The Author’s Guild has experienced another setback in its battle against Google’s book-scanning project.
Last week, we reported that Google had settled with a group of major publishers. “Now a judge has ruled that the libraries who have provided Google with their books to scan are protected by copyright’s fair use doctrine,” reports Ars Technica.
“While the decision doesn’t guarantee that Google will win — that’s still to be decided in a separate lawsuit — the reasoning of this week’s decision bodes well for Google’s case,” notes the article.
Copyright scholar James Grimmelmann called Judge Harold Baer’s ruling a “near-complete victory” for the libraries.
The decision “makes the case seem so lopsided that it makes the appeal into an uphill battle,” he explains. “Perhaps together with the AAP [American Association of Publishers] settlement, this is a moment for a reevaluation of the Authors Guild’s suit against Google. My estimate of the likelihood of settlement just went up substantially.”
Media analyst Bill Desowitz says that Digital Domain was a significant presence at last week’s VES Summit in Marina del Rey.
“Co-founder and former CEO Scott Ross implored the industry to get behind a trade association and stand up to the studios,” writes Desowitz, “while new CEO Ed Ulbrich discussed the reboot of DD 3.0, which he said was more like 1.0 so far.”
“The business is much too warm and cuddly,” noted Ross, suggesting the studios need to get tougher with directors and VFX companies should negotiate for better compensation. He does not believe now is the time for unionization, although he is not against the idea.
“Ulbrich said the recent bankruptcy and sale to Beijing Galloping and Horse and India’s Reliance has been a wild ride,” adds Desowitz. “They paired up like ‘Survivor’ and now DD has the capitalization to continue as a thriving VFX studio.”
Digital Domain may eventually open a facility in China. “We need to send people over there to help close the [talent] gap,” said Ulbrich. “Going to India allows us to mature in LA by scaling up with larger projects. India is part of the future of the VFX business.”
Desowitz explains that VES emphasized the intersection between creative and business concerns — with an additional focus on how social media is having an impact on decisions. He moderated a panel — “Is Television VFX the Future of Feature Film VFX?” — that addressed being productive with limited resources and leveraging globalization and virtual production.
“Meanwhile, Mary Ann Hughes, VP, Film and Television Production Planning, The Walt Disney Co., suggested that there are no standalone VFX incentives in California (indeed few in the U.S.) and that the problem with convincing legislators to create them is that they insist on proof that production would stay locally even with the incentives.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta warned last week of the possibility of a “cyber-Pearl Harbor,” suggesting the country is “increasingly vulnerable to foreign computer hackers who could dismantle the nation’s power grid, transportation system, financial networks and government,” reports The New York Times.
Panetta’s speech in New York City was a reaction to “increasing aggressiveness and technological advances by the nation’s adversaries, which officials identified as China, Russia, Iran and militant groups,” notes the article.
“An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these kinds of cyber tools to gain control of critical switches,” Panetta said. “They could derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous, derail passenger trains loaded with lethal chemicals. They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”
While Pentagon officials say Panetta’s speech was not hyperbole, they also acknowledge that he’s pushing for new legislation on Capitol Hill.
“It would require new standards at critical private-sector infrastructure facilities — like power plants, water treatment facilities and gas pipelines — where a computer breach could cause significant casualties or economic damage,” explains NYT.
“If we detect an imminent threat of attack that will cause significant physical destruction in the United States or kill American citizens, we need to have the option to take action against those who would attack us, to defend this nation when directed by the president,” said Panetta.
It is estimated that by 2016, mobile payments could be a trillion-dollar industry, according to Fast Company. Currently, a mobile-payment race is emerging between tech giants Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon.
It surprised many when Apple didn’t include NFC technology in the iPhone 5. The closest Apple has come thus far with mobile payments is Passbook, which is more of a digital wallet.
As for Google, its Google Wallet has been out for a while with limited success. “But Google’s just made a very important move to expand Wallet in a new direction: Micropayments, online,” notes the article.
“Saying in a tweet that it had ‘started an experiment to help content creators bring high-quality content to the Web,’ Google launched a system that lets users buy Web content for a small fee of between $0.25 and $99,” according to Fast Company.
