After weeks of speculation, Verizon Wireless has announced it will no longer offer customers unlimited data service plans, but will instead introduce service tiers at varied price points.
Verizon joins AT&T and T-Mobile in offering tiered service models. Sprint Nextel remains as the only major carrier to offer an unlimited data plan.
Verizon’s current unlimited data model is $30 on most plans. Moving forward, customers will get a maximum of 2GB/month for that price. Customers who use up to 10GB will pay $80/month.
Customers with an existing unlimited plan will be grandfathered in and will not have to change to a tiered plan, but any change in service will terminate the unlimited data plan.
ETCentric contributor Phil Lelyveld comments: “It will be interesting to see if this becomes a competitive differentiator among services, and whether consumers hit the limits and start caring about limits on their wireless data plans.”
Apple announced the 15 billionth app download this week. The App Store has been open three years.
There are some 425,000 apps and 100,000 iPad apps available to users in 90 countries.
Apple has paid more than $2.5 billion to app developers to date.
From the Apple press release: “Users of the more than 200 million iOS devices around the world can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, education, sports, health, reference and travel.”
IARPA, a research arm of the intelligence community, is looking to fund the development of an Open Source Indicator (OSI).
The proposed OSI is intended to gather publicly available information in order to analyze, anticipate and/or detect societal disruptions, such as political crises, disease outbreaks, economic instability, resource shortages, and natural disasters.
From their proposal: “Many significant societal events are preceded and/or followed by population-level changes in communication, consumption, and movement. Some of these changes may be indirectly observable from publicly available data, such as Web search trends, blogs, microblogs, Internet traffic, webcams, financial markets, and many others. Published research has found that many of these data sources are individually useful in the early detection of events such as disease outbreaks and macroeconomic trends. However, little research has examined the value of combinations of data from diverse sources. The OSI Program seeks to develop methods for continuous, automated analysis of publicly available data. The Program will aim to develop methods that ‘beat the news’ by fusing early indicators of events from multiple data sources and types.”
Hollywood studios and music recording labels announced an agreement with major ISPs including AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Verizon in which the ISPs agree to send “copyright alerts” to consumers who have accessed pirated content.
The intention is to educate, not punish.
A 2007 study showed that a “large majority” of those who receive alerts will stop the illegal activity.
If the alerts have no effect, mitigation measures may be pursued. Consumers will have the option of an independent review for a $35 fee.
Mitigation measures begin with the fifth or sixth alert, and may include: “temporary reductions of Internet speeds, redirection to a landing page until the subscriber contacts the ISP to discuss the matter or reviews and responds to some educational information about copyright, or other measures that the ISP may deem necessary to help resolve the matter.”
UK researchers led by the University of Exeter have created a prototype 3D printing technology that creates custom objects in chocolate.
Similar to how plastic and metal models are created with 3D printing, the research team hopes that consumers will soon be able to create custom designs on their computers and then “print” the designs in “three dimensional chocolatey form.”
The biggest challenge has been finding a way to successfully manage accurate heating and cooling cycles required to work with the delicate substance.
“By combining developments in engineering with the commercial potential of the digital economy we can see a glimpse into the future of new markets – creating new jobs and, in this case, sweet business opportunities,” explains ESPRC’s chief exec Professor Dave Delpy (ESPRC is managing the project).
Amazon announced several notable enhancements to its Cloud Drive and Cloud Player service this week.
The Cloud Player is finally available for the iPad and has been optimized for Safari (joining existing apps for the Android phone, Android tablet, Mac, and PC).
New customers who register for the annual $20/20GB plan will receive unlimited space for music tracks.
Cloud Drive users can also store all of their previously Amazon-purchased MP3s for free.
New allegations have emerged that News of the World, a British paper owned by News Corp., illegally hacked into and tampered with the voicemails of crime victims, including a kidnapped 13-year-old girl.
The allegations arrive just as News Corp. was poised to acquire BSkyB, the largest pay TV service in Britain.
British regulators have yet to give final approval to the deal, which has already taken 13 months due to complicated regulatory hurdles.
It is unclear whether the growing scandal will affect its fate. However, Prime Minister David Cameron said the allegations are a “separate issue” from the regulatory process.
