutrality has always been a solution in search of a problem."

Commissioner Mike O'Rielly, meanwhile, said he was "deeply concerned" by the announcement. "It appears that the FCC is tilting at windmills here. Instead of fostering investment and innovation through deregulation, the FCC will be devoting its resources to adopting new rules without any evidence that consumers are unable to access the content of their choice." Free Press, an organization that has been deeply involved in the net neutrality debate, critiqued Wheeler for attempting to proceed without larger policy changes. "Pretending the FCC has authority won't actually help Internet users when websites are being blocked or services are being slowed down," says president and CEO Craig Aaron in a statement. "If the agency really wants to stop censorship, discrimination and website blocking, it must reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service."

In addition to this rulemaking, Wheeler says he will continue to look for other ways to promote broadband deployment, including encouraging cities to develop their own broadband networks to compete with telecoms. He will also attempt to hold internet service providers to the statements they've made in support of an open internet, an issue that became more pressing when Verizon denied accusations that it throttled Netflix in the wake of the decision.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/54...utrality-rules





The Two Secret Weapons in the FCC’s War on Internet Throttling
Brian Fung

The fate of the open Internet just got a little bit clearer.

For weeks now, it's been legal for Internet providers to slow down or block Americans' access to Web content — the result of a federal court ruling against regulators at the Federal Communications Commission. On Wednesday, FCC chairman Tom Wheeler fired back with a new plan to preserve Internet openness — but more important than his vow to write new rules on net neutrality may be two carefully calculated moves that show Wheeler's promise as a tactician.

Reclassification. Wheeler's first step was to say he wanted to rewrite the FCC's net neutrality order to conform to the agency's existing authority, which the D.C. Circuit court affirmed. But backing up that promise is the threat of reclassification, or the act of turning Internet providers into regulated utilities under Title II of the Communications Act. Doing so would entitle the FCC to reinstate all the old rules about traffic blocking and discrimination that were just eliminated by the court. As an extreme outcome most Internet providers would like to avoid, reclassification acts as Wheeler's trump card; if the carriers don't behave, he could still play the card with few legal repercussions. There are two advantages to holding reclassification over the carriers' heads rather than going for it right away: The FCC demonstrates its willingness to pursue more modest steps in line with its existing authorities, and keeping Title II on the table gives the carriers a strong incentive to cooperate.

Municipal broadband. Even if Wheeler can't force Internet providers to treat all traffic equally, he can still create market conditions that do the job for him. Wheeler is hinting he'll be looking at ways to act against state laws that ban cities and towns from setting up their own high-speed Internet. It's still unclear how he'll go about doing that, but eliminating or weakening those laws would make it easier for mayors to create alternatives to the big cable and telephone companies that currently dominate most markets. This is a big deal. More options for consumers might well lead to net neutrality in spite of the FCC's inability to impose regulations to that effect.

Wheeler didn't have to take these steps, but both amount to an assertive use of power under the FCC's existing authority. It's a muscular response to what started out as a short-term defeat for the agency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...et-throttling/





China Says Kerry's Call for Internet Freedom Naïve

China criticized U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday for his "naive" call for more Internet freedom in the country, and wondered why his discussion with Chinese bloggers had not touched upon Edward Snowden.

During an approximately 40-minute chat with bloggers in Beijing on Saturday, Kerry expressed his support for online freedom in China, as well as for human rights in general.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said outsiders had no right to pass judgment and misunderstood the real situation.

"If China's Internet had not gone through enormous development in the past few years then where would these bloggers have come from?" she told a daily news briefing.

"China's affairs must be decided by Chinese people based on their own national condition. Using methods like this to push China in a direction of change they want, isn't that rather naive?" Hua added.

"I think the topic of this discussion could have been even more open, for example discussing Snowden's case and issues like that," she said, referring to the former U.S. National Security Agency contractor whose leaks have embarrassed Washington.

Last year, China's Communist Party renewed a heavy-handed campaign to control online interaction, threatening legal action against people whose perceived rumors on microblogs such as Sina Weibo are reposted more than 500 times or seen by more than 5,000 people.

Rights groups and dissidents have criticized the crackdown as another tool for the party to limit criticism and to further control freedom of expression.

The government says such steps are needed for social stability and says every country in the world seeks to regulate the Internet.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A1E05R20140217





Saudi Internet Monitors Turn Focus On Syria-Fuelled Radicalism
Angus McDowall

Syria's civil war has led to a new, greater threat of Islamist radicalism in Saudi Arabia that requires a more aggressive "war of ideology" on the Internet, says the man responsible for online monitoring in the kingdom.

Remarks by the head of the Saudi Ideological Security Directorate (ISD) suggest that the unit, known for keeping tabs on liberal activists and women drivers as well as Islamist extremists, is turning its focus increasingly towards those using the Internet to recruit fighters for jihad abroad.

This month King Abdullah decreed that any Saudi who goes overseas to fight faces jail terms of 3-20 years. Authorities believe 1,000-2,000 of the kingdom's citizens have gone to Syria to join the war there.

The decree also imposes punishment on Saudis who join, glorify or give moral or material support to groups described as terrorist or extremist, a list that has not yet been published.

