Netflix Claims Americans Don't Want Standalone Streaming Movie Service

from the say-what-now? dept

Netflix's streaming movie service has been pretty successful according to most of the analyses I've seen, but it's still tied to the DVD rental service. So it's a bit surprising to find out that, while Netflix is readying a streaming-only service, it won't be available in the US because (according to CEO Reed Hastings):

"the company hasn't seen much interest in something of that nature in the States."

Karl Bode, over at Broadband Reports, has the appropriate response:

Wait, What? 42% of Netflix users have streamed at least 15 minutes of one TV show or movie during the last quarter, up from 22% just one year earlier. Personally, my DVD queue has sat unused for months, with the majority of my film and HDTV viewing now occurring via the far more efficient Xbox 360. The demand is certainly there, it's just not quite mainstream yet. So what's really going on?

His guess... and it's a good one, is that Hollywood isn't really thrilled with the situation, and is holding back the licensing that would enable such a service.

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New US Ambassador To Canada Kicks Things Off By Pushing For Bad Copyright Laws

from the *sigh* dept

So it looks like the "timing" on Barrie McKenna's ridiculous Globe & Mail column spewing a bunch of recording industry propaganda wasn't so random after all. Just after it came out, the new US ambassador to Canada, David Jacobson, made a point of scolding Canada for its copyright laws, and sticking by the decision to put Canada on the "watch list" in the USTR special 301 report. Once again, despite early suggestions that the new administration might actually take an evidence-based approach to intellectual property, it looks it's instead decided to simply act as an enforcer for Hollywood make believe. Too bad.

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The Borderless Internet And Jurisdictional Disputes: A Growing Problem

from the different-laws,-different-places dept

For many, many, many years, we've discussed how the fact that the internet easily reaches anywhere, despite different laws in different places, makes for some really screwed up legal situations, and little has been done to address this over the years. We recently wrote about a troubling decision in Belgium, whereby a Belgian court seemed to think that Yahoo -- despite no presence in Belgium -- needed to comply with Belgian laws. And, we're seeing similar situations again and again and again. Two new examples...

First, we already wrote about how London's National Portrait Gallery was threatening someone in the US for copying photos of public domain paintings from the Gallery's website and putting them on Wikimedia's servers. The problem is that this is entirely legal in the US, and the guy was in the US, the computer he used was in the US, and Wikimedia's servers are in the US. But the threat of a lawsuit is in the UK. Luckily, the EFF has taken on the case and is trying to stress this point:

It's quite clear under U.S. law that Mr. Coetzee did nothing wrong -- as far as U.S. law is concerned, the photos are not copyrightable, the NPG website's "browsewrap" contract is unenforceable, there is no "database right," and using Zoomify on public domain images doesn't get you a DMCA claim. It's also clear that everything he's alleged to have done took place on his computer and Wikipedia's computers, none of which are in the UK.

In the offline world, that would certainly be the end of the matter. If Mr. Coetzee had flown to London, purchased posters of the same paintings at the museum store, brought them home, and started making copies for his friends, it's clear he would be well within his rights in doing so.

Why should the answer be different simply because he posted the photos to Wikipedia? NPG seems to think that UK law should apply everywhere on the Internet. If that's right, then the same could be said for other, more restrictive copyright laws, as well (see, e.g., Mexico's copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years and France's copyright over fashion designs). That would leave the online world at the mercy of the worst that foreign copyright laws have to offer, an outcome no U.S. court has ever endorsed.

In a separate case involving people in the US and a lawsuit in the UK, Mike Arrington, who runs TechCrunch, was recently sued for libel in the UK. The standards for proving libel in the UK are significantly lower than in the US, and considering that TechCrunch is a US site, based in the US on US servers, Arrington (reasonably) felt that responding to the lawsuit itself made little practical sense. Even if he could have won the case (and from the details, the case seems patently ridiculous, more a case of sour grapes than anything else), it would have been way too costly to defend. So he refused to respond... leading to the inevitable summary judgment (which is what happens by default when the other side doesn't appear). This is a bad result for everyone, as it means Arrignton can no longer travel to the UK (and, in fact, canceled planned travel there), for no good reason at all, other than not wanting to spend an incredible sum of money to defend himself in a country he doesn't live in or operate in. It's hard to see what's reasonable or fair about that at all.

