Russia export controls and sanctions

The issue of some domain registrars allegedly supporting online piracy was highlighted in the U.S. Trade Representative Special 301 out-of-cycle report on “notorious” IP markets. The report, which USTR released Thursday, reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries and highlights those nations with the most problematic IP standards (see 1502060043). ICANN has an agreement with registrars that they should act when “notified of illegal activity,” including piracy and counterfeiting, said the report. “Some registrars, however, reportedly disobey court orders and other communications, including from government enforcement authorities,” said USTR. “Some registrars apparently even advertise to the online community that they will not take action against illicit activity, presumably to incentivize registrations by owners and operators of illicit sites.” The report singled out several infringing websites as particularly problematic, including 4shared.com (British Virgin Islands), Baixeturbo.org (U.K.) and Bajui.com (Canada). “The theft we're shining a light on today is detrimental not only to creators and inventors, but also to consumers, who may be deceived and even endangered by Notorious Markets engaging in counterfeiting and piracy,” said USTR Michael Froman in a separate news release. “The infringing marketplaces listed in the USTR report -- many of which exist online -- undermine this framework that benefits both content creators and consumers,” said MPAA CEO Chris Dodd in a news release. “These notorious markets enable the theft of content on a massive scale, diminishing U.S. competitiveness, discouraging reinvestment from creators, and ultimately harming the consumer experience.” IP groups filed comments earlier this year suggesting which markets should be added to the list (see 1502060043); the Electronic Frontier Foundation slammed the report as “unfair” to foreign countries like Vietnam and Russia (see 1502090037).

NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling replied to challenges by Senate Commerce Committee members about the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition’s purpose and political viability Wednesday. The hearing was the first on the IANA transition this Congress. Strickling told us it signaled a shift in opinion on Capitol Hill about the transition, one that’s moved from rejection to cautious acceptance. Also testifying were ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and attorney David Gross of Wiley Rein on behalf of the Internet Governance Coalition, as expected (see 1502240059). Chehade said last year’s proposal (see 1408210028), which would have required a two-thirds vote by the ICANN board to reject advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee -- rather than the current simple majority -- has been “taken off the table.”

Spectrum allocations above 24 GHz that the FCC has identified for possible wireless use “present an important opportunity to open large contiguous blocks of spectrum,” but the commission also should continue to examine bands below 24 GHz since those are the bands where 5G services “are expected to emerge first,” AT&T said in a filing posted Friday. Most other industry stakeholders also encouraged the FCC in separate filings to proceed with caution on rulemakings for spectrum above 24 GHz. The FCC, in an Oct. 17 notice of inquiry, identified six sets of bands above 24 GHz for possible wireless use: the local multipoint distribution service (LMDS) bands, the 39 GHz band, the 37/42 GHz bands, the 57-64 GHz and 64-71 GHz bands, the 71-76 GHz bands, the 81-86 GHz bands and the 24/25 GHz bands. Reply comments on the NOI were due Feb. 17.

It’s “time for a Republican-controlled Congress to “unleash the pent-up energy of pro-innovation policies,” and address tech priorities such as patent reform, data privacy, high-skilled immigration reform and Internet governance, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said during a keynote speech at Lincoln Labs’ Reboot Congress event Thursday. As chairman of the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force, Hatch said he has developed an innovation policy agenda for the 114th Congress to “protect legitimate intellectual property rights from abusive patent litigation.” Patent trolls “bring thousands of frivolous patent infringement lawsuits each year in attempts to extort settlements from conscientious, hard-working technology innovators,” costing the U.S. economy about $60 billion each year, Hatch said. Current law fails to combat patent trolls, he said. He said it’s time to reform the America Invents Act, which Hatch introduced in 2005 with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Patent reform legislation has been proposed, but Hatch said he will “oppose any bill that fails to prevent patent trolls from litigating-and-dashing.” Hatch encouraged continuing bipartisan support for updating U.S. privacy laws, encouraging action so “privacy laws correspond to present realities and keep up with technological advances.” The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) should be updated immediately “to safeguard data stored abroad from improper government access,” he said. “Congress has not adequately updated the law since its enactment, and technological developments have resulted in disparate treatment between online and offline communications.” Though Hatch said he agrees with the premise of the ECPA reform bills (see 1501280044) that were recently introduced in the House and Senate, they don’t establish a “framework for how the U.S. government can access data stored abroad,” he said. Americans' privacy would not be protected by foreign governments, he said. “If the federal officials can obtain emails stored outside the United States simply by serving a warrant on a provider subject to U.S. process, nothing stops governments in other countries -- including China and Russia -- from seeking e-mails of Americans stored in the U.S. from providers subject to Chinese and Russian process.” Hatch said he plans to reintroduce the Law Enforcement Access to Data Stored Abroad Act, or LEADS, in the coming weeks to ensure Americans' privacy is protected by all governments. “We must strengthen privacy in the digital age and promote trust in U.S. technologies worldwide by safeguarding data stored abroad,” Hatch said, “while still enabling law enforcement to fulfill its important public safety mission.”

