U.S. home entertainment spending increased 8.93 percent in Q4 to $6.82 billion and jumped 8.44 percent for the year to $25.17 billion, reported the Digital Entertainment Group Monday. Subscription streaming was the industry’s lifeblood, rising 26.04 percent in Q4 to $4.32 billion and increasing 23.73 percent for the year to $15.9 billion, said DEG. Packaged media sales slid further, declining 17.81 percent in Q4 to $1.02 billion, it said.

Consumer Reports petitioned 25 camera vendors Monday to raise the standard for product security and privacy after recent incidents with connected cameras. The advocacy group is “alarmed by recent security incidents involving Ring, Wyze, Guardzilla and other connected camera products,” said Ben Moskowitz, director-Consumer Reports’ Digital Lab. Due to the “sensitive nature" of the data the devices collect, it urged manufacturers to incorporate additional security measures such as requiring multifactor authentication, emailing users when a login occurs from a new device or IP address, and increasing password protection against credential stuffing and brute-force dictionary attacks. CR’s ratings will continue to change to reflect the stronger data security and privacy practices it believes are essential for consumer protection. Letters were sent to ADT/LifeShield, Arlo, August, Blink, Canary, D-Link, Eufy/Anker, Frontpoint, Guardzilla, Honeywell Home, iSmartAlarm, Logitech, Google/Nest, Netvue, Night Owl, Ooma, Remo-Plus, Ring, Samsung SmartThings, Scout, SimpliSafe, TP-Link, Wyze and Zmodo. ADT, Google and Samsung didn't comment. Honeywell spun off its home business almost two years ago, a spokesperson emailed now: Home and do-it-yourself "products are now under Resideo, which manufacturers and markets those products. They simply license the Honeywell name." Resideo didn't comment on CR's request.

The Supreme Court should strike down Oracle’s lawsuit against Google’s use of Java programming code (see 1911150052) because innovation relies on interoperability and fair use, tech companies, groups and scholars told the court Monday. Computer innovation depends on “collaborative development and seamless interoperability,” which require reuse of functional code, said Microsoft. The company cited long-applied flexibility of fair use doctrine to address software issues. Eighty-three computer scientists agreed, saying the computer industry has long relied on free use of software interfaces to foster innovation and competition. Supreme Court precedent excludes program interfaces from copyright’s scope, said two intellectual property scholars. Public Knowledge and others urged the court to hold that the Java application programming interface “is uncopyrightable, in accordance with longstanding tradition, industry practice, and common sense.” PK's brief included the R Street Institute and the Niskanen Center. Functional aspects of Oracle’s code are “not copyrightable, and even if they were, employing them to create new computer code falls under fair use protections,” said the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Successful software development requires platform [single sign-on] compatibility,” said a group that included Mozilla, MapBox, Etsy and Wikimedia Foundation. Prior court decisions dictate that “copying incidental to software reverse engineering does not infringe copyright,” said the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Google copied “less than 0.5% of the Java application programming interface into Android to make it easier for Java programmers to write apps for Android smartphones,” CCIA said, saying interoperability is key to innovation and success, including Oracle’s success. Oracle previously noted that half of Google’s petition had been rejected, while the other half doesn't "even purport to present a circuit conflict." The top court rejected review of whether Oracle’s creative computer code is copyrightable in 2015, that company wrote. It didn't comment now.

The Commerce Department should establish a bright-line process similar to the export administration regulations’ entity list for identifying supply chain threats, USTelecom said in comments Friday. The Information Technology Industry Council recommended Commerce designate foreign adversaries threatening the supply chain with specific criteria. In response to President Donald Trump’s May executive order, Commerce proposed new procedures for reviewing transactions, including imports, that involve information and communications technology and services seen as potential national security threats (see 1911260044). Commerce's bright-line process should rely on Homeland Security Department “risk assessment and related tools to draw lines between prohibited and permitted transactions,” USTelecom said. The association asked Commerce to coordinate its transaction evaluations with other agencies at “every step.” ITI called for a narrow scope for what transactions will trigger security reviews and a waiver process. It urged avoiding duplicative transaction reviews with export administration regulations, international traffic in arms regulations and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. Commerce's proposed rules are “overly-broad and highly subjective,” BSA|The Software Alliance said Friday. The proposed procedures would let Commerce “launch a review of virtually any ‘transaction’ involving almost any form of commercial technology, regardless of whether it has a clear nexus to national security or to a foreign adversary,” BSA wrote, saying it would create much industry uncertainty. The EO directs Commerce to issue regulations barring technology from foreign companies -- like Huawei and ZTE -- from U.S. networks.

Facebook won’t ban or fact-check political marketing, and unlike Google, it won’t limit how political advertisements target specific groups, Product Management Director Rob Leathern announced Thursday. Democrats criticize Facebook for allowing politicians and candidates to lie in their ads. Leathern said Facebook doesn’t think companies should make decisions about political commercials. Facebook will allow users to block political ads from feeds. Google is limiting political ad targeting and Twitter banned political ads (see 1912020041). “This does not mean that politicians can say whatever they like in advertisements on Facebook,” Leathern wrote: Users face community standards, which “apply to hate speech, harmful content and content designed to intimidate voters.”

Congress failed to pass a privacy law in 2019, so consumers are facing a less-than-ideal patchwork of privacy laws from states like California, creating uncertainty for consumers and businesses, said a Washington Post editorial Tuesday evening. “Though its track record doesn't offer much reason for optimism, Congress should do in 2020 what it promised to do in 2019.”

The White House proposed 10 artificial intelligence regulatory principles to govern private sector AI, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios announced Tuesday. The principles focus on ensuring public engagement, limiting regulatory overreach and promoting trustworthy AI, Kratsios said.

More than 70 percent of U.S. broadband households own at least one streaming entertainment product and half own a smart TV, reported Parks Associates Monday. Seventy-seven percent of smart TVs are connected to the internet, it said, up from 62 percent in 2014. Kristen Hanich said ISPs and others increasingly look to extend into subscriptions and advertising-supported over-the-top video services. The analyst cited Samsung’s recently announced ad-supported video service, Samsung TV Plus, and said more announcements from TV makers are expected at CES here in Las Vegas.

A Utah technology company didn't implement “reasonable security safeguards, allowing a hacker to access” the personal data of more than a million consumers, the FTC alleged Monday in a 5-0 settlement. InfoTrax and CEO Mark Rawlins are barred from storing and sharing personal data unless they implement an information security program, the agency said. They must also obtain third-party assessments of their systems every two years. An attorney for the company didn’t comment.

ICANN and VeriSign agreed on a proposed amendment to the .com registry agreement, with comments due Feb. 14. Verisign is the registry operator of the .com top-level domain. Because of a growing domain name market, the Commerce Department concluded in an amended cooperative agreement that ICANN and Verisign would serve the public by allowing “an increase to the price for .COM registry services, up to a maximum of 7 percent in each of the final four years of each six-year period,” ICANN wrote Friday. The first six-year period began in October 2018. ICANN and Verisign also announced a proposed framework for collaborating on domain name system security, stability and resiliency, signing a binding letter of intent. These agreements fulfill 2016 commitments when the two sides previously amended the .com pact.