Russia export controls and sanctions

The U.S. and ITU hope to return to a more consensus-based approach to international telecom and Internet policy Tuesday when the ITU convenes the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (WTPF), industry and government officials told us. WTPF is the ITU’s first major telecom summit since the controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), which met in Dubai in December. The WCIT, convened to update the treaty-level International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), resulted in a series of fractious votes and a revised treaty that only 89 ITU member nations signed. The U.S. was among the 55 nations that did not sign the ITRs, citing the existence of Internet governance-related language within the ITRs and in an attached non-binding resolution. The U.S. remains a signatory of the original ITRs adopted in 1988 (CD Dec 17 p1). WTPF will also tackle Internet-related topics, but industry insiders told us it will be a far different conference than WCIT.

Arianespace successfully launched Russia’s Glonass-M satellite from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia. The satellite was launched on a Soyuz launch vehicle, Arianespace said in a press release (http://bit.ly/14ljrI5). The government satellite “was accurately placed on the target orbit,” it said. It was the sixth Soyuz family mission this year, it said.

Financial cybercrime and state-affiliated espionage made up a combined 95 percent of all cybersecurity incidents in 2012 included in a Verizon Communications study released Monday. The report examined 47,000 security incident reports from Verizon and 18 other organizations, including the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) and two of its Computer Emergency Readiness Team units, as well as the U.S. Secret Service. Verizon focused its study on the 621 confirmed data breaches included in those reports, said Jay Jacobs, principal with Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ RISK Team, which writes the annual data breach report. A final version of the report had not been made public at our deadline.

The House passed an amended version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a 288 to 127 vote Thursday. The revised CISPA aims to increase cyberthreat information sharing between the public and private sectors, something which cybersecurity experts say is needed to protect U.S. networks from attacks. HR-624 is a modified version of the information sharing legislation that passed by the House last year (HR-3523) but failed to achieve a vote in the Senate. Ninety-two Democrats voted for the bill Thursday, 50 more than voted for the CISPA bill that passed the House in the last Congress.

Marking a reach of 276 million TV homes worldwide, 85 million of them in Europe, satellite operator SES will use next month’s MIPTV conference in Cannes, France, to announce its plans to test Ultra HD channels, Norbert Hoelzle, SES senior vice president, said Tuesday at a seminar in London. SES views Ultra HD 4K TV as the “next big thing,” Hoelzle said, predicting that Ultra HD growth will be more “linear and faster than the uptake of HD.” SES thinks the CE industry will drive Ultra HD growth, and the SES “fleet” of satellites will be “ready” for the explosion, he said. “Sports events like soccer in London are already being shot in Ultra HD. So the broadcasters already have Ultra HD on their tapes, though they don’t publicize it. We want to help and enable the smaller broadcasters, by providing access to specific channels for testing this year. We will announce details at MIPTV and I don’t want to give the details ahead of then. But there will be some help on costings.” Hoelzle predicts the start of 4K Ultra HD services next year, with World Cup soccer in Brazil and Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Russia as the main drivers, followed by the Rugby World Cup in 2015. “Ultra HD TVs are already available,” he said. Encoding and modulation is developing, with H.265, he said. Set-top boxes will be easy to do, and game consoles need to differentiate against IP-based services by offering Ultra HD, he said. “The big advantage of Ultra HD for consumers is that they can sit anywhere in the room. Big screens look good even in small rooms. People can sit close which is very attractive for small living rooms. So Ultra HD will be driven by manufacturers and by consumers, which is why it will come much faster than HD.”

Correction: The International Intellectual Property Alliance asked the U.S. Trade Representative to elevate Costa Rica to USTR’s Priority Watch List and to keep Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia and Russia on that list (CD Feb 21 p14).

European fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) penetration continues to rise steadily, but the gap between leaders and laggards is growing, FTTH Council Europe said at a press briefing at the FTTH conference in London. Russia is a clear fiber leader in the region, with 2.2 million new subscribers added in the second half of 2012, more than all of the 27 EU members combined, it said. Across the EU27, the number of subscribers grew 15 percent during that same period, adding 820,000 new subscribers and bringing the number of fiber-connected homes to 6.24 million, it said. The top five “dynamic” economies, with high subscribership growth and where new 2012 subscribers represented the highest proportion of total subscribers at end-2012, were Turkey, Ukraine, Spain, Bulgaria and Russia, it said. Lithuania remains the dominant fiber nation in terms of household penetration, with 100 percent coverage and over 31 percent of homes connected. Sweden came in second, it said. But many major western economies are still “dragging their feet,” the council said. Italy and Spain are at the bottom of the ranking, and Germany and the U.K. once again failed to qualify, it said. To be included in the FTTH ranking, a country must have more than 1 percent of households connected and more than 200,000 households.

Ukraine’s government is implementing the intellectual property rights (IPR) “action plan” it developed in consultation with the U.S. and hopes to fix remaining IP issues through forthcoming legislation, said Serhii Nalyvaiko, head of the State Intellectual Property Service of Ukraine’s control over IP objects use division, during a Special 301 review hearing Wednesday at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR). Nalyvaiko’s testimony came as the USTR-led Special 301 Committee considers whether to designate Ukraine as a “priority foreign country” (PFC) under the Special 301 statute.

The U.S. Trade Representative should designate Ukraine as a “Priority Foreign Country” in its Special 301 proceeding because of “severe legal and copyright enforcement problems,” said the International Intellectual Property Alliance Friday in comments to USTR. The Special 301 report focuses on the extent of copyright piracy and market access barriers U.S. creative industries face in some overseas markets. The USTR should also “immediately suspend Ukraine’s eligibility to continue receiving Generalized System of Preferences benefits,” IIPA said in a news release. “Problems in Ukraine include rampant online and hard goods piracy, governmental decisions to act against the legitimate collecting society instead of against rogue societies, and the pervasive use of unlicensed software by businesses and government ministries.” The piracy rate and the level of copyright protection in Ukraine have worsened in the last two years, including “widespread” film and music piracy, IIPA said. The group acknowledged that Ukraine’s government has aided in multinational efforts to stem piracy in the country, but said the government never implemented the IPR “Action Plan” with the U.S. government -- and its recent actions “would weaken, not strengthen, enforcement.” IIPA also recommended the USTR place or maintain seven nations on its Priority Watch List: Argentina, Chile, China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia and Russia. IIPA said 25 more nations should be placed or maintained on the Watch List: Belarus, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Ecuador, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Vietnam (http://xrl.us/bofo8v). Public Knowledge also filed comments in the Special 301 proceeding. The group told USTR (http://xrl.us/bofo74) its comments were similar to those it made in previous filing cycles and weren’t specific to any country. The entire Special 301 process “takes a one-sided view of copyright law” that “promotes excessive copyright owner control over content and hurts developing countries’ ability to confidently adopt copyright laws that allow libraries to lend and preserve books, educators to use material in teaching, citizens to make social and political commentary using popular film and television shows, and a variety of other socially, economically, and politically beneficial uses,” said Rashmi Rangnath, director of the group’s Global Knowledge Initiative, in a separate statement (http://xrl.us/bofo8x). A “balanced view” of copyright would not only benefit other countries but also U.S. tech companies, which rely on limitations and exceptions “to make and market their products abroad,” she said.

The U.S. is engaged in a cyberwar “and we are losing,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., during a speech at the NARUC conference in Washington Wednesday. He said it was “shameful” that Congress failed to pass the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and said it’s “absolutely critical” that Congress act this year: “We are absolutely under siege and we are fooling ourselves if we think we don’t have a problem.” White House Senior Director for Cybersecurity Andy Ozment threw cold water on Roger’s cybersecurity approach during a subsequent speech at the event and said baseline industry cybersecurity standards are required to stop most of the cyberattacks.