From an office near a firing range in a police academy in Riyadh, the ISD keeps tabs on "anything that might influence the stability of Saudi Arabia," said its director, Abdulrahman al-Hadlaq. That broad mandate includes peaceful political or human rights activists, he said. Several have been jailed over the past year on charges that included comments made online.

"Our job is to counter radicalization - either conservatives or liberals," he told Reuters in an interview.

The directorate monitors online activity, reports threats to the security services and participates on social media to rebut arguments of Islamist militants speaking in favor of jihad.

Hadlaq justified the policy by saying most governments, including those in the West, monitor citizens online. The Saudi monitors are careful to distinguish between people who simply voice opinions and those who incite others to action, he said.

Three years after the Arab uprisings and facing a bitter rivalry with Iran being played out on the battlefields of Syria, and in Bahrain, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon - Saudi Arabia's rulers feel more threatened than ever.

Saudi Arabia is one of the main sources of arms and cash for rebels fighting against Iran's ally Bashar al-Assad in Saudi Arabia. But it has increasingly been worried about a blowback at home as al Qaeda-linked fighters gain influence, much as Saudi Arabia faced a threat from returning fighters from Afghanistan and Iraq who killed hundreds in a bombing campaign before being crushed last decade.

It is imperative that Saudi Arabia fight a "war of ideology" online, Hadlaq said. "If we don't do this, terrorists will come back and the terrorism issue will come back."

"Before the problems in Syria started, the role of Qaeda and the radicals were declining," Hadlaq said. "When the issue of Syria came and the guys started watching the brutality of the system there and the regime in Syria, we started noticing that radicalization might come back."

SAUDI EGGS

Saudi Arabia's few liberal activists worry that they are targeted by the same body that deals with terrorism.

Saudis are among the world's biggest users of social media, using it to discuss political, religious and social issues that were once seen as taboo. Many quietly grumble about what they see as heavy-handed interference by the authorities.

Comments counter to government policy are quickly attacked by what users have come to refer to as "Saudi eggs" - suspected government officials represented by the egg that Twitter uses as the default image for users without profile photos.

Hadlaq said most of the people who argue on the government's behalf online are "volunteers" and many are doing so without the help, guidance or even knowledge of the authorities.

Those who argue against militant Islamists "are really doing a good job, posting and replying to those extremists," he said.

Government monitors use a guidebook and database of arguments to counter militant rhetoric online, he said.

"We have a huge guide that is really a reference for us... We have a database and we use it to refute. For example if someone says 'I can go (on jihad) without taking permission from my mother', we have an answer for this," he said. Riyadh has shared this database with Western governments, he added.

Over the past three years, the government has stepped up its campaign against all groups that challenge the authorities, including human rights and pro-democracy advocates who have been detained and imprisoned.

Last year the political and human rights activists Mohammed Fahd Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamad were jailed for more than 10 years, partly because of social media posts, including one that called for the then interior minister, the late Prince Nayef, to be stripped of his job and charged with rights abuses.

Blogger Hamza Kashgari was imprisoned for more than a year after posting tweets of a hypothetical conversation with the prophet Mohammad, ruled as blasphemous.

Among other possible targets, Hadlaq said, could be the Muslim Brotherhood, the pan-Arab Islamist group which came to power in Egypt after the 2011 revolution there until it was overthrown by the military last year.

In a rare sign of rare Saudi political ferment in recent months, some Saudis have begun using as their online avatars a four-fingered salute adopted as symbol by the Brotherhood after protesters were killed in a Cairo square last year.

"Followers of the Muslim Brotherhood would be considered illegal, because the laws here are really against any creation of a political group," Hadlaq said. The Brotherhood had pushed "issues that are in contradiction with the Saudi policies".

Use of the four-fingered sign on the Internet was being watched, but for now was considered more of a sign of sympathy with slain protesters than proof of illegal support for the Brotherhood's aims, Hadlaq said.

REBUTTING MILITANTS

In addition to monitoring the Internet, the ISD is also responsible for running the kingdom's rehabilitation program for militants, oversees an anti-militancy publicity campaign and works to counter radicalization among clerics and teachers.

When it is concerned about somebody online it passes the information to an investigative security branch.

"Sometimes you will report an issue on someone that from monitoring him you think he is dangerous. Then in a few days or weeks you will be seeing him taken to court," said Hadlaq.

Hadlaq added he thought there were "tens" of Saudis now under investigation or in a legal process because of comments written on social media. Most people being watched in the kingdom are "sympathizers" rather than actively involved with radical groups, he said.

The new decree imposing prison terms for those who go abroad to fight or are aligned with groups the government sees as extremist will make the ISD's job easier, he added.

"Now you have a special law that really prosecutes, or helps you prosecute, people in a very clear way. I think this is important. We already noticed (online extremism) declining."

He defended the government's policy of viewing liberal activists, including those calling for women being allowed to drive, as potentially dangerous.

"The policy of Saudi Arabia, we want a united society. We don't want things to influence our unity. So if something is going to make our society unstable or disunite out society, we will pay a lot of attention to it," he said.

