Consumer groups want the Justice Department to investigate whether the pay-TV industry illegally colluded in developing the TV Everywhere service. Seven groups made the request in a letter Monday to Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, chief of the Antitrust Division. The “headline issue” is the industry’s push to bundle online video content with cable TV through deals that could exclude content from other distribution channels, said Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott in a conference call with reporters. Cable industry officials said the service will give viewers new choices.
Class-action lawyers could get a new stream of clients from Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s dismissal of a defamation lawsuit against ConsumerAffairs.com. A car dealer had alleged the gripe website lost its Section 230 immunity as an “interactive computer service” by soliciting complaints and helping consumers find lawyers, making it an unprotected “information content provider.”
Four recent retirements by House Democrats and one party switch to the GOP is prompting some political analysts to predict Democrats’ power will wane in the Congress. Safe for now is Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., a longtime technology advocate. But some analysts are betting Republicans may put up a candidate next year to run against him. Boucher ran unopposed in 2008. His district tends to be conservative, and his votes and views on the politically charged health care reform bill will be closely watched.
The Department of Health and Human Services defined “meaningful use” of health IT in proposed rules released Wednesday and set out the standards for certification of electronic health records. Each regulation, scheduled to be published Jan. 13 in the Federal Register, has a 60-day comment period. The proposals culminate a nearly year-long process of comment and discussion in two federal advisory committees since Congress passed the Recovery Act in February.
In releasing anonymized rental and ratings information to the public as part of a contest to find ways to improve its movie suggestions system, Netflix is violating federal and state laws that protect privacy, according to four plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in San Jose, Calif., this month. The plaintiffs are seeking class action status and want the court to declare that releasing further information, as Netflix has said it will do in a second version of the contest, would violate the federal Video Privacy Protection Act, the California Consumer Records Act and other state statutes. They also want to ensure that Netflix no longer maintains records about subscribers, their rentals and preferences for any purposes other than those in the terms of service and that it obligates contestants to destroy any such records. They also seek punitive damages.
Google may have lost its best shot at showing that it can’t tell whether clips uploaded to YouTube were authorized for promotional purposes or posted illicitly without copyright owners’ permission. U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in New York approved Viacom’s request to withdraw 250 clips it had alleged to be infringing in its suit against YouTube, 91 of which Viacom itself had posted. He also declined to rule in favor of Google on the withdrawn clips, “lest it give an appearance of having an effect” on Viacom’s broader claims -- and its potential liability for wrongly suing.
After a year in which Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s Reader gained solid footing, retailers are giving the e-book category mixed reviews, but expect it to write a new chapter in 2010. The expanded push in 2010 will be led by a flood of new models ranging from Hearst Corp.’s Skiff and BenQ’s nReader to Plastic Logic’s Que and Apple’s rumored tablet that will include e-books as one of many features. But whether e-readers get retail shelf space equal to that dedicated to digital cameras, TVs and DVD and Blu-ray players, remains to be seen, retailers we polled said.
Widget maker RockYou “failed to take even the most basic steps to protect” users’ personally identifiable information, enabling the recent breach of 32 million users’ data, said a federal lawsuit seeking class-action status. The company, which makes photo-sharing and other widgets for social networks, failed to store e-mail addresses and passwords in encrypted format at the time it was breached, the suit said. That’s despite the site’s pledge to use “commercially reasonable” data protection methods, said the suit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. The method of attack against RockYou -- through an SQL injection flaw -- was also easy to thwart, the suit said. RockYou declined to comment on the allegations.
The FCC should establish a separate Tribal Broadband Plan within the National Broadband Plan, the National Congress of American Indians and other groups said. Native Public Media, the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative and the Southern California Tribal Chairmen’s Association offered additional ex parte comments on the broadband plan. The comments built on an earlier filing on an FCC request for comment on high-speed access on tribal lands.
PBS is following up on the success of its online video players for adults and for schoolchildren aged six to nine with an expanded player aimed at its youngest fans, those aged two to five. PBSKIDS.org debuted in early December. “The stats have completely surprised us,” said Sara Dewitt, senior director of PBS Kids and PBS Kids Go! Interactive. Although PBS won’t release detailed information until January, after it has a full month of figures, the number of visits has been “completely jaw-dropping,” she said.