A Russian social network’s music service is the target of legal action by the recording industry for “deliberately facilitating piracy on a large scale,” said an International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1kuUDBq). Sony Music Russia, Universal Music Russia and Warner Music UK all filed separate cases against the social network, vKontakte (VK), in the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Arbitration Court, claiming VK “operates an unlicensed music service involving a huge library of copyright-infringing tracks that are stored on its website,” IFPI said. “The service provides unlimited access to this repertoire, enabling its tens of millions of users to search and stream music.” The companies are asking the court require VK to institute “effective industry-standard measures, such as audio fingerprinting” and for VK to pay over $1.4 million in compensation.

Pandora’s listener hours rose 14 percent to 1.71 billion in March, from March 2013, and its share of total U.S. radio listening reached 9.1 percent, up from 8 percent, the company said Thursday. Active listeners for March totaled 75.3 million, an 8 percent bump from last March, it said. Wedbush Securities maintained a “neutral” rating on Pandora, saying March listener hours exceeded expectations, but the number of active listeners was below its estimate of 78 million. Wedbush expects listener hours to rebound over the next few months as Pandora integration in vehicles expands. Wedbush also sees RPMs (revenue per thousand listener hours) trending up for Pandora as newly accepted measurement techniques improve its appeal to advertisers. On its last earnings call, Pandora said it will no longer disclose key audience metrics on a monthly basis after June because monthly metrics had been provided to help advertisers make informed buying decisions. But Pandora decided it was no longer necessary to continue monthly updates after the Media Rating Council granted accreditation to Triton Digital metrics allowing for accurate side-by-side comparisons of listening hours between Pandora and local radio competitors.

Google petitioned the Supreme Court in late March to rule on whether the U.S. District Court in San Francisco “erred in holding that ‘radio communications’ under the Wiretap Act are restricted to ‘predominantly auditory broadcasts’ and do not include Wi-Fi communications even though Wi-Fi communications are transmitted using radio waves (http://bit.ly/1gOObX4). The petition results from ongoing lawsuits against Google over the company gathering data from unencrypted Wi-Fi networks as part of its Street View program, known as the “Wi-Spy” case. Google paid $7 million in a March 2013 settlement with dozens of states over the issue (http://1.usa.gov/ZjOI7I), and in September the U.S. District Court in San Francisco ruled against Google in several merged class-action lawsuits, the petition said. But the Justice Department and FCC have cleared Google in the matter, said the petition. Google did not comment beyond the text of the petition.

House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and three members of the House Armed Services Committee -- Reps. Bill Keating, D-Mass.; Joe Kennedy, D-Mass.; and Tom Marino, R-Pa. -- introduced a resolution Tuesday that urges Turkey’s government to restore its citizens’ access to Twitter and YouTube. The resolution is meant to show “we stand united against actions that restrict Internet freedom in Turkey and around the world,” Eshoo said in a news release. “Today the Internet connects people all around the world, and to maintain the vibrancy of the internet as we know it, it’s imperative that people from all nations have unfettered access,” Marino said in the news release (http://1.usa.gov/1gLQ9Yh).

Net neutrality is “socialism for the Internet,” wrote Less Government President Seton Motley in a blog post Monday (http://bit.ly/QzHRJd). “It guarantees everyone equal amounts of nothing.” In the wake of the Netflix-Comcast paid peering deal (CD Mar 5 p1), Motley criticized a move from the political left to expand the definition of net neutrality to include everything from the last mile to the backbone, where peering deals happen. Such an expansive set of net neutrality rules “would give the government hay-yuge new, uber-expansive power over the Internet,” Motley said, calling it “exactly what the Left wants."

Advertisers and brand holders can help fight cybercrime by supporting the City of London police intellectual property crime unit’s (PIPCU) infringing website list (IWL), PIPCU said Monday. The IWL, said to be the first of its kind, aims to disrupt ad revenue on illegal websites around the world, the police unit said. It’s part of Operation Creative, an initiative designed to stop websites from providing unauthorized access to copyrighted content. The IWL gives the digital ad sector an up-to-date list of copyright infringing sites, identified by the creative industries and verified by PIPCU, so that advertisers, agencies and other intermediaries can stop placing ads on the sites. The IWL rollout followed a three-month pilot last year in collaboration with the British Recorded Music Industry, Federation Against Copyright Theft, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, Publishers Association, Internet Advertising Bureau UK, Incorporated Society of British Advertisers and Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, PIPCU said. The pilot showed a “clear and positive trend,” with a 12 percent reduction in ads from major brands on the identified illegal websites, it said. The trial also shows that 46 percent of ads served to the sites clicked through to scams, it said.