A woman who participated in a women's driving campaign in October by filming herself behind the wheel and posting it on YouTube, as well as with Tweets encouraging others to do the same, said she had reduced her social media profile.

Although she was not contacted by the authorities, she was worried that her online posts could make her a target.

"I think it's wrong. Women's driving is not a threat to the government but they always mix everything together and accuse people of making a threat. After what happened to some tweeters, I locked my account. It's so private right now that I only have 34 followers," said the woman, who asked not to be identified.

(Reporting By Angus McDowall, Editing by William Maclean and Peter Graff)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A1F0HK20140216





Venezuela's Internet Crackdown Escalates into Regional Blackout
Danny O'Brien

For the last month, Venezuela has been caught up in widespread protests against its government. The Maduro administration has responded by cracking down on what it claims as being foreign interference online. As that social unrest has escalated, the state's censorship has widened: from the removal of television stations from cable networks, to the targeted blocking of social networking services, and the announcement of new government powers to censor and monitor online. Last night, EFF received reports from Venezuelans of the shutdown of the state Internet provider in San Cristóbal, a regional capital in the west of the country.

The censorship began early last week when the authorities removed a Columbian news network, NTN24, from Venezuelan cable, and simultaneously published a reminder that TV stations could be in violation of a law that forbids the incitement or promotion of "hatred", or "foment citizens' anxiety or alter public order."

Venezuelan Internet users on a variety of ISPs lost connectivity last Thursday to an IP address owned by the content delivery network, Edgecast. That address provided access to, among other services, Twitter's images at pbs.twimg.com. A separate block prevented Venezuelans from reaching the text hosting site, Pastebin.

No official explanation for the loss of access to these general purpose communication platforms was given by either the government or the ISPs (the country's largest ISP, CANTV, is government-owned). Twitter later reconfigured their services to point to another IP in response to Venezuelan complaints, bypassing the block. Twitter also communicated to users in Venezuela how to use Twitter using SMS, in anticipation of further Internet interruptions.

William Castillo, the director of CONATEL, the country's media regulator, later claimed that Internet censorship was necessary to fight off online attacks. He said that his organization had blocked several links "where public sites were being attacked."

Last week also saw the Venezuelan government prepare more systematic monitoring and blocking online. The country's official gazette published last Thursday the details of a new government institution, CESPPA ("The Strategic Center for Security and Protection of the Fatherland"). Among its broad powers, CESPPA can unilaterally classify and censor any information it sees as a threat to national security. Its structure includes two new Directorates: the Directorate of Information and Technology Studies, which will be in charge of "processing and analyzing information from the web"; and the Directorate for Social Research, intended to "neutralize and defeat destabilization plans against the nation". The Center will also provide for a network of situation rooms to be placed in all public institutions (the state ISP, CANTV, is defined as a public institution).

When first announced in October, CESPPA was criticized for being an unconstitutional attack on press freedom. With its new details revealed, it's clear that it will also have a wide mandate to monitor and control all online communications in the defence of the state.

Even before CESPPA can flex its new powers, however, the Venezuelan government appears to have taken the most drastic step yet against its citizens' free expression online. Starting late Tuesday night, reports reached EFF of the shutdown of CANTV's Internet access in areas of San Cristóbal, the capital of the state of Táchira, and one center of the protests. Venezuelan technologists have been organizing online to spread information about bypassing censorship and restoring connectivity via the Twitter account @accesolibreve.

The Venezuelan authorities may claim their interference in Internet communication is an attempt to "defeat destabilization," but the results have so far led in the opposite direction. With shifting excuses for increasingly heavy-handed Internet controls, the government is undermining its own legitimacy abroad and among its own citizens. The censorship and blackouts must end.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/0...down-escalates





Seeking Privacy, Teens Turn to Anonymous-Messaging Apps
Cecilia Kang

When the message appeared on Ryan Dominick’s smartphone, the 14-year-old paused to muster some courage. In it was a link sent by an unknown user that could contain anything from a flirtatious come-on to an embarassing put-down.

It turned out to be a picture of Ryan photoshopped to make him look overweight, complete with multiple chins and engorged cheeks. Luckily, the athletic and confident freshman found the picture hilarious.

“LOL,” he responded to the anonymous sender while literally laughing out loud and showing the picture to friends.

The picture was typical of the pranks exchanged among Ryan’s Los Angeles classmates on the anonymous-messaging app Backchat, one of a fast-expanding breed of social-media apps that mask users’ identities and can create messages that self-destruct. Anonymous and ephemeral, apps such as Whisper, Secret, Ask.fm and Snapchat fill a growing demand among teens for more fun, less accountability and more privacy online.

But the boom is opening secret new corners of the Internet at a time when educators and law enforcement officials are worried about the safety of youth online. As teens look increasingly for alternatives to the social giants Facebook and Twitter, the anonymous apps create the opportunity for bullying and cruelty in a forum where they cannot be tracked.

Educators, parents and law enforcement officials complain that it’s hard enough to keep up with activity on public forums such as Facebook. Accounts on the anonymous sites are even harder to monitor, they say, noting that the popular anonymous question-and-answer forum Ask.fm has become a magnet for cyberbullying.

