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An elite unit of Chinese hackers that allegedly waged a massive cyber-espionage campaign against U.S. companies has attempted to clean up their online presence after being identified in a public report by information security firm Mandiant.
Since the release of the report last month, top administration officials have called on China to take urgent steps to crack down on hacker attacks and curb the siphoning of intellectual property from American companies. After outing the hacker unit in its report, Mandiant executives said that the Chinese hackers have taken steps to clean up their tracks and have largely stopped their activity.
Mandiant: Chinese hacker unit attempted to clean up online presence
A bipartisan pair of senators are expected to take a shot at amending the budget resolution this week with an online sales tax measure.
Sens. Mike Enzi (R-WY) and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-II) are putting their political weight behind the push to pass legislation that would give states greater ability to collect sales taxes from online purchases. The National Retail Federation (NRF) and the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) each sent letters to senators on Tuesday calling for them to support the amendment. RILA deemed it a key vote. Neither senator has offered up an amendment, yet.
Senators may push online sales tax measure in budget
[Commentary] There was plenty of depressing if not very surprising news in the annual report on the state of the news media released this week by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. But this particular finding jumped out at me: the accelerated morphing of the cable news channels into talk cable. That's not a healthy development for a democracy, particularly one plagued as ours is by a toxic, highly partisan and deeply polarized political climate. And politics is the coin of the realm on cable.
The report had two significant revelations on the cable front. First, coverage of live news events on CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC plummeted by 30% from 2007 to 2012, while interview segments — featuring all manner of savants, pundits and bloviators — jumped by 31%. The second: The distinction between daytime and prime time on cable has blurred. While prime time has long been dominated by talk, the earlier hours featured a healthy dose of actual news. No longer. The Pew report found that interview segments were equally prevalent in both time periods.
Talk replaces news on cable at 'surprising' rate
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations held a hearing on March 19 to consider updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to clarify the protections of e-mails, text, and information stored in the cloud from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government and in civil suits.
But Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) made it clear it would have to be a balancing act between protecting privacy and allowing for law enforcement investigation of crime. He also said that would be a "tough nut to crack." (ECPA update legislation failed to materialize out of the last Congress.) "Americans should not have to choose between privacy and the Internet," he said. Chairman Sensenbrenner said he expected there would probably need to be a probable cause warrant standard for most communications, at least in criminal investigations. Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), ranking member of the subcommittee, said the Act was clearly outdated, pointing out that a single email could be subject to different legal standards for access depending on whether it was being stored or awaiting storage. He pointed out that service providers are providing both a communications service and a remote storage service and that there needed to be clarity on the definition of content. Full committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said that updating the ECPA would be a top priority of Judiciary Committee.
House Judiciary Wades Into Electronic Communications Privacy Act Reform DOJ weighs in on reforming electronic privacy law (Washington Post) Justice Department changes stance, now supports search warrants to access user email (The Verge) Government access to private email reviewed in Congress (Reuters) Register of Copyrights: Authors Are at Center of Public Interest (B&C) Head of US Copyright Office wants to shorten terms, just barely (ars technica) Consensus builds for requiring warrant for email searches (The Hill)
T-Mobile USA, the Deutsche Telekom AG division that agreed to a merger with MetroPCS Communications in October, named a new board for the combined company, with Timotheus Hoettges serving as chairman. The board will have 11 members, including two directors of MetroPCS and the chief executive officer of the new company. Hoettges, who will lead the board, is deputy CEO and chief financial officer for Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom. Rene Obermann, the German phone company’s CEO, also will serve on the board, as well as T-Mobile CEO John Legere. A shareholder meeting to vote on the deal will be held April 12.
T-Mobile USA Names New Board in Preparation for MetroPCS Merger
Comcast has completed its acquisition of the remaining 49% interest in NBC Universal it didn’t already own from General Electric for about $16.7 billion.
In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Comcast said the consideration for the 49% stake included $10.0 billion in cash on hand; about $725 million of 5.25% cumulative preferred stock issued by NBCUniversal Enterprise; $4 billion of senior unsecured debt securities; $750 million of cash funded through its commercial paper program; and $1.25 billion of cash funded through NBCUniversal Enterprise’s $1.35 billion credit facility, which was amended on March 19.
