Disney is adding “distribution partnerships” with Amazon Fire, LG and Samsung for the Disney Plus streaming service launching Tuesday in the U.S., said CEO Bob Iger on fiscal Q4 call Thursday. It already had partnerships with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Roku and Sony. Disney Plus also will launch March 31 in “markets across Western Europe,” said Iger. The company won’t disclose “specifics” on Disney Plus preorders, he said. Consumers are greeting with “great enthusiasm" the $6.99 monthly price but also the $169.99 three-year subscription offer, “which is a big deal for us in terms of lowering churn,” he said. “We're still relatively small in terms of the scope of things,” but “we certainly feel good about the product that's going into the marketplace,” he said. “We'll know a lot more in just a few days.”

The U.S. and the EU need to cooperate and defend innovation against technological threats from adversaries like China, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios said Thursday in Portugal. He accused China of pushing an authoritarian state that favors “censorship over free expression and citizen control over empowerment.” China also uses technology to surveil and control its citizens and steals intellectual property from the U.S., he said, noting the importance of 5G and artificial intelligence. “If we don’t act now, Chinese influence and control of technology will not only undermine the freedoms of their own citizens, but all citizens of the world,” he said. The Chinese embassy in D.C. didn't comment.

San Francisco Superior Court should order Facebook comply with an investigatory subpoena about alleged data privacy violations, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said Wednesday. Allegations involve the company’s Cambridge Analytica privacy breach. The subpoena was issued in June, and Facebook provided “inadequate responses” and failed to “provide, or even search for, responsive documents among the communications of the company’s senior executives,” Becerra said. Responding to a second subpoena, the platform “provided no answers to 19 out of 27 written interrogatories, provided a partial response to six, and produced no documents in response to six document requests,” the AG said. The company has “cooperated extensively" with California’s investigation, said Vice President-State and Local Policy Will Castleberry in a statement. “We have provided thousands of pages of written responses and hundreds of thousands of documents.”

ICANN must ensure that its temporary Whois rules effectively allow reasonable access to nonpublic personal registration data while it tries to comply with the EU general data protection regulation (GDPR), speakers said Tuesday at ICANN's Saturday-Thursday meeting in Montreal. The problem is that, while the first phase of the expedited policy development process (EPDP) developed the temporary specification under which ICANN now operates, there's still no conclusion to the phase 2 work, which involves creating a new model to allow legitimate parties to access nonpublic registrants' data, said Laureen Kapin, FTC counsel-international consumer protection, at a Governmental Advisory Committee meeting. On Monday, EPDP group chair Janis Karklins said his top priority is to find a standardized system of access and disclosure (SSAD) for such data. A draft paper on a hypothetical SSAD model was sent to the European Data Protection Board Oct. 25, said ICANN Government and International Governmental Organizations Engagement Senior Director Elena Plexida. The model proposes a centralized access system to decide whether personal data should be disclosed, but it's not clear whether this idea will fly under the GDPR. The EPDP group is moving toward drafting an initial report that, in the "optimistic scenario," could be published in early December and finalized in May, Karklins said. If that timeline is delayed, the final report might not emerge until June, he said. The question is how to make the policy reality, Kapin said: There's "real concern" among governments that despite the existence of the temporary policy, law enforcement agencies, intellectual property owners, cybersecurity researchers and other stakeholders are having trouble accessing Whois data. Many who no longer see the data in Whois either don't know they can ask for it or are unsure how to do so, she said. Governments should recommend that ICANN do a better job of ensuring that its existing policy is working properly, she said. Another policy in the works is new procedures for subsequent new generic top-level domains. ICANN is reviewing the 2012 round of gTLDs to determine if changes to the procedures are needed, said Jeff Neuman, co-chair of the Generic Names Supporting Organization policy development working group. The panel is preparing draft recommendations for a final report expected to go to the GNSO Council by the end of Q1 2020 and to the board by late Q2, he said. Directors are likely to commission another applicants' guidebook for the next round, with new gTLDs possible by late 2021 or early 2022.