Issues like these have been going on for many, many years, and at some point this is going to need to be addressed. You can't have a situation where the lowest common denominator of laws applies across the board in every country. And you can't have a situation where people would have to bankrupt themselves to defend themselves in a foreign country. It still seems like the most reasonable solution is to default such lawsuits to the country where the action has actually taken place and/or where the servers reside. Now, some might say that you can place the servers elsewhere, but for such situations you could just default to where the person resides.

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US Officials Finally Going After Online Organized Criminals In Other Countries

from the it's-a-start dept

It's no secret that Eastern Europe has become the center of an awful lot of organized crime online. Various phishing and scam rings tend to work from a variety of different Eastern European countries without much fear of law enforcement or prosecution. Most of the enforcement in the US to date has been on the few unfortunate Americans who got involved in such scams -- but such targets were almost always small-time scammers compared to the big players across the ocean. However, there are some signs that's starting to change. Forbes details the first case of a foreign cybercriminal being extradited to the US, noting that greater cooperation between foreign governments and the US means that we should be seeing more of this. However, the article also notes that this is only one small attempt, and officials haven't really been able to do any damage to some of the bigger organized crime groups online. Still, given how little the US gov't had been able to do to actually go after the real criminals, it is a good sign that at least they're looking for ways to reach across boundaries to find them.

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Verizon: US Broadband Is Really Competitive, If You Just Redefine The Market The Way We Want...

from the that-whole-'and-wireless'-bit dept

Almost all of the issues facing broadband in this country (our slow speeds and high prices relative to other countries, questions about "neutrality" and things like customers being forced into broadband tiers) are really symptoms of a lack of significant competition in many markets. Many customers really only have one or two options, neither of which they like (I'm in that camp myself). Yet, the broadband providers want to make everyone believe it's a really competitive market. That's why they've done everything possible to block the FCC from getting accurate data about actual broadband deployments and competition over the years. Their most recent plan has been about pitching the idea of an organization called "Connected Nation" to "map" broadband penetration. However, as has been discussed previously, Connected Nation seems more like a front for the big telcos to try to pretend there's significant competition... and an increasing number of doubts are being raised about Connected Nation's efforts -- even as it seems to remain a darling of DC politicians. However its "mapping" still won't look at house-by-house penetration and competition (by demand from the broadband providers) and the collected data will remain proprietary, rather than open.

Meanwhile, Verizon has put up a video claiming to explain why there's plenty of competition in broadband in the US, but it does so by pulling a neat little trick: rather than defining the market as DSL and cable providers, it dumps wireless providers into the mix... So when you add mobile data providers, yes, there are more players in the space, but that ignores the fact that (1) many of the mobile players and broadband players are actually connected (i.e., AT&T has both, as does Verizon) and (2) that the cellular wireless broadband providers are all greatly limited, and use terms of service that tend to forbid using the data account as a primary connection. In other words, they're not really part of the same market at all.

But, most importantly, the video fails to back up its thesis that the US is "one of the most successful broadband markets in the world." It says there's lots of competition, investment in new technologies and consumers are getting more as prices go down. That suggests there is, in fact, some competition in the market -- a point pretty much everyone agrees on. But it does nothing to compare the US to other markets around the world that have much more competition, much more investment and much greater consumer value per dollar spent. Just saying that because there's some competition, the US is one of the most successful in the world, doesn't back up the thesis at all. It's like saying that you won a baseball game because you fielded nine guys. You forgot about the actual game.

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US Contractor Follows Japanese Example: Leaks Military Secrets Via P2P

from the security-software-anyone? dept

Nearly four years ago, it was reported that a contractor in Japan who had plans for a nuclear powerstation leaked them via a file sharing app on his personal computer. It was never clearly explained why he had those classified work-related materials on his personal computer, but it led to quite a mess, with the government begging people to delete the nuclear secrets, if they found them. You would hope that with that as a guide, other government and military contractors around the world would be more careful. No such luck. Lots of folks have been sending in the news that the details on Marine One, President Obama's helicopter were recently leaked via file sharing software found on the computer of a (you guessed it) government contractor. Apparently no one takes things like basic computer security seriously anymore.

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If You Stand On One Leg, Twist Yourself Around And Squint Into This Light... The US Is #1 In Broadband. Maybe

from the sorta dept

Well, US telcos who are sick and tired of people pointing out how far behind the US is in broadband, is certainly happy to hear about a new report that claims the US is actually #1 in broadband. But, of course, the devil is in the details and the details look pretty ridiculous. Apparently, the guy behind the study built a bizarre and somewhat meaningless "connectivity scorecard," where he measured five different factors in a variety of countries, from overall internet penetration to online banking usage to voice minutes (both wired and wireless) to SMS usage per capita and, finally, consumer spending on software. From that, he ranked the countries with the US being number one.

