Three advertising associations urged their members to contribute to the Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative to “speed up the transformation and maturation of digital measurement,” a joint letter from the agencies said Thursday. The American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers and Interactive Advertising Bureau said marketers, ad agencies and publishers need to provide the Media Rating Council with “specially structured data on viewability measurement results for their advertising campaigns.” The "most valuable data submissions would be those that illustrate significant vendor counting differences in systematic manners,” it said. “The next phase of 3MS, which has already begun, will focus on the creation of a common, audience-based GRP, followed by the development of common platforms for cross-media analytics.”
CEA’s monthly index of consumer technology expectations jumped 0.3 points in January from December to reach 88.9, CEA said Tuesday in a report. The January index, which is a measure of consumer intentions on tech spending, is 5.2 points higher than in January 2014 and suggests “momentum from the holiday season is spilling into the new year,” CEA said. The association's separate index of consumer expectations, which measures consumer expectations about the “broader economy,” however, fell 2.2 points from December to 177.9, CEA said. But the January index is 10.6 points higher than that of January 2014, it said.
WikiLeaks’ lawyers sent a letter to Google and the U.S. Department of Justice Monday criticizing Google for violating the privacy and journalistic rights of its staff, after it was discovered that the company shared email content, subscriber information and other metadata for three WikiLeaks editors and journalists with the U.S. government in response to federal warrants. Investigations Editor Sarah Harrison, Section Editor Joseph Farrell and Senior Journalist and spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson were notified by Google in December that they were being investigated by the U.S. government on conspiracy and espionage charges, and for allegedly violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and that Google had handed over the information pursuant to the warrants two-and-a-half years ago. WikiLeaks lawyers said they were disappointed that “Google failed to notify the warrants’ targets immediately,” since as a result the three journalists were unable to “protect their interests including their rights to privacy, association and freedom from illegal searches.” Google said it was under a gag order from the U.S. government, but WikiLeaks said the company didn’t fight the gag order, as some other organizations, such as Twitter, have successfully done in the past. WikiLeaks lawyers asked that DOJ provide a list of all the information Google disclosed, copies of court orders requiring the company to share the information and all other communications regarding the related search warrants in the case.
Zenbu Magazines filed four lawsuits seeking class-action certification against Apple, Google, Rdio and Sony, claiming the defendants failed to pay performance royalties on pre-1972 sound recordings, according to court documents filed last week. Zenbu, which owns the sound recordings of several songs by The Flying Burrito Brothers, Hot Tuna and New Riders of the Purple Sage, filed the suits in the U.S. District Court for Northern California. “Sony profits from its unauthorized reproduction, distribution, and public performance of pre-1972 recordings by charging subscription fees to its users, without paying royalties or licensing fees for pre-1972 recordings,” Zenbu’s complaint against Sony said. Zenbu said in each of the complaints that the value of the recordings in question exceeds $5 million but that an exact value hasn’t been determined. The defendants didn’t comment. California courts have recently ruled in favor of artists on the issue of a performance right for such sound recordings (see 1410160001). U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Judge Philip Gutierrez and Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Mary Strobel ruled against SiriusXM on pre-1972 recordings in 2014 (see 1409240079 and 1410090092). The plaintiffs in the SiriusXM case, Flo & Eddie, are also seeking class-action certification in the U.S. District Court for New York on the performance right for pre-1972 sound recordings (see 1501160053). Public performance royalties are expected to play a key role in music licensing debates this Congress.
Former NSA analyst-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden said it's the bosses at his former employer and not rank-and-file employees who abused the public trust with widescale government surveillance. His remarks came via teleconference during a privacy symposium at Harvard University Friday. The Internet was designed to promote surveillance, said security specialist Bruce Schneier, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, sparking a conversation on whether it was possible to have an Internet and maintain privacy at all. Schneier said the public should not have been surprised they were being watched. John DeLong, director of commercial solutions at the NSA, who was director of compliance while Snowden worked there, made a rare public appearance for an employee of that agency. He said the NSA was authorized to collect the information that it had gathered from the American public. “Protecting privacy today is more an art than a science,” DeLong said. “The science and engineering of privacy [is] the key challenge of our time.” Snowden, who spoke via a live video feed from Moscow, said the "NSA is virtually unregulated." He said NSA employees are "not bad people" but "a culture for impunity develops.”
