Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , According to a report in the Wall Street Journal this morning, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has finally realized the folly of its anti-piracy strategy and decided to abandon its mass lawsuits against those who share files over P2P networks. This strategy will now be replaces by a three-strikes rule, where ISPs will be notified of infringements by the RIAA. A number of ISPs have agreed to “reduce the service” of these file sharers if they continue to distribute files after receiving a first warning. After a third or fourth warning, the Internet service might be cut off completely. It is not clear which specific ISPs have entered into this arrangement with the RIAA.
One good aspect of this deal is that the ISPs will not have to report the identity of the alleged copyright infringers to the RIAA. This doesn’t mean that the RIAA is planning to completely stop its lawsuits, however. According a report by CNET, the RIAA will still sue those who download “5,000 or 6,000 songs a month” (of course, it is important to point out that nobody has ever been sued for downloading files, only for sharing them).
This arrangement was brokered by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and, at its core, resembles the RIAA’s deal with a number of colleges.
Read The rest–>Pirates Rejoice: RIAA Drops Lawsuits, Makes Deal with ISPs
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , In response to a Congressional inquiry about its pilot test of NebuAd’s services, internet service provider (ISP) Embarq insisted it revised its privacy policy at least two weeks before it integrated the platform.
NebuAd partners with ISPs to serve ads to users based on their aggregate online activity. The behavioral ad firm sparked a debate over privacy in the Senate earlier this month. Amidst the fracas, it lost a planned liaison with Charter Communications.
“Embarq followed the industry practices of the most similar business model, that of online advertising networks,” wrote Embarq SVP David Zesiger of regulatory policy and external affairs in a letter to Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas).
“It appears that industry standards in this area are evolving rapidly toward a more robust form of notice and choice.”
Lawmakers last week demanded to know whether Embarq tested NebuAd’s services without notifying subscribers directly. Its response — that it changed its privacy policy two weeks prior — lends the sense it did not.
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Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , SOURCE STORY HERE
Viacom has backed off its demands to gain access to the viewing habits and personal data of YouTube users, information it had originally asked for in its copyright infringement lawsuit against the video-sharing website.
The two sides agreed on Monday that any material YouTube was ordered to hand over would be stripped of personal information, including user ID, IP address and visitor ID.
“We are pleased to report that Viacom, MTV and other litigants have backed off their original demand for all users’ viewing histories and we will not be providing that information,” YouTube wrote on its company blog Monday. The company also posted a copy of the stipulation to the order on its website.
Viacom, which owns several U.S. television networks including MTV, VH1, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, had originally asked for the information as part of its $1 billion US lawsuit against YouTube, which is owned by internet search giant Google Inc.
Other plaintiffs in the lawsuit include the English soccer Premier League and music publisher Bourne Co. Viacom and the other plaintiffs alleged in the suit, launched in March2007, that almost 160,000 unauthorized clips of its programming are available on YouTube. Those clips have been viewed more than 1.5 billion times, Viacom charged.
It argued Google wasn’t doing enough to keep its copyrighted videos from television shows such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report off YouTube.
It had originally asked for access to the user histories to prove that copyright-infringing material is more popular than user-generated videos on YouTube.
Two weeks ago a U.S. federal judge ordered YouTube to hand over this information, a decision San Francisco-based privacy advocacy group The Electronic Frontier Foundation said was “a setback to privacy rights.”
Viacom issued a statement Monday, saying it never asked for personally identifiable information and only wanted the data as evidence in its case.
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FCC to Comcast: Throttling Broadband is Unlawful
Comcast’s attempts to throttle user bandwidth have been ruled unlawful by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) — a coup for ‘net neutrality proponents.
Throttling broadband, the practice of slowing internet service down for heavy users, is an unpopular means of discouraging peer-to-peer filesharing. Last year the media panned Comcast when it confessed to throttling access to torrent sites, and in March 2008 it vowed to seek less controversial alternatives to serve users. Three months later, it piloted a slower service for those that consume more bandwidth than others — regardless of what they use it for.
