Aug 12 -- Data Caps Could Cut Artists off from the Cloud
Industry Spotlight
Bruno Mars joins roster of entertainers slated for MTV VMA
August 11, 2011 – Examiner.com
How to Publish Your Own Amazon Kindle Ebook
August 8, 2011 - PC World
FBI releases new app for Apple’s iPhone to help identify missing children
August 8, 2011 - Federal Computer Week
Microsoft's KinectFusion research project offers real-time 3D reconstruction
August 9, 2011 - Engadget
Kmart Launches U.S. Latino Series On YouTube
August 10, 2011 - Huffington Post
Best Buy Offering 20% Off Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones with HTC Purchase This Weekend Only
August 11, 2011 - AndroidGuys
Live365 Makes It Easier, Cheaper to Broadcast via the Internet and Mobile Devices
August 3, 2011 – San Francisco Chronicle
Politics and Policy
I. PROTECT IP Act (S. 968)
Protect IP Could Have Far-reaching Impact on Digital Freedom
Authored by Jaya Gibson on August 10, 2011 – The Epoch Times
A bill designed to help stop the decline of the U.S. entertainment industry by preventing sharing and streaming of video content online could have far reaching implications for major websites and the everyday Internet user. As all users of the Internet are aware, HTML links are the very basis of how we navigate our way across the Web. If a bill that is currently being scrutinized by the U.S. government comes into force, however, you may want to think twice about what you link to.
The Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP) focuses on websites that include or link to copyright infringing content. It would give the U.S. Department of Justice the power to seek a court order against an allegedly infringing website, and then "expeditiously" render the website invisible by demanding "information location tools," defined as a "directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link,” according to the bill.
II. IP Enforcement: Rogue Websites
Spanish site claims forfeiture of link sites is illegal
Authored by Timothy B. Lee on August 9, 2011 – Ars Technica
Puerto 80, the Spanish company that owns the Rojadirecta sporting website, has asked a federal judge to dismiss the government's forfeiture of its domain names. Calling the seizure "an unprecedented effort to expand both copyright liability and the reaches of civil forfeiture law," the firm argued that only direct infringement, not linking to infringing content, could be the basis for a domain name seizure.
The brief was co-authored by the prominent copyright scholar Mark Lemley of Stanford University and was filed on Friday. It claims that Puerto 80 is—at most—guilty only of assisting the infringement of others, which copyright law calls secondary liability. But, the brief argues, secondary infringement can only lead to civil, not criminal, liability. And only criminal infringement can justify the forfeiture of the Rojadirecta domain names.
We asked New York Law School copyright scholar James Grimmelmann to assess Puerto 80's arguments. He told Ars that Puerto is clearly right that linking to infringing material does not constitute direct copyright infringement. But he was less sure of the other arguments.
III. Mobile Wireless Data: Throttling and Metered Pricing
Internet Rationing Latest Threat to Watching Video Online
Authored by Art Brodsky on August 2, 2011 – Huffington Post
AT&T's announcement that it would start to throttle the "heaviest users" on its wireless network is only the latest in a series of developments that place the idea of a thriving, useful Internet at risk. (This is the same AT&T that wants to spend $39 billion buying competitor T-Mobile, rather than fix up its network.)
No one knows why rationing schemes like data caps are triggered, what they are supposed to do, much less if they are successful. Serious doubts have been raised whether caps are necessary at all to manage networks or to cover costs from increased Internet use. But consumers who wants to use the Internet more are the ones who will suffer.
Some institutions, like the New York Times editorial page, the news pages of the Washington Post, and Canadian regulators, are paying attention. Some institutions, like the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), are not.
Data Caps Could Cut Artists off from the Cloud
Authored by Aalok Mehta on July 26, 2011 – New America Foundation
The case of André Vrignaud highlights the serious issues that artists, photographers and musicians might face as both data caps and cloud computing become increasingly common—and contradictory. Vrignaud, writing under the name Oxymandias, earlier this month outlined how Comcast had cut off his Internet connection for a year after he exceeded their monthly usage cap of 250 GB for back to back months.
Such usage might seem extravagant for most Internet users. Comcast, for example, reports that their typical high-speed Internet customer uses between 4 and 6 GB a month. For those who cut more deeply into their allotment, streaming video, music and other entertainment may be the most likely culprit. According to one estimate, Netflix streaming alone accounts for nearly 30 percent of all evening downstream traffic on wireline networks in North America, with the average Netflix customer burning through more than 1 GB of data a day.
Certainly, some of that was to blame in Vrignaud’s case. He writes that he and his roommates “stream Netflix HD movies and Pandora music incessantly to multiple devices in the home,” as well as having an open-access wireless network that other people could use. But the kicker, according to Vrignaud, wasn’t what he was downloading, but rather what he was uploading—as a “photographer and audiophile,” he had sent gigabytes of high-fidelity music, RAW-format pictures and other files to remote servers, to provide mobile access to files but more importantly to serve as off-site backup. Comcast’s and many other data caps typically count both uploaded and downloaded data.