Competition regulation is needed to help spur broadband takeup, a key U.K. ISP group said this week. Regulation “will almost certainly be required in a market where a single operator continues to hold a significant market power,” said Matthew Hare, chmn. of the broadband subgroup of the Internet Service Providers Assn. (ISPA) U.K. However, he said, regulation “ideally” would fade out over time, leaving the market to encourage greater broadband use. The comments came in a submission to the Commons Trade & Industry Select Committee, which is investigating the deployment of broadband in the U.K.
Dugie Standeford
Dugie Standeford, European Correspondent, Communications Daily and Privacy Daily, is a former lawyer. She joined Warren Communications News in 2000 to report on internet policy and regulation. In 2003 she moved to the U.K. and since then has covered European telecommunications issues. She previously covered the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration and intellectual property law matters. She has a degree in psychology from Duke University and a law degree from the University of Tulsa College of Law.
Although Webcasters are likely to be left out of an expected World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty extending copyright protection to broadcast electronic signals carrying radio and TV programs, support may be growing for their inclusion in some later protocol, we're told. As delegates to WIPO’s Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights (SCCR) prepare to meet Nov. 3-5 in Geneva, the issue of protecting Webcaster broadcast rights remains “so divisive” it could get in the way of a broadcast treaty, said Michael McEwen, secy. gen. of the North American Bcstrs. Assn. (NABA), which takes part in SCCR meetings as an observer. Some say that, despite the fact that the U.S. delegation is the only one openly calling for inclusion of Webcasters, there’s some indication others may be quietly moving in that direction.
The U.S. Appeals Court, Federal Circuit, vacated a lower court summary judgment ruling holding that an enhanced TV (ETV) system used by Disney, ABC and ESPN didn’t infringe on patents owned by ACTV. The case involves technology that synchronizes TV programming with Web pages by using the video blanking interval of an analog video signal to send a uniform resource locator (URL) specifying the location of online content, the appeals court said. ACTV sued Disney and the others for patent infringement in U.S. Dist. Court, N.Y. After that court construed the term “Internet address” in ACTV’s patents to mean “a particular host on the Internet, specified by a uniform [URL] that is unique to that host,” and “Internet information segments” to mean “parts into which information on the Internet is commonly divided, such as a Web page,” Disney sought summary judgment, saying its ETV system transmitted only file names, not absolute URLs. Moreover, it argued, because absolute URLs weren’t transmitted, its ETV system didn’t receive, decode or interpret URLs as defined by the trial court. The lower court held Disney’s ETV system didn’t perform the identical functions of ACTV’s patents and thus didn’t directly infringe. The Federal Circuit disagreed, saying: (1) Despite ACTV’s failure to explicitly define URL, the patents didn’t indicate a clear intent to limit the definition to absolute URLs (addresses consisting of a protocol type such as “http://” and a resource location such as “www.fedcir.gov") as opposed to both absolute and “relative” URLS -- that is, those made up of less than a protocol type and a resource locator. (2) Both parties’ reliance on Requests for Comment (RFCs) from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was misplaced because such documents, far from being authoritative, unbiased sources relating to the meaning of URL, were simply working papers meant to “assign language to facilitate further discussion.” (3) The trial court erred in construing URL to encompass only absolute URLs. Instead, the appellate court said, in ACT’s patents, URL meant a reference identifying the location of information segments such as audio clips, Web pages and images. (4) The file names transmitted by Disney’s ETV system fell within the scope of the term URL. The Federal Circuit ordered the lower court to consider ACTV’s claims of both literal infringement and infringement under the doctrine of equivalents.
The U.S. intends to press delegates at next week’s Preparatory Committee (PrepCom) meeting to agree on the 2 documents scheduled for discussion at Dec. World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) as soon as possible, delegation head David Gross said Wed. Going into the 3rd PrepCom meeting, the declaration of principles has been broadly negotiated but needs tightening, said Gross, U.S. coordinator-international communications & information policy at the State Dept.