The Digital Justice Foundation requests a panel rehearing and rehearing en banc of net neutrality case Mozilla v FCC, case 18-1051, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, its petition (on Pacer) emailed Friday. It said the D.C. Circuit's panel decision "plainly misstated DJF's position" on why the FCC 2018 net neutrality order transparency rule failed to meet the circuit's "arbitrary and capricious" standards. DJF said the 2018 order excluded audiences, including engineers and consumer watchdogs, on scope of transparency rules. It identified "major discrepancies" between the transparency rule and the 2010 one it purported to be returning to "with minor modifications." In an earlier brief, DJF asked the court to vacate the 2018 order's transparency rule and declare the previous 2105 transparency rule remains.

Apple's CEO isn't scared about the next tranche of tariffs that takes effect Dec. 15 on smartphones and other devices. Tim Cook's view is “very positive in terms of how things are going," he said on a call Wednesday on Q4 ended Sept. 28. The tone of trade talks “has changed significantly, and I have long thought that it was in both countries’ best interests to get to an agreement that maybe initially doesn't solve everything but solves some things that each party may want,” he said of the U.S. and China. “I'm hopeful that that's where we're headed.” Cook highlighted the “recurring payment” model a growing number of iPhone users have adopted. He said the company wants to make that process easier, responding to a question on plans for bundling hardware and services, which the company is doing for the first time beginning Friday (see 1910310050). That Apple TV Plus service bundle is “a great way to get more people to see the content,” Cook said. Critics have noted limited content available. Though bundling won’t be a “pattern,” Cook said, “I wouldn't want to rule out for the future that we might not see another opportunity at some point.” The CEO was sanguine about iPhone’s 9 percent decline (see 1910310032), saying it's a “significant improvement” over the 15 percent decline in the year-ago quarter.

The PlayStation Vue streaming service gave viewers a "differentiated" experience since launching in 2015, said Chief Financial Officer Hiroki Totoki in scripted remarks to analysts in Tokyo Wednesday. "Diversification of viewing styles and an intensification of competition" prompted Sony's recent decision to terminate the service Jan. 31 (see 1910290051), he said. "We aim to wind down the service in a deliberate manner to minimize any inconvenience to users." PlayStation 5 development "is progressing according to plan" toward a launch in time for holiday 2020, said Totoki. PS5's introduction will be "the most important step in strengthening the PlayStation platform," he said. Sony expects to sell 13.5 million PS4s this fiscal year, down 24 percent from the year earlier and a 10 percent downgrade from July's forecast.

More than 70 percent of U.S. smart device homes have security concerns, said Parks Associates Wednesday, and a quarter of those who don't own smart home devices have similar worries that prevent them from investing in the technology. As devices offer more services and interconnectivity, “cybersecurity is inadequate to protect today's connected consumer," said Kenneth Wacks. Home devices that store data, require updates, and perform multiple functions “create additional vulnerabilities,” he said. Consumers are increasingly aware personal data can be misused, said the analyst, saying building in privacy and security protection during product development costs less for device makers than fixing problems. Such breaches can do “significant damage to a brand," Wacks said. More than 40 percent of U.S. broadband households don’t trust companies to keep their data safe, and 54 percent don’t feel they get much in return for sharing data.

Federal agencies need to “identify skill gaps” within IT workforces to “anticipate and respond to changing needs and critical risks,” GAO said Wednesday. It made the same recommendations to agencies in 2016 and 2018. DOJ, Homeland Security and State were among departments and agencies examined. GAO found DOJ hasn’t implemented four of eight key IT workforce planning recommendations, partially implemented three and minimally implemented one.

Twitter will end political advertising globally Nov. 22, CEO Jack Dorsey tweeted Wednesday. “We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. ... Paying to increase the reach of political speech has significant ramifications that today’s democratic infrastructure may not be prepared to handle.”