The apps fill a critical need, however, among teens, the majority of whom have their own smartphones and manage their social lives on multiple online networks. Many have been thoroughly lectured about the dangers of sharing too much on traditional sites: They know that future employers and college recruiters are likely to sift carefully through their Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Besides, when parents, grandparents and Little League coaches became core users of Facebook, kids naturally gravitated to new places where they could socialize away from the watchful eye of adults, experts say.

“Youth need a way to share material in a more natural way, like a voice conversation, and that they don’t have to worry about lingering around and being part of what’s now become curated life online,” said Amanda Lenhart, a senior researcher at the Pew Internet and American Life Project.

Experts estimate that dozens of anonymous and so-called “ephemeral” apps such as Snapchat have sprung up, attracting millions of teenage users. Most are relatively simple, capable only of sending photos and texts, and there are no fussy profiles or privacy settings.

Take Backchat: The app was created by Ryan’s 14-year-old classmate Daniel Singer and attracted 125,000 members in its first few months. He launched it with support from his father and $200,000 in seed investments.

“There’s suspense in not knowing who is sending you messages, and it’s actually kind of fun, knowing someone spent the time to make the photo,” said Ryan, who has been on a hunt this week to find the mystery sender of the picture. “It adds spice, more than on Facebook, where everything is permanent and out there.”

Some apps are backed by the biggest Silicon Valley venture capitalists. Whisper, whose users post pictures and comments anonymously, received $21 million from Sequoia Capital last fall. Secret was created by former employees of Google and Foursquare, to take advantage of a backlash to the scripted feel of Facebook.

“What we found was people on social networks were trying to put forth their best image of their great dinners, amazing beach vacations. But life isn’t always like that,” said Chrys Bader, a co-founder of Secret.

The Secret app combs through users’ contact lists to find other members of the anonymous network. A user never knows which of his or her friends might be a Secret user, too.

Many of the Secret posts are corny jokes, but some target individuals. One recent post invited condemnation of a girl who was identified by name: “Raise your hand if any of you have ever felt personally victimized by” the girl, it said.

Among the comments, came this reply: “Push her in front of a bus.”

Bader said the site allows users to flag abusive comments and that harmful posts will be taken down. He said the majority of messages are not harmful, but he declined to say how many people use Secret and whether they are mainly teens.

According to a 2011 Pew Internet and American Life study, nearly nine of 10 teen users said they have witnessed “mean or cruel”actions aimed at peers online. Still, many experts say serious online cruelty is rare and that the risks of cyberbullying have been overblown because of a few high-profile teen suicides.

But they also wonder if the recent proliferation of anonymous apps could change that.

This month, Olivia Birdsong, a 13-year-old Memphis resident, saw classmates trash a girl as a “slut” on the question-and-answer board Ask.fm. The high school freshman said a few people stood up for the girl, but many piled on with criticism.

“The worst stuff happens on the anonymous sites because people are either too scared to say something to someone’s face or they want to present someone with public humiliation,” Olivia said.

Numerous psychological studies show conflict is often resolved when people talk face-to-face. When people can see signs of sadness or other emotions, they tend to back down. Facebook said the majority of users who are flagged for abusive or bullying conduct never do it again. On the anonymous sites, there are no such brakes on negative behavior.

Ask.fm, which is based in the tiny Baltic nation of Latvia, has emerged as a particularly vicious online playground, where hateful comments circulate quickly, with no monitoring and little accountability. Florida resident Rebecca Sedwick, 12, jumped to her death last September after cyberbullying by former middle-school classmates on Ask.fm and other social networks. “you seriously deserve to die,” read one message directed to Rebecca on the site.

To protect against cyberbullying, some of the new apps don’t allow minors. Whisper, for example, requires users to be 17 or older. But no one polices the requirement. Meanwhile, it takes just one tap on a pop-up notice to verify age and get online.

Arielle Ampeh, a junior at Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, said she resisted using social networks until last year. At first, she said she just joined Facebook, mainly to keep up with class assignments posted by teachers and to look at her lacrosse team’s page.

“I didn’t even want to join at first. I didn’t see the draw. And I saw people post dumb things, like with vulgar language that they may regret saying later,” she said.

But in the past year, Arielle has graduated to Snapchat, where she likes to post silly pictures of dogs and look at photos from friends. She also follows popular posts on Tumblr such as Humans of New York.

Arielle said she remains a cautious user who mostly browses friends’ posts and rarely contributes anything of her own.

Still, she said, “it’s hard not to be on social networks.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/busine...0da_story.html





The Other Big Winner in the WhatsApp Deal: Your Wallet
Farhad Manjoo

Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp for at least $16 billion has minted dozens of new millionaires and billionaires this week, but there was another big winner in the deal: Parents and their teenage children, who have most likely saved hundreds or even thousands of dollars in texting fees thanks to the hugely popular messaging app, and will continue to do so after the deal.

Before WhatsApp — and Line, Viber, WeChat and a few other messaging apps now being hungrily adopted by young people and adults across the globe — the main way to send a message from one phone to another was through SMS, a technology that routed the text through the same infrastructure that mobile carriers used to handle voice calls.

