Many Web sites mis-selling ring tones and other mobile phone services cleaned up their act after a European Commission (EC) crackdown, Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva said on Tuesday. An EC enforcement “sweep” launched in June 2008 netted 301 Web sites across the 27 EU states, Norway and Iceland found to be scamming consumers seeking ring tones, wallpaper and other services, she said. Of those, 52 percent were corrected and 17 percent of the Web sites have closed, she said. The three main problems were unclear pricing, failure to provide complete contact information, and misleading advertising, particularly when ring tones offered as “free” instead tied buyers into paying subscriptions, she said. More than half of the sites investigated targeted children through the use of cartoon or well-known TV characters, and many had multiple irregularities, the EC said. Ring tones accounted for about 29 percent of Europe’s overall mobile content market in 2007, bringing in an estimated $1 billion, it said. The EC targeted the mobile phone services sector for enforcement because of growing consumer complaints, it said. This sweep and an earlier one on Web sites selling airline tickets are ratcheting up pressure to comply with consumer protection laws, Kuneva said. National authorities are working together more effectively and homing in on problem areas of the consumer market more precisely, she said. The increased media attention is deterring bad business practices and raising consumer awareness, she said. The investigations are “a totally new way of doing business at the EU level,” she added.

The Government Accountability Office said NTIA and the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) “face scheduling, staffing, and data challenges in evaluating applications and awarding funds” under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act. “In particular, the agencies may lack time to apply lessons learned from the first funding round and to throughly evaluate applications for the remaining rounds,” GAO said in a report released Monday. GAO also raised concerns that the agencies lack funding for oversight after fiscal year 2010, as well as updated performance goals. And NTIA hasn’t yet defined annual audit requirements for commercial entities funded under the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program, it said. NTIA and RUS agreed with the GAO’s recommendations, GAO said.

Provisions of the original Google Book Search settlement that remain in the new version may not be enough for regulators to kill the deal, according to antitrust experts. The new agreement, filed late Friday night, responds to some criticisms by the Justice Department. But its tweaks, including provision for a new “fiduciary” to handle orphan works separate from the proposed Book Rights Registry, don’t change anything fundamental regarding competition concerns raised by critics in the Open Book Alliance and academia. The parties in the case passed the buck to Congress to make changes to the law that would open the door to competition for orphan works.

Despite virtually unchanged laws, judges are making it easier for plaintiffs to prevail in libel and privacy-related lawsuits due to the Internet’s involvement, lawyers and a federal appeals judge said during a Practising Law Institute discussion Friday. Allegedly defamatory or intrusive writings and other forms of media, previously buried in print newspapers and other formats difficult for a mass audience to view over time, have a “scope and permanency” online that’s panicking judges, said Kelli Sager, chair of the media practice at Davis Wright. Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert Sack said his peers on the bench generally were operating under old notions of privacy that don’t match public sentiment. “We're going to be in this weird land for a while where law doesn’t match expectation,” lawyer Lee Levine said.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated late Thursday a revised version of an order that would impose a shot clock for wireless tower siting decisions, FCC officials said Thursday. Meanwhile, CTIA has put on a full-court press asking the FCC to reduce the deadline for making decisions on co-location applications, but those efforts are likely to fail, FCC officials said. The revised order is expected to have broad support among commissioners.

Small and minority-owned business are having a tough time getting financing for most projects in the current economy, the FCC was told during an agency broadband workshop on capitalization strategies. Commissioner Robert McDowell repeated his concerns that financial issues will play a major role in broadband deployment.

FCC members urged industry, government and public safety officials to pull together to finish the nationwide interoperable public safety network that’s been in limbo since 2001. At an agency field hearing Thursday at Georgetown University, Commissioner Michael Copps said he hopes and expects the National Broadband Plan will provide “some real compass direction on how the spectrum should be used to bring our public safety hopes to reality.” The plan provides “as good a shot at getting a broadband public safety network up as we're going to have for a long, long time,” but that doesn’t guarantee the opportunity will be seized, he said.

The net neutrality debate has evolved away from “bumper sticker” campaigns to a growing consensus among stakeholders, Amazon.com Vice President Paul Misener told an Institute for Policy Innovation seminar Thursday. Most agree network operators should have control over “housekeeping” issues of network management, such as blocking malware and downloads of illegal content. But differences remain, largely over the question of whether operators, if allowed to prioritize traffic, would wield their market power to favor services they offer, Misener said.

The net neutrality debate has evolved away from “bumper sticker” campaigns to a growing consensus among stakeholders, Amazon.com Vice President Paul Misener told an Institute for Policy Innovation seminar Thursday. Most agree network operators should have control over “housekeeping” issues of network management, such as blocking malware and downloads of illegal content. But differences remain, largely over the question of whether operators, if allowed to prioritize traffic, would wield their market power to favor services they offer, Misener said.

The Justice Department announced indictments against eight Eastern Europeans who it said stole $9 million in one day by hacking into credit card processing company RBS WorldPay’s computer network. The ring compromised the data encryption that RBS WorldPay used on payroll debit cards, then raised the account limits on compromised accounts and had a group of “cashers” go to ATMs around the world to withdraw money, Justice said. Acting U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates of the northern district of Georgia, where the indictments were handed up, called the attack “perhaps the most sophisticated and organized computer fraud attack ever conducted.” She cited the “unprecedented” cooperation of law enforcement agencies across the globe and the cooperation of RBS WorldPay as critical to the case. Sergei Tsurikov of Estonia; Viktor Pleshchuk of Russia; Oleg Covelin of Moldova; and a person known only as “Hacker 3” were indicted on charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit computer fraud, computer fraud, access device fraud and aggravated identity theft. They face fines of up to $3.5 million and imprisonment of up to 20 years on the most serious charges. Igor Grudijev, Ronald Tsoi, Evelin Tsoi, and Mihhail Jevgenov, all of Estonia, were indicted for access device fraud. They face fines of up to $250,000 and imprisonment of up to 15 years. The indictment also seeks criminal forfeiture of $9.4 million.