“Tablets aren’t cannibalizing notebooks; they’re converging with them,” writes John Paczkowski in a WSJ article about how fears regarding an iPad takeover of PC sales is overblown.
Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi sees tablets and notebooks converging as solid-state storage, low-power processors, app stores, touch interfaces, and lighter weights continue to span both platforms.
Sacconaghi predicts there will be notebooks of iPad weight with touchscreens and integrated keypads for under $1,000 which may undermine sales of tablets.
Paczkowski concludes: “In other words, the cannibalized becomes the cannibal. And in the end, it turns out that the post-PC era doesn’t mean that the PC is dead, but rather that it’s been born anew as a converged device — an ultrathin, touch-sensitive notebook.”
“Almost everyone interested in seeing 3D on a home TV would be much happier if they didn’t have to wear those awkward glasses to do it,” writes TVTechnology.
While autostereoscopic 3D is available for small screens such as the Nintendo 3DS, it is not yet practical for large flat screen displays.
Both lenticular and parallax technologies exhibit sweet spots where the illusion is best.
Phil Lelyveld, ETC’s Consumer 3D Experience Lab program manager, says we’re many years away from a marketable product.
“3D is the one of the first art forms that impacts your visual system and can have a health response on it,” says Lelyveld. “Some autostereoscopic display technologies can be very age-dependent, and market research has found that people in their early 20’s and younger can more readily accept the AS3D effect, but people in their 20’s and older find it very annoying.”
A collection of Hollywood studios and guilds this week announced the formation of “Creative America,” a non-profit grassroots organization intended to fight piracy that threatens creative jobs.
Creative America intends to provide a unified voice for some 2 million Americans who work in film, television, and other creative fields and believe, “that halting the looting of America’s creative works and protecting jobs must be a national priority.”
Members of the coalition include: AFTRA, CBS, DGA, IATSE International, NBC Universal, SAG, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Twentieth Century Fox, Viacom, Disney and Warner Bros.
The coalition supports a new bill before the U.S. Senate, which would allow the Department of Justice to pursue pirates overseas.
The group aims to provide IP protection and related information through its website and social networking entities such as Facebook and Twitter.
Some 90 law professors have signed a joint letter opposing the Protect IP Act which is intended to deal with copyright infringement. The Act is currently being reviewed by Congress.
The letter contends that the Act’s domain-blocking provisions can be viewed as Internet censorship, which is barred by the First Amendment.
“The Act would allow courts to order any Internet service to stop recognizing [a] site even on a temporary restraining order… issued the same day the complaint is filed” without allowing for an adversary proceeding, which has been required by the Supreme Court.
Moreover, blocking an entire domain when infringing material exists in a subdomain is equivalent to “burning the house to roast the pig.”
Paramount Pictures recently issued a cease and desist order to a 3D replicator of “Super 8” cubes.
Todd Blatt, an engineer from Baltimore, replicates interesting devices and props he sees in movies (such as the cubes from Paramount’s “Super 8”), sends the digital models to 3D printer Shapeways, and then sometimes sells the resulting metal or plastic models to fans online.
New fronts in copyright law are developing as digital tools increasingly encroach on the physical world. Emergence of low-cost 3D printers and software will continue to push these issues.
From a copyright viewpoint, this case illustrates how 3D printers will possibly impact product licensing the way the MP3 codec impacted the music industry.
This may raise some interesting near future questions regarding how film props will need to be legally classified (especially in terms of patent, copyright and fair use laws).
The legal debate continues regarding the divergent approaches to cloud-based music lockers proposed by Amazon, Google and Apple.
The 2008 Cablevision decision in the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals allowed for a remote DVR feature (when done at the direction of users and separate copies were stored for each user as would be done for an in-home DVR). The decision is the strongest legal case for a music locker service.
EMI’s current suit against MP3tunes.com will also impact the situation. EMI asserts that music locker services must remove material if they become “aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent.”
While Apple has signed agreements with the major labels, it has not yet done so with smaller labels.
According to Ars Technica: “Either Apple wasted millions of dollars on licenses it doesn’t need, or Amazon and Google are vulnerable to massive copyright lawsuits.”
Google and Amazon will assert their rights under DMCA Safe Harbor and the Cablevision case. In addition, they may have some protection under rights they have to sell music through their online stores.