GigaOm

People can be surprised to discover that they don’t actually own the digital books and songs they buy, but that they instead rent them from large companies like Amazon and Apple. In response, Congress is asking whether copyright law should be changed to ensure people can resell or lend out their digital goods.

The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to heard testimony from publishing and technology executives as well as public interest groups over whether the government needs to update a long-standing rule known as “first sale” that lets people do what they want with works they lawfully purchased.

The short answer, based on the upcoming hearing, appears to be no as members of Congress and those testifying appeared skeptical that people should have the same property rights in digital goods as they do in physical ones. But some suggested that it might be time for companies to do a better job of explaining to consumers about what they are allowed to do with the books and music they “buy.”

The House Judiciary Committee, which is in the process of reviewing US copyright law, held a field hearing in New York on June 2 to get the views of publisher John Wiley, the New York Public Library, and tech CEO John Ossenmacher among others as to whether Congress should require a digital resale right. For practical purposes, a change in the law could mean giving consumers the right to sell their iTunes library, or to lend e-books bought on Barnes & Noble to a friend.

The mood at the committee hearing, chaired by Rep Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), was skeptical, however. Several of the witnesses pointed out that requiring first sale for digital media, which is so easy to exchange and reproduce, would likely bring major harm to the primary market for books and music. Others noted that second hand digital files don’t really become “used” or become deteriorated like books and records.

Online marketers have long relied on cookies to track users’ behavior on the web in an effort to deliver targeted ads as accurately and effectively as possible.

But two major factors continue to minimize the relevance of cookies in mobile: Apple’s Safari browser doesn’t support third-party cookies, preventing advertisers from tracking users and retargeting pitches across multiple sites. Similarly, the webview technology used by native apps to display online content is unique per application, preventing the sharing of information between cookies or with the browser.

The latter problem is particularly troublesome because apps continue to dominate the time spent on smartphones. Apps accounted for an overwhelming 86 percent of the average US mobile consumer’s time in 2013, according to Flurry, while the web claimed a mere 14 percent, down from 20 percent in 2012. So while consumption of mobile data continues skyrocket, the mobile advertising industry still lags behind.

[Commentary] A major assault on the past is underway in Europe where tens of thousands are seizing on a landmark court ruling to demand Google remove search results they dislike.

As a result, people on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and even within Europe, could soon see very different versions of the Internet as Google’s listings become riddled with blank spaces where information once stood. This is dangerous.

Europe’s past is replete with governments that scrubbed history to suit their own ends. The new Google rules could not only provide a new way for the powerful to purge the past, but also help legitimize censorship in other countries.

This doesn’t mean that there is no place for forgetting or deleting data -- indeed, history also shows that forgetting can be as important to a society as remembering. But the removal rules, as they are now constructed, threaten to do more harm than good.

Content delivery network Akamai is still attempting to speed up the web and it has teamed up with OpenDNS to add optimized DNS routing to its arsenal of services.

For customers using OpenDNS, content hosted on Akamai’s servers will arrive faster -- as much as four times fast in some cases. So now a user in Austin, Texas who types in the URL for a YouTube video will share part of his IP address as part of the DNS request. That way, the domain name system server can route the request to a Google data center in Dallas, as opposed to one in Ireland.

This can substantially speed up access to content.

Now that Time Warner Cable has it made it easier for customers to access its Wi-Fi hotspot networks with its recent upgrade to Hotspot 2.0, and it’s starting to expand its wireless coverage with roaming deals.

It’s now signed a new roaming deal with wireless ISP Boingo, giving it access to its network of hotspots in busy US transit hubs, including airports, train stations and even New York City subway platforms. The deal is reciprocal, meaning Boingo’s wireless customers can access TWC’s 32,000-node hotspot network, built in commercial corridors and other highly trafficked areas throughout its cable territory. TWC broadband customers won’t get access to Boingo’s entire hotspot footprint, just travel hubs in about 100 US locations.

[Commentary] When SoftBank CEO and Sprint chairman Masayoshi Son gave a well-received talk on deplorable state of the Internet in the US, he never mentioned T-Mobile directly.

However, the subtext was there: if regulators let him get his hands on T-Mobile, he wouldn’t just make the US mobile landscape the competitive, but the entire realm of Internet access.

Give me T-Mobile and I’ll give you a competitor to Comcast-Time Warner, was the message Son delivered, and everybody seemed to eat it up.

I think Son is being pretty disingenuous here. He simply can’t deliver the network to meet those promises. Here’s why.

Mobile and wireline broadband networks are fundamentally different animals, and no matter how much wireless technology improves you’re never going to pump the same amount of capacity through a cellular connection that you would through its wireline equivalent. Son argued that today’s average LTE connection -- at 6 Mbps -- is just as fast as the home broadband speeds many Americans have today (though as The Verge’s Chris Ziegler pointed out, he seemed to be making up numbers), but Son is conflating speed with the cost of capacity. The way people use their home broadband connections simply can’t stand up to today’s mobile technology and today’s mobile business models.