The issue of trade in services -- including telecom -- is high on the European Union’s agenda for next week’s World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, Comr. Pascal Lamy said Thurs. Services are “extremely important” to Europe in terms of opening markets, he said in a news briefing on the upcoming trade talks. Europe’s key objectives include: (1) Removing barriers to trade in several sectors, including telecom and computer. (2) Ensuring a more transparent and nondiscriminatory regulatory environment. (3) Making sure WTO negotiations in the services arena preserve public services regulated by individual nations. (4) Helping developing countries benefit from the trade negotiations in such areas as capacity- building in telecom and information technology services. Europe doesn’t distinguish between telecom and Internet services in trade talks, Lamy said: “Technology is neutral and it doesn’t bring changes in the way we have to handle trade negotiations.” Lamy called the Cancun talks “a sort of midpoint review” of whether WTO members are on track for next year’s Doha Round. The basic test for Europe of whether Cancun succeeds or fails will be whether negotiators leave feeling they have only half way to go to complete negotiations, Lamy said. Various countries have put services offers on the table, he said, but those proposals need to be accelerated so negotiations can begin soon. “We are leaving for Cancun with an open mind,” he said.
NTIA, FCC and State Dept. officials said Wed. they supported the idea of an industry-based mechanism for choosing the provider of “Tier I” services for a U.S. e- numbering (ENUM) system -- under certain conditions. The ENUM Forum, an industry group, is considering forming a limited liability corporation (LLC) to manage the selection of one or more database operators from which ENUM queries would be launched (akin to domain-name system registries).
Verizon Internet Services’s warnings about the dangers of RIAA’s sweeping Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoena blitz have been borne out, Verizon Vp-Assoc. Gen. Counsel-Internet Policy Sarah Deutsch said Fri. Pacific Bell Internet Services’ filing of a lawsuit last week challenging the issuance of hundreds of DMCA subpoenas and/or DMCA notices by RIAA, MediaSentry and Titan Media prove Verizon’s point -- so far unsuccessfully argued in federal court in D.C. -- that the DMCA Sec. 512(h) subpoena process is unconstitutional and will be abused, Deutsch told us. “These are not hypothetical arguments,” she said.
Pacific Bell Internet Services late Wed. challenged RIAA’s attempt to force disclosure of the identity of alleged online file swappers. In a lawsuit filed in U.S. Dist. Court, San Francisco, Pac Bell requested a declaration that Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) subpoenas served on it by RIAA were overly broad and should have been issued by a Cal., not D.C., court, AP reported. The suit raises constitutional issues as well, the AP said. “This is old news,” an RIAA spokeswoman said. Pac Bell is simply recycling many of the same arguments raised (by Verizon Internet Services) and shot down twice by a D.C. federal court, the spokeswoman said. RIAA contacted SBC (which purchased Pac Bell) to discuss the matter but was “rebuked,” she said. The “procedural gambit” won’t change the underlying fact that when people engage in copyright infringement online, they're not anonymous and ISPs must reveal who they are, the spokeswoman said.
Delegates made better progress than expected at last week’s “intercessional” meeting leading up to Dec.’s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) but left several key issues unresolved, David Gross, State Dept. U.S. coordinator- international communications & information policy, said Mon. The week-long meeting produced a winnowed-down version of the draft principles govts. would be asked to adopt at WSIS, with a revised plan of action due out around mid-Aug., he told us. But the documents aren’t yet ready for prime time, Gross and industry groups said.
A World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panel begins consideration today (Mon.) of several sticky copyright issues. One agenda item at the June 23-27 meeting of the Standing Committee on Copyright & Related Rights is a proposal that WIPO craft a new treaty updating broadcast rights for the Digital Age. Broadcasters have been pushing for global protection for electronic signals carrying radio and TV programs in order to stop piracy of the signals and to maintain territorial exclusivity. What has engendered debate, however, is the issue of whether Webcasting signals should be included in such a treaty. In May, the U.S. submitted a revised proposal that, among other things, would let broadcasters, cablecasters and Webcasters authorize and prohibit the rebroadcast of their programs or their retransmission via computer, or defer transmission for public reception. The U.S. proposal also would declare that signatories provide “adequate and effective” legal remedies against the circumvention of technological measures. Late last week, Consumer Project on Technology (CPT) Dir. James Love asked U.S. delegates to the committee to “clarify both the U.S. govt. objectives in the treaty negotiations and explain how key features of the proposed treaty would work.” CPT has 2 main questions, Love said: (1) Whether it’s in the public interest to “shrink the public domain” by extending broadcasters’ rights from the 20 years required by the Trade- Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement to a new 50-year term. (2) Whether the U.S. definition of Webcasting will be limited to a subset of special TV or radio-like activities taking place on the Internet or will create a new right that can be “used to extend to more general operations of listserves, downloadable Web pages” and other online activities. “If the proposed treaty embraces a broad definition of Internet activities, it would effectively create a new mechanism to assign exclusive rights to materials now in the public domain?” Love wrote. “This would be a bad outcome.”