FCC Chair Kevin Martin called the FCC ruling “a good first step.” He added that it would “set baseline protections for consumers that we can build upon.”
Last week Martin recommended the FCC rule against Comcast on the topic of throttling, arguing it violates the principle of treating all web traffic equally. The recommendation required that Comcast stop slowing certain types of traffic. It must also disclose its network management practices. The company was not charged a fine.
Comcast remains unapologetic.
“Comcast does not block any Internet content, application, or service,” said Senior Director Sena Fitzmaurice of Comcast’s corporate communications. “The carefully limited measures that Comcast takes to manage traffic on its broadband network are a reasonable part of Comcast’s strategy to ensure a high-quality, reliable Internet experience for all Comcast High-Speed Internet customers and are used by many other ISPs around the world.”
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , SOURCE ARTICLE HERE
A federal judge in California has suspended proceedings in a subscriber’s lawsuit against Comcast while the Federal Communications Commission completes its investigation into whether the company violated net neutrality principles by slowing traffic to peer-to-peer sites.
U.S. Judge Phyllis Hamilton stayed the case on the grounds that the FCC was already considering petitions against Comcast filed by online video company Vuze, as well as net neutrality advocates Free Press and Public Knowledge.
“The FCC is already using its recognized expertise to consider some of the exact questions placed before the court here, in an effort to promote uniformity in internet broadband regulation,” Hamilton wrote in a ruling quietly issued late last month.
In the ruling, Hamilton said the FCC has “well-established” authority to regulate broadband companies’ services. “The reasonableness of a broadband provider’s network management practices has … been firmly placed within the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission,” she wrote.
Last year, an investigation by The Associated Press revealed that Comcast was slowing traffic to peer-to-peer sites. The report triggered complaints to the FCC that Comcast was violating 2005 net neutrality principles, as well as a putative class-action lawsuit by California resident Jon Hart.
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Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Published: July 4, 2008
SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has ordered Google to turn over to Viacom its records of which users watched which videos on YouTube, the Web’s largest video site by far.
The order raised concerns among YouTube users and privacy advocates that the video viewing habits of tens of millions of people could be exposed. But Google and Viacom said they were hoping to come up with a way to protect the anonymity of the site’s visitors.
Viacom also said that the information would be safeguarded by a protective order restricting access to the data to outside lawyers, who will use it solely to press Viacom’s $1 billion copyright suit against Google.
Still, the judge’s order, which was made public late Wednesday, renewed concerns among privacy advocates that Internet companies like Google are collecting unprecedented amounts of private information that could be misused or fall unexpectedly into the hands of third parties.
“These very large databases of transactional information become honey pots for law enforcement or for litigants,” said Chris Hoofnagle, a senior fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.
For every video on YouTube, the judge required Google to turn over to Viacom the login name of every user who had watched it, and the address of their computer, known as an I.P. or Internet protocol address.
Both companies have argued that I.P. addresses alone cannot be used to unmask the identities of individuals with certainty. But in many cases, technology experts and others have been able to link I.P. addresses to individuals using other records of their online activities.
The amount of data covered by the order is staggering, as it includes every video watched on YouTube since its founding in 2005. In April alone, 82 million people in the United States watched 4.1 billion clips there, according to comScore. Some experts say virtually every Internet user has visited YouTube.
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Google and its allies may have lost key Capitol Hill votes on Net neutrality laws last year, but now they’re mounting a counterattack: a lobbying effort to extend similar rules to forthcoming wireless broadband networks.
As part of a congressionally mandated switchover to digital television broadcasts, the federal government is preparing to auction off a generous chunk of the 700MHz broadcast TV band by early next year. Wireless companies are eager to bid on it because its signals can travel farther and easily penetrate walls–qualities that lend themselves to widespread, wireless broadband networks.
