Public Knowledge said Wednesday it welcomes a State Department diplomatic initiative aimed at spreading broadband adoption worldwide, discussed last week by Phil Verveer, senior counsel to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler (see 1509180042). “The initiative’s goals are based on the core understanding that the Internet should be Open and protected as a public interest infrastructure, and that’s a sentiment we share,” Carolina Rossini, PK vice president-international policy, said in a news release. “By working closely with other nations through the U.N., the World Bank and other stakeholders, the U.S. could jump-start critical investments and policy initiatives to make the Internet available and affordable to people all over the world.”

Customs and Border Protection changed procedures for sharing information with importers and rightsholders when it suspects trademark infringement. The CBP final rule takes effect Oct. 19, the agency said in Friday's Federal Register. Regulations in 19 CFR 133.21 enlist importers and rightsholders to help CBP determine whether merchandise infringes on trademarks and trade names and should be seized or excluded, without violating Trade Secrets Act restrictions on government agency release of protected business information. Importers have seven days' notice of detention issuance to convince CBP its mark is legitimate before unredacted images or information or samples are provided to the rightsholder for verification. Partly to address importer concerns, CBP added language clarifying that information provided to rightsholders is only for the purposes of assisting the agency in making infringement determinations. CBP must give the importer unredacted information, pictures or a sample of the suspect merchandise, it said. “Releasing this information to importers will assist them in providing CBP with a meaningful response before or within the seven business day response period." In other changes, the agency removed provisions for a 30-day extension of the limit for detaining merchandise before it's deemed excluded.

New America's Open Technology Institute welcomed an FCC undersea cable NPRM as "focusing attention" on an "opaque part of the Internet's architecture that needs greater oversight." Its adoption Thursday launched a proceeding aimed at requiring undersea cable licensees to report on major outages (see 1509170047). "Most online traffic travels through submarine cables at some point, and yet we know very little about when this part of the network fails," the OTI said in a statement Thursday. "A single cable outage can disrupt entire regions, as we saw in the Northern Marianas [sic] Islands earlier this year when an outage knocked out the territory's access to the Internet and forced a shutdown of its banking system. We need more data about these outages to strengthen the Internet's resilience and to protect people from future disruptions."

European online video revenue rose seventeenfold between 2012 and this year, when it's expected to top $423 million, IHS and SpotX said Wednesday. By 2020, close to $2.3 billion of online ad revenue will be generated programmatically, meaning involving algorithms that overlay watchers' demographic and behavioral data, with programmatic video becoming the predominant OVD ad revenue source in France, the Netherlands and the U.K., IHS said. The IHS/SpotX study said the German OVD ad market is expected to be roughly $374 million this year, putting it behind France and the U.K.; that by 2020, 54 percent of French ad revenue will come from programmatic channels; and that the Italian programmatic video market is expected to boom in 2016 and 2017.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. approved Nokia's proposed buy of Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia said in a news release Monday. Nokia received approval of the transaction from the European Commission in July (see 1507240023) and said it's still waiting for approval from a "few remaining antitrust authorities in the relevant jurisdictions." The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2016, Nokia said.

Sprint is seeking FCC International Bureau approval to begin offering telecom service to Cuba, the company said in a filing posted Friday in docket 10-95. The company signed an interconnection agreement Sept. 4 with Cuban telecom company Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba to provide international service between the two countries, Sprint said.

U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman chose USTR General Counsel Timothy Reif as the agency’s first chief transparency officer. In a statement, USTR noted that the new position comes at a “critical time in trade policy” as the U.S. angles to complete the Trans-Pacific Partnership and make progress in other trade negotiations. The agency won't appoint new general counsel, said a USTR spokesman. Lawmakers forced the agency to create the new position through a provision in the 2015 version of Trade Promotion Authority, which President Barack Obama signed into law in late June. That provision directs the chief transparency officer to “consult with Congress on transparency policy, coordinate transparency in trade negotiations, engage and assist the public, and advise the United State Trade Representative on transparency policy.” Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an advocate for more transparency in trade, also applauded the new position.

The “new Pioneer,” in cooperation with Onkyo, is readying a portable digital audio player with 4.7-inch screen and powered by a quad-core processor working under Android Lollipop Version 5.11. The XDP 100R player was previewed Thursday in Berlin at IFA in near-ready state. The XDP 100R was introduced as the “world’s first product with MQA (Master Quality Authenticated) to deliver super hi-res audio in CD bandwidth. The new Pioneer player can download music directly from online stores such as Onkyo Music, without the need for a computer, and also access Google Play and third-party stores such as Deezer, Spotify and Tidal. The large screen can be used for YouTube, Internet radio and gaming. Onboard storage is a mix of 32 GB inbuilt memory and up to two 128 GB SD cards, making a total of 288 GB, appearing to the user as one large memory bank.

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai, hosting his company’s IFA news conference Wednesday in Berlin, promised the company's mantra will be to “make major strides” in innovation to create products that will touch consumers in a “deeper and even more profound way” than in the past. Sony introduced its new Xperia Z5 smartphones in a “compact” 4.6-inch screen size and a 5.5-inch step-up “premium” version that Sony is billing as the world’s first 4K smartphone. Both versions feature a variety of camera innovations, Hirai said.

Companies from Finland, Israel, New Zealand, the U.K., the U.S. and elsewhere supported Colombian government agencies in buying surveillance equipment that allowed them to intercept communications, said a Privacy International report Wednesday, following a PI report Monday on the secret surveillance programs in Colombia (see 1508310051). “Peering behind the veil of surveillance in Colombia, a broad international network of companies are (sic) revealed to be behind some of the most significant expansions in surveillance capabilities in the country over the past ten years,” PI Advocacy Officer Matthew Rice said. “The surveillance industry has been found to be wholly complicit in these abuses,” said PI Research Officer Edin Omanovic. “Probing questions need to be asked about this cycle and how it can be placed within a human rights framework that guarantees that in the future it cannot be this easy for an agency to act outside the law.” There's an urgent need for more transparency and safeguards because the rise of the surveillance industry hasn't been met with the required protections, Omanovic said.