DirecTV thinks 4K “will have broad appeal when there’s a convergence of reasonably priced 4K sets and more 4K content,” spokeswoman Jade Ekstedt said in reply to our query about her company’s 4K content delivery plans. Those conditions are “similar to circumstances that sparked the HD revolution,” Ekstedt said. DirecTV “is proud to have been a strong driver in that HD revolution and we plan to play the same role in the Ultra HD transformation,” she said. As for DirecTV’s plans for “4KNET,” a name it has sought to trademark, Ekstedt said: “This is all of the info we can give you at this time, but we promise to keep you posted as the technology evolves. Just a bit early to get into details."

Students at Cornell University are putting so much demand on the school’s wireless network that many find they sometimes can’t connect, said an article in The Cornell Daily Sun (http://bit.ly/16zGIpy). The school’s system allows for 25,000 devices to use the network at the same time, up 25 percent from last year, but “despite the increase in capacity, some students said they are experiencing new problems connecting to wireless networks on campus,” the paper said.

The FCC should hold an open forum with broadcasters to discuss whether they should voluntarily stop using the name “Redskins” for Washington’s NFL team, said a group of former Democratic FCC officials and communications attorneys, academics and activists in a letter sent to acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn Thursday. Former FCC Chairman Reid Hundt -- one of the letter’s co-signers -- said it had its genesis in a discussion he had with Minority Media and Telecommunications Council President David Honig, who also signed the letter. “We decided a disparagement of one minority group is a disparagement of all minority groups,” said Hundt in an interview. An FCC forum on the Redskins name “need not answer any questions of legality nor necessarily lead to regulatory intervention,” said the letter. Instead, the forum would focus on “self-regulation” by broadcasters and its application to the Redskins’ name. “The FCC has unquestioned authority to convene an open forum with broadcasters to discuss whether they should voluntarily stop using the name,” said the letter, citing several media personalities who have said they will no longer use the word “Redskins.” Those who signed the letter “hope that an open forum hosted by the FCC will encourage broadcasters to follow suit,” said a news release issued by Hundt. By using its authority to convene the forum, the FCC “has the opportunity to act as a principled and transparent leader during a time of distressing difficulty in the nation’s capital,” said the letter. The letter was signed by former FCC commissioners Jonathan Adelstein, Nicholas Johnson and Tyrone Brown, Ambassador Karen Kornbluh, former FCC Chief of Staff Blair Levin, former FCC General Counsel Christopher Wright now of Wiltshire Grannis, public-interest attorney Andrew Schwartzman, who consults for Free Press, Charles Firestone of the Aspen Institute, former NTIA administrators Henry Geller and Larry Irving, Communications Workers of America Telecommunications Policy Director Debbie Goldman, Wiltshire Grannis telecom lawyer John Nakahata, Best Best municipal lawyer Nicholas Miller, the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development and others.

The portion of adults uploading or posting videos online has doubled in the past four years, said a Pew survey released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1bfh8pH). Twenty-seven percent of adult Internet users have uploaded a video and 18 percent have created and posted videos to a website, the survey said. Seventy-two percent of online adults watch videos on a video-sharing site such as Google’s YouTube, and 56 percent watch videos online through social network sites or mobile apps, said Pew. Since 2006, the percentage of online adults who use video-sharing sites has grown from 33 to 72, said the survey. Online adults tend to watch more comedy/humorous videos (57 percent), educational videos (50 percent), how-to videos (56 percent) and music videos (50 percent), said Pew. The phone survey of 1,003 adults in the U.S. was done by Princeton Survey Research Associates International from July 25 to July 28.

U.S. companies still face significant market access and licensing obstacles in China, said a U.S.-China Business Council survey released Thursday. The vast majority of survey respondents, all USCBC member companies, said Chinese operations remain profitable, and a growing number of companies place China in the top five global market priorities, said the survey summary (http://bit.ly/1g2QKpd). “Respondents most frequently claimed to have experienced protectionism in licensing and regulatory approvals, while also noting discriminatory enforcement and preferential policies favoring domestic Chinese companies in many forms,” said USCBC President John Frisbie (http://bit.ly/19pCC46). “Membership continues to see a significant difference in how foreign companies are treated, both formally and informally, versus their domestic Chinese counterparts.” Slower Chinese economic growth, coupled with a sluggish global recovery, has increased business competition there due to efforts to preserve local enterprises, said the survey. Three-quarters of respondents said they know or suspect Chinese companies receive benefits and subsidies that are not available to them. “The discriminatory treatment problem is not just an SOE problem,” said the council, referring to state-owned enterprises. “It is a problem of Chinese companies versus foreign and foreign-invested companies."

Global mobile service revenue is likely to contract in 2018 -- for the first time “in the history of the mobile industry,” research firm Ovum said Thursday. Although annual global sales in 2018 will reach $1.1 trillion, that will be a 1 percent decline -- or $7.8 billion -- from projected figures in 2017, Ovum said. The number of global mobile connections will continue to rise -- from 6.5 billion in 2012 to 8.1 billion in 2018, Ovum said. The decline in revenue will mean carriers “will need to find new ways to serve customers more profitably, not just focus on increasing subscriber numbers,” Ovum said. It said any revenue growth through 2018 will be driven by the Asia-Pacific market, where connections are set to rise to 4.2 billion by 2018, as well as South and Central America. Africa will have the strongest revenue growth, with a forecast 4.2 percent compound annual growth rate, Ovum said (http://bit.ly/19CRcXI).

