Study: P2P customers are Hollywood’s best friends—really! Ars Technica
Peer-to-peer developer Vuze has commissioned a study that finds BitTorrent users actually spend more money on movies than the general Internet population does—they just don’t spend it online. Vuze’s CEO blames high prices and DRM.

Phorm woos browsers with personalised web The Register
Phorm is aiming to strengthen ties with publishers by allowing them to track and target their visitors’ interests as they browse the web. The web monitoring firm today unveiled “Webwise Discover” in London with the tagline “don’t search, just browse”. It made the announcement ahead of releasing its annual financial report. Phorm also hopes that Webwise Discover will encourage ISP subscribers to opt in to have their browsing monitored for advertising targeting. Both systems use the same cookie containing a profile of browsing interests, which excludes sensitive categories.

Google to enter book sales Mercury News
In a plot twist worthy of Thomas Pynchon, publishers Monday welcomed Google’s plans to open a digital bookstore by the end of the year. “It opens the door to create a robust distributor that will really be the only serious competition to Amazon in the world,” said David Marshall, director of digital communities for Berrett-Koehler Publishers of San Francisco. The creation of the store is unrelated to a controversial settlement that Google hammered out with authors and publishers last fall after they sued the search and advertising giant for making digital copies of millions of books without permission from copyright holders. The settlement has been criticized for giving Google unprecedented rights to sell out-of-print books, giving Google a de facto monopoly.

Court Sides with TiVo in Patent Case Against EchoStar Wall Street Journal
A federal court has awarded TiVoInc. an additional $103 million as part of a major ruling in a long-running legal patent spat with EchoStar Communications Corp., now part of Dish NetworkCorp. TiVo shares shot up 38% after-hours. The court rejected EchoStar’s attempted workaround claim regarding its patent, found EchoStar to be in contempt of court and ordered that an earlier permanent injunction EchoStar had lifted fully enforced. The court also awarded TiVo $103 million, which is in addition to the $105 million EchoStar has already paid TiVo, plus interest, through April 2008. With the latest twist, it appears EchoStar has run out of legal options, and now must begin negotiating a licensing deal with TiVo for its technology, said David Miller, a Caris & Co. analyst. Miller estimates that four million of Dish’s 13.6 million subscribers are DVR subscribers.

TV Recommendation System TechCrunch
The Milan, Italy-based startup founded in 2006 by an international team of experienced technology and media experts, has just raised $8 million in Series B funding from Italian VC firm Innogest, the largest investment this fund has ever made. BeeTV aims to use the capital to ‘change the way we watch TV’ by pioneering what it calls a Personal Content Channel (PPC), a personal TV suggestion engine that helps you find your way in the ocean of VOD titles and channels out there by surfacing the best choice for you based on your profile and even the mood you’re in.

Monticello, MN beats the phone company; Internet a “utility” Ars Technica
Monticello, Minnesota hoped to set state precedent by building its own fiber-to-the-home link for every resident in town. The phone company sued, but after a year in litigation, the state Court of Appeals has ruled that Internet is indeed a “utility” that can be provided by local communities and funded by city bonds.

How will sir pay? Facebook credits, that’ll do nicely The Register
Internal only, for now-Facebook has launched an internal payment system using virtual currency to get its members to pay for various virtual things on the site. Facebook Credits are 10 for a dollar and can be exchanged for various virtual gifts which you can send to your virtual mates. Credit can be topped up using American Express, Mastercard and Visa.

Microsoft, Lucent battle in huge patent case Reuters
Microsoft Corp argued before an appeals court on Tuesday that its Outlook calendar date-picker tool did not infringe an Alcatel-Lucent patent and asked for a $358 million jury verdict to be overturned. The lawsuit is the last remaining after Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft settled other patent fights in December. The case was appealed from a district court in San Diego, where a jury ruled that Microsoft did infringe and ordered it to pay $358 million, or $511 million including interest.

Code for handling personal data is muddled, says lawyer The Register
A code of conduct for handling personal data was launched in London yesterday. But the document is inconsistent on the need for consent when collecting personal data, according to a data protection expert. Sometimes consent is not necessary, he said.

Investing in litigation: beat the street by buying a share in someone’s grievance against a big company BoingBoing
… investing in litigation is now a sound business strategy, says the NYT: Mr. Fields is chief executive of Juridica Capital Management. which runs a fund that invests in one side of a lawsuit in exchange for a share of any winnings.

Group says Time Warner cable terms may hamper use of Internet Mercury News
Time Warner Cable has issued new terms for its subscribers’ Internet use that may let it cut or reduce service for customers using rivals’ video and telephone applications, a public interest group said. The changed language “raises serious questions about the company’s commitment to an Internet free of discrimination,” Washington, D.C.-based Public Knowledge said Monday in a statement. It called for a federal investigation. [Comment: publicknowledge.org created the website stopthecap.com that originally carried the news. Also see: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/2252]

Political Leader Threatens Court Action Over P2P “3 Strikes” TorrentFreak
The head of Spain’s Popular Party says he will take legal action if the government implements Internet disconnection for alleged file-sharers. Leader of the opposition Mariano Rajoy says that if the Prime Minister of Spain mimics Sarkozy and brings in a “3 strikes” regime, he will take the whole issue to court.

McDowell Gets Another Term At FCC DSLreports
McDowell’s greatest hits since 2006 include an editorial insisting the country has no broadband coverage issues, proclaiming the Internet would collapse if Comcast was held accountable for throttling upstream P2P traffic and lying to customers, and conflating network neutrality with the fairness doctrine for political effect. Those hoping for an FCC made up of technologists and intellectuals instead of partisan lobbyists and lawyers aren’t going to get their wish. In addition to McDowell, Democrats have pegged Mignon Clyburn as their new commissioner. Clyburn has spent much of the last decade as a South Carolina regulator, though consumer advocates are already concerned about her potentially too-friendly ties to AT&T.

What a non-neutral ‘Net looks like, UK-style Ars Technica
One UK ISP throttles P2P traffic, uses bandwidth caps, throttles streaming online video, and throttles “heavy users” of the network. The BBC is upset about the effect this has on its iPlayer streaming video service, but really, there are no surprises here. This is what a non-neutral network is allowed to look like.

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June, 2009