Rep. John Shimkus’ Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters Act (HR-805) is “misguided and hurts the cause he claims to support,” Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., said in an email Tuesday. “Delaying this [IANA] transition allows anti-democratic nations to continue to use the IANA contract as a red herring to falsely claim ‘the U.S. government controls the Internet’ and call for a greater role for governmental entities like the United Nations and the ITU,” he said. “Further delaying NTIA’s transition process only strengthens these arguments.” Shimkus, R-Ill., told us Monday that the lack of clarity about the term “multistakeholder community” is one of the primary reasons some lawmakers are skeptical of the transition (see 1502100049). Doyle's comments "suggest we ought to have a greater concern for what Russia and China think than what is in the best interest of the American people and the future of our free and open Internet,” Shimkus emailed Wednesday. “Even now, the fact is that this transition will not move forward until NTIA is satisfied with the multistakeholder proposal," he said. "All my bill asks is that Congress also have an opportunity to review the proposal, through our non-partisan investigative arm, before a final, irreversible decision is made," Shimkus said. "That’s not dilatory, that’s due diligence.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation partnered with several countries, including Russia and Vietnam, to “defend” against their being “unfairly bullied” by the U.S. Trade Representative’s annual Special 301 report, said an EFF blog post Monday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards (see 1502060043). Countries like Russia and Vietnam are being asked to “to adopt failed U.S.-style copyright, patent, trademark, and trade secret rules,” said EFF. “This would be absolutely fair enough, if the standards by which the other countries were assessed were globally-agreed standards, and if their adherence to those standards were assessed objectively, using a consistent and predictable methodology,” it said: “But they're not; rather, the USTR has free reign to castigate its trading partners for whatever reasons it can come up with.” The "mere listing of a country on the Priority Watch List has applied a heavy extra-legal influence on that country to amend its intellectual property laws and policies to accord with the USTR’s unilateral demand,” said EFF’s filing to the USTR.

Congressional oversight of the IANA transition is likely to loom large at ICANN 52 in Singapore this week, said experts in interviews. House and Senate members introduced separate IANA-related measures Thursday, indicating Congress intends to be involved in the transition’s development, said John Kneuer, JKC Consulting president and former NTIA administrator in the George W. Bush administration. Neither Congress nor NTIA has clarified the “actual mechanism” that will sustain a viable transition, said CEO Nao Matsukata of FairWinds Partners, a domain consultancy. ICANN 52 runs Monday through Thursday.

Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam should be added to the U.S. Trade Representative’s “priority watch list” in its annual Special 301 report, the International Intellectual Property Alliance said in a news release Friday. The USTR report reviews IP protections and other market practices in foreign countries, highlighting those nations with the most problematic IP standards. The Association of American Publishers, the Entertainment Software Association, the Independent Television & Film Alliance, MPAA and RIAA are IIPA members. Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Switzerland, Taiwan and United Arab Emirates should be added to the 301 report’s general watch list, said IIPA. The USTR should have “special engagement” with Italy and Spain, it said. “No country, including the U.S., is immune from the harms posed by high levels of unfair practices on the Internet,” said RIAA Executive Vice President Neil Turkewitz in a separate release. But there are “distinctions to be made between the efforts of different countries, and today’s filing highlights practices in some of the countries that have been least responsive in addressing piracy.”

Reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service under Title II of the Communications Act has extreme, negative implications for the Internet outside the U.S., said Mobile Future Chairman Jonathan Spalter in a letter Friday to the FCC. “Specifically, the Title II approach, which could insert the government into the regulation of the broadband Internet more robustly than ever before, could embolden despotic and unfriendly regimes to assume additional powers in their nations,” Spalter said. “There is also a belief among some in the Administration that there is a distinction between internet access and the content and services delivered over the internet, and that leaders in Russia and China, among others, will respect that distinction when they interpret American policy. Even for most Americans, there is no such distinction.”

Smartphone shipments vaulted to a record level in Q4 on seasonality, strong end-user demand and a “deep selection of models,” said preliminary data released Thursday from IDC. Vendors shipped 375 million units during Q4, according to the IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, up 28 percent over the year-ago quarter and 12 percent growth over Q3. For the year, 1.3 billion smartphones shipped, IDC said, up 28 percent from 2013. Juniper Research said it was the first year global smartphone shipments exceeded 1 billion units, at 1.2 billion. It said the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sold more iPhones in China than in the U.S. for the first time. Despite closing in on Samsung in Q4, Apple had a worldwide market share of 15 percent for 2014. The iPhone was the star of Apple's most recent quarter, CEO Tim Cook said earlier this week (see 1501280031). Both market research firms cited a narrowing gap between No. 1 smartphone maker Samsung and rival Apple. IDC said Apple cut the volume gap to 600,000 units in Q4 and said continued success -- along with challenges to Samsung from low-cost, low-margin Android smartphone makers -- could enable Apple to overtake Samsung as shipment leader sometime during 2015. For Samsung to hold on to the top spot, “it will either have to accept lower margins from here forward or revamp its high-end strategy to compete with Apple,” IDC said. While year-over-year smartphone unit growth slowed from 40 percent in 2013 to 27 percent last year, “the market clearly has legs,” IDC said. Growth is forecast to decline to the mid-teens this year, “but opportunity exists” as a large segment of the world population hasn't yet acquired a mobile phone or stepped up to a smartphone, IDC said. "Mature markets have become increasingly dependent on replacement purchases rather than first-time buyers, which has contributed to slower growth,” Ramon Llamas, research manager, said. In emerging markets, first-time buyers have provided momentum to the smartphone market, but “the focus has shifted toward low-cost devices, creating a different dynamic for both global and local vendors,” Llamas said. Facing increased pressure from Apple at the high end and from Chinese manufacturers Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE and others at the mid- to low end, Samsung is facing a “multi-front battle” and has streamlined operations and its product portfolio to position itself more competitively, IDC said. Apple sales were up 44 percent in the U.S. to 74.5 million and up 97 percent in Brazil, Russia, India and China, IDC said. It “remains to be seen how long Apple can sustain this runaway growth,” IDC said. Juniper said the reception of the iPhone 6 Plus indicates “a large potential for Apple phablets” and will likely accelerate the trend toward bigger smartphone screens.