Holding an Internet news portal liable for offensive online comments posted by its readers doesn’t violate the European Convention on Human Rights, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Thursday (http://bit.ly/162Clj7). The case arose in January 2006, when Delfi, an Estonian company that owns one of the biggest online news sites in the country, published an article about a ferry company, the court said in a news release. The story covered the company’s decision to change its ferry routes to certain islands, which caused ice breaks where ice roads could have been made in the near future, it said. Opening of those roads, which could have made connections to the islands cheaper and faster, was postponed, and many readers posted highly offensive or threatening message about the ferry operator and its owner, it said. The owner sued Delfi and was granted judgment against it in June 2008, the court said. An Estonian court found that the comments were defamatory and that Delfi was responsible for them, said ECHR. It awarded damages to the ferry company, and Estonia’s Supreme Court rejected Delfi’s appeal, it said. The domestic courts rejected Delfi’s contention that under the EU e-commerce directive, its role as an ISP or storage host was purely technical, passive and neutral, finding instead the portal exercised control over the publication of the comments. The ECHR said it was up to national courts to resolve issues of whether the directive, as adopted into Estonian law, limited Delfi’s liability for the posts. The court said governments can interfere with freedom of expression to protect a person’s reputation, as long as the interference is proportionate in the circumstances. The main question was whether the interference in this case was proportionate, it said. The ECHR assessed four issues: (1) The context of the posts, which were insulting, threatening and defamatory. Given the nature of the article, Delfi should have expected offensive comments and exercised extra caution to avoid being held liable for damage to an individual’s reputation, the high court said. (2) The steps Delfi took to prevent publication of defamatory comments. Although its Web page said comment authors would be liable for their content; and that threatening or insulting statements weren’t allowed; and it also automatically deleted posts contained a series of vulgar words; and allowed users to tell administrators about offensive comments by clicking a button, the warnings weren’t enough to prevent a large number of people from submitting offensive comments that weren’t removed in good time. (3) Whether the actual authors of the comments could have been held liable for them. The ECHR said the ferry company owner could theoretically have tried to sue specific posters, but it would have been difficult to identify them because readers were allowed to comment anonymously. Making Delfi liable was more practical, and it was also reasonable since the news portal obtained financial benefit from comments being made. (4) The consequences of holding Delfi liable. Penalties imposed by the national courts against the company were fairly small, the ECHR said. It said the courts didn’t make any rulings about how the portal should protect third-party rights in the future in a way that could limit free speech. The ECHR said making Delfi liable for the comments was a justified and proportionate interference with its right to freedom of expression that didn’t breach the convention.

Consumer demand will require an “enormous increase” in both licensed and unlicensed spectrum capacity, said Time Warner Cable in a press release (http://bit.ly/bRNbEs) announcing the results of a TWC report on “the effects that the growth of WiFi consumer demand is having on existing unlicensed spectrum allocations.” To meet that demand, the TWC report -- written by Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation -- argues for “balanced spectrum policy to address the growing demand for mobile, data-intensive applications,” said Fernando Laguarda, director of TWC’s Research Program on Digital Communications, which published the report. “Unleashing an abundance of spectrum and driving down its cost as an input for all things mobile is therefore the single best means by which the federal government can promote innovation and consumer welfare in wireless,” concludes the report. The report is at www.twcresearchprogram.com.

National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander criticized the media Wednesday for impacting the “foundation of trust that industry has with NSA, and NSA has with the American people.” NSA is made up of “noble” people “doing what our nation has asked them to do, for the good of our nation,” and any characterization otherwise is “flat wrong from my perspective, period,” Alexander said at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference here in National Harbor, Md. “Every time we make a mistake, we address it, we report it, we fix it,” he said. “We do make mistakes. Most of those mistakes are unintentional.” It’s important for the NSA to not reveal its exact methods of collecting information, because then in informing the “good people” the agency also tips off the bad guys. All things being equal, Alexander would err on the side of defending the nation, he said. “Trust that we'll do the right thing. And if possible, we'll put all the transparency out there that we can.” Anyone who has an idea for a better way to defend the nation, “put it on the table,” Alexander said. “If somebody’s got an idea -- you've got the next Internet -- put it out there. Let’s look at that. … I do not want to jeopardize the security of this nation, nor do I want to be up here explaining why another 9/11 occurred. I'd much rather be defending what we're doing, rather than defending why we failed to act.”

Government surveillance practices fail legally in different ways, panelists said at a Cato Institute event Wednesday. The bulk collection of phone metadata is “unconstitutional,” said Laura Donohue, director of Georgetown’s Center on National Security and the Law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “was specifically intended to prevent the [National Security Agency] and others … from actually conducting these types of activities,” she said, calling the court’s role “initially very narrow.” The very existence of government surveillance affects individual rights, said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy. “Really the debate isn’t about the call records problem,” he said. “Should the government be allowed to collect everything on the theory that someday someone might do something wrong?” That framing makes it tougher to accept the practices, he said. But Attorney General “Eric Holder is not Darth Vader,” said Paul Rosenzweig, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He argued these practices have been subject to considerable judicial scrutiny. “I think in the end, Laura [Donohue] should be right, but she’s not, at least in the way it is right now.” The constitutional argument “just doesn’t carry forward” under existing court precedent, said Rosenzweig, former deputy assistant secretary for policy in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush.