Employees of some of the strongest antipiracy advocates are committing peer-to-peer (P2P) piracy, according to reports from P2P news site TorrentFreak. The reports -- conducted with Poland-based BitTorrent monitoring service ScanEye -- indicate that employees of the largest film studios (http://xrl.us/bn73hy), record labels and government bodies tasked with creating and enforcing copyright law (http://xrl.us/bn8b82) are accessing pirated content though P2P networks. Alleged offenders include employees of Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney, Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, the House of Representatives and the U.S. departments of Justice and Homeland Security, according to TorrentFreak. None of the companies and agencies mentioned in the reports commented by our deadline.
Suddenlink Communications asked the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau for extra time to comply at some of its systems with new Common Alerting Protocol requirements for Emergency Alert System participants. The cable operator’s 12 “most remote systems” have no broadband access at the headends and recent field research by Suddenlink’s staff “indicates there is still no viable means to bring these very remote systems into immediate compliance,” it said (http://xrl.us/bn8b3z). It planned to use satellite Internet connections at seven of the sites and DSL at the other five, it said. But it learned that the five planned DSL sites are too far from the closest digital subscriber line access multiplexer to receive an effective broadband connection. Furthermore, satellite connections have proved problematic at all 12 sites, it said. It asked for another six months to comply with the requirements.
Gray TV asked the FCC’s Media Bureau to remove WOWK-TV Huntington, W.Va., and WVAH-TV Charleston, W.Va., from the significantly viewed station list for Wood County, W.Va. Gray owns one full- and two low-power stations in Parkersburg and is seeking a waiver of the commission’s significantly viewed exception to its network exclusivity rules, it said in a petition for special relief (http://xrl.us/bn8b3i). WOWK and WVAH are no longer significantly viewed in Parkersburg and should be removed from the list, Gray said.
The Competitive Carriers Association and T-Mobile filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in support of the FCC in City of Arlington, Texas, v. FCC, a case set for oral argument Jan. 16. “CCA supports the FCC’s ’shot clock’ ruling, as well as the Commission’s underlying jurisdiction to issue the Declaratory Ruling,” the group said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bn8b28). “The FCC’s authority to act is clearest in cases like the present one, where it is interpreting language in a statute purposefully left ambiguous by Congress. Congress entrusted the Commission to fill in the details as to what should be considered a reasonable amount of time for authorities to make a decision."
A New Jersey woman claiming that Apple failed to stop third-party applications from uploading users’ personal and device information without permission will get a second bite at Apple. U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland, Calif., granted Apple’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit seeking class-action status while also granting Maria Pirozzi leave to amend her claims. The suit faults Apple for allegedly not enforcing its terms of service for app developers, letting developers upload “private address book information (including names and contact information of users’ contacts), location data, private photographs and videos without the users’ knowledge or consent when a user agrees to allow an app to access the user’s then current locations.” The Path app, for example, was caught uploading address book and calendar data without user consent in February, the suit said. Pirozzi claimed she was “induced” to buy an unidentified Apple device in September 2011, and download paid apps to it, based on Apple’s terms and promises regarding app consent rules, Rogers said. But it’s not clear from Pirozzi’s complaint whether any apps “actually uploaded” her information, the judge said (http://xrl.us/bn8b2j). “Overpaying for goods or purchasing goods a person otherwise would not have purchased based upon alleged misrepresentations by the manufacturer would satisfy the injury-in-fact and causation requirements” for standing to sue, but because Pirozzi didn’t “allege specifically which statements she found material to her decision to purchase” the device or any apps, she hasn’t suffered injury-in-fact through Apple’s alleged conduct, Rogers said. Pirozzi similarly didn’t allege that an app “actually misappropriated” her information, only that it was at “greater risk” of misappropriation through Apple’s negligence, the judge said. The plaintiff will have to provide specifics, including what harm she suffered from unauthorized tracking and whether Apple even received her information and thus profited from it, to show her standing, Rogers said, giving Pirozzi leave to amend her claims. Rogers also pooh-poohed Apple’s reliance on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) as a shield for Pirozzi’s claims. Apple said it can’t be held responsible for exercising editorial discretion over which apps it approves and distributes through the App Store. But Pirozzi didn’t “solely” fault Apple for choosing which apps to distribute -- rather she wants to hold it liable for its own representations as an “information content provider,” Rogers said: The record is too “scant” to decide whether Apple is shielded by the CDA. The judge gave Pirozzi until Jan. 22 to file an amended complaint.
