Google changes 'to tackle piracy'

2 December 2010 Last updated at 12:30 ET

Google has said it will tweak its search service in an attempt to tackle online piracy, following lobbying by the music industry.

The search giant will implement four changes, including the removal of words that are associated with piracy from appearing in its autocomplete feature.

However, it will not prevent sites that host illegal copyright material from appearing in its search results.

The music industry said the measures did not go far enough.

"It is encouraging that Google is beginning to respond to our calls to act more responsibly with regard to illegal content," said a spokesperson for the BPI, which says artists lose out on millions of pounds every year because of online piracy.

"However, this package of measures, while welcome, still ignores the heart of the problem - that Google search overwhelmingly directs consumers looking for music and other digital entertainment to illegal sites."

The thoughts were echoed by the Publishers Association, which represents the book and print industry.

"We hope that the measures announced today take effect quickly and that Google could then consider going further, so that illegal sites don't appear in general free search results," said its head, Richard Mollet.

Google is the most popular search engine in the world.

The firm's Simon Morrison said that it "heard from rights holders all of the time" and that the move would help "content owners make money online and help users find legal content".

Word games

The package of four measures will roll out over the coming months.

They include a commitment to prevent Google ads being displayed on sites hosting illegal content, preventing the owner making money from them.

In addition, it would implement measures to make short previews of legal content - such as songs - more prominent in its search results.

Continue reading the main story

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We are concerned that words like 'torrent' might be harder to use on Google"

End Quote Jim Killock Open Rights Group

"It's a two-fold strategy where piracy will be far less of a problem and there will be more growth in legal online services," said Mr Morrison.

The firm said that the tweaks were "not about altering search results" and that sites hosting illegal material would not be automatically penalised.

However, the firm said that it would introduce new measures to guarantee that sites using Google's own services to host illegal content would be taken down with 24 hours of a request from rights holders. It will also make it easier to file counter claims, said Mr Morrison.

In addition, the search firm will remove key terms from its autocomplete feature, which offers users suggestions of terms as they type in the search box.

For example, typing "Lady Gaga MP3" currently brings up suggestions such as "free download" or "torrent".

Torrents are files that are commonly distributed using BitTorrent software. Although it has many legitimate uses, it is also commonly used to exchange illegal copyright material.

Mr Morrison said the firm would review these suggestions based on its experience of dealing with so-called DMCA requests - a US legal framework that governs the removal of copyright material.

"If you look at certain terms, you can see that they lead to certain sites that produce a lot of these requests," he said.

He admitted that it was going to be a "difficult process" to determine which terms to remove and in which combinations, as many search terms could have multiple meanings.

Jim Killock of the Open Rights Group said it would be asking Google how this would be done.

"We are concerned that words like 'torrent' might be harder to use on Google," he said.

"Many small software groups and movie makers depend on torrents for legitimate distribution. There is no reason why they should be put at a disadvantage."

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Web bug reveals browsing history

2 December 2010 Last updated at 07:30 ET

Porn sites are among the top users of a browser bug that reveals all the places people go online, finds research.

Carried out by computer science researchers at UC San Diego the study found 485 sites exploiting the bug.

The flaw gives sites access to all the other sites that user has visited. Many use it to target ads or see if users are patronising rivals.

The researchers said their work showed a need for better defences against history tracking.

The bug exploits the way that many browsers handle links people have visited. Many change the colour of the text to reflect that earlier visit.

This can be abused with a specially written chunk of code sitting on a website that interrogates a visitors browser to see what it does to a given list of websites. Any displayed in a different colour are judged to be those a user has already seen.

A survey of 50,000 of the web's most visited websites by the team from UC San Diego found 485 sites using this method to get at browser histories, 63 were copying the data it reveals and 46 were found to be "hijacking" a user's history.

The most popular site that uses the technique is adult site YouPorn. Many other porn sites use it too as well as sports, news, movies and finance websites.

The researchers also looked at other popular techniques that sites use to map and monitor what visitors do. Some, such as YouTube, run scripts that track the trail a user's mouse pointer takes on and across pages.

"Our study shows that popular Web 2.0 applications like mashups, aggregators, and sophisticated ad targeting are rife with different kinds of privacy-violating flows," wrote the researchers.

