[news release] The European Commission Thursday adopted a Recommendation on how to combat commercial scale online piracy of sports and other live events, such as concerts and theatre performances.
European telecoms providers are set to win their decade-long fight to make Big Tech pay for network costs, thanks to sympathetic EU regulators and the bloc’s efforts to rein in U.S. tech giants, according to industry and regulatory sources, in the EU’s strongest move yet to set a global standard.
France, Italy and Spain are stepping up pressure on the European Commission to come up with legislation that ensures Big Tech firms partly finance telecoms infrastructure in the bloc, a document showed on Monday.
The UK’s competition watchdog has found streaming has made the music industry challenging for many artists.
European Union regulators accused Apple on Friday of violating the bloc’s antitrust laws, alleging the iPhone maker distorts competition for music streaming by imposing unfair rules for rival services in its App Store.
CIRA, the .ca registry, has filed an intervention in a Canadian pirate site blocking appeal, along with a Canadian public interest technology law clinic, according to a report in TorrentFreak this week.
A new ‘piracy landscape’ paper commissioned by the US Patent and Trademark Office provides a detailed overview of how online piracy should be tackled. Combining the results of dozens of peer-reviewed academic studies, the authors conclude that effective enforcement measures, paired with more attractive legal options, will yield the best results. A carrot and stick approach.
Stay-at-home Britain appears to be becoming a nation of streaming pirates, with traffic to illegal movie and TV sites surging since lockdown measures were introduced.
Continue reading UK traffic to film and TV piracy sites up nearly 60% in lockdownPeople staying at home due to the coronavirus pandemic appear to be listening to more radio rather than music apps, figures suggest.
Global, which owns Capital FM and talk station LBC, said online radio listening had risen by 15%.
The BBC said streaming of its radio stations had risen 18% since last week.
Meanwhile, data from two US analytics companies suggested use of music-streaming apps such as Spotify had dipped by about 8%.
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-52037461
More Netflix. Less ESPN. The pandemic means a greater number of television viewers in the short term, but signals a potential threat to the ecosystem protecting the industry.
It happened around the world, and now it’s happening in the United States: The more people stay home to avoid the coronavirus pandemic, the more they find themselves glued to their screens.
In South Korea, as cases spiked, television viewership shot up 17 percent, according to Nielsen. Last month in Italy, the size of the TV audience increased 6.5 percent, with a 12 percent rise in hard-hit Lombardy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/business/media/coronavirus-television-netflix.html
Also see:
Time Spent Streaming Spiked 20% Worldwide This Past Weekend
For years, TV executives have fretted there is too much TV. Now, with the coronavirus looming large, they are worried there might not be enough. Because of the pandemic, streaming surged this past weekend, according to Wurl Inc., a company that delivers video and advertising to connected TVs. The amount of time people spent streaming spiked by more than 20% worldwide, including more than 40% in Austria and Spain.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/netflix-twitch-traffic-booms-because-everyone-needs-an-escape