The International Trade Commission stayed a cease-and-desist order Wednesday while the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit considers whether data transmissions are “articles” that can be imported and can violate Section 337 of the Tariff Act. The ITC had issued the order against ClearCorrect in April, barring the company from transmitting files to the U.S. that it uses to manufacture invisible realignment braces via a 3D printer. The agency had said the transmission of the files over the Internet constitutes importation, and that the files violated patents held by Align Technology. ClearCorrect filed an appeal on May 2. The ITC said it doesn’t usually stay Section 337 remedial orders, but will do so in the case because the issue of whether data is an article that can be imported is an “admittedly difficult question.”
Voters are much more likely to vote for candidates favoring Electronic Communications Privacy Act updates than for those who don’t back updating ECPA, and 84 percent of voters said it’s time for an update, said polling from the Digital 4th Coalition, which supports refreshing the act (http://bit.ly/1pH85WG). The coalition of civil liberties and conservative groups commissioned Vox Populi to poll registered and active voters in six states and one city -- Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Virginia and Los Angeles -- during the week of May 26. “Americans of all ages, genders, political affiliation and races want their online privacy protected,” Digital 4th said. Voters who spent the most time online were also most likely to support ECPA updates, it said. Digital 4th wants Congress to pass the Email Privacy Act (HR-1852), which would update the ECPA to require a search warrant of all remotely stored electronic communications.
Retail ISPs may have an incentive to “discipline and punish upstream ISPs, content distributors and content creators that refused to pay a surcharge,” Pennsylvania State University law professor Rob Frieden told several FCC officials at the closed portion of a net neutrality regulation workshop May 30, said an ex parte filing posted Tuesday to docket 14-28 (http://bit.ly/1kighad). ISPs have several options to provide “enhancements to conventional ‘best efforts’ routing of traffic,” Frieden said. “Better than best efforts” routing is a form of price and quality-of-service discrimination, but such paid prioritization can occur without making it possible for ISPs to engage in unreasonable discrimination unblocking of traffic, he said. Content distribution networks and negotiation between content providers and ISPs provide interconnection alternatives to the traditional peering and transiting arrangements, he said. Due to risk of “artificial congestion and other tactics to leverage, or coworkers higher payments” that may result in more disputes, the commission should require ISPs to disclose interconnection arrangements that deviate from the traditional “best efforts” standard, he said. “ISPs have solidified their control over the Internet ecosystem, despite the conventional wisdom that content rules,” Frieden said in an attached presentation (http://bit.ly/1kigtq7). The presentation was part of a two-day agency symposium on the future of broadband regulation (CD May 30 p9)).
Global IP traffic will reach an annual run rate of 1.6 zettabytes -- more than 1.5 trillion gigabytes -- by 2018, Cisco said Tuesday. That would be more traffic globally than occurred in all prior “Internet years” combined, Cisco said in a report. There will be 3.9 billion Internet users by 2018 -- more than half the world’s projected population for that year, it said. By then, the average broadband speed will be 42 Mbps, up from an average of 16 Mbps in 2013, Cisco said. Broadband speed increases will drive projected increases in IP video usage, 4K UltraHD connectivity and machine-to-machine connections, the report said. IP video will be 80 percent of all IP traffic in 2018, up from 66 percent in 2013, Cisco said. There will be 2.7 networked devices and connections for every person on Earth by 2018, up from 1.7 per person in 2013, the report said (http://bit.ly/P1eXkv).
The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) must be sure of driverless cars’ safety before adopting public use regulations, Consumer Watchdog said in a letter sent Tuesday to the DMV (http://bit.ly/1qp4OuS). “In the ideal rule-making process, regulations covering the public use of autonomous vehicles would not be adopted until they could be informed by the results of testing that was done under DMV regulation,” said the letter, written by Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson, who has often been critical of Google, which Consumer Watchdog believes is trying to rush its autonomous cars to market. The DMV recently published regulations taking effect Sept. 16 for the testing of autonomous vehicles, Consumer Watchdog said. “Unfortunately the [California] Legislature, under pressure from Google and the tech industry, required in SB-1298 that the regulations for both testing and public use be adopted by Jan. 1, 2015.” Consumer Watchdog said the public use regulations should be delayed until there is at least a year of tests under the regulations going into effect in September. “Under the regulations we are proposing, the earliest time a ‘driverless car’ could be approved for public use on California’s highways would be July 1, 2016."