To the carriers, these texts are essentially free to provide. Each text occupies a minuscule amount of bandwidth on their airwaves, and it rides across the infrastructure that they have already set up to provide voice calls. But because there is little competition in SMS — after you sign up for a carrier, you cannot send your SMS messages through any other provider — carriers once charged exorbitant rates for texts, minting huge profits.

In the United States, until recently, Verizon charged 20 cents a text to customers who did not sign up for a messaging plan. Those who did — at $5 to $20 a month a phone — could bring their costs down to as low as half a cent a message, although that was only if 5,000 messages were sent a month. AT&T’s rates were similar, and so were those of many carriers around the world. These prices proved enormously lucrative for carriers. Analysts’ estimates put global SMS revenue at around $100 billion a year annually — money that was essentially all profit for carriers.

WhatsApp did not start out as a messaging app. Its earliest version, introduced in 2009, was more of a mobile status-updating app — something closer to Twitter than SMS. But as Forbes reported in a detailed profile of the company, its founders quickly noticed that people began using the app for back-and-forth communication, a way to send texts without incurring SMS fees.

Technically, this was not totally free to users, but it was very close to free. WhatsApp routes its messages over the Internet, so people had to have a mobile data plan or access to Wi-Fi to use it. They also had to have a smartphone. (SMS could work on more basic phones.) But after that cost, each message over WhatsApp required such a tiny slice of mobile bandwidth that it was basically free. If you paid AT&T $25 for a two-gigabytes-a-month data plan, each WhatsApp message might cost about two ten-thousandths of a cent, according to Gizmodo’s math. This means that someone who sent 5,000 messages over WhatsApp, a not unreasonable number for some overactive teenagers, would pay about a penny in data fees. If 5,000 SMS texts were sent at AT&T’s nonplan rate of 20 cents a message, the sender would be out $1,000, which is 100,000 times WhatsApp’s price.

But Internet texting was not just cheaper, it was also better. In WhatsApp’s early days, it was one of hundreds of apps trying to offer a replacement for SMS, so it was forced to create a better service to stand out. Among other features, it eschewed ads, while some competitors’ apps were glutted with them, and per-message fees. The company also focused on the service’s functionality, making sure that messages flew across the globe extremely quickly and efficiently, and that the app itself was well designed and easy to use.

Its founders were also determined to make the app work everywhere: They started on the iPhone, but quickly created versions for Android, BlackBerry, Symbian and Windows Phone. This gave WhatsApp a leg up over proprietary messaging systems like BlackBerry’s BBM and Apple’s iMessage, which worked only for messages between similar devices.

It is still unclear whether WhatsApp can make a lot of money providing very cheap texts. Today, the app is free to use for a year, after which it charges a user $1 a year. With 450 million users and growing, that could add up to a lot of money, but it is not obvious that the company is worth as much as $19 billion. That is especially true when you consider that the service does not collect a lot of data about its users — data that the company’s new owner might use for ad targeting — and that it has pledged to remain ad-free after the acquisition.

But to users, WhatsApp’s fortunes are almost irrelevant now. In response to the rise of WhatsApp and other app-based messaging services, carriers have had to reduce their SMS prices. Both AT&T and Verizon now offer unlimited texting with their basic smartphone plans. Around the world, carriers’ SMS revenues are now falling by tens of billions of dollars a year. And even if Facebook fails to turn WhatsApp into a viable business, we are never going to return to the old pay-per-text days. Messaging is now on a one-way path toward its natural price, which is free.

There is a larger lesson in this story: When telecom companies control specific protocols on their lines — whether it’s texting, voice calls or even cable TV — customers lose out. And as soon as our devices get access to the open Internet, we have a bounty of competitive choices that reduce prices and improve service. What happened to texts is likely to happen to voice calls, too, in a few years’ time. Because of competition from FaceTime Audio, Google Hangouts, Skype and lots and lots of other Internet-phone services, few of us will worry about voice minutes anymore; for some, that might even be true today. And perhaps the SMS story will play out on TV, too. Cable is expensive and inflexible. Internet-based alternatives like Netflix and YouTube are cheap and available everywhere. In the long run, there is only one way that story ends.
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/0...l-your-wallet/





Apple Security Flaw Could Allow Hackers to Beat Encryption
Joseph Menn

A major flaw in Apple Inc software for mobile devices could allow hackers to intercept email and other communications that are meant to be encrypted, the company said on Friday, and experts said Mac computers were even more exposed.

If attackers have access to a mobile user's network, such as by sharing the same unsecured wireless service offered by a restaurant, they could see or alter exchanges between the user and protected sites such as Gmail and Facebook. Governments with access to telecom carrier data could do the same.

"It's as bad as you could imagine, that's all I can say," said Johns Hopkins University cryptography professor Matthew Green.

Apple did not say when or how it learned about the flaw in the way iOS handles sessions in what are known as secure sockets layer or transport layer security, nor did it say whether the flaw was being exploited.

But a statement on its support website was blunt: The software "failed to validate the authenticity of the connection."

