Universal Home Video’s Seabiscuit was the #1-rented DVD movie in the U.S. again in its 2nd week of availability, Rentrak’s Home Video Essentials preliminary data for the week ended Dec. 28 showed. Rentrak said Seabiscuit earned an additional $7.15 million on DVD for the week, boosting its total rental earnings on DVD to date to $13.2 million. Combined DVD and VHS rental earnings on the title were $10.7 million for the week and $19.59 million to date. Rentrak said there were 2 new titles in the top 10, factoring in combined DVD and VHS rentals: MGM’s Jeepers Creepers 2 at #7 and Columbia TriStar’s Jackie Chan action-comedy The Medallion at #8 in the first full week of availability for each. Combined rentals for Jeepers were $5.09 million in the week and $5.2 million to date and for Medallion $4.74 million and $4.82 million. DVD rentals for Jeepers were $3.22 million and $3.3 million, and for Medallion were $4 million and $4.07 million.

Electronic Arts (EA) once again had the 2 top-rented videogames in the U.S., Rentrak’s Home Video Essentials preliminary data for the week ended Dec. 28 showed. Rentrak said EA’s Need for Speed: Underground for PS2, in its 6th week, again was #1, generating an additional $738,285 in rentals in the week to boost its total earnings to date to $2.77 million. EA’s Medal of Honor: Rising Sun for PS2 again was #2, earning an additional $587,004 in its 7th week and its rental total to date to $3.8 million. EA had 2 other PS2 games in the top 10 as well: Madden NFL 2004 at #9 in its 20th week (down 3 from a week ago, earning an additional $347,248 for a total of $5.43 million) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at #10 in its 8th week (up 1, $339,129 and earnings of $1.73 million). Only one game in the top 10 wasn’t for PS2: Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto double pack for Xbox at #8 in its 8th week (up 9, $347,395 and $1.90 million). Take-Two had one other title in the top 10 -- Manhunt at #7 in its 6th week (up 3, $354,990 and $1.41 million). Also having 2 games in the top 10 was Activision: Tony Hawk’s Underground at #3 in its 9th week (up 2, $460,003 and $3.33 million) and True Crime: Streets of L.A. at #4 in its 8th week (down 1, $439,568 and $2.85 million). Rounding out the top 10 were SOCOM II: U.S. Navy SEALs from Sony Computer Entertainment at #5 in its 8th week (up 2, $430,695 and $2.27 million) and Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2 from Atari at #6 (down 2, $365,111 and $1.2 million).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its final results of the antidumping (AD) duty administrative and new shipper reviews of certain non-frozen apple juice concentrate from China for the period of June 1, 2001 through May 31, 2002. The ITA states that this review covers five producers or exporters and one producer/exporter.

House Judiciary Courts Subcommittee Chmn. Smith (R-Tex.) used his weekly column to denounce profane language and the FCC’s preliminary decision not to levy fines against affiliates that aired the Golden Globe awards in Jan., which included a vulgar comment by rock singer Bono (CD Jan 2 p4). Smith is the lone co-sponsor of HR-3687, introduced by Rep. Ose (R-Cal.) at the end of last year, that effectively would ban profane language from broadcast TV. In a column offered to district papers, Smith took issue with the FCC Enforcement Bureau’s determination that Bono’s use of the “F-word” was out of the Commission’s enforcement jurisdiction since he used it as an adjective in a non-sexual vein. “Since the FCC believes the law isn’t strong enough to stop harmful, indecent and profane language from being broadcast, we must strengthen the law,” Smith said. He said the bill didn’t raise constitutional issues since the Supreme Court had ruled (in the Pacifica case) that broadcast’s unique accessibility to children allowed more First Amendment restrictions on broadcasters. “Unfortunately, the FCC has given television and radio stations too much power to broadcast any type of behavior or speech that they believe will bring in high ratings and advertising dollars,” Smith said: “This undermines standards of common decency; harms the ability of parents to raise their children free from profane language and leads to a further deterioration of our culture.”