Of course, looking over those factors, it's difficult to see why those specific factors should be the ones measured. Or how the relative weights of those factors should be measured to have any say at all in overall connectivity. SMS usage per capita? Does that really say anything about broadband connectivity? I actually use SMS less when I'm around a broadband connection. And, consumer software spending? That would mean that a hypothetical country that relies mostly on open source technologies is considered less connected than one that buys Microsoft. Even worse, as we see more and more free "cloud" offerings, it would mean those that use something like Google Docs, rather than paying for Microsoft would be seen as less connected, even as it likely means they're more connected.

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Congress Wants WiFi Owners To Keep Log Files For 2 Years... For The Children

from the it's-always-for-the-children dept

Similar ideas have been proposed before, but new bills have been proposed in both the House and the Senate that require anyone offering internet connectivity to retain log files for two years. There's no good reason for this, of course. It's been shown that such data retention laws actually make it more difficult to track down the information you need while being expensive. But, of course, the politicians are claiming this is "to protect the children." Of course. They even have come up with a silly acronym so that the title of the bill (Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today's Youth Act) spells out "Internet SAFETY Act." Of course, that's a load of crap, because this bill has little to do with protecting children, and won't do much, if anything to actually protect children.

It will, however, be a huge nuisance for just about everyone. That's because the bill, as written, doesn't just apply to big ISPs, but to anyone providing internet access -- meaning all of you with your home routers fall under this law and will need to keep log files for two years or, you know, be accused of helping child predators. I can't wait until prosecutors are looking to charge someone with something -- and since they have no actual evidence on whatever it is they're looking for, they'll make use of such a law to prosecute. For the children. Of course.

Can someone pass a law that says that any politician who proposes a law "for the sake of the children" or "to protect the children" automatically gets thrown out of elected office? Protecting children is great -- but why is it that every law that is supposedly there to protect the children never actually has anything to do with protecting children?

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US IP Interests Pressured Canada To Join In Its WTO Fight With China

from the teaming-up dept

In the WTO fight between the US and China -- in which the US declared victory recently, despite losing most of its arguments -- Canada had joined the fight on the US's side. However, as Michael Geist has discovered, by accessing government documents using the Access to Information Act in Canada, Canadian officials didn't see any reason to get involved at all, not believing the dispute impacted Canadians in any manner. However, it appears US officials didn't like that very much, and a rather heavy attempt to pressure Canadian officials into signing up ensued, with both US officials and the Canadian Recording Industry Association (often seen as basically a puppet of the RIAA) applying the pressure. While Canadian officials continually expressed doubt about participating, noting little evidence that China's practices had any impact on Canadians, eventually they signed on in support. As Geist notes, the end result has been quite damaging to Canada. Since the main points of the case were won by China, Canada signed up with the wrong side of the arguments and the effort has damaged Canadian relations with China. That's what you get for getting pushed around by the IP bullies...

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US Falsely Claiming It 'Won' IP Fight With China

from the it-lost-badly dept

You may recall a few years ago that in the (still ongoing!) fight between Antigua and the US at the World Trade Organization (WTO), that the WTO came out with a ruling where the US declared immediate victory, though the details showed that actually the WTO had sided with Antigua. The US merely declared victory, and got its (wrong) story out to the press first.

It appears that's happening again.

Earlier this week, plenty of attention was paid to a WTO ruling concerning US disputes with China over a variety of intellectual property issues. The US Trade Representative quickly declared victory (pdf) and that's the story most of the folks in the press went with, claiming that this was a US victory where the WTO largely supported the US. Some even called it a major victory, while others were surprised that China seemingly was fine with the ruling.

Perhaps that's because if you actually read through the details, you realize, as Michael Geist points out, that the US actually lost very badly. There were three issues at stake -- and the only one the US "won" was the most minor of the three. On the two big issues, concerning China's border measures concerning counterfeit goods and its IP enforcement system within the country, the WTO sided strongly with China, and chastised the US for providing rather bogus "evidence" (often consisting of newspaper articles, rather than actual evidence) in support of its position. It seems like the only mainstream publication that actually bothered to read the report, rather than the USTR's "day is night" version of the events was Forbes, who notes that the USTR was being misleading in claiming victory. Of course, given how the US acted after it lost the Antigua case in the WTO, we can expect the US to appeal the ruling or... just ignore it and continue pretending the WTO actually ruled in its favor.

