"There is nothing that links the IP address location to the identity of the person actually downloading” or viewing Malibu Media videos, said Judge Ursula Ungaro, U.S. District Court in Miami, in a ruling (http://bit.ly/1gycWYs) against the porn studio filed last Thursday. In Malibu Media v. John Doe, the plaintiff tried to prove that an IP address can be traced back to the copyright infringer, in this case, from a user of BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing service, according to a court document filed by Malibu Media last year (http://bit.ly/1jD5oBs). “Even if this IP address is located within a residence, the geolocation software cannot identify who has access to that residence’s computer and who would actually be using it to infringe Plaintiff’s copyright,” said Ungaro in the decision. In 2012, Malibu Media in U.S. District Court in Dallas accused Verizon of acting in “bad faith” by not turning over identities of Internet subscribers alleged to have shared porn films via BitTorrent (CD Nov 29/12 p15).

Consumers need to be protected from major ISPs and the FCC can do that best by reclassifying broadband as a Title II service, Consumers Union said in comments filed at the FCC that were posted Tuesday. CU responded to an FCC public notice on potential new net neutrality rules. “The recently struck-down nondiscrimination and no-blocking rules leave ISPs free to experiment with anticompetitive and anti-consumer practices that are contrary to the longstanding principles underlying the Open Internet rules,” CU said (http://bit.ly/1ffs1J0). The FCC should not rely on its authority under Section 706 of the Communications Act to impose new rules, the group said. “We believe that Section 706 is not the best path forward to restoring the protections against discrimination and blocking. We are concerned that the provision, which gives the FCC the ability to use its expert judgment to ‘encourage the deployment on a reasonable and timely basis of advanced telecommunications capability to all Americans’ is too general, lacks meaningful mechanisms to deter harmful conduct by ISPs, and provides little clarity about the extent to which a broadband ISP can interfere with traffic before it is deemed to have infringed upon consumers’ rights."

Mark Zuckerberg didn’t back down from his critical stance on U.S. government surveillance efforts after he and numerous tech company CEOs attended a meeting with President Barack Obama Friday (CD March 27 p18). In a statement via email, a Facebook spokeswoman said, “Mark Zuckerberg brought his concerns about government surveillance directly to the president today and is grateful for his continued personal engagement on this issue.” Zuckerberg and the president “had an honest talk about government intrusion on the Internet,” she said. “While the U.S. Government has taken helpful steps to reform its surveillance practices, these are simply not enough,” she said. “People around the globe deserve to know that their information is secure and Facebook will keep urging the U.S. Government to be more transparent about its practices and more protective of civil liberties."

Google will always use an encrypted HTTPS connection for its email service, Gmail, the company said in a Thursday blog post (http://bit.ly/1fKtG8Q). Gmail has always supported HTTPS since launching, and HTTPS has been the default since 2010, Google said. But now, the email service will default to encrypted HTTPS, according to the post. “Today’s change means that no one can listen in on your messages as they go back and forth between you and Gmail’s servers -- no matter if you're using public WiFi or logging in from your computer, phone or tablet.” The company said all messages sent or received will be encrypted while moving internally between Gmail servers and Google’s data centers, “something we made a top priority after last summer’s revelations.” In October, it was revealed that the National Security Agency is secretly tapping the links connecting Google and Yahoo’s data centers around the world ((CD Oct 31 p9).

Internet governance stakeholders should be wary of a government-controlled Internet, as the U.S. government transitions oversight of domain name functions to global stakeholders, said former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, now a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, in a Friday blog post (http://tinyurl.com/ldku43y). NTIA announced March 14 it was asking the global Internet community to create an oversight plan for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). “If events don’t unfold as NTIA intends, however, Internet freedom, global prosperity and international political reform will be at risk,” McDowell said. If all goes according to plan, “existing, non-profit, private sector Internet governance groups [will] oversee ICANN’s management of these critical technical functions, just as they have other technical aspects of the Net for decades -- with a perfect track record of success,” McDowell said. “The worst case scenario would include foreign governments, either directly or through intergovernmental bodies, snatching the soon-to-be untethered technical functions for their own purposes.” McDowell pointed to foreign leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has “plainly asserted” a goal to have international control of the Internet conducted by the United Nations. “This concern is more than theoretical,” McDowell said. “Countries such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and their client states, have worked for years to absorb many aspects of Internet governance into multilateral organizations ... rather than the non-profit private sector."

