The European Commission launched a public debate focused on geo-blocking and the role of platforms in the online economy, it said in a news release Thursday. The information gathered through the debate will aid the commission in assessing "the need for, or prepare initiatives as part of the Digital Single Market Strategy and the Internal Market Strategy for Goods and Services," the EC said. The debate on geo-blocking is designed to collect opinions on "unjustified commercial barriers which prevent from buying and selling products and services within the European Union," the commission said. The EC also said the consultation concerning online platforms, including search engines, social media, video sharing websites and others, will look at their economic role, explore the liability of intermediaries regarding illegal content hosted online, and discuss ways to improve the free flow of data in the EU and to build a "European Cloud." The debates will help the commission prepare legislative proposals in the first half of 2016 to "end unjustified geo-blocking" and could include targeted change to existing e-commerce rules, it said.
Negotiators from countries party to the Information Technology Agreement will convene in Geneva Monday to Oct. 2 to discuss duty reductions for the pact’s expansion rollout, dozens of industry associations said in a recent statement. The World Trade Organization says the duty reductions will begin in 2016 (see 1507280062), and the industry associations urged a speedy elimination schedule. “While the standard phase-out (or staging) period for tariff elimination under ITA expansion is three years, we urge the negotiators to show as much ambition as possible,” said the statement, which was endorsed by CEA, the Chamber of Commerce, DigitalEurope, the Entertainment Software Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, as well as a range of software and semiconductor groups. “We urge all negotiating parties to show restraint in seeking staging periods longer than three years, given the short innovation cycles for high-technology products.” Each country must finalize its schedule by the December WTO ministerial in Nairobi, the statement said. In late July, the WTO said only 49 countries out of 81 total ITA parties had signed off on expansion, which was brokered in the days before.
An FCC proposal to remove radiofrequency device certification requirements for importers needs some language changes to avoid unintended regulatory issues, said the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America in a filing posted Wednesday in docket 15-170. While NCBFAA generally favored proposed changes to eliminate the import declaration filing requirements on FCC Form 740, the association said some language tweaks are necessary to distinguish between the parties involved in import transactions. Although the FCC intends to remove requirements for commission-specific declaration or filing upon import, the proposed language "does not accurately capture this shift," the NCBFAA said. As proposed, it said that "no radio frequency device may be imported into the Customs territory of the United States unless the importer or ultimate consignee, or their designated customs broker, determines that the device meets one of the conditions of entry." But "without a declaration to affix responsibility in each instance, it will be unclear exactly who made the determination," the NCBFAA said. "If the responsible party for making the determination could be any of three entities (i.e., the importer, the ultimate consignee or the customs broker, as the proposed regulation suggests), there is no certainty for the FCC or the trade as to which party is responsible for documenting how the radio frequency device was determined to be in compliance. This leaves a potentially significant gap in affixing responsibility." Customs brokers shouldn't be among the entities considered able to make such a "determination," the group said. While fewer than 100 forms a month were filed when the form became a requirement, an estimated 2 million are filed annually today, the NCBFAA said. "By 2020, an estimated 26 billion devices may be subject to FCC jurisdiction as the Internet of Things expands, making the Form 740 filing a burdensome requirement that appears to us to yield few enforcement benefits for the FCC."
The 2,580-mile Hibernia Express cable is the first trans-Atlantic cable built in more than a decade, Hibernia Networks said in a news release Thursday. The cable has undergone testing on its power stability, spectral efficiency and latency over the past few weeks, it said. The cable has an actual tested latency of better than 58.95 milliseconds from New York to London, it said.
Public Knowledge said Wednesday it welcomes a State Department diplomatic initiative aimed at spreading broadband adoption worldwide, discussed last week by Phil Verveer, senior counsel to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1509180042). “The initiative’s goals are based on the core understanding that the Internet should be Open and protected as a public interest infrastructure, and that’s a sentiment we share,” Carolina Rossini, PK vice president-international policy, said in a news release. “By working closely with other nations through the U.N., the World Bank and other stakeholders, the U.S. could jump-start critical investments and policy initiatives to make the Internet available and affordable to people all over the world.”
The Bureau of Industry and Security penalized two Dubai-based traders and three companies operated by the pair over violations of the Export Administration Regulations, BIS said in a notice set to appear in Thursday's Federal Register. The two individuals and their companies violated the EAR by conspiring to export and re-export controlled telecom equipment to Syria without the proper U.S. authorization and through falsified documents, BIS said. The agency placed on the Denied Persons List companies including iT Wave, for four years. The five entities are collectively being charged $7 million, the order said. The BIS directed the entities to pay only $250,000 in total over an annual, staggered payment schedule. The remaining fees will be waived after two years if no further violations are committed, BIS said.
Customs and Border Protection changed procedures for sharing information with importers and rightsholders when it suspects trademark infringement. The CBP final rule takes effect Oct. 19, the agency said in Friday's Federal Register. Regulations in 19 CFR 133.21 enlist importers and rightsholders to help CBP determine whether merchandise infringes on trademarks and trade names and should be seized or excluded, without violating Trade Secrets Act restrictions on government agency release of protected business information. Importers have seven days' notice of detention issuance to convince CBP its mark is legitimate before unredacted images or information or samples are provided to the rightsholder for verification. Partly to address importer concerns, CBP added language clarifying that information provided to rightsholders is only for the purposes of assisting the agency in making infringement determinations. CBP must give the importer unredacted information, pictures or a sample of the suspect merchandise, it said. “Releasing this information to importers will assist them in providing CBP with a meaningful response before or within the seven business day response period." In other changes, the agency removed provisions for a 30-day extension of the limit for detaining merchandise before it's deemed excluded.
New America's Open Technology Institute welcomed an FCC undersea cable NPRM as "focusing attention" on an "opaque part of the Internet's architecture that needs greater oversight." Its adoption Thursday launched a proceeding aimed at requiring undersea cable licensees to report on major outages (see 1509170047). "Most online traffic travels through submarine cables at some point, and yet we know very little about when this part of the network fails," the OTI said in a statement Thursday. "A single cable outage can disrupt entire regions, as we saw in the Northern Marianas [sic] Islands earlier this year when an outage knocked out the territory's access to the Internet and forced a shutdown of its banking system. We need more data about these outages to strengthen the Internet's resilience and to protect people from future disruptions."
European online video revenue rose seventeenfold between 2012 and this year, when it's expected to top $423 million, IHS and SpotX said Wednesday. By 2020, close to $2.3 billion of online ad revenue will be generated programmatically, meaning involving algorithms that overlay watchers' demographic and behavioral data, with programmatic video becoming the predominant OVD ad revenue source in France, the Netherlands and the U.K., IHS said. The IHS/SpotX study said the German OVD ad market is expected to be roughly $374 million this year, putting it behind France and the U.K.; that by 2020, 54 percent of French ad revenue will come from programmatic channels; and that the Italian programmatic video market is expected to boom in 2016 and 2017.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. approved Nokia's proposed buy of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia said in a news release Monday. Nokia received approval of the transaction from the European Commission in July (see 1507240023) and said it's still waiting for approval from a "few remaining antitrust authorities in the relevant jurisdictions." The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2016, Nokia said.