Similar to how scientists embrace "pragmatic skepticism," antitrust enforcers should be wary of adopting "antitrust scholarship," said acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen at the Antitrust Writing Awards event Tuesday. Enforcers can be wrong about the future and should use regulatory humility, which is "about understanding and internalizing the limits of our own knowledge when we wield the considerable powers entrusted to us," she said in prepared remarks. Since being named acting chairman, she has given speeches about leading the commission to investigate and enforce real rather than merely theoretical harms (see 1702170026 and 1702020020). Ohlhausen said she's willing to hear new theories but also would want to get as much "probative, reliable information" as possible and would be "pretty hesitant to embrace novel theories that conflict with the answers that the well-established antitrust toolkit already provides." Acknowledging she might get criticized for being too cautious and not creative enough, she said there is a "free market for new ideas in this field. ... The process is not always neat and tidy, but eventually the best ideas emerge from the rough and tumble world of critical skepticism intact."
Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512 safe harbor provisions let YouTube evade paying market music licensing rates, costing the U.S. music industry between $650 million and $1 billion in annual royalty revenue during 2015, the Phoenix Center reported. The group did its study using “accepted economy modeling techniques” to simulate how YouTube's service affects revenue. There's a “sizeable effect [which] lends credence to the recording industry's complaints about YouTube's use of the safe harbor,” said Chief Economist George Ford in a Wednesday news release. YouTube owner Google didn't comment.
Two tech associations are applauding President Donald Trump's creation of the White House Office of American Innovation (OAI) that will led by son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. In a news release Monday, Kushner said OAI will bring a "creative and strategic approach" to people's problems. Software & Information Industry Association Senior Vice President-Public Policy Mark MacCarthy said in a Tuesday statement that OAI will prioritize technological innovation at the highest level. He said it's important for "policies to keep pace with the rise of big data, the Internet of Things, and more recently, the emergence of Artificial Intelligence." In a Monday statement, Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield said bringing innovation and data-driven efficiencies into government operations is welcome. "Fresh thinking can spark new solutions to old problems, an approach that is deeply engrained in the tech industry," he said.
THX bowed a mobile certification program for smartphones, tablets, and laptops, it said in a Tuesday announcement. Display and audio settings are key to presenting images and sounds as the creator intended, and the certification program will provide standards to ensure high quality via “hundreds” of tests measuring panel performance, audio signal path and headphone output, THX said. The Razer Blade Pro gaming laptop is first device to be certified under the program.
Fifty-nine percent of pay-TV subscribers in U.S. broadband households are bothered that advertisers use personal viewing data to tailor advertisements, said Parks Associates in a release Monday. Forty percent of pay-TV subscribers also “worry about the safety and use of their personal data when they use an online video service,” while 34 percent of U.S. pay-TV subscribers said they trust online video services more than they trust their current pay-TV provider, the researcher said. Such concerns are likely to increase after the FCC and the Senate’s recent action on ISP data privacy, Parks said. “A majority of consumers are concerned about the safety and privacy issues created by these practices, so advertisers and pay-TV providers need to be transparent about their data collection and protection of consumers’ information,” the firm said. “Privacy fears are a major factor in broadband consumers’ online media experiences.”
German disc replicator Sonopress recently joined the DVD Copy Control Association and Kaleidescape was one of six companies to withdraw, DVD CCA told DOJ and the FTC in simultaneous “written notifications” Feb. 24. That’s according to a notice published in Monday’s Federal Register by Patricia Brink, director-civil enforcement, in DOJ’s Antitrust Division. The change-of-membership notifications were required to extend DVD CCA members antitrust protections under the 1993 National Cooperative Research and Production Act, Brink’s notice said. Other companies withdrawing from DVD CCA, which licenses the DVD format’s Content Scramble System (CSS), were Azend Group, Datapulse Technology, DVS Korea, ESS Technology and Quanta Storage, the notice said. Kaleidescape nearly three years ago reached a settlement in the decade-long breach of license complaint brought by DVD CCA over Kaleidescape’s movie servers that import CSS-protected DVDs (see 1406040035). Kaleidescape representatives didn’t comment Monday on the DOJ notice.
AT&T takes its "responsibility to protect our customers’ information and privacy very seriously," emailed a spokesman in response to the Ranking Digital Rights' 2017 Corporate Accountability Index, which ranked the company low. RDR's report Thursday (see 1703210015) assessed 22 internet, mobile and telecom companies and found most poorly disclosed policies and practices for online free expression and privacy. AT&T, the only U.S. telco ranked, scored 48, topping other telecom companies but below Google and Microsoft. Yahoo said it was generally pleased with its score, and the other U.S. companies assessed in the report -- Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter -- didn't comment.
Ericsson and the FandangoNOW on-demand video service are among five new Digital Entertainment Group member companies, the DEG said in a Thursday announcement. Other new DEG members are the film studio Broad Green Pictures, The Great Courses, a developer of audio and video instructional programming, and Premiere Digital, a content management and data analytics firm, it said.
CTA President Gary Shapiro is concerned about the U.S. ban on carrying on laptops, tablets and other larger electronics for passengers flying to the U.S. from much of the Middle East and North Africa because of concerns about terrorism, he said in an emailed statement. Passengers will have to keep the devices in their checked luggage. The ban was announced Monday. “CTA generally opposes bans on the use of consumer technology products in flight, unless there is a specific technical or security justification,” Shapiro said. “CTA led the successful effort to expand the use of non-transmitting portable electronics devices (PEDs) during all phases of flight in the United States. We recognize, however, that specific national security concerns may on occasion warrant a temporary ban on use of electronics in-flight. We anxiously await more detailed information on the rationale for the restrictions put in place … on certain airlines flying into the U.S. Overall, any ban on the use of PEDs in flight related to security concerns should be narrowly tailored, transparent and, ideally, time-limited.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a Wednesday blog post, said the new restrictions “have provoked a growing sense of insecurity among personal and business travelers flying between America, the Middle East and Turkey, and rightly so. Travelers to and within the United States were already concerned over reports of increasing levels of warrantless inspection of their devices at the border of the United States.” Requiring travelers to check electronic devices raises new privacy concerns, the group said: “If someone else has physical access to your device almost all information security guarantees are off the table. Data can be cloned for later examination.”
Twitter received more than 6,000 government requests globally for information targeting more than 11,400 accounts during the second half of 2016, it reported Tuesday. That's a 7 percent increase over the prior six-month reporting period, but it affected 13 percent fewer accounts. Three new countries -- Guatemala, Taiwan and Ukraine -- were added to the list. The U.S. made the most requests of any government, about 2,300 targeting more than 5,600 accounts. The company said its latest report shows "modest growth" due to decrease in total requests from the U.S. and France. Twitter said it didn't comply at all or only partially with 39 percent of all global requests. It provided noncontent information -- such as email address, phone number associated with the account or to/from information of a direct message -- in 88 percent of the cases, and content information, which is the contents of the communications, in 11 percent of the cases, similar to the previous reporting period.