The researchers pointed out that some modern browsers, such as Chrome and Safari, are not vulnerable to history hijacking and that the most recent version of Mozilla has closed the loophole. Users of Internet Explorer can defeat the bug by turning on "private browsing".

Users can also check how much information they are leaking by visiting a webpage set up by security researchers that tries to grab their history.

Despite these safeguards, the researchers said there was a "pressing need to devise flexible, precise and efficient defenses" against the history hijacking technique.

The research team is now planning more in-depth work that it hopes will result in tools that will more comprehensively defend against attempts to exploit the bug.

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UK lags on broadband and mobile

1 December 2010 Last updated at 20:43 ET By Jane Wakefield Technology reporter

Only a tiny percentage of UK homes have super-fast broadband and mobile speeds are slow compared to other nations, Ofcom has revealed.

In its annual International Communications Market report, the regulator said more needed to be done on fixed and mobile broadband.

Less than 1% of UK homes have super-fast broadband, compared to over a third of Japanese consumers.

Next-generation mobile services have yet to roll out in the UK.

Despite this, the UK saw the highest growth in smartphone take-up among the countries surveyed by Ofcom, with a 70% rise in subscriber numbers in 2009.

The report suggests that UK consumers are sophisticated smartphone users, being among the first to use mobile mapping and direction services.

Capacity needed

Despite this, UK mobile users experience some of the slowest speeds.

Next-generation mobile networks are late to launch in the UK, largely because of arguments among mobile operators about how spectrum should be shared out.

Several of the operators have threatened to take the UK government to court over the way it intends to allocate spectrum but these issues have now been resolved, according to Ed Richards, chief executive of Ofcom.

"There has been a big change among mobile operators and an increasing consensus that UK consumers are early adopters and need lots of data. We are in a much better place than we were a year ago," he said.

But the delay in spectrum auctions means UK consumers are currently experiencing much slower services than people in other countries.

The theoretical maximum mobile download speed in the UK is 7.2Mbps (megabits per second), compared to 28Mbps in Germany, 30Mbps in the US, 42Mbps in Japan and 100Mbps in Sweden.

Ofcom said it would lay out the details of how spectrum auctions would work early next year, with the auctions earmarked for early 2012.

Without the auctions of the 2.6GHz spectrum and the 800MHz airwaves freed up by the digital switch-over, networks will struggle to cope with demand, Mr Richards said.

"It is difficult to see where the capacity will come from," he said.

Ofcom is currently mapping mobile notspots and will reveal its findings in the new year.

Most ambitious

Most of the major reports into the state of global broadband put the UK well down the league table when it comes to broadband speeds.

So it comes as no surprise that the UK also has the lowest percentage of households with super-fast broadband, offering speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second).

In the UK, only 0.2% of households have super-fast broadband, compared with 2% in Germany, 7.1% in the US and 34.4% in Japan.

"We still have challenges on super-fast broadband take-up. We are not where we want to be but plans are well under way and, if they are fully met, will take us to a strong position," said Mr Richards.

BT plans to have fibre networks deployed to 66% of homes by 2015, while Virgin's cable service will offer 100Mbps speeds to 50% of UK homes by 2012.

This makes the UK's roll-out plans among the world's "most ambitious" according to Mr Richards.

"I think sometimes the cycles of these things are different in different countries. It is not just a matter of flicking a switch," said Mr Richards.

While Virgin "moved quickly", BT came at the challenge of laying next generation networks from "a different perspective", said Mr Richards.

But he said that the regulatory framework was now in place to persuade BT to move ahead with its roll-out while allowing rival operators a competitive landscape.

He revealed that Ofcom is consulting with the government on the best way to bring super-fast broadband to the third of the UK, expected to be bypassed by commercial broadband players.

He said he expected things to "move relatively quickly".

Big spenders

When it comes to current-generation fiixed broadband, the UK is in a pretty healthy state, according to the report.

Some 70% of households have fixed-line broadband, which is comparable with other nations.

The UK also leads when it comes to take-up of digital TV, although internet-based TV services have failed to take off, largely due to the well-established pay TV market in the UK.