Apple released software patches and an update for the current version of iOS for iPhone 4 and later, 5th-generation iPod touches, and iPad 2 and later.

Without the fix, a hacker could impersonate a protected site and sit in the middle as email or financial data goes between the user and the real site, Green said.

After analyzing the patch, several security researchers said the same flaw existed in current versions of Mac OSX, running Apple laptop and desktop computers. No patch is available yet for that operating system, though one is expected soon.

Because spies and hackers will also be studying the patch, they could develop programs to take advantage of the flaw within days or even hours.

The issue is a "fundamental bug in Apple's SSL implementation," said Dmitri Alperovich, chief technology officer at security firm CrowdStrike Inc. Adam Langley, a senior engineer at Google, agreed with CrowdStrike that OS X was at risk.

Apple did not reply to requests for comment. The flaw appears to be in the way that well-understood protocols were implemented, an embarrassing lapse for a company of Apple's stature and technical prowess.

The company was recently stung by leaked intelligence documents claiming that authorities had 100 percent success rate in breaking into iPhones.

Friday's news suggests that enterprising hackers could have had great success as well if they knew of the flaw.

(Reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Ken Wills and Robert Birsel)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...A1L01Y20140222





Reporting From the Web’s Underbelly
Nicole Perlroth

In the last year, Eastern European cybercriminals have stolen Brian Krebs’s identity a half dozen times, brought down his website, included his name and some unpleasant epithets in their malware code, sent fecal matter and heroin to his doorstep, and called a SWAT team to his home just as his mother was arriving for dinner.

“I can’t imagine what my neighbors think of me,” he said dryly.

Mr. Krebs, 41, tries to write pieces that cannot be found elsewhere. His widely read cybersecurity blog, Krebs on Security, covers a particularly dark corner of the Internet: profit-seeking cybercriminals, many based in Eastern Europe, who make billions off pharmaceutical sales, malware, spam, frauds and heists like the recent ones that Mr. Krebs was first to uncover at Adobe, Target and Neiman Marcus.

He covers this niche with much the same tenacity of his subjects, earning him their respect and occasional ire.

Mr. Krebs — a former reporter at The Washington Post who taught himself to read Russian while jogging on his treadmill and who blogs with a 12-gauge shotgun by his side — is so entrenched in the digital underground that he is on a first-name basis with some of Russia’s major cybercriminals. Many call him regularly, leak him documents about their rivals, and try to bribe and threaten him to keep their names and dealings off his blog.

His clean-cut looks and plain-speaking demeanor seem more appropriate for a real-estate broker than a man who spends most of his waking hours studying the Internet’s underbelly. But few have done more to shed light on the digital underground than Mr. Krebs.

His obsession with hackers kicked in when he was just another victim. In 2001, a computer worm — a malicious software program that can spread quickly — locked him out of his home computer. “It felt like someone had broken into my home,” Mr. Krebs recalled in an interview. He started looking into it. And he kept looking, learning about spam, computer worms and the underground industry behind it.

Eventually, his anger and curiosity turned into a full-time beat at The Post and then on his own blog.

“I realized that if security breaks down, the technology breaks down,” Mr. Krebs said.

Today, he maintains extensive files on criminal syndicates and their tools. Some security experts readily acknowledge that he knows more about Russia’s digital underground than they do.

“I would put him up against the best threat intelligence analyst,” said Rodney Joffe, senior vice president at Neustar, an Internet infrastructure firm. “Many of us in the industry go to him to help us understand what the Eastern European criminals are doing, how they work with each other and who is doing what to whom.”

That proved the case in December when Mr. Krebs uncovered what could be the biggest known Internet credit-card heist. That month, he had been poking around private, underground forums where criminals were bragging about a fresh haul of credit and debit cards.

Soon after, one of Mr. Krebs’s banking sources called to report a high number of fraudulent purchases and asked whether Mr. Krebs could pinpoint where they were coming from. The source said that he had bought a large batch of stolen cards from an underground site and that they all appeared to have been used at Target.

Mr. Krebs checked with a source at a second bank that had also been dealing with a spike in fraud. Together, they visited one forum and bought a batch of stolen cards. Again, the cards appeared to have one thing in common: They had been used at Target from late November to mid-December.

On the morning of Dec. 18, Mr. Krebs called Target. The company’s spokeswoman did not return his call until several hours later, but by then he had enough to run his article: Criminals had breached the registers in Target’s stores and had made off with tens of millions of payment card numbers.

In the following weeks, Mr. Krebs discovered breaches at Neiman Marcus; Michaels, the arts and crafts retailer; and White Lodging, which manages franchises for major hotel chains like Hilton, Marriott and Starwood Hotels.

It is still unclear whether the attacks were related, but at least 10 other retailers may have been hit by the same hackers that hit Target and are reluctant to acknowledge it.

That is where Mr. Krebs comes in. Unlike physical crime — a bank robbery, for example, quickly becomes public — online thefts are hushed up by companies that worry the disclosure will inflict more damage than the theft, allowing hackers to raid multiple companies before consumers hear about it.

