The Internet Association released a video Wednesday featuring House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., with whom the group has disagreed on net neutrality. “We have a lot to showcase in that the Internet allows access to the market that’s frankly worldwide,” Upton said in the video, which also showed business leaders from a small business walking tour in Michigan (http://bit.ly/1uL6lxY). “These businesses may not be in business without the Internet. You don’t need to regulate the Internet -- it’s not a problem as long as it’s not regulated,” Upton says on the video.
With the release of its iOS 8 platform, Apple unveiled a new privacy website Wednesday, saying the operating system won’t let the company comply with government national security requests (http://bit.ly/1uJqaWk). “On devices running iOS 8, your personal data ... is placed under the protection of your passcode,” the site said. “Unlike our competitors, Apple cannot bypass your passcode and therefore cannot access this data. So it’s not technically feasible for us to respond to government warrants for the extraction of this data from devices in their possession running iOS 8.” Apple took another jab at competitors: “We don’t build a profile based on your email content or web browsing habits to sell to advertisers,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook. “We don’t ‘monetize’ the information you store on your iPhone or in iCloud. And we don’t read your email or your messages to get information to market to you.” Apple’s advertising network, iAd, is only “one very small part of our business,” Cook said, doesn’t use personal data “and you can always just opt out altogether.” Google’s revenue, by contrast, is primarily ad-based (http://bit.ly/1upkim4). Google didn’t comment. Apple has been facing heightened privacy questions since the high-profile hacking of numerous celebrities’ iCloud accounts.
Internet access via mobile devices soared 67 percent in the past 12 months, said a report released Thursday by StatCounter, a website analytics company (http://bit.ly/1udvccq). Overall, 64.6 percent of Internet access is from desktops, but mobile device access has grown from 17.1 percent to 28.5 percent in the past 12 months, StatCounter said. Tablet Web access has increased from 4.8 percent to 6.8 percent of traffic, the company said. “Mobile usage has already overtaken desktop in several countries including India, South Africa and Saudi Arabia,” said CEO Aodhan Cullen.
Home Depot’s investigation concluded that information for 56 million payment cards was exposed between April and September, the retailer said Thursday. That puts the breach ahead of the 40 million payment cards that were exposed during Target’s late 2013 breach, which also exposed roughly 70 million customer records that included names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. “We apologize to our customers for the inconvenience and anxiety this has caused, and want to reassure them that they will not be liable for fraudulent charges,” said Home Depot CEO Frank Blake. Home Depot said it has also completed a point of sale encryption project to heighten security.
Sinclair has filed a petition for review of the FCC’s incentive auction order, in documents filed Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Sinclair’s court challenge joins one filed last month by NAB (CED Sept 10 p5) and numerous petitions for reconsideration of the order filed this week at the FCC. The auction order was adopted “in excess” of FCC authority and violates the Spectrum Act and the Administrative Procedure Act, Sinclair said. The court should hold the order unlawful or enjoin it, Sinclair said. The commission declined to comment.
Sony Electronics in Park Ridge, New Jersey, and its Tokyo parent are jointly patenting technology for a TV, set-top box or DVR that suppresses broadcast or recorded TV commercials and claims to do so much more effectively than current systems. Sony’s system, described in U.S. application 2014/0064705 filed in November 2013, names Brant Candelore of San Diego as the inventor. “Most every business entity advertises to promote products or services, and often pays significant sums of money on such activities to broadcasters and service providers,” said the patent. But consumers “are generally less entertained by advertising,” it said. “To most, an advertisement is an unwanted pause in a program with generally increased volume, and therefore, a significant inconvenience.” Current ad suppression systems, which mute the sound, change the channel or turn the TV off during a commercial are “laborious and prone to error given that a user must guess as to when the commercial break will end,” said Sony. “Despite the ability to fast-forward through commercials, users must still deal with undershoot and overshoot problems.” Thus, despite the advantages of time-shifting over viewing in real-time, “commercial suppression in recorded content is still a manual and laborious task that is prone to error, thereby exacerbating the annoyance and inconvenience brought by commercials in the first place,” it said. Instead, the patented system relies on downloading and storing a library of templates of known commercials, the Sony document said. Downloading is automatic and ongoing, by Internet connection, and the templates contain both audio and video information on the ad’s content and duration, it said. The program being watched is continually compared with the stored templates, and when a match is found, the sound is automatically muted or playback fast-forwarded and the screen blanked until the template signals the end of the ad and switches the set back to normal viewing mode. Attempts to reach inventor Candelore were unsuccessful. Sony representatives didn’t immediately comment.