Comcast Completes NBCU Consolidation
[Commentary] We are living in an unparalleled time for technological progress. In 10 years, it will be almost impossible to describe to any child in India what life was like before the internet. Only about two billion of the world's seven billion people have an internet connection, and I believe the remaining five billion will get one in the next decade. Almost one billion of them will come online in India. They will have different needs from people online today and expect different things from the internet. Now is the moment for India to decide what kind of internet it wants for them: an open internet that benefits all or a highly regulated one that inhibits innovation. India accepts that investing in the internet is as crucial as investing in roads or telephone lines. The bigger question is, which internet will it invest in, an open or closed one? If people in power are overly pessimistic about the internet, their pessimism will be self-fulfilling. In seeking to control all of it — including the good parts that are working well — they'll stop good Indians from doing great things. Instead, they should focus on giving every Indian the best shot at using the internet to make his or her country even better.
[Schmidt is Google’s Executive Chairman]
Which internet will India choose?
[Commentary] The Kirtsaeng decision shows why we should not take the assertion that trade negotiators know what the law is and only take positions consistent with it too seriously. The law is sometimes uncertain and subject to dispute. We need courts to clarify what it means.
Today, the Supreme Court clarified that the first sale doctrine applies to goods made overseas. It's important to note that the Court did not declare that henceforth, first sale applies in this way. Rather, a convincing majority of the Court held that it always has. Supap Kirtsaeng acted legally when he imported textbooks into the United States without the permission of John Wiley & Sons. To the extent that anyone at USTR or anywhere else at the time thought otherwise, they were wrong. This is how the legal system works. It is thus relevant that Justice Ginsburg writes, in dissenting from the majority opinion, that "[u]nlike the Court's holding, my position is consistent with the stance the United States has taken in international trade negotiations." But trade negotiators do not get to decide what the law is: Congress passes statutes and courts interpret them. The USTR is not part of this workflow. If trade negotiators have ever taken positions that are inconsistent with Kirtsaeng then those positions are now, and always have been contrary to US law. I would make a similar argument even if Kirtsaeng came out the other way: trade negotiators should not try to anticipate how contentious legal battles will turn out. They should steer clear of these areas entirely and allow the system to do its work.
Kirtsaeng Shows Why Trade Negotiators Don't Always Know What the Law Actually Is
In a court ruling that has major implications for used good merchants across the country, the Supreme Court overturned a lower court decision that forbid a textbook seller from reselling textbooks that he had purchased overseas.
In a 6-3 ruling, the court rejected publisher John Wiley’s interpretation of a rule known as the “first sale doctrine” which prevents copyright owners from exerting rights over a product once it has been purchased legally. This rule is what allows used book and music stores to sell used items without the copyright owners’ permission. In recent years, copyright owners facing a wave of imported goods have argued that “first sale” only applies to goods manufactured in the United States. Lower courts have till now sided with the copyright owners, producing considerable uncertainty about whether or not retailers can import and sell goods they legally purchase abroad. Writing for the majority, Justice Stephen Breyer rejected John Wiley’s argument that the phrase “lawfully made under this act” implied a geographic limitation. He also cited the concerns of library associations, used-book dealers, technology companies, consumer-goods retailers, and museums — all of which had urged the court to reject the restricted notion of “first sale.”
Supreme Court sides with bookseller in major copyright ruling, says resale is ok Supreme Court upholds first-sale doctrine in textbook resale case (ars technica) Supreme Court Says First Sale Doctrine Not Geographically Limited (B&C) Supreme Court: Copyrighted goods can be resold in the US (The Hill)
[Commentary] The Supreme Court's decision in Kirtsaeng is a big win for the public, for ownership rights, and free trade.
In a compellingly-argued 6-3 decision, the Court held that copyright owners do not have a perpetual right to control the resale of goods, even when they are manufactured overseas. Publishers argued for the right to control the distribution of copies of their books in perpetuity (or until any copyrights expired, whichever comes first). The effects would go far beyond the original importer. This would have been an absurd result.
If you own something, you own it, and whether or not you can resell it, give it as a gift, or lend it out should not depend on the country it was made in. (In many cases, how would you even know?) Had the Court gone the other way, a used bookstore or a library with books on its shelves that were imported from the U.K. twenty years ago might be a copyright infringer. But thanks to the Court's decision, sales of used books, CDs, clothes or other items with copyrighted designs or logos, and anything with embedded software (such as cars, electronics, and appliances) can continue without legal uncertainty hanging over them.
The Kirtsaeng Decision is a Victory for Ownership Rights