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its final results of the antidumping (AD) duty administrative review of steel concrete reinforcing bars from Latvia for the review period of January 30, 2001 through August 31, 2002.

Despite a strong push from the telecom industry for “price discrimination” in various online services, chances are good that the Internet’s open architecture will survive, the head of the U. of Minn.’s Digital Technology Center said in a preliminary paper posted Tues. Seeking ways out of its slump, the telecom industry is proposing remedies -- such as restricting VoIP -- that will lead to new Internet architectures and give carriers greater control, said mathematics prof. Andrew Odlyzko. While historical precedents from the telecom arena don’t bode well for the introduction of differentiated prices and sophisticated charging regimes on the Internet, he said, incentives to price-discriminate have increased on the transportation side. That may be prompting telcos to try to break with tradition and follow the lead of the transportation industry, Odlyzko said. Price discrimination has been practiced in both industries for a long time, he said, and it now has popped up in the current controversy over VoIP. VoIP’s biggest advantage is said to be its greater efficiency in the use of network resources, Odlyzko said, but it arguably is less efficient in the use of basic transmission services than traditional telephony. Most existing VoIP implementations don’t compress voice signals to provide higher quality, Odlyzko said, and because of the current structure of the industry, most U.S. VoIP calls travel over extremely long distances while telephone long distance calls mostly are shorter. Current VoIP technologies “find few savings,” he said, leading to slow uptake. In the long run, VoIP “is bound to win” because it will offer new features as well as the advantage of not having to run a separate network, he said. Now, however, the main incentive for VoIP comes from its ability to get out of the “elaborate maze of cross- subsidies, discriminatory pricing policies and taxes that are built into the current telecom system.” The question, Odlyzko said, is whether the telecom industry can survive in the broadband era without another maze of cross-subsidies and price differentials. “That the Internet has thus far developed with an open architecture and simple pricing does not mean that it can do so in the future,” he said. Incentives to price-discriminate are growing as fixed costs increase and marginal costs drop, Odlyzko said. At the same time, he said, the ability to price-discriminate also is being pushed by the development of digital rights management tools and the increased use of licensing rather than outright sales. The telecom industry views the Internet as a major cause of its slump, Odlyzko said: Services such as e-mail, search engines and Napster “are all great but appear not to provide any direct revenues for carriers.” Moreover, he said, the introduction of artificial restrictions on the Internet -- such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and the broadcast flag -- is forcing the entire information technology industry to restrict what users can do online. But there are countervailing factors to the increased threats to the Internet’s architecture, Odlyzko said, including: (1) Public policy concerns about stifling the Internet’s tremendous power to spark innovation and economic growth. (2) Govts. can take a hands-off approach or promote closed architecture, but “content is not king” and there’s far more money in providing basic connectivity. (3) The increasing heterogeneity of the telecom network means users will be able to mitigate restrictions by bypassing service providers and using their own networks. But, Odlyzko said, perhaps the most powerful limitation on proposed new Internet architectures and associated discriminatory practices is that “people react extremely negatively to price discrimination.”

On December 30, 2003, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issued a news release which details several additional protection measures that are intended to further strengthen protections against Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease.

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its final results of the antidumping (AD) duty new shipper review of certain non-frozen apple juice concentrate (apple juice concentrate) from China for the period of June 1, 2002 through November 30, 2002. The ITA states that this review concerns Yantai Golden Tide Fruits & Vegetable Food Co. Ltd. (Golden Tide).

The International Trade Administration (ITA) has issued its preliminary results of the following antidumping (AD) and countervailing (CV) duty administrative reviews

The House Commerce Committee is expected to schedule a hearing on broadcast decency after it returns Jan. 20, industry and House sources said. A House source said the hearing hadn’t been scheduled formally but was expected in the 2nd session of the 108th Congress. The hearing follows a preliminary FCC decision not to fine several NBC affiliates for profanity uttered during the Golden Globe Awards show that drew the ire of several members and led to their introduction of legislation.