Also, Facebook’s offer of “in-app frictionless payments via carrier billing” hints at a potentially strong mobile payments future.
“Among the fighters in the Great Tech War, it’s Amazon that’s so far been the quietest in terms of mobile payments,” suggests the article. But there are rumors stirring about Amazon pursuing a low-fee mobile pay solution to compete with the likes of Square.
As Amazon launched its new Paperwhite e-reader and an associated book-lending scheme in the UK, Germany and France, CEO Jeff Bezos spoke on how the company makes no profit on hardware sales.
The Paperwhite is an e-ink powered device featuring a built-in light to put it in direct competition with Barnes & Noble’s Nook Glowlight and Kobo’s Glo.
“Amazon is seeking to distinguish its line-up by offering a subscription package that includes access to the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library,” writes BBC News.
That would allow for users to borrow up to one book per month from a variety of both famous authors and ones publishing their works through Amazon’s publishing system.
It is consumption like this, of books and movies and TV, that Bezos is counting on. He “made clear that the devices’ success would depend on how many books and other media files were subsequently bought by their owners,” notes the article.
“We want to make money when people use our devices, not when people buy our devices,” he said.
Amazon also wants physical sales. The Lending Library will be tied to the Amazon Prime price, so will include free and fast delivery from physical objects in the Amazon warehouses.
Camera review website Digital Photography Review has launched a new platform called Connect which is “dedicated to the fast growing world of mobile photography,” reports Wired.
DPReview promises to provide detailed reviews of cell phone cameras that focus not only on resolution, but on the “sensors, lenses and software that all contribute to the look and quality of the images,” explains the post.
Connect “will be combining DPReview’s qualitative assessment of performance and image quality with technical testing,” through its partnership with DXO Labs.
Editor Barney Britton says a new studio will help create objectivity for the nine to ten page cell phone camera reviews.
“We’ll be able to test cameras and phones using a common scene which greatly improves on our current setup,” he says. “This means we can shoot from a reasonable distance away on cellphones, avoiding issues with distortion and sharpness that plague attempts to shoot smaller scenes with fixed wide-angle lenses/cameras.”
As reports indicate that the iPhone 4 is the most used-camera in America, DPReview will fill a much needed void of analyzing which cell phone cameras are best. The detailed, respected reviews could incentivize cell phone companies to improve their cameras, speculates Wired.
Toys R Us has entered the video-streaming business with its toysrusmovies.com, “a new digital service for users to stream and download movies and television shows geared toward children,” writes CNN Money.
The prices are on par with Apple’s iTunes, with movies priced at $2.99 for a 24-hour rental and TV shows are $1.99 per episode.
“With this move, Toys R Us is wading into a crowded arena of competitors that include Netflix, Walmart Stores, Amazon and Apple — all of which are growing their online video presence,” explains the article.
According to Toys R Us spokeswoman Katie Reczek, the site’s family-friendly content will set it apart from these other services. Additionally, it won’t require a subscription, so the a la carte approach could be attractive to consumers.
Toys R Us Movies will offer more than 4,000 titles to start. It will also feature new movie releases on the same day the DVDs hit retail stores and TV shows will be available the day after they air, according to the article.
In addition, Toys R Us also announced that its tablet for children, the Tabeo, will launch October 21. A Toys R Us Movies app is in development for the device.
NetZero, a 4G mobile broadband provider, is hoping to attract users to its hotspots by giving away free wireless data on its new Facebook app. Users with any NetZero subscription — even the free 200MB/month plan — can sign up to give Facebook friends free data.
“Its new Data Share program lets those who own the company’s WiMAX devices give away up to 1GB of data every month through Facebook, spread across five friends at 200MB each,” reports Engadget. “Apart from needing NetZero hardware in a coverage area, there’s no financial strings attached — neither the sender nor the recipient needs to adopt more than the free, 200MB per month they already have just for showing up.”
“Subscribers are not required to sign a contract, can join on a month-to-month basis, can cancel at any time, and can upgrade their data plan at will without facing overage charges,” the press release states.