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US's Global IP Cops Bemoan Anti-IP Activists For Making Their Lives More Difficult

from the just-as-bad-as-pirates,-apparently dept

One of our readers, Virginia, alerted us to a report concerning a gathering of US IP Attaches (basically, the US gov't's international copyright cops that we send around the world to try to enforce draconian IP policy), in which they spend most of the time complaining about how countries around the world don't agree with the US's view on intellectual property and are quick to ignore it when possible. In fact, those countries often don't even want to invite their US counterparts to meetings because they're "too aggressively pro-IP."

Of course, rather than take this as a sign that maybe their views are too aggressively pro-IP, they instead want to blame anyone who is pointing out the dangers of being so aggressively pro-IP. The article quotes US Chamber of Commerce President Tom Donohue, saying that US IP cops can't just focus on pirates and counterfeiters, but need to start worrying about those of us crazy enough to point out the dangers and downsides of aggressively pro-IP policies:

"[There is a] second threat [from] a growing movement of anti-IP activists drawn from universities, foundations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), ideologically driven interest groups, and even governments."

You see, we're not a part of the debate and the conversation -- perhaps showing how their strong belief in stronger IP is dangerous -- but we're a "threat" that needs to be dealt with. Nice to know that the US's worldwide IP enforcers have such open minds.

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eBay Has To Turn Over Info On Canadian PowerSellers

from the can't-get-off-that-easy dept

Michael Geist points us to the news that a Canadian court has told eBay Canada that it needs to cough up info on Canadian PowerSellers. The case involves attempts by the Canadian government to determine if eBay PowerSellers are underreporting earnings on their taxes. Canadian tax officials had asked eBay Canada to hand over data on various Canadian PowerSellers, but the company refused, noting that the info was actually held by eBay in the US, and thus the data was not subject to the Canada Revenue Agency's jurisdiction. The court disagreed, noting that eBay Canada had easy access to the data at a "click of the mouse." For the most part, this does make sense, though it does raise some questions about jurisdictions. Perhaps this is a special case, due to the close relationship between eBay and eBay Canada, but it still is a bit worrisome that a Canadian court would rule that info on an American server is subject to Canadian laws. You could see that coming back up in a bad way in the future.

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UK Ruling Says Authorities Can Force You To Hand Over Your Encryption Key

from the self-incrimination-means-different-things-across-the-pond dept

A year ago, there was a legal ruling in the US that said an individual could not be forced to hand over their encryption key to encrypted data on a computer, since it violates the 5th amendment against self-incrimination. Over in the UK, they apparently also have protections against self-incrimination, but apparently it doesn't cover handing over your encryption key (thanks to JJ for sending over the link). Basically, the ruling is pretty close to the opposite of the US ruling. Basically, it found that an encryption key isn't speech but an independent "thing" that can be required to be turned over to authorities.

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Internet Traffic Routing Around The US

from the indeed-it-is dept

There's a famous saying by John Gilmore, that "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." However, that saying may apply equally to other "damage" beyond censorship -- and that includes spying, slow connections and many other things. In fact, with it being considered somewhat common knowledge that US intelligence agencies frequently tap into internet traffic coming through the US from elsewhere, more and more countries are working hard to make sure their internet traffic need not travel through the US at all. It's not just about the spying -- though, that is a part of it.

It's also about a basic competitive advantage. Since the internet has become such an important infrastructure concern, relying on a separate country to make sure that infrastructure remains solvent (especially when that country has actively promoted policies that seem to hinder investment in that infrastructure) doesn't make much sense. So, while the US gov't argues over side issues like net neutrality, other countries are making sure that whatever the US does with its internet policy doesn't impact their ability to make use of a global information network. One of these days, US politicians are going to wake up and realize that while they were arguing over net neutrality and policies concerning telcos and cable companies, other countries built out much stronger internet infrastructure that will allow their economies to profit, while we start playing catchup.

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UK Hacker Loses Extradition Appeal Yet Again

from the time-to-come-stateside dept

While the US gov't clearly overplayed its claims that Gary McKinnon was the "world's biggest hacker" after having him arrested for breaking into US military computers, that doesn't mean that McKinnon hasn't overreacted back in response. The US offered him a plea bargain deal that seemed fairly reasonable, given what he did -- and he flipped out about it. Now he's lost his latest appeal against extradition, and it looks like he may finally get sent to the US in the next few weeks to stand trial, for breaking into US military computers, supposedly while high and looking for info on alien encounters.

