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Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) grilled Maria Pallante, the head of the U.S. Copyright Office, over a meeting with movie studio lawyers on the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) during a hearing of the House Administration Committee.
Rep Lofgren said she was concerned because a day after the meeting with movie studios in Los Angeles, Pallante called for a serious response to online piracy in testimony in support of SOPA. "SOPA was an extreme measure that blindly pursued copyright enforcement at the expense of many other considerations," said Lofgren, a chief opponent of the legislation. In her earlier testimony to the House Judiciary Committee one day after the meeting in Los Angeles, Pallante warned that without a serious response to online piracy, "the U.S. copyright system will ultimately fail." She called SOPA "serious and comprehensive" but also "measured." Under pressure from Rep Lofgren, Pallante acknowledged the anti-piracy bill was "one of many things" discussed with the lawyers from Warner Brothers, Paramount and other major studios. Rep Lofgren also asked Pallante about a meeting in December with the Author's Guild and the Association of American Publishers. The copyright chief acknowledged that she discussed the anti-piracy legislation and the problem of rogue pirate websites at the meeting.
Rep Lofgren grills copyright chief over meeting with movie lawyers on SOPA Zoe Lofgren Criticizes Copyright Official Over Piracy Statements (Roll Call)
The Business Software Alliance (BSA) announced a major reorganization to ramp up its lobbying and anti-piracy efforts.
The group, which represents companies including Microsoft, Apple, Intel and Adobe, will split into two units: one focused on advocacy and one focused on combatting copyright infringement. BSA General Counsel Jodie Kelley will head the group's new unit devoted to anti-piracy efforts. The office will lead projects in enforcement, education, marketing and public policy. Matt Reid, formerly the vice president of communications, will head the organization's new advocacy unit as senior vice president of external affairs. Katherine McGuire, a former aide to Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), will continue to drive the group's "direct engagement with policymakers." BSA also said it plans to move its headquarters to Capitol Hill this summer.
Business Software Alliance reorganizes to focus on lobbying, anti-piracy efforts
Two black men who said they were "lookin' for love" and auditioned last summer for the popular ABC reality television show "The Bachelor" sued the network, saying they were rejected because of their race. "They were tossed aside because of their race," said Byron Perkins, one of a trio of prominent civil rights attorneys representing Nathaniel Claybrooks, 39, and Christopher Johnson, 26, in the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Nashville. The suit says ABC has never put a single person of color - whether African American, Hispanic or Asian - in the central role of "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette."
Two black men accuse ABC of racial bias over 'The Bachelor'
Satellite export controls should be relaxed by Congress so that US companies can better compete globally for sales of communications and remote-sensing equipment, a report by the Pentagon and State Department found.
“Limited national security benefits” are provided by a 1998 law that applies more stringent controls on satellites than on other equipment that may have both civilian and military uses, the departments said in the report requested by Congress and released today to lawmakers. The report is “a key step toward relieving U.S. commercial satellite system, component, and part manufacturers of unnecessary controls,” said John Ordway, an export-licensing attorney with Berliner, Corcoran & Rowe LLP in Washington.
Satellite Export Controls Should Be Eased, US Says
Earlier this month, Google measured Web page load speeds on desktop computers and mobile devices in 50 countries with the fastest Internet connections.
When it came to the fastest average time for loading Web pages on a desktop computer, the Slovak Republic was tops at a speedy 3.3 seconds, Google said. Meanwhile, South Korea was the zippiest in mobile with an average loading time of 4.8 seconds. So, who were the laggards? The slowest was Indonesia, which had an average Web page loading speed on desktops of 20.3 seconds. In mobile, the United Arab Emirates had an average Web page loading speed of 26.7 seconds, putting it in last place. The US, meanwhile, was somewhere in the middle. On the desktop, it took an average of 5.7 seconds. On a mobile device it took 9.2 seconds to load, which for many folks here, feels like an eternity.