But a key question, set to be discussed at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on Thursday morning, is whether open access rules–a close cousin of last year’s legislative tussles over Net neutrality–should be levied on at least some of the companies that win licenses through the auction. In charge of deciding that point is the Federal Communications Commission, which is still finalizing its rules for the proceeding.
That has led to a renewal of old alliances. On one side are last year’s Net neutrality proponents, including liberal advocacy groups, wireless technologists and companies like Google, which say that federal regulators must step in and impose “open access” rules. Otherwise, they claim, only a few powerful companies will control this prized chunk of spectrum.
On the other side are the telecommunications giants such as AT&T that blocked extensive Net neutrality rules in the House of Representatives and the Senate last year–and are invoking the same free-market arguments a second time. An AT&T filing with the FCC, for instance, says one Google proposal should be rejected because the market will determine how spectrum should be used.
Advocates affiliated with the pro-Net neutrality Save the Internet lobby group wrote in a recent letter to the FCC: “If the FCC simply gives the highest bidder exclusive rights over the new airwaves, phone and cable companies could become permanent gatekeepers of the airwaves–continuing their record of keeping new competition and innovation out of the marketplace.”
Google has also been pressing the FCC to reserve a portion of that spectrum (the 722-728MHz band) to be used primarily or exclusively for broadband communications. Final comments on that proposal were due on Wednesday. (Google did not answer all questions posed by CNET News.com about its auction stance on Wednesday, but a representative did send a statement saying, “the FCC should be adopting flexible rules that encourage competitive entry by new and innovative broadband companies.”)
Participants in the broader open access effort include the advocacy groups Public Knowledge, MoveOn.org and the Media Access Project, along with Craigslist founder Craig Newmark and Stanford Law School professor Lawrence Lessig. More than 250,000 people submitted comments to the FCC calling for an “open, accessible and affordable” Internet, the group says.
Also in the open access camp is Frontline Wireless, a start-up backed by major Silicon Valley venture capitalists that has proposed a controversial plan to build a public safety network on those airwaves.
Old alliances reunite
Although their individual positions differ on some points, they all generally want the FCC to guarantee that at least a portion of the new spectrum is made available at “fair-market” wholesale prices to anyone who wants to use it. They also want regulators to require that users have the freedom to connect the devices of their choosing to the network, so long as they abide by a “do no harm” mantra.
“This would be a way of getting people who might not be able to afford to bid on spectrum to get into the game,” said Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge.
It would also prevent more powerful companies from “warehousing” valuable unused spectrum that could be used by competitors to provide additional services, his group and its allies have argued.
Some groups would like to take the open access idea even further. A group of 15 wireless industry entrepreneurs led by Virgin Mobile USA co-founder Amol Sarva is asking the FCC to set aside one sixth of commercial spectrum as an open “sandbox,” where smaller entrepreneurs and inventors can play with new ideas without having to get permission from one of the “big four” network operators–AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile.
“Having to engage with the Big 4 at each cycle in the process can slow time to market and increase risks and costs for the entrepreneur,” the group, Wireless Founders for Innovation Coalition, said in a letter to the FCC (PDF) last week.
It’s unclear how those ideas will fare before the FCC. The agency’s two Democratic commissioners have tended to be sympathetic to stricter regulations imposed on network operators, but the remaining three Republicans have long maintained further regulations aren’t necessary. The commission has already adopted a set of four broadband connectivity principles, which state, among other things, that network operators must generally allow their subscribers to connect the devices and browse the content they wish.
The open access proposals have also encountered fierce resistance from the wireless industry and from politicians with free-market leanings.
“The last thing we need to do is upend that very successful marketplace by imposing 1970s-style regulatory mandates upon it.”
–Joe Farren, spokesman, CTIA-The Wireless Association
On the eve of the Senate’s hearing, six Republican senators sent a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, urging the regulators to resist “encumbering rules which suppress interest in the auction,” such as open access and Net neutrality mandates.