When looking at the technology involved, Son also stands on tenuous ground. Mobile and wireless technologies will gradually get faster and more powerful, evolving to a point where we may some day be able to consume data over wireless connections as indifferently as we consume over the wireline connections. But that kind of scenario involves much more than the cellular networks Sprint could provide.

Ever since it acquired Alltel back in 2009, Verizon has been indisputably at the top of the US mobile carrier heap in terms of subscribers. But AT&T is again vying for that top spot, thanks to its recent acquisition of regional operator Leap Wireless, according to a new report by Chetan Sharma Consulting.

At the end of the first quarter, AT&T and Verizon both controlled 34 percent of the mobile subscriptions in the US, according to Sharma’s estimates. It’s hard to pin exact numbers on those carriers, though, since both report subscribers differently.

At the end of March, AT&T had 116 million total connections, but that number includes all of its wholesale subscribers (those that connect with one of AT&T’s mobile virtual network operator partners) and machine-to-machine links attached to cars, gadgets and other devices in the Internet of things. Verizon doesn’t report any of those numbers. It only reveals business and consumer retail subscribers buying their service directly from Verizon. That number totaled 103 million.

By Sharma’s calculations just as many people are connecting their phones and tablets and hotspots to AT&T’s network as Verizon. Any way you look at it, these two carriers are huge. They collectively control 68 percent of the US wireless market.

Pandora and Sirius XM already pay far more in copyright royalties than AM/FM stations, but that’s not stopping the music industry from demanding that Congress force the digital radio services to pay even more.

SoundExchange, a royalty collection service, announced a heart-tugging campaign called “Project 72.” The campaign is to back the “RESPECT Act,” a law proposed by Reps George Holding (R-NC) and John Conyers (D-MI) that would require digital radio services to pay performance royalties for pre-1972 recordings.

As it stands, Sirius and Pandora don’t pay to perform these early recordings since they are not covered by federal copyright law. The industry claims the issue is one of fairness, arguing that the earlier recordings deserve the same protection as the later ones. Sounds fair, right? After all, what sort of philistine wouldn’t pay those dear old musicians for their oldies?

Alas, it’s not that simple. As I’ve explained before, the vagaries of copyright law mean that Pandora doesn’t pay for pre-1972 recordings -- but neither does any other radio service. What’s more, the digital services are paying large sums to play post-’72 performance rights, while AM/FM stations (which are much richer) pay nothing at all. And, in any case, everyone must pay the songwriters and publishers for the pre-1972 works.

All the RESPECT Act would do is exacerbate these irrational distinctions between traditional and digital radio services (and possibly put Pandora and Sirius XM out of business altogether), while failing to solve the music industry’s deeper problem, which is the permanent decline of CD sales.

Public Knowledge’s Jodie Griffin said, “Public Knowledge supports protecting pre-1972 sound recordings under federal copyright law, but this bill fails to give pre-1972 recordings actual copyright protection and fails to solve the uncertainty created by a patchwork of state laws. Pre-1972 sound recordings should be addressed in a comprehensive approach that considers the many current issues in music licensing. Pre-1972 sound recordings should be given actual copyright protection that lasts for the lifetime of the author. That protections should be balanced by limitations like robust statutory licensing, mechanisms to help users locate authors, and reasonable damages. Additionally, users that are currently relying on limitations in state laws today should be given notice and time to adjust to the new regime. Finally, the windfall that results from new licensing requirements should go the actual artist, so the statutory splits that often currently give half of the collected royalty payments to record labels should be adjusted to increase artists' share of the royalties.”

Google released an US-focused version of its video quality report, which offers users a way to check which of their local Internet service providers (ISPs) deliver the best-looking YouTube streams.

The report is singling out some ISPs as “HD verified” which YouTube Product Manager Jay Akkad defined this way: “If your provider can consistently deliver HD video, a resolution of at least 720p, without buffering or interruptions -- it’s HD Verified.”

The report also shows which ISPs are capable of delivering SD quality video without buffering, and which ones deliver videos at a lower performance, or in other words will leave you completely frustrated. To get to these results, YouTube monitored streams over a 30-day period. Only ISPs that were capable of delivering HD at least 90 percent of the time are being called HD verified.

A Q&A with violinist Lindsey Stirling. She talks about her career, her fans and how using YouTube gave her a way to break into a tough industry.

Stirling, who first came onto the national stage in 2010 by reaching the quarter-finals of "America's Got Talent," now has 4.8 million subscribers on YouTube and just released a new album, "Shatter Me," which debuted as #2 on the Billboard charts. Stirling noted how YouTube has provided her with a side-door into the music industry.

“There is a connotation to being a YouTuber: that you’re a cover artist, or you're not legit. I'm very proud that I came through YouTube. It's exciting to be a part of this wave and to say, ‘Hey, this is a legitimate platform,’” she said.