“There’s a lot going on in this industry that impedes the flow of information,” Mr. Krebs said. “And there’s a lot of money to be made in having intelligence and information about what’s going on in the underworld. It’s big business but most people don’t want to pay for it, which explains why they come to someone like me.”

Mr. Krebs is “doing the security industry an enormous favor by disseminating real-time threat information,” said Barmak Meftah, chief executive of AlienVault, a threat-detection service. “We are only as strong as our information. Unless we are very specific and effective about exchanging threat data when one of us gets breached, we will always be a step behind the attackers.”

The tally of victims from the breaches at Target, Neiman Marcus and others now exceeds one-third of the United States population — a grim factoid that may offer Mr. Krebs a strange sense of career vindication.

He first developed an interest in computers because his father, an Air Force engineer, was obsessed with the latest devices. But he did little about it until 1998, when he began writing about technology for The Post, after working his way up from the mailroom. Cybersecurity became a bit of a focus after his own computer was infected by that worm in 2001. “I learned there’s this whole underworld that seemed really fascinating,” he said.

In 2005, he started The Post’s Security Fix blog, occasionally frustrating editors with hacker jargon and unnerving some who worried he was becoming too close to sources.

“A lot of what Brian does would scare the hell out of traditional newsroom editors,” said Russ Walker, Mr. Krebs’s former editor at The Post. “I don’t think he crossed the lines journalistically, but he was living a different type of experience.”

By 2006, Mr. Krebs was a fixture in hacker forums, learning code, and — ever the dutiful reporter — borrowing Russian language tapes from his local library since most of what he tracks originates in the former Soviet Union and its satellite states. (He acknowledges having used his technical prowess at one point to peek inside The Post’s payroll system to see how much colleagues were making, something he now strongly advises against.)

In 2009, The Post asked Mr. Krebs to broaden his focus to general technology news and policy. When he declined, he was let go.

He used his severance to start his own blog, Krebs on Security, from his “command center,” a guest room at the Annandale, Va., home he shares with his wife. There, three 19-inch computer screens help him keep tabs on the underworld, while another monitors security footage of his house.

Mr. Krebs’s readership is growing. In December, 850,000 readers visited his blog, mostly to learn more about the breach at Target. Though he will not disclose figures, Mr. Krebs says the salary he now makes from advertising, occasional speaking engagements and consulting work is a “nice bump” from what he earned at The Post.

But there are risks implicit to being a one-man operation. “The work that he’s done exposing Eastern European hackers has been seminal,” said Tom Kellermann, vice president for cybersecurity at Trend Micro, a computer security company. “But Brian needs a bodyguard.”

Russian criminals routinely feed Mr. Krebs information about their rivals that they obtained through hacks. After one such episode, he began receiving daily calls from a major Russian cybercriminal seeking his files back. Mr. Krebs is writing a book about the ordeal, called “Spam Nation,” to be published by Sourcebooks this year.

In the meantime, hackers have been competing in a dangerous game of one-upmanship to see who can pull the worst prank on Mr. Krebs. They often steal his identity. One opened a $20,000 credit line in his name. Admirers have made more than $1,000 in bogus PayPal donations to his blog using hacked accounts. Others have paid his cable bill for three years with stolen credit cards.

The antics can be dangerous. In March, as Mr. Krebs was preparing to have his mother over for dinner, he opened his front door to find a police SWAT team pointing semiautomatic guns in his direction. Only after his wife returned home from the grocery store to find him handcuffed did the police realize Mr. Krebs had been the victim of “swatting.” Someone had called the police and falsely reported a murder at their home.

Four months after that, someone sent packets of heroin to Mr. Krebs’s home, then spoofed a call from his neighbor to the police. But Mr. Krebs had already been tipped off to the prank. He was tracking the fraud in a private forum — where a criminal had posted the shipment’s tracking number — and had alerted the local police and the F.B.I.

Mr. Joffe worries Mr. Krebs’s enemies could do far worse. “I don’t understand why he hasn’t moved to a new, undisclosed address,” he said.

Mr. Krebs said he did plan to move and keep his new address secret. But these days it is almost impossible.

Though he goes to great lengths to protect his personal information, last month his wife received an email from Target informing her that their mailing address and other personal information had been stolen in the breach.

“I got that letter,” he said, “and I just had to laugh.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/te...nderbelly.html





At Newark Airport, the Lights Are On, and They’re Watching You
Diane Cardwell

Visitors to Terminal B at Newark Liberty International Airport may notice the bright, clean lighting that now blankets the cavernous interior, courtesy of 171 recently installed LED fixtures. But they probably will not realize that the light fixtures are the backbone of a system that is watching them.

Using an array of sensors and eight video cameras around the terminal, the light fixtures are part of a new wireless network that collects and feeds data into software that can spot long lines, recognize license plates and even identify suspicious activity, sending alerts to the appropriate staff.

The project is still in its early stages, but executives with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, are already talking about expanding it to other terminals and buildings.

To customers like the Port Authority, the systems hold the promise of better management of security as well as energy, traffic and people. But they also raise the specter of technology racing ahead of the ability to harness it, running risks of invading privacy and mismanaging information, privacy advocates say.

Fred H. Cate, director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research at Indiana University, described the potential for misuse as “terrifying.”