“There are few markets in America that are more competitive, vibrant and innovative than wireless,” said Joe Farren, a spokesman for CTIA-The Wireless Association, which represents m
ajor wireless companies. “The last thing we need to do is upend that very successful marketplace by imposing 1970s-style regulatory mandates upon it.”
Farren pointed to the example of Apple’s iPhone and its collaboration with AT&T to see that the market is working just fine without added regulations. And besides, no one’s stopping the companies that favor the “sandbox” idea or other regulations from bidding in the auction themselves, Farren added. (Google, for example, says it’s not sure whether it will be participating in the auction.)
“Go to the auction like everybody else does, bid on the spectrum, and if you have a great business plan and if you think that plan is going to work in the marketplace, go for it,” he said. “But don’t try to get a government regulation passed to protect your so-called business plan. That’s certainly not the free market at work.”
Net neutrality through the back door
The spectrum has also generated new talk of enacting Net neutrality regulations, which would prohibit network operators from prioritizing any Internet devices or services and from making deals with outside companies to provide priority access in exchange for extra fees.
By contrast, major broadband providers in the telephone and cable industries say they deserve the right to manage their networks as they wish and to charge fees as they see fit to offset the costs of new, more advanced equipment.
But such carriers, particularly in the wireless sector, have a poor track record for giving consumers the choices they’re looking for, consumer groups argue. “Absent regulatory changes that would require wireless networks to operate in a neutral manner and permit subscribers to attach devices to their networks, it seems remarkably unrealistic to assume that any of the national incumbents will change their behavior,” they wrote in a letter to the FCC.
A 2008 presidential hopeful said he’s also on board with the idea. In a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin late last month, former Democratic North Carolina Sen. John Edwards urged the regulators to set aside as much as half of the spectrum for wholesalers who can lease to smaller start-ups that would be willing to build broadband networks in rural and underserved areas. He also said they must require anyone who wins control of the spectrum to adhere to nondiscrimination rules, allowing consumers to hook up the devices and browse the Web sites they wish.
Google, for its part, said it’s skeptical that the spectrum auction alone will assuage concerns that dominant network operators will become gatekeepers capable of squeezing out smaller or shallower-pocketed content providers. Company telecommunications and media counsel Richard Whitt argued in the search giant’s most recent FCC filing that regulators shouldn’t write off the need for Net neutrality rules on a broader level because of what he called “a significant lack of effective broadband competition in this country.”
Posted by Mark Blei in : Uncategorized , Neutrality On the Net Gets High ‘08 Profile
Tech Issue Gains Traction in Election
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 20, 2007; Page D01
Bloggers and other Internet activists made their marks in the past two presidential elections chiefly by building networks of political enthusiasts and raising money for candidates. Now, they are pushing aggressively into policymaking — and not just over high-profile issues such as Iraq.
They are pressing candidates to back a handful of issues that are obscure to many Americans but vital to those who base their livelihoods on the Internet and track its development.
Armed with massive e-mail lists and high-speed networks, these activists are bypassing the familiar campaign tactics of door-knocking and phone-banking. They are also using their new-age technologies for an old-fashioned purpose: making politicians take note of their legislative priorities.
One of those is “net neutrality.” Hardly a household term, it has no overtly partisan or ideological dimensions. Yet it is shaping up as a Democratic issue this year, largely because its most fervid advocates are liberal bloggers and other Internet activists who play a big role in the early stages of choosing a Democratic presidential nominee.
Unlike their Republican counterparts, every major Democratic presidential candidate has endorsed net neutrality. The move keeps them in good standing with powerful grass-roots groups, such as MoveOn.org, and costs them little in return — perhaps a bit of space on campaign Web sites to promote a matter that comparatively few voters might explore.