The FTC has settled 53 data security law enforcement actions since 2000, a number expected to rise in the future, said the agency on its blog Friday. To better protect consumers, the FTC is proactively reminding companies that their “data security measures should be reasonable and appropriate in light of the sensitivity and amount of consumer information you have, the size and complexity of your business, and the availability and cost of tools to improve security and reduce vulnerabilities,” said the agency. To ensure companies understand what is expected of them when it comes to data security basics, the commission published all data security resources in one place on its website and created a “to-the-point” brochure, 20-minute interactive tutorial and an imaginary text conversation between a business person and an FTC staff member on key data security points.
A nationwide lawsuit accusing Google and Viacom of illegally tracking children under the age of 13 who visited the Nickelodeon website to watch videos and play videogames was dismissed Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Stanley Chesler in Newark, New Jersey. “Children do indeed warrant special attention and heightened protections under our laws,” said Chesler. But he said that there's no evidence that the children's privacy was violated by either company as established under the U.S. Video Privacy Protection Act, nor is there evidence that either company engaged in “highly offensive” behavior when it came to tracking the children for advertising purposes.
Netflix has continued “to deliver a variety of algorithmic and data improvements that put better choices in front of members,” said CEO Reed Hastings and Chief Financial Officer David Wells Tuesday in a quarterly letter to shareholders. “We are also pioneering offering new high-quality video formats, delivering UHD-4K for House of Cards and Marco Polo.” Netflix soon will begin offering high dynamic range video, which “captures and renders pictures with more realistic peak brightness in the highlights, and may be a more significant step forward in viewing pleasure than UHD-4K,” they said. “We will start building our library to deliver in HDR as new TVs become available from several manufacturers this year.” At CES, Netflix said it would support the HDR technologies of Dolby Vision and the open HDR standards espoused by the new UHD Alliance (see 1501050023). On the issue of “strong net neutrality,” people around the world “increasingly view Internet access as a necessary utility,” the letter said. “Finland even made fast Internet access a legal right.” Recently, President Barack Obama “echoed the same themes in his call for the FCC to take bold steps to be able to ensure a low-cost high-speed Internet,” it said. “The support for strong net neutrality continues to grow.”
Facebook’s global economic impact was $227 billion in 2014, said a study released Tuesday by Deloitte. The social media company created 4.5 million jobs, it said. The study, which Deloitte prepared for Facebook, measured the company's effect on marketing services ($148 billion); platform and app development ($29 billion); and the demand for mobile devices and broadband services ($50 billion). The study’s findings focused on third parties affected by Facebook and excluded the revenue and jobs within the social media company. Facebook generated $100 billion in the U.S.; the European Union, $68 billion; the U.K., $11 billion; and Brazil, $10 billion, said Deloitte. It said the company’s activities created 1.07 million jobs in the U.S.; the EU, 1.13 million jobs; and 335,000 jobs in India.
President Barack Obama said he supports U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron’s push for information and communications technology (ICT) companies to continue allowing government tracking of suspects and potential terrorists via their technology. “Social media and the Internet is the primary way in which these terrorist organizations are communicating,” Obama said during a news conference Friday. “When we have the ability to track that in a way that is legal … and presents oversight, then that’s a capability that we have to preserve.” Cameron and FBI Director James Comey have raised concerns about attempts by Apple, Google and other companies to encrypt customers’ data in a way that governments can’t access. Cameron pushed back Friday against claims that he’s seeking backdoors into companies’ technology, saying, “we’re asking for very clear front doors through legal processes to help keep our country safe.” Cameron and Obama agreed in bilateral meetings last week to strengthen existing cybersecurity cooperation between the U.K. and U.S. governments. The countries plan joint cybersecurity exercises targeted at testing specific industries’ defenses, with the first to focus on the financial sector, the White House said. The countries also will work to align existing cybersecurity best practices in the National Institute of Standards and Technology-led Cybersecurity Framework and the U.K.'s Cyber Essentials scheme, the White House said.