New subscribers who purchase one of NetZero 4G Mobile Broadband devices — the NetZero 4G Stick or the NetZero 4G Hotspot — have the option of testing the service for free up to a year. The company is offering a promotional half-off sale for devices this month.
“The real dilemma is managing just who gets the data in the 4G provider’s first come, first served approach to the sharing link that hits friends’ social news feeds,” Engadget suggests.
Consumers in the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to enjoy 5G speeds of up to 200Mbps by 2013, reports TechWeekEurope.
The 5G trial will occur in the area from the University of Surrey to Guildford. The total area is about five square kilometers.
“We have developed many technologies that are suitable for 5G using computer simulation and mathematical analysis and what this test bed allows us is to integrate all these technologies together and optimize them end-to-end and take them to standards afterwards,” explains Professor Rahim Tafazolli.
Tafazolli’s team at Surrey believes it can achieve speeds four times as fast as 4G speeds. But such high speeds require a lot of energy, so Tafazoli also stresses energy efficiency as paramount to the project.
“Every 10 to 20 years a new generation of mobile cellular standards will come up,” suggests Tafazolli. “Our proposal is about preparing the research development and standardization for the fifth generation, which is supposed to be deployed by 2030… Research and standardization needs to happen now.”
In a related CNN Moneyarticle last month, head of wireless research at Bell Labs Tod Sizer suggested the still-budding new 4G wireless standard will be inadequate in just five years.
“By 2020, industry analysts say the amount of cellular traffic created by smartphones and tablets will be dwarfed by the data generated from the world of connected ‘things.’ Shoes, watches, appliances, cars, thermostats and door locks will all be on the network,” CNN reports.
The improvements are expected to be incremental. “5G won’t be about more speed, necessarily,” says Sizer. “It may be faster, but it will be more about meeting the expectation of service quality.” The 5G network technology will help prioritize all the things we’re attempting to communicate.
More than a third of Verizon’s data traffic travels on its fastest LTE network. The company says that within the next few months, more than half of its user data will travel on this network.
It took 3G eight years to account for half of Verizon data, but 4G will supplant Verizon’s slower networks in just about two years.
Eleven of Verizon’s 89 million customers had access to 4G LTE coverage as of last quarter. “In a move to get more devices onto the network, Verizon announced in June a shift to new shared data plans,” reports AllThingsD. “Such plans, also offered by AT&T, allow customers to share a pool of gigabytes across multiple devices.”
After Verizon reaches its yearly goal of 400 4G LTE markets on October 18, the company will focus on using LTE Advanced to bolster its capacity to match its growth in coverage area. The company’s LTE network covers 75 percent of the American population, according to Verizon.
Verizon projects that its LTE network will cover voice as well as data by the end of 2013, according to CTO Nicola Palmer, who notes that the company’s network is currently the largest LTE network in the world.
“Sprint thinks that hotels, rental car agencies, airlines, supermarkets and big box retail stores — pretty much any business with a loyalty card — would make excellent resellers of its 3G and WiMAX data service,” reports GigaOM.
For example, hotels could rent or lend 4G data modems to guests, while grocery stores could sell prepaid 3G cards. And “those data services could be linked directly to any loyalty program — for instance, for every megabyte you consume earn a frequent flyer mile or get 10 cents off your next purchase of frogurt,” notes the post.
“Sprint is inviting these companies to become mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) on its data networks, offering a compelling proposition to companies that normally wouldn’t have a clue how to run a wireless business: Sprint will deploy all of the infrastructure and manage the service, while its partners focus on their customers,” explains GigaOM.
This is all part of the new “MVNO in a box” platform that Sprint launched in July, but now Sprint is aiming at any company with a consumer base and a website.
Sprint is working with Telespree to support activation and management of subscriptions through its cloud-based wireless data platform.
“So far Sprint is making its WiMAX and CDMA networks available through the program, so its biggest impact may be regional,” suggests the post. “Once Sprint completes the rollout of its LTE network, though, it will probably start offering it up to its MVNO partners.”
Japanese cellphone and Internet company Softbank Corp. has been in talks regarding a substantial ownership stake in struggling U.S. wireless carrier Sprint Nextel Corp., the third largest cellphone company in the U.S.