Major telecom and technology companies announced a consortium to develop standards for the Internet of Things (IoT), said a Thursday release (http://bit.ly/P96XgL). The companies -- AT&T, Cisco, GE, IBM and Intel -- said the new group, called the Industrial Internet Consortium, will work on “establishing interoperability across various industrial environments for a more connected world.” Specifically, the consortium will develop industry use cases, develop best practices and reference architectures and organize public forums to discuss IoT issues, it said.

Facebook will use drones, satellites and lasers “to deliver the internet to everyone,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday in a Facebook post (http://on.fb.me/1mx6hQy). The initiative is part of the Internet.org partnership, which Facebook, Ericsson, MediaTek, Nokia, Opera, Qualcomm and Samsung jointly launched in August (CD Aug 22 p13). The group’s stated goal is to bring Internet access to 5 billion people. Thursday, Facebook elaborated in a post on Internet.org (http://bit.ly/1hBEJCn). “For suburban areas in limited geographical regions, we've been working on solar-powered high altitude, long endurance aircraft that can stay aloft for months, be quickly deployed and deliver reliable internet connections,” Facebook said. “For lower density areas, low-Earth orbit and geosynchronous satellites can beam internet access to the ground.” But for all systems, the lab is looking into free-space optical (FSO) communication, which “is a way of using light to transmit data through space using invisible, infrared laser beams,” Facebook said. “FSO is a promising technology that potentially allows us to dramatically boost the speed of internet connections provided by satellites and drones.” Michael Toscano, CEO of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an unmanned aircraft industry group, said “the increased attention our industry is receiving demonstrates the wide range of applications of [unmanned aircraft systems] technology."

A new European Telecommunications Standards Institute cybersecurity technical committee launched Friday. With different methods governing secure transactions in the various EU countries, it’s difficult to assess respective risks and make the right choices to ensure security, ETSI said. Its new panel (TC Cyber) will work with relevant parties within and outside ETSI on standards in several areas: (1) Cybersecurity. (2) Security of infrastructures, devices, services and protocols. (3) Security advice, guidance and operational security requirements for users, manufacturers and network and infrastructure operators. (4) Security tools and techniques. (5) Creating security specifications and aligning them with work done by other ETSI committees. TC Cyber’s first meeting is May 27-28 in Sophia Antipolis, France.

Courts may order ISPs to block access to copyright-breaching websites under certain conditions, said the European Court of Justice (ECJ) Thursday in a decision one commentator called unsurprising but important. The ruling in UPC Telekabel Wien GmbH v. Constantin Film Verleih GmbH and Wega Filmproduktionsgesellschaft mbH (http://bit.ly/NYcjur) arose from complaints by the movie companies that their films could be viewed and downloaded from the website kino.to without authorization, the court said. They sought injunctions against ISP UPC Telekabel Wien, which argued that it couldn’t be enjoined because it had no business relationship with kino.to’s operators and there was no proof that its own customers acted unlawfully. The ISP also claimed any possible blocking measures could be circumvented, and some are excessively expensive. The ECJ said the EU copyright directive allows rights-holders to seek injunctions against intermediaries whose services are used by third parties to infringe their rights, and that UPC is such an intermediary. The law doesn’t require a specific relationship between the person carrying out the infringement and the intermediary against whom an injunction is issued, nor is it necessary to prove that an ISP’s customers are actually accessing the material, it said. But fundamental rights recognized by EU law permit injunctions on two conditions, the court said: (1) The ISP’s measure doesn’t unnecessarily deprive users of the ability to lawfully access the information. (2) The blocking or other actions do prevent unauthorized access to the material or at least make it hard to access. Intellectual property rights in such situations conflict with other rights such as the freedom to conduct a business and user’s freedom of information, the ECJ said. Where several basic rights are at issue, EU governments must ensure their national laws strike a fair balance, it said. The ruling isn’t surprising because EU laws implicitly allow such interventions in order to repress piracy, telecom consultant Innocenzo Genna wrote on his radiobruxelleslibera blog (http://bit.ly/1pzl2OJ). Genna, who represents new-entrant, non-incumbent operators, said the decision is “very important” because it’s the first time the ECJ has set out mandatory principles national courts must comply with when they order ISPs to block access to copyright-infringing websites. Under the decision, ISPs can’t be forced to bear significant costs and put in place complex and difficult technical solutions, Genna wrote. The court said Web-blocking must be strictly targeted, particularly when the illicit content is available on sites used for lawful purposes, he said. The decision is “an important clarification that will strengthen the ability of the music and other creative industries to tackle piracy,” said the International Federation for the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). The ruling confirms that “copyright is itself a fundamental right requiring protection,” it said. Europe’s recording industry has more than 230 licensed services but its continued success depends on the legal environment in which it operates, IFPI said. “ISPs’ ability lawfully to prevent access to pirate sites that undermine legitimate music service is critically important.”