Who’s Fastest? Google Measures Web Speeds Around the World
Clearwire, the unprofitable wireless-broadband wholesaler, fell to its lowest price since January after Verizon Wireless said it will sell some of its spectrum.
Shares of Clearwire declined 6.9 percent to $1.76 at the close in New York, after earlier retreating 20 percent. The Bellevue, Washington-based company’s shares have dropped 70 percent in the past 12 months. Clearwire, which hasn’t reported an annual profit in at least five years, could be forced by creditors to sell spectrum assets, which were worth as much as $4 billion at the end of September, Ping Zhao, a CreditSights Inc. analyst, has said. Any sale of good quality spectrum makes Clearwire’s holdings less valuable, Christopher King, an analyst at Stifel Nicolaus & Co., said.
Clearwire Tumbles After Verizon Announces Spectrum Sale
The Federal Communications Commission today launched a new ‘bill shock’ website, an online tool to help consumers track implementation of recent commitments by wireless carriers to provide usage alerts before and after consumers exceed their plan limits.
Bill shock is a sudden and unexpected increase in monthly wireless bills that happens when consumers’ unknowingly exceeding plan limits for voice, data and text. Bill shock can also happen when consumers travel abroad and get hit with unexpected international roaming charges. A recent FCC survey found that 30 million Americans – or one in six wireless users – have experienced bill shock.
FCC Launches “Bill Shock” Website FCC (visit the site)
Facebook's VP-Business and Marketing Partnerships David Fischer cited a range of brands from Procter & Gamble to Domino's to the reboot of the classic soap "Dallas" as innovative users of the social network in his remarks at Ad Age's Digital Conference.
Facebook's initial public offering is coming next month, so the company is currently in a quiet period where executives are prohibited from discussing the company's financials. But since its FMC conference for marketers in February -- when it introduced pricey log-out ads and a new package called "Reach Generator" that promises marketers that ads built out of their timeline posts will reach a far higher percentage of their fans than they would have organically -- Facebook has been on a mission to rebrand ads as "stories." Mr. Fischer spoke to that, noting that marketers' Facebook strategies need to center on "content beyond what you'd traditionally call advertising." The power of regularly messaging fans and their friends is at the core of Facebook's pitch to marketers, and Mr. Fischer cited data supporting the notion that "always-on" marketing drives results.
Facebook: We Have No Plans for an Ad Network
An attorney and some top broadcast group execs met with Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski and Media Bureau staffers earlier this week to make a last-ditch pitch for their proposal to put aggregated political ad totals from candidates online, rather than individual ad buys.
The proposal was pitched earlier this year by Barrington Broadcasting Co., Belo Corp, Cox Media Group, Dispatch Broadcast Group, The E.W. Scripps Company, Gannett Broadcasting, Hearst Television, Meredith Broadcasting Group, Post-Newsweek, Stations, Raycom Media and Schurz Communications, as a win-win alternative to the FCC's proposal of putting individual spot prices online, which broadcasters strongly oppose. Attorney Jonathan Blake, representing the broadcasters, told the commission other broadcast groups had signaled they would be willing to support the compromise proposal.
Broadcast Groups Pitch Chairman On Political File Compromise
Federal, state and local governments could learn a thing or two from major Internet companies, using data to improve public benefits such as health care and education, lawmakers said at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing.
Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources Chairman Geoff Davis (R-KY) pointed to companies like Facebook and Google, which base their business on the data they have access to. "It's long past time for the government to use those same sort of tools," he said. In March the White House announced a plan to pour millions of dollars into harnessing the huge amounts of data, from genetic databases to earthquake tracking, collected by government agencies. The "Big Data Research and Development Initiative" will provide more than $200 million "to greatly improve the tools and techniques needed to access, organize, and glean discoveries from huge volumes of digital data," the Office of Science and Technology Policy said at the time.
Lawmakers Want Government Using Data Like Google, Facebook