Streaming accounts for more than 80 percent of stolen and shared content globally, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported Tuesday. About “26.6 billion viewings of U.S.-produced movies and 126.7 billion viewings of U.S.-produced TV episodes are digitally pirated” annually, said the report.

Facebook and Spotify announced participation in the Libra Association Tuesday, enabling users to pay for services using cryptocurrency. Libra was founded to create a “simple, global currency and financial infrastructure,” and it will enable Spotify users to directly access audio they want anytime, anywhere and “at the right price,” blogged the streaming music company. Libra offers “massive opportunity for simple, convenient, and safe payment over the internet," particularly for the 1.7 billion adults worldwide without access to mobile money, a bank account or a payment card, Spotify said, citing developing markets. A challenge for Spotify and its global users has been the lack of easily accessible payment systems, creating a barrier between creators and fans, especially in financially underserved markets, said Alex Norstrom, chief premium business officer. It's an opportunity to “better reach Spotify’s total addressable market, eliminate friction and enable payments in mass scale,” said Norstrom. Facebook, meanwhile, plans to launch a digital wallet, scheduled for 2020, that will be available in Messenger, WhatsApp and as a stand-alone app. "If you have an internet connection today, you can access all kinds of useful services for little to no cost -- whether you’re trying to keep in touch with family and friends, learn new things or even start a business,” blogged the company. For many people, even basic financial services are “out of reach,” Facebook said, saying nearly half of adults in the world don’t have an active bank account, mostly women and people in developing countries. Some 70 percent of small businesses in developing countries lack access to credit, Facebook said, and $25 billion is lost annually by migrants due to remittance fees.

The EU’s general data protection regulation is failing to increase online consumer trust, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s Center for Data Innovation argued Monday. ITIF cited articles and reports discrediting the GDPR as failing to fulfill its intended purpose. Four of five Europeans “who provide personal information online feel they have no control or partial control over this information,” ITIF said, citing European Commission data from June. Companies “reported spending an average of $1.3 million in 2017 on GDPR compliance and were expected to spend an additional $1.8 million in 2018,” ITIF said, citing a 2018 report from the International Association of Privacy Professionals and Ernst & Young.

Four agencies need to strengthen online identity verification, GAO reported Friday. It recommended the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Social Security Administration, U.S. Postal Service and Veterans Administration discontinue using knowledge-based verification, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology provide guidance to assist agencies in adopting more-secure processes for proving identity remotely. It recommended OMB require agencies report progress in adopting secure practices. Only Health and Human Services, on behalf of CMS, disagreed with the recommendations. The department doesn't "believe that the available alternatives to knowledge-based verification were feasible for the individuals it serves,” the report said. Some of those alternatives require cellphones, HHS responded. The General Services Administration and the IRS use alternative methods, said GAO.

A background screening company “falsely claimed” participation in the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, and now faces $42,000 fines for future violations, the FTC announced in a settlement Friday. Commissioners approved 5-0 the agreement with Florida-based SecurTest, which the agency said failed to complete its 2017 Privacy Shield application. The company is barred from misrepresenting itself again, but no monetary penalty was issued for the initial offense. The agency also sent “warning letters to 13 companies that falsely claimed they participate in the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor and the U.S.-Swiss Safe Harbor frameworks,” the FTC said.

Worldwide IoT spending is expected to reach $1.1 trillion in 2023, based on a 12.6 percent compound annual growth rate the next five years, said IDC Thursday. “Spending on IoT deployments continues with good momentum and is expected to be $726 billion worldwide this year." The consumer market will be the second largest source of IoT spending in 2019 behind manufacturing, with smart home and connected vehicle “use cases” the biggest growth drivers in the consumer sector, said IDC. It forecasts the consumer market to “overtake” manufacturing to become the largest source of IoT spending by 2023.

Europeans are relatively aware of the general data protection regulation (GDPR), their privacy rights and the existence of national data protection authorities (DPAs), the European Commission said Thursday. A survey of 27,000 people showed that, a year after the law became effective in May 2018, 73% have heard of at least one of the six rights it guarantees, particularly the rights to access their own data, object to receiving direct marketing and have their data deleted. Another key finding was that 62% of those surveyed said they worry about not having complete control cover the personal data they provide online. The EC launched an awareness-raising campaign to encourage people to read privacy statements and set privacy settings to ensure they only share data they're willing to share. GDPR is still "a baby that is growing fast and doing well" but that needs continued nurturing, EU Justice, Consumer and Gender Equality Commissioner Vera Jourova said at a Brussels event marking the first-year anniversary. Among other things, she tweeted, "We must avoid fragmentation and temptation for adding additional conditions or expansive interpretation," and avoid "the so-called 'gold plating.'" It's time to "roll up the sleeves," European Data Protection Supervisor Giovanni Buttarelli said via video For enforcement to be effective, the European Data Protection Board must be better resourced, DPAs must start to use the full range of their enforcement powers, and data controllers must better respect the spirit as well as the letter of the law. The GDPR won't significantly affect the current digital ecosystem unless companies have based their business model on excessive use of personal data for profiling and other activities, he said. Buttarelