U.S. government guidelines to spend $4 billion to expand broadband access to underserved areas across the United States may go beyond current laws, a broadband industry group said.
USTelecom, which represents the biggest U.S. telephone companies Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc, said it was still analyzing requirements to provide loans and grants to applicants that can include state and local governments as well as non- and for-profit organizations.
"We are concerned that some of the new mandates seem to go well beyond current laws and FCC rules," USTelecom President Walter McCormick said.
McCormick said the rules, which were released on Wednesday by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Commerce, may lead to uncertainty and even delay President Barack Obama's plans to revive the U.S. economy with job creation, partly, through the telecommunications industry.
The funds are part of a $7.2 billion program to build an affordable high-speed Internet structure in rural areas. The broadband program was tucked into a $787 billion fiscal stimulus package Obama signed into law in February.
July 3, 2009
July 2, 2009
China paper says Web filter only a matter of time
It is only a matter of time before a controversial scheme to install Internet filtering software on all computers begins in China, a state newspaper said on Thursday, after the plan was abruptly delayed this week.The surprise climbdown was reported late on Tuesday by Xinhua news agency, which said the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology would "delay the mandatory installation of the controversial 'Green Dam-Youth Escort' filtering software on new computers."
Officials said the software was intended to stamp out Internet pornography, and computer companies had originally been told they had to bundle "Green Dam" with any personal computers heading to stores for sale in the country from Wednesday.
But the order was assailed by opponents of censorship, industry groups and Washington officials as rash, politically intrusive, technically ineffective and commercially unfair. PC companies have mostly avoided making firm public statements on the issue.
But the English-language China Daily, citing an unidentified ministry official, said the plan would eventually come to pass.
"The government will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It's just a matter of time," the official was quoted as saying.
The reason for the delay was because some computer makers needed more time to include the software, it said.
"What will happen is that some PC manufacturers will have it included with their PC packages sooner than the others," he said. "But there is no definite deadline at the moment."
The ministry declined comment when contacted by Reuters.
The decision was the latest turn in a see-saw battle between the ruling Communist Party, wary of the Internet as a conduit of political dissent and objectionable values, and social and commercial forces pressing to use the Internet as a channel for more unfettered expression.
Google has also been caught in recent controversy over censorship, and the stakes for citizens and companies can be high.
China has about 300 million Internet users. About 42.6 million personal computers will be sold across the country this year, according to data research firm Gartner.
The country's largest PC brand is homegrown Lenovo, though global players such as HP, Dell and Acer have made considerable headway in the market in recent years.
PC makers voluntarily supply Web filter in China
Several PC makers were including controversial Internet-filtering software with computers shipped in China on Thursday despite a government decision to postpone its plan to make such a step mandatory.
Beijing's decision this week to delay the requirement that the filtering software — known as Green Dam — be pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the United States and Europe. But the move by some makers to include the software anyway could re-ignite complaints by Chinese Web users.
Also Thursday, a government newspaper said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory at some point, a move that would disappoint opponents who hoped the government would drop the effort.
Taiwan's Acer Inc. — the world's No. 3 PC maker — Sony Corp. and China's Haier Group said they were shipping Green Dam on disks with computers for sale in China. China's Lenovo Group, the No. 4 producer, said it would offer the software pre-installed or on disk. Taiwan's Asus Inc. said it was preparing to supply Green Dam disks with PCs. Taiwanese laptop maker BenQ Inc. said the system was on the hard drives of its computers.
Acer was supplying Green Dam because disks were already packed with PCs before the government postponed the plan, that had been due to take effect Wednesday, said a company spokeswoman, Meng Lei. Lenovo said it also was going ahead with plans made before the Green Dam order was postponed.
Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's top PC manufacturer, said it was working with the U.S. government to get more information and declined to comment further. No. 2 Dell Inc. said it was not including Green Dam with its PCs.
Chinese authorities said the software is needed to shield children from violent and obscene material online. But experts who examined it said Green Dam also would block material the government deemed politically unacceptable.
Sony said it does not know how long it will continue to supply the software.
"What we will do in the future is still undecided because it will depend on the situation," said Sony spokesman Shinichi Tobe.
A Toshiba Corp. spokeswoman, Yuko Sugahara, said the company was deciding how to proceed.
An official of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology quoted Thursday by the China Daily said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory.