Nine individuals were denied a motion to file a class-action lawsuit against Google for violating user privacy by scanning email messages on Gmail, in a decision by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday. In her decision, Koh cited the “individualized nature” of each individual’s case, which would involve whether a consumer had consented to the scanning of email. “A fact-finder would have to determine to what disclosures each Class member was exposed and whether such disclosures were sufficient to conclude, under the Wiretap Act, that Class members consented to the alleged Google interceptions of email,” Koh said. The plaintiffs had alleged Google’s actions violated federal wiretap laws, which regulate unauthorized access to private electronic communications. “The individualized questions with respect to consent, which will likely be Google’s principal affirmative defense, are likely to overwhelm any common issues,” Koh said. Parts of the decision were redacted, as parts of many case documents have been, a decision decried by a number of media organizations and consumer advocates (WID Feb 20 p19, Feb 27 p6). Koh had previously rejected Google’s claims that wiretapping laws don’t apply to Gmail (CD Sept 27 p23).

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said Congress should closely monitor the NTIA’s proposal to spin off oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to a global multistakeholder body. “The current multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance has been a tremendous success,” he said in a statement Tuesday (http://fcc.us/1iA2FtX). “Any proposal to change that model therefore demands rigorous scrutiny.” Pai said he was concerned foreign governments may use the proposal process to increase government control of the Internet, saying “if I am not convinced that a different governance structure would preserve Internet freedom, I will strongly oppose it.” Other Republicans have also said they were concerned about the possibility of foreign governments abusing the transition process, including House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who said in a statement Monday that she believes the transition “will allow countries like China and Russia that don’t place the same value in freedom of speech to better define how the Internet looks and operates.”

The European Commission will release its vision for a trusted European cloud later this week, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Tuesday at the Future Internet Assembly in Athens. The future Internet will have four main characteristics, she said: The cloud, big data, the Internet of Things and fast networking. They're now converging, supporting and reinforcing one another, she said. Further into the future, there could be more innovations, such as advanced networking or 5G, she said. The most important ingredient for the next Internet isn’t gadgets or tools but the entrepreneurs, startups, businesses, researchers, engineers and academics in the audience, she said. The EC will support innovations with the “three Ps,” Kroes said: (1) A public-private partnership on the Future Internet with a lab that offers building blocks for inventors to use. (2) Platforms where ideas can be safely tested. (3) Prizes to spur innovation. The EC will put 100 million euros ($139 million) on the table to help about 1,000 small businesses and startups develop services and apps, she said. The EC talked up four user-driven projects on tomorrow’s Internet, in a memo (http://bit.ly/1l0sGoU). They include the FIcontent initiative to develop cutting-edge information and communication technology platforms devoted to applications and services in the areas of social connected TV, smart city services and pervasive games; and smart toys that will be able to connect computers and online games to deliver personalized content.

A four-year trend reveals that as time-shifted viewing grows, local live-plus-same-day ratings are within 1 percent of the national C3 standard for what’s viewed about three days after first shown on TV, TVB said of its latest analysis. The industry’s current standard for live-only local TV is “increasingly less accurate,” TVB said in a news release Monday (http://bit.ly/1iZvLWi). Live-only local TV dropped to below 26 percent C3 in January, it said. Season to date, that data stream is already 18 percent below C3, “its lowest index to C3 ... for that period since 2010,” it said. TVB also said Live + SD Primetime A25-54 Ratings were 9 percent below the C3 average across Nielsen’s Local Peoplemeter Markets,” in its analysis (http://bit.ly/1ifh6Tg). This is the lowest performance of that stream relative to C3, “and marks the 4th consecutive month in which the Live + SD data stream was at or below C3,” it said. This is another indicator that time-shifted local viewing is growing, TVB said.

The top U.S. cable providers and telcos added more than 2.6 million net broadband subscribers in 2013, said Leichtman Research Group Monday. Gains at those 17 companies, which collectively have 93 percent of the U.S. broadband market, were about 95 percent of all net broadband subscriber gains for the year, Leichtman said. Top cable companies continued to dominate the U.S. broadband market, ending 2013 with 49.3 million broadband subscribers, compared with 35 million broadband subscribers through top telcos. Comcast added 1.3 million net subscribers in 2013 -- 49 percent of the net adds from top companies, Leichtman said. Top cable companies saw their share of subscriber additions shrink to 82 percent in 2013 from 88 percent in 2012. Top telcos added 480,000 net broadband subscribers in 2013, 146 percent of their total net additions in 2012, Leichtman said (http://bit.ly/1iWcbdo).