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Turns Out Americans Are Watching More TV Than Ever

from the not-going-away-just-yet dept

While there's been some talk that other forms of entertainment, such as the internet, were starting to cut into TV watching time, someone apparently forgot to inform Americans. The latest Nielsen numbers show more TV being watched than ever before. Of course, there are plenty of additional factors to consider. As some note in the comments to that post, the high price of gas may make some folks stay at home more often than go out -- potentially leading to more TV watching. Also, it's not clear how much is actual TV watching vs. just leaving the TV on in the background while they do something else (such as surf the internet). The report also finds (not at all surprisingly) that more people are time shifting content they view on TV, though it still seems like a rather small percentage of overall TV watching. On the whole, though, it appears that the demise of TV is still a long ways off.

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Has Broadband Growth Stalled In The US?

from the reaching-saturation? dept

A new survey on broadband adoption in the US suggests that broadband adoption in the US may be leveling off, or stalling out completely as the numbers aren't all that different than they were at the end of 2007 (55% have broadband now, compared to 54% in December). Of course, there are a variety of different groups out there trying to measure broadband penetration in the US, and they all seem to turn up different numbers -- so these numbers shouldn't necessarily be taken as fact. The report suggests the economic situation may have something to do with it, though there appears to be a variety of reasons that factored into the decision of many not to sign up for broadband.

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Japanese Broadband Caps Compared To US Broadband Caps

from the take-a-look-around dept

With various US broadband firms implementing usage caps sometimes as low as 5GBs/month, we are quite concerned about how these moves will hinder innovation by effectively placing much greater mental transaction costs on using any kind of application online. In defense of these caps, some have pointed out that even Japanese ISPs (sometimes used as an example of a much better broadband system than in the US) are also implementing caps.

Broadband Reports now has the details on some of those caps, and they're much higher than in the US (just like Japan's broadband speeds). The cap is 30 gigs per day of upload. There are no download caps. So, yes, the Japanese caps (that some want to use as an example of why caps are necessary) are many times greater per day than what some US firms want to offer per month -- and it's only for upload, rather than download. Suddenly, I get the feeling we'll be hearing the example of Japanese broadband caps a lot less frequently.

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Isn't It Better To Keep Smart Foreign Workers In The US Than Sending Them Home To Compete?

from the just-wondering dept

It's amazing how short-sighted some people can be on the immigration question. Rep. Zoe Lofgren has a wonderful idea, suggesting that we make it much easier for skilled foreign workers to establish residency if they get a job in the US. It's difficult to see why anyone would oppose this. Keeping those workers in the US, working for US companies, means that they're contributing to the American economy. Sending them home only lets them compete against us, potentially harming the American economy. The argument most often brought up against such proposals, that it hurts American jobs, is easily shown to be false. It's based on the incorrect assumption that jobs are a zero-sum game, and if a foreign-born worker takes a job, it means one fewer job for an American-born worker. Yet, if that foreign worker goes back to his home country and works for a company that takes down an American company, then we have a lot fewer jobs in the US, due to that worker going home. At the same time, if that foreign-born worker stays here, and while working for an American company, helps build up an industry, it will create many new jobs for both foreign and American-born workers.

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While US Blames P2P For Everything, EU Invests Money In It

from the a-study-in-contrasts dept

US politicians have, for years, been coming up with bogus arguments about why P2P technology is just plain evil. Most of these have little to do with file sharing of unauthorized material, but you can bet that it was the entertainment industry who put these ideas in our elected repesentatives' minds. There was the bogus claim that P2P was responsible for porn on the internet (despite the fact that studies have shown there's no more porn on P2P networks than on the rest of the internet). Then, of course, Congress started talking about how P2P technology was responsible for identity theft and was potentially endangering national security.

Over in Europe, however, the good news is that some folks there have at least realized that P2P is merely a tool, and as such, can help enable very good things as well. That's why it's nice to see the EU invest $22 million in helping to build a new, open source, BitTorrent client, designed to help broadcasters better distribute their content. Kind of nice to see in comparison to the grandstanding and misleading rhetoric coming from US politicians, blaming a technology, rather than recognizing that the technology itself is neutral.

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