"The government will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It's just a matter of time," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.
Beijing operates extensive Internet filters to block access to material considered obscene or subversive. Still, Chinese Web users were outraged by Green Dam, which would have raised screening to a new level by putting it on each computer.
The controversy was sensitive for global computer makers, for which China is both a major market and the production site for up to 80 percent of the world's PCs.
Washington and the EU have complained that the Green Dam order, imposed abruptly in May, might violate China's free-trade pledges because manufacturers got too little notice and no time to comment. Producers had little time to test the software, made by an obscure Chinese company, and industry groups warned it might cause security problems.
American diplomats have been talking with Chinese officials about the plan. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said Thursday it had no information on the status of talks. European Union officials have also objected to the plan.
Green Dam already is in use in Chinese Internet cafes and manufacturers say it has been supplied since early this year with PCs sold under a government program to subsidize appliance purchases in the poor countryside.
Beijing's decision this week to delay the requirement that the filtering software — known as Green Dam — be pre-installed or supplied on disk with all computers sold in China averted a possible trade clash with the United States and Europe. But the move by some makers to include the software anyway could re-ignite complaints by Chinese Web users.
Also Thursday, a government newspaper said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory at some point, a move that would disappoint opponents who hoped the government would drop the effort.
Taiwan's Acer Inc. — the world's No. 3 PC maker — Sony Corp. and China's Haier Group said they were shipping Green Dam on disks with computers for sale in China. China's Lenovo Group, the No. 4 producer, said it would offer the software pre-installed or on disk. Taiwan's Asus Inc. said it was preparing to supply Green Dam disks with PCs. Taiwanese laptop maker BenQ Inc. said the system was on the hard drives of its computers.
Acer was supplying Green Dam because disks were already packed with PCs before the government postponed the plan, that had been due to take effect Wednesday, said a company spokeswoman, Meng Lei. Lenovo said it also was going ahead with plans made before the Green Dam order was postponed.
Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's top PC manufacturer, said it was working with the U.S. government to get more information and declined to comment further. No. 2 Dell Inc. said it was not including Green Dam with its PCs.
Chinese authorities said the software is needed to shield children from violent and obscene material online. But experts who examined it said Green Dam also would block material the government deemed politically unacceptable.
Sony said it does not know how long it will continue to supply the software.
"What we will do in the future is still undecided because it will depend on the situation," said Sony spokesman Shinichi Tobe.
A Toshiba Corp. spokeswoman, Yuko Sugahara, said the company was deciding how to proceed.
An official of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology quoted Thursday by the China Daily said regulators will revive the plan to make Green Dam mandatory.
"The government will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It's just a matter of time," the unidentified official was quoted as saying.
Beijing operates extensive Internet filters to block access to material considered obscene or subversive. Still, Chinese Web users were outraged by Green Dam, which would have raised screening to a new level by putting it on each computer.
The controversy was sensitive for global computer makers, for which China is both a major market and the production site for up to 80 percent of the world's PCs.
Washington and the EU have complained that the Green Dam order, imposed abruptly in May, might violate China's free-trade pledges because manufacturers got too little notice and no time to comment. Producers had little time to test the software, made by an obscure Chinese company, and industry groups warned it might cause security problems.
American diplomats have been talking with Chinese officials about the plan. The U.S. Embassy in Beijing said Thursday it had no information on the status of talks. European Union officials have also objected to the plan.
Green Dam already is in use in Chinese Internet cafes and manufacturers say it has been supplied since early this year with PCs sold under a government program to subsidize appliance purchases in the poor countryside.
July 1, 2009
Sweden's Global Gaming snaps up Pirate Bay
A little-known Swedish software firm has snapped up file-sharing website The Pirate Bay with the hope of turning the source of legal controversy into a money-spinner that appeals to both users and content providers.
Global Gaming Factory X AB, which operates Internet cafes and provides software, said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million).
The website made world headlines in April when the three Swedish founders and a financial backer were each sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay a combined $3.6 million in damages for breaching copyright law with the free downloading site, which was one of the biggest sites of its kind on the Internet.
Swedish News Agency TT cited one of the founders, Peter Sunde, as saying that the money would not go directly to him or any of the others sentenced in April.
Sunde told TT that the money would be placed in a company outside Swedish borders and it would be used for Internet projects other than downloading sites.