Qualcomm’s Connected Experiences subsidiary announced Vuforia, a mobile vision platform to enable developers to build augmented reality applications for next-generation digital eyewear. Calling the technology a “major advance in user experience,” Qualcomm said Vuforia lets interactive 3D content be “visually aligned with the underlying world.” Applications include hybrid virtual/augmented reality gaming, shopping and education across enterprise and industrial uses, Qualcomm said Thursday. The Vuforia SDK for Digital Eyewear will be available this fall as a beta for a select group of developers, Qualcomm said. Timing was meant to converge with recent innovations in digital eyewear devices, including the ODG R-7 and the Epson Moverio BT-200, it said. ODG’s R-7, announced Thursday and using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 805 processor, is “state-of-the-art” digital eyewear with an integrated one-piece design, a stereoscopic see-through display system and wireless connectivity, Qualcomm said. The R-7 is initially targeted at government and industrial applications, it said.
"Strides” made by Chinese smartphone makers has for Sony caused a “worsening” of the market in mid-priced handsets, spurring Sony to impose an impairment charge of 180 billion yen in its mobile communications business, CEO Kazuo Hirai said in a hastily called news conference Wednesday in Tokyo. The impairment charge means Sony now expects to record a 230-billion-yen net loss for the year ending March 31, vs. the 50-billion-yen loss predicted in its July forecast, the company said. Sony finished last fiscal year with a 128.4-billion-yen net loss. In its smartphone business, Sony now will forego higher unit sales and market share in exchange for profit, Hirai said, without giving specifics. The “overarching strategy” for mobile communications will be to “reduce risk and volatility, and to deliver more stable profits,” Hirai said. Again without giving specifics, Sony will change its smartphone strategy “in certain geographical areas, concentrating on its premium lineup, and reducing the number of models in its mid-range lineup,” Hirai said. A restructuring of Sony Mobile Communications will mean a 15 percent headcount reduction, but more details on that will be released later, he said. Though Sony on Wednesday didn’t offer a regional breakdown of where its smartphone business has hit potholes, the company as recently as mid-June said it would use the digital imaging technology and content “assets” unique to Sony as differentiation tools to build a bigger foothold in the U.S. smartphone business in the fiscal year that runs through March 31 (CED June 10 p4). That followed earlier vows by Hirai to “grow our presence” in the U.S. smartphone market, but to do so in a “prudent” way that won’t jeopardize profit (CED May 23 p1).
The reasons for not requiring DBS and IPTV systems to comply with separable security requirements no longer apply in the current market, said TiVo General Counsel Matt Zinn in a meeting with staff from the FCC chairman’s office, Media Bureau and AT&T/DirecTV deal review team Sept. 11, according to an ex parte filing posted in docket 97-80 Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1o3WCOw). CableCARD rules should remain in place until there’s a successor solution, Zinn told FCC staff.
Online retailers must ship purchases within 30 days or give customers a refund option, the FTC said in a final rule in Wednesday’s Federal Register (http://bit.ly/1Dkenml). “The Rule prohibits sellers from soliciting mail, Internet, or telephone order sales unless they have a reasonable basis to expect that they can ship the ordered merchandise within the time stated on the solicitation or, if no time is stated, within 30 days,” the rule said. It said a seller must seek “the buyer’s consent to the delayed shipment when the seller learns that it cannot ship within the time stated or, if no time is stated, within 30 days.” Without consent, the seller must offer a refund, the FTC said. The updated rule is an amendment to the trade regulation that the agency said has been revised to be called the “Mail, Internet, or Telephone Order Merchandise” rule.