NTIA is likely to be “even busier in 2013 than 2012,” said NTIA Deputy Administrator Anna Gomez in a blog post on NTIA’s website (http://xrl.us/bn8byu). “We expect the consumer data privacy multistakeholder work on establishing a code of conduct on mobile application transparency to conclude successfully, and the stakeholders to move on to other business contexts,” Gomez said. “We expect the majority of our broadband grant projects to wrap up by the fall, and we look forward to celebrating the successes of the projects and moving the needle on broadband deployment and adoption in the United States. ... We also will continue to work on spectrum sharing and fulfilling the President’s 500 megahertz goal, including completing the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee (CSMAC) working group activities and analyses of existing bands, and moving on to new activities.” Also on tap, NTIA will soon issue requirements for the $135 million State and Local Implementation Grant Program to support states, regional and tribal entities and local jurisdictions as they work with the new FirstNet, Gomez said.
China adopted a rule that requires Internet subscribers to use their real names, according to reports from state news agency Xinhua (http://xrl.us/bn8b7a). The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress adopted the rule, which Xinhua described as having “the same legal effect as a law,” which made official a policy against the anonymity that most telephone and Internet service providers already have in place, the report said. The decision requires that service providers protect the identities of their subscribers and prohibits “service providers, as well as government agencies and their personnel, from leaking or damaging users’ digital information,” the article said. It’s unclear whether the new regulations apply more broadly to online services. According to the Los Angeles Times (http://xrl.us/bn8b7n), which wrote about the rule before it was adopted, “the law would be especially damaging to China’s micro-blogging platforms such as Sina Weibo.” The committee’s deputy director of the Commission for Legislative Affairs, Li Fei, told lawmakers that users can still use psuedonyms when posting content online, and the identities of users will remain “backstage,” according to Xinhua.
The Supreme Court’s review of the Chevron doctrine in City of Arlington, Texas, v. FCC is “one of the most important administrative law cases of the last quarter-century” and the right decision by the court could help stanch a flood of overregulation by the federal government, said Free State Foundation President Randolph May in an editorial in The Washington Times (http://xrl.us/bn8byd). “Suppose the question ... is whether an agency possesses any authority at all to regulate the entities it claims are subject to its statutory jurisdiction. Should a reviewing court defer to the agency’s own interpretation of its jurisdiction? This is the question the court will decide in City of Arlington. Both logic and separation of powers principles should dictate that Chevron deference doesn’t apply in this situation. As a logical matter, Chevron deference can only apply to an agency’s decision if Congress has, in fact, delegated the agency authority over the matter. As the Supreme Court has made clear in post-Chevron decisions, the deference framework is not applicable unless Congress actually intended to delegate interpretative authority to the agency.”
Fox Sports Media Group said it bought SportsTime Ohio, a Cleveland-based regional sports network with the rights to telecast the Cleveland Indians’ baseball games, from the Indians-owning Dolan family. Fox also said it secured the long-term local TV rights for those games. The deal brings Indians baseball back to Fox Sports for the first time since 2006, when its Fox Sports Ohio last carried the games, it said.
Netflix’s Christmas Eve outage may speed up the creation of its own content delivery network (CDN), Wells Fargo analyst Jennifer Fritzsche said Friday in an email to investors. “Netflix has already publicly stated this intention to build its own CDN,” she said. “It has been doing this in phases at this point, but has not yet moved the core of the network.” The disruption, caused by an outage at Amazon Web Services (AWS), impacted “many, but not all” streaming devices in the Americas using Netflix services. Most Netflix subscribers had their service restored by late Monday evening (CD Dec 27 p10). A Netflix move to its own CDN would be good news for Cogent, Fritzsche said. While Netflix currently uses both Cogent and Level 3 Communications for Internet connectivity, it would likely make Cogent its primary provider after a CDN switch, she said.