Pirate Bay could not be immediately reached for comment.
Global Gaming said it believed the website was a viable business with its plans for a new, legal business model.
"We would like to introduce (business) models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," the company said in a statement.
USERS AS EARNERS
Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya told a news conference that the revamped website would generate money via advertising, supplying storage space and helping telecom operators optimize Internet traffic.
He also said users would be able to earn money by supplying storage space, which would encourage people to use the site.
"That's what is interesting. If you can earn money by file-sharing, it's no big deal to pay for what you download," Pandeya said.
Analysts were unimpressed by the move, comparing it to Napster, an online file-sharing site that quickly lost popularity after it started to charge its users.
"It looks like they are going to Napsterize it," said Leigh Ellis, intellectual property partner at Gillhams Solicitors.
Mark Mulligan, vice president at research firm Forrester, said that many of Pirate Bay's around 20 million users would move on to other free downloading options.
"The bottom line is that most people who use file-sharing networks use it because it's free. They are not likely to start paying just because the owners have a new business model," he said.
"There has not yet been a single example of a legal file-sharing network which has made a successful transition to a legal business."
($1=7.826 Swedish Crown)
Global Gaming Factory X AB, which operates Internet cafes and provides software, said Tuesday that it had agreed to buy Pirate Bay for 60 million Swedish crowns ($7.7 million).
The website made world headlines in April when the three Swedish founders and a financial backer were each sentenced to one year in jail and ordered to pay a combined $3.6 million in damages for breaching copyright law with the free downloading site, which was one of the biggest sites of its kind on the Internet.
Swedish News Agency TT cited one of the founders, Peter Sunde, as saying that the money would not go directly to him or any of the others sentenced in April.
Sunde told TT that the money would be placed in a company outside Swedish borders and it would be used for Internet projects other than downloading sites.
Pirate Bay could not be immediately reached for comment.
Global Gaming said it believed the website was a viable business with its plans for a new, legal business model.
"We would like to introduce (business) models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site," the company said in a statement.
USERS AS EARNERS
Global Gaming Chief Executive Hans Pandeya told a news conference that the revamped website would generate money via advertising, supplying storage space and helping telecom operators optimize Internet traffic.
He also said users would be able to earn money by supplying storage space, which would encourage people to use the site.
"That's what is interesting. If you can earn money by file-sharing, it's no big deal to pay for what you download," Pandeya said.
Analysts were unimpressed by the move, comparing it to Napster, an online file-sharing site that quickly lost popularity after it started to charge its users.
"It looks like they are going to Napsterize it," said Leigh Ellis, intellectual property partner at Gillhams Solicitors.
Mark Mulligan, vice president at research firm Forrester, said that many of Pirate Bay's around 20 million users would move on to other free downloading options.
"The bottom line is that most people who use file-sharing networks use it because it's free. They are not likely to start paying just because the owners have a new business model," he said.
"There has not yet been a single example of a legal file-sharing network which has made a successful transition to a legal business."
($1=7.826 Swedish Crown)
Microsoft's Bing search wins share from Google
Microsoft Corp's new Bing search engine gained U.S. market share in its first month in operation but still trails dominant rival Google Inc, according to data released on Wednesday.Bing, launched on June 3 but available to some users a few days earlier, took 8.23 percent of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81 percent for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21 percent in April, said Internet data firm StatCounter.
Google lost share slightly, dipping to 78.48 percent from 78.72 percent before Bing. Yahoo Inc, the perennial No. 2 in the market, rose to 11.04 percent from 10.99 percent.
Bing's share peaked in the first week of June at 9.21 percent, falling away in the middle two weeks before coming back at 8.45 percent in the last week of June.
The results may give heart to Microsoft, which is investing heavily in its loss-making online services business and is refusing to cede the market to Google.
"At first sight, a 1 percent increase in market share does not appear to be a huge return on the investment Microsoft has made in Bing but the underlying trend appears positive," StatCounter Chief Executive Adohan Cullen said in a statement.
The world's largest software company may yet strike an online search partnership with Yahoo to make itself a credible competitor, but talk of such a deal has quietened down.
StatCounter, based in Dublin, says its data are based on 4 billion pageloads per month monitored through a network of websites. Other data research firms such as comScore are not expected to release figures on Bing's share until mid-July.
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