The imminent launch of YouView, a partnership between BT, the BBC, ITV, Five, Channel 4, Arquiva and TalkTalk, could change this, Mr Richards thinks.

It will allow users to combine Freeview digital channels with on-demand content such as the iPlayer.

One area where the UK does excel is in online spending.

Over a six-month period, the average UK consumer spent over �1,000 online, double that of some other countries.

UK consumers also appear to be getting value for money when it comes to their communications bills.

An average family, using broadband, four mobile connections and entry-level pay TV would pay �104.17 per month, compared to �146.40 in Germany and �209.12 in the US.

One notable exception to this is fixed-line voice pricing, which has increased in the last year.

This is due largely to hikes in line rentals, an area that Ed Richards said Ofcom was "keeping an eye on".

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Open internet set for US showdown

1 December 2010 Last updated at 13:07 ET By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley

US regulators are set for a showdown over rules to ensure an open internet.

The rules are intended to prohibit phone and cable companies blocking or discriminating against internet traffic over their broadband networks.

Net neutrality was one of the Obama administrations top campaign pledges to the technology industry.

Today, the head of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Julius Genachowski sent draft rules to its members.

Two Republican commissioners have already said they oppose the chairman's "reckless" proposal which they will be asked to vote on when the Commission meets on 21 December.

In a speech in Washington, Mr Genachowski said his rules were "consistent with President Obama's commitment to "keep the internet as it should be - open and free".

"It is the internet's openness and freedom - the ability to speak, innovate and engage in commerce without having to ask anyone's permission - that has enabled the internet's unparalleled success."

Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker issued comments criticising the chairman's move.

"This is a mistake," said Commissioner Baker.

"We do not have the authority to act."

The two other Democratic members, Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn have not commented so far but have in the past said they support net neutrality.

The Chairman needs three votes to pass his plan on 21 December.

Third way

The issue of net neutrality has been in limbo for months following a ruling earlier in the year when the courts said the FCC did not have the authority to penalise cable firm Comcast because it slowed some internet traffic going over its network.

Continue reading the main story

"Start Quote

The only issue is the extent to which the FCC should regulate in this area"

End Quote Tom Tauke Verizon

Since then the Commission has been thrown into disarray over the best way to safeguard the future of an open web where all traffic is treated the equally.

Mr Genachowski had in the summer proposed a so-called "third way" where he suggested reclassifying broadband under stricter regulations.

Phone and cable companies were critical and said this stricter reclassification of broadband would stifle innovation and investment. Technology companies however have argued that regulations are needed to keep the internet free of restrictions.

Search giant Google and telecom titan Verizon came up with a compromise in August where fixed line services would be treated differently to that of wireless. That proposal was not taken up.

Mr Genachowski has now abandoned the "third way" approach. Senior Commission officials now say they are confident the Chairman's agenda can proceed without reregulation and that they have a "legally sound approach" going forward that does not involve stricter regulation.

'Gamble'

Despite the confidence of the Chairman and senior Commission officials that they have the legal authority under existing rules to move ahead, advocacy groups are not convinced.

"While we are pleased this issue is now on the (FCC's) agenda but we think the Chairman should have pushed through on his "third way" which would have provided a firmer legal foundation," said Art Brodsky of Public Knowledge.

"This one will go to court. They all do and this is a gamble."

The Centre for Democracy and Technology's Leslie Harris called Mr Genachowski's move "a first step, but a critical one" but noted that "adopting these historic rules will not be the end of the internet neutrality debate, it will be just the end of the beginning".

Josh Silver of the public interest group Free Press said he believes Mr Genachowski should have gone further to secure the future of an open web.

"To achieve real net neutrality and preserve the level playing field that is the DNA of the internet, the FCC must do a lot better than offer failed proposals we have seen this year floated by big corporations or designed to win the unanimous consent of Congress."

Verizon has also welcomed the Chairman's move and said "the stated objective of this initiative - an open internet- is not an issue.

"The only issue is the extent to which the FCC should regulate in this area," said Tom Tauke, Verizon's vice president of public affairs, police and communications.

"In this fast-moving marketplace, inappropriate regulation can be very harmful to consumers, companies and the ability of this industry to create jobs, provide new services, and be an engine for economic growth. That is why it is so important that policymakers get this right.

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