September 2011

EU opens antitrust probe into e-payment market

European Union antitrust regulators are investigating whether a group of banks --including Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Spain's BBVA -- is blocking new players from entering the European online payments market.

The European Commission opened an investigation into the standardization process for e-payments by the European Payments Council (EPC), saying the move was prompted by a complaint. It did not identify the complainant. "Standards promote interoperability and competition, but we need to ensure that the standardization process does not unnecessarily restrict opportunities for non-participants," EU Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said. The Commission said the exclusion of new players and payment providers not controlled by a bank could result in higher prices for web merchants and consumers.

China urges police use microblogs to dispel rumors

More Chinese police should use microblogs to give the public "correct" facts and release authorized information to dispel misunderstandings, the Ministry of Public Security said, in a new effort to counter critics of the government.

Chinese officials have voiced worries about the feverish growth of microblogs, also known as "tweets", which can be used to spread information and comments unwelcome to the ruling Communist Party's censors. Vice Minister of Public Security Huang Ming said that police forces should actively use microblogs to ensure the correct information is put across to people. "All levels of public security organs should fully understand the importance of microblogs for public security," Huang said. Police forces should set up "new platforms to guide public opinion, further pay attention to hot topics people are talking about on the Internet, and use correct, authoritative, transparent news to answer people's concerns in a timely way, clarify facts and clear up misunderstandings".

European data concerns cloud outlook for U.S. vendors

American cloud providers may find themselves unable to sell to the Dutch government due to concerns that the vendors could be compelled to share data with U.S. authorities under the provisions of the Patriot Act. Similar concerns are being raised in the European Parliament.

Ivo Opstelten, the Dutch minister of security and justice, informed the Tweede Kamer (the Dutch lower house) last week that the government is contemplating excluding American cloud providers from government bids. Dutch government agencies need to protect government information and citizen data from being accessed by the U.S., and so bids must be able to meet demands that cloud providers do not hand over any information to the U.S. "That basically means that companies form the United States are excluded from such [government] bids and contracts," Opstelten said in the letter.

Emergency Access Advisory Committee

Federal Communications Commission
Friday, October 14, 2011
10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-11-1599A1.pdf

The October meeting will continue deliberations to develop recommendations to the Commission as required in the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA).

Read more about Emergency Access Advisory Committee (Oct 2011)

YouTube Prepares to Launch Scheduled Channels

Will consumers put down the remote and tune into YouTube? The Google-owned site is getting closer to finding out.

The video giant is finalizing contracts for its first of more than a dozen "channels" featuring regularly scheduled content on big broad themes such as fashion and sports, according to people familiar with the matter. YouTube has requested some content for the channels within the next 60 days, according to one of these people, as it considers a launch in early 2012. YouTube, which media companies have long griped is too stingy cutting content deals, is paying from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million to content creators to create and curate videos for a channel, according to these people. Google recoups the original payment through ad revenue, and Google and the partner share ad revenue after that. Content owners in talks with the company say Google executives say they want to build a comprehensive video service that users will want to tune into instead of television, not just a service to better compete with other Web video sites.

The Facebook Chart That Freaks Google Out

Facebook is crushing the rest of the Web when it comes to stickiness.

Facebook changes draw privacy concerns

Users and privacy advocates have reservations about Facebook’s planned redesign, the way the change will affect third-party apps and the network’s general approach to privacy.

hird-party apps will be fully integrated into a user’s profile page, with updates about activity on each app. That means that users won't actively click to share updates from apps — the apps will add that information to a user’s page automatically. With this change, users will have to think more carefully about what apps they use, since their private media consumption, exercise routines and other habits could be automatically published on their profiles.

Self-proclaimed hacker Nik Cubrilovic accused Facebook of using cookies to track users while they are logged off, something Facebook engineer Gregg Stefancik denied in a comment on Cubrilovic’s post. Stefancik confirmed that Facebook alters rather than deletes cookies when users log out as a safety measure, but said the company does not use those cookies to track users or sell personal information to third parties. He also said that the company does not use cookies to suggest friends to other users.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that the organization is opposed to changes made to the Timeline, Facebook’s newly designed profile page.

Hollywood downloads a post-DVD future

Across Hollywood, a quiet revolution is brewing that's about to transform living rooms around the world. After desperate attempts to prop up the industry's once-thriving DVD business, studio executives now believe the only hope of turning around a 40% decline in home entertainment revenue lies in rapidly accelerating the delivery of movies over the Internet.

In the next few years, the growing number of consumers with Internet-connected televisions, tablets and smartphones will face a dizzying array of options designed to make digital movie consumption a lot more convenient and to entice users to spend more money. With films that can be accessed on any digital device, downloaded as iPhone apps or shared on Facebook as easily as a photo, it may be the biggest shift in Hollywood's business model since the explosion of the DVD in the late 1990s.

Companies grapple with social media policies

In the age of instant tweets and impulsive Facebook posts, some companies are still trying to figure out how they can limit what their employees say about work online without running afoul of the law.

Confusion about what workers can or can't post has led to a surge of more than 100 complaints at the National Labor Relations Board— most within the past year — and created uncertainty for businesses about how far their social media policies can go. "Employers are struggling to figure out what the right policies are and what they should do when these cases arise," said Michael Eastman, labor law policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Investigative Reporting Outlook Not Bright

A Q&A with Byron Harris of Belo's WFAA (Dallas, TX). He is one of broadcasting's pre-eminent investigative reporters, having earned all of broadcast journalism's most prestigious awards, including this year a Peabody and a Murrow for an on-going expose of for-profit career schools.

Belo is one of the handful of station groups that is bucking the trend, he says in this interview. Instead of marginalizing investigative reporting as most groups are doing, he says, Belo is nurturing it, convinced that it sets its stations apart and above its competitors. In most places, investigative reporting is a victim of broadcasters' obsession with the bottom line, and the merging of news operations within markets is only making matters worse, he says. The situation has left him pessimistic about the future of his corner of broadcasting. "The reality is investigative reporting has been disappearing and it will continue to disappear regardless of whether stations consolidate or not."

Benton

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