Net neutrality is a principle that bars Internet providers, primarily phone and cable companies, from charging higher rates to Web-based firms in return for giving their content priority treatment on the pathways to consumers. Without such restrictions, proponents say, a user might find it time-consuming, or even impossible, to call up a favorite site that carriers have relegated to slower lanes for economic or even philosophical reasons.
“It’s an issue that really captures the attention of one of their core constituencies, especially the bloggers and ‘netroots,’ ” said Craig Aaron of Free Press, a group that champions net neutrality. “For candidates looking to appeal to those folks, it was important to take a stand,” he said, even though “nobody was talking about it a year ago.”
A veteran Democratic consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity was more blunt. Among Democratic candidates, she said, “if you’re not for net neutrality, then the blogs will kick your” rear. The grass-roots groups that strongly favor it are relatively small but very noisy, she said, “and you just don’t want to have to deal with that.”
Opposing net neutrality are the telephone and cable companies that control the “pipes” that transport Internet content from producers to users. The companies say they need flexibility to manage Internet traffic, even if it eventually means charging higher rates for priority service.
For several years, the issue has been debated mainly in legal and telecom circles. Recent telecom mergers have raised its profile, however, as regulators considered the possible ramifications of consolidating control over the Internet’s major pathways.
Net neutrality restrictions “could prevent broadband providers from offering enhanced levels of service for specialized applications such a telemedicine, or to offer their own branded or co-branded products or services,” said Christopher Wolf, co-chairman of Hands Off the Internet, a group sponsored by phone and cable companies . Such arrangements, he said at a recent Federal Trade Commission workshop, “will help pay for the build-out of the next generation of Internet pipes.”
Moreover, Wolf said, his industry’s critics cannot cite an example in which any U.S. user has been blocked.
But some groups that rely heavily on their Web sites to share information, raise money or promote causes say they fear it’s only a matter of time. They cite, for example, a 2005 comment by William L. Smith, then chief technology officer for BellSouth, which has merged with AT&T, that Internet service providers should be able to charge a firm such as Yahoo for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than Google’s site.
Last spring, the debate over net neutrality barely scratched the consciousness of Congress, let alone the general public, after a House subcommittee defeated an effort to add net-neutrality restrictions to a multi-faceted telecommunications bill. The 23 to 8 vote goaded more than 850 interest groups, many, but not all, politically left of center, to form a coalition called SavetheInternet.com.
Members included organizations such as Common Cause and the American Civil Liberties Union, but the name that really grabbed the attention of Democratic officials was MoveOn.org. The group, founded in 1998 to oppose the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, rocked the political establishment in 2003 and 2004 with its ability to rally supporters and raise money for causes such as opposing the Iraq war.
With MoveOn.org urging its 3 million members to sign and deliver pro-net-neutrality petitions to senators last spring, congressional support began to grow. The net-neutrality language died in an 11 to 11 Senate committee vote, but its backers claimed a moral victory after a wide-ranging telecom bill, which lacked their amendment, eventually collapsed.
The debate’s partisan nature has surprised and disappointed some advocates, who note that conservative groups such as the Christian Coalition of America and the Gun Owners of America are part of the SavetheInternet coalition. The Christian Coalition of America, in its policy statement, said net neutrality is “extremely important to America’s grassroots organizations and those Americans who want to ensure the cable and phone companies controlling access to the Internet will not discriminate against groups like Christian Coalition of America.” Michele Combs, a spokeswoman for the Christian Coalition of America, said that net neutrality is a nonpartisan matter and that “the conservative side has not been educated on the issue.”
MoveOn.org officials agree that net neutrality should transcend political lines. “There’s a growing online people-powered movement that has increasing relevance in our politics,” said Adam Green, a spokesman for MoveOn.org. “An issue like net neutrality, which directly taps into Internet issues, . . . could have a special energy in the political season,” he said. “Every Republican and Democrat who uses the Internet is threatened by corporations that want to control which Web sites people can access.”