“A deal would offer a multibillion-dollar lifeline that could help Sprint finance future mergers of its own and better compete with its much bigger and richer rivals,” reports the Wall Street Journal.
People familiar with the negotiations suggests Softbank is looking to purchase 70 percent of Sprint. The news sent Sprint shares on Thursday to their highest level since 2008.
Sprint has struggled since its merger with Nextel in 2005 and large investments including a costly network upgrade and its $15.5 billion commitment to carry the iPhone. (However, the iPhone deal has recently helped the company compete with contract customers.)
“There are a number of potential hurdles to a deal, including winning over Sprint’s shareholders and resolving a complex relationship between Sprint and partner Clearwire Corp.,” notes WSJ. “If the deal happens, however, it could transform a market where just two companies, Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc., have the bulk of the customers and profits.”
The deal is expected to exceed $12.8 billion, although Softbank isn’t looking to buy Sprint outright. “Instead, the U.S. company is likely to get a multibillion-dollar cash infusion by selling new shares to Softbank, which would then seek to buy more stock in the market at a premium to the current price,” explains the article.
This would provide Sprint with financial relief immediately, potentially lead to network improvements or acquisitions, while allowing Softbank to “gain control of Sprint for a lower price than if it bought the company outright.”
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings will vacate his seat on Microsoft’s board of directors next month. Microsoft announced yesterday that Hastings has decided to not seek re-election at the company’s 2012 annual meeting of shareholders.
Hastings is currently the lead independent director on Microsoft’s Board. After he steps down, Microsoft will appoint his replacement.
“I’ve decided to reduce the number of boards I serve on, so that I can focus on Netflix and on my education work,” explained Hastings in a statement.
He also serves on the board of directors at Facebook, Netflix and some educational nonprofits.
“It makes sense for Hastings to focus on Netflix: The company has lost 80 percent of its value since last summer, when it unveiled a price hike and a plan, since abandoned to separate its online video-streaming and DVD rental businesses,” reports Business Insider.
Norton by Symantec has announced a new service designed to protect consumers when they connect to the Web using a public Wi-Fi network.
The new Norton Hotspot Privacy essentially creates a virtual private network for the user while on a Wi-Fi network, providing more control over what is shared online.
“The service provides a secure and private connection that shouldn’t be able to be seen by ‘eavesdropping software.’ The user’s Wi-Fi session should therefore be invisible, encrypting the user’s connection and everything related (i.e. usernames, passwords, etc.),” reports ZDNet.
“The inspiration behind Hotspot Privacy comes from the sheer amount of unprotected Wi-Fi hotspots available and just how vulnerable those networks are to cyber threats,” notes the post.
Available for Mac and PCs, Norton Hotspot Privacy supports unlimited bandwidth on up to five devices for $49.99/year, $19.99/month and $2.99/day.
Dual-screen apps are changing how people interact with and consume content. “For developers this creates many new opportunities to provide better experiences for their users, but it requires thinking about dual-screen setups from the start as well as new tools,” writes Mashable.
Dual-screen apps have the potential to shake up the industry, as designers now need to think of Web tasks from a different perspective.
“Importantly, designers and developers need to shed the concept that TVs are for rendering video, and instead think about TVs as large monitors on which they can render applications, content and interactivity that’s supported by a touch-based tablet application,” suggests the article.
Apple’s AirPlay is taking the concept a step further by allowing iOS devices and PCs with OS X Mountain Lion to display mobile device screens onto a television — essentially creating “a wireless HDMI output to a TV.”
“With the existing Apple TV unit sales already outselling the Xbox in the most recent quarter, we can see a world that goes from approximately 5 million dual-screen-capable Apple TVs to potentially 15-20 million in the next couple of years, and eventually to 30-50 million as new and improved versions of the Apple TV companion device come to market,” notes the article.
Mashable explores how dual-screen apps could impact our lives in regards to house-hunting, car purchases, kids edutainment, classroom interaction, medical visuals, video consumption and more. “Virtually every application that exists on the Web and phones and tablets likely has a dual-screen use case.”