By 2024, nearly nine in 10 new cars sold worldwide will have embedded connectivity, “offering huge potential for mobile operators,” said U.K. research firm Analysys Mason in a report Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1jisVGP). In-car connectivity “has come full circle” since Bell introduced the first car phone in 1946, it said. “Vehicle manufacturers are bringing many models to market during 2014 and 2015 with embedded cellular connectivity, giving consumers an early glimpse of what is possible when the automotive and telecom worlds collaborate.” In the next decade, when it’s expected nearly half the cars in use will have embedded connectivity, “consumers will expect their experiences inside the car to be aligned with their experiences outside of the car, meaning that they will want access to all the apps and services they are used to in their modern digital lifestyles,” the report said. “They will also expect their streaming media and infotainment services in their cars to have the same degree of reliability and uptime as they do when they tune in to FM radio. As a consequence, mobile network operators will have to rethink how they build-out their next-generation 4G networks.”
The Copyright Alert System (CAS) is a “non-punitive, voluntary effort,” and Comcast doesn’t want to “disrupt” its customers’ Internet access, said a company spokesman Monday. More information about CAS’s mitigation measures for repeat infringers is necessary to determine the viability of the program, said copyright experts in interviews (CD June 10 p9). The idea behind CAS is to have an “educational conversation” with consumers who infringe, said the Comcast spokesman. Repeat infringers using Comcast will receive a “persistent in-browser notification” until the customer contacts the ISP, he said. “Account termination is not an option,” he said. AT&T won’t “terminate a subscriber’s Internet service as part of the CAS program,” said a spokesman by email. AT&T’s mitigation measures “will temporarily redirect the user to a landing page that will require the account holder to review educational material on Copyright,” he said Monday. “Upon completion, the customer will be released from the landing page, and no further action will be taken under the program terms."
European Union data protection laws will apply to non-EU companies doing business in Europe, EU ministers agreed during a Justice Council meeting Friday (http://bit.ly/1jggGun). The decision puts a conclusive end to an issue circulating European courts, where Facebook recently lost an argument that it should be required to comply with the data privacy laws only in the country of its European headquarters, Ireland (http://bit.ly/1m66fMI). “It’s in the interest of companies to have legal certainty rather than having to spend money on costly law suits only to arrive at the same result at the end,” said EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding. “Following [Friday’s] agreements, the data protection reform is on track -- it is on the right track.” The decisions are part of the EU’s ongoing attempts to formalize a new set of data privacy rules (CD Oct 23 p14). U.S. companies have also been working to comply with a recent EU Court of Justice ruling that individuals have a “right to be forgotten” and can request search engines remove links to certain information about themselves.
Netflix said Monday it plans to end what it calls a “small scale test” on June 16 of certain messages to their subscribers when videos are buffering. The messages faulted ISPs for delays. The company said in a blog post that it plans to “evaluate rolling it out more broadly” (http://nflx.it/1pw0MRk). Verizon, one of the ISPs whose subscribers received the test messages, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Netflix Thursday seeking an end to the messages. Verizon asserted that any network congestion issues were attributable to Netflix choosing overly trafficked connections for its streaming service (CD June 6 p4). Netflix said in its blog post Monday it “does not purposely select congested routes” and that the issue is “at that door -- the interconnection point -- when the broadband provider hasn’t provided enough capacity to accommodate the traffic their customer requested.” Verizon had no comment. Netflix also released its ISP speed index for May, in which it lowered the rankings for both Verizon’s FiOS and DSL services, as well as Comcast’s service. Comcast ranked No. 5 on the index for May -- down from No. 3 in April -- with an average speed of 2.72 Mbps. Verizon FiOS dropped two places to No. 10 with an average of 1.9 Mbps, while Verizon DSL dropped one spot to No. 16 with an average of 1.05 Mbps. Charter, Windstream, Frontier and Clearwire all moved up in the rankings. Cablevision’s Optimum service remained No. 1 with an average of 3.03 Mbps.
Cybercrime likely costs the global economy more than $445 billion per year, McAfee and the Center for Strategic and International Studies said Monday in a report. The report said the annual global cost could be as low as $375 billion and as high as $575 billion. The U.S. annual loss is around $100 billion, the report said. Those figures are likely to increase in the coming years, amplifying cybercrime’s impact on the global economy, the report said. Global losses from abuse of personal information and related records totals up to $160 billion annually, with about 40 million people in the U.S. -- about 15 percent of the population -- having had their information stolen, the report said. “Governments need to begin serious, systematic effort to collect and publish data on cybercrime to help countries and companies make better choices about risk and policy,” the report said (http://bit.ly/1oNjp21).