His concern derived not from the technology itself but from the process of adopting it, driven by, he said, “that combination of a gee-whiz technology and an event or an opportunity that makes it affordable.” As a result, he said, there was often not enough thought given to what data would actually be useful and how to properly manage it.

At Newark Airport, the Port Authority will own and maintain the data it collects. For now, it says, no other agencies have access to it, and a law enforcement agency can obtain it only through a subpoena or written request.

What began as a way to help governments and businesses save energy by automatically turning lights on and off has become an expanding market for lights, sensors and software capable of capturing and analyzing vast amounts of data about the habits of ordinary citizens.

The light fixtures are outfitted with special chips and connect to sensors, cameras and one another over a wireless network. Data that is collected — say, a particular car pulling up to the terminal — can then be mined and analyzed for a broad range of applications. Systems like the Port Authority’s, developed by a company called Sensity Systems, could soon be more widely available. Under a recent agreement, Amerlux, a leading lighting manufacturer, will start using the technology in its LED fixtures.

“We are opening up an entirely new area in lighting applications and services,” said Chuck Campagna, Amerlux’s chief executive, “including video-based security and public safety, parking management, predictive maintenance and more.”

Other companies, including giants like Cisco Systems and Philips, are racing to grab a share of that market.

Las Vegas is testing a street lighting system that can broadcast sound, and plans to use it mainly to control lighting and play music or to issue security alerts at a pedestrian mall.

Copenhagen is installing 20,000 streetlamps as part of a system that could eventually control traffic, monitor carbon dioxide levels and detect when garbage cans are full. Other government agencies and businesses have begun replacing thousands of lighting fixtures with LEDs, mainly to cut costs.

The trend is expected to accelerate as the fixtures become cheaper and more sophisticated. Navigant Consulting, a firm based in Chicago, has estimated that cities’ interest will prompt more than $100 billion in spending on the technology over the next 10 years.

“More and more what we’re seeing is decision-makers choosing networked lighting controls not just for the energy benefits but for a whole host of nonenergy benefits,” said Jesse Foote, a lighting industry analyst at Navigant.

Sensity’s technology, for example, would allow light fixtures and sensors to pinpoint a gunshot, sense an earthquake or dangerous gas, or spot a person stopping at various cars in a parking lot.

Some cities already have more targeted sensors, like the ShotSpotter gunshot location system in use by more than 70 American cities, including Boston, Milwaukee and San Francisco. But the Sensity network can bring them together through existing light fixtures.

The system could, once software is developed, also make shopping more convenient — a potential boon for malls losing business to the Internet. Sensing a shopper pulling into a parking lot, the system could send an alert to a smartphone, showing empty spaces, or a coupon.

“We see outdoor lighting as the perfect infrastructure to build a brand new network,” said Hugh Martin, Sensity’s chief executive. “We felt what you’d want to use this network for is to gather information about people and the planet.”

But that is precisely what worries privacy advocates.

“There are some people in the commercial space who say, ‘Oh, big data — well, let’s collect everything, keep it around forever, we’ll pay for somebody to think about security later,’ ” said Justin Brookman, who studies consumer privacy at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “The question is whether we want to have some sort of policy framework in place to limit that.”

Even those developing the technology acknowledge the concerns.

“I’m not saying that I know the exact balance point, but there is a lot of value, I think, if we do it right, to this information,” Mr. Martin said, whether that value is heightening security or helping stores compete with Amazon.

His company has a board that includes Heather Zichal, President Obama’s former energy and climate change adviser, and former Representative Richard A. Gephardt to help figure out the implications of the technology.

“I just think we need to be very thoughtful about the positives and the negatives,” Mr. Martin said. He added that the Sensity network is encrypted and “supersecure.”

In Las Vegas, officials say they are not interested in using the video and audio surveillance capabilities of the system they are testing, called Intellistreets, and are instead looking at the use of audio broadcasting to enhance ambience and safety in public areas.

In Copenhagen, the emphasis is on efficiency, said Eric Dresselhuys, an executive vice president of Silver Spring Networks, which designed the network to connect that system.

Executives say the potential for the advanced lighting is nearly boundless.

“No one really wanted the smartphone 20 years ago because they didn’t know they could have it,” said Fred Maxik, founder and chief technology officer of Lighting Science Group, which manufactures LEDs. “And I think the same is true of lighting today: No one knows what lighting is going to be capable of.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/18/bu...ching-you.html





Case Dropped Against SC Woman Jailed Over Video
AP

The owner of a now-closed video store in South Carolina has decided to drop charges against a woman accused of failing to return a movie nearly a decade ago.

Pickens County sheriff's deputies said the owner decided to not pursue the charge because of the media attention that 27-year-old Kayla Michelle Finley's arrest received.

Finley rented the movie "Monster-in-Law" from Dalton Videos in 2005. The owner took out a warrant against Finley, and she was arrested last week when she was at the sheriff's office for something else and the warrant was found. Finley spent the night in jail before she was released.

Working phone numbers for Finley and the defunct store's owner could not be found.
http://www.newstimes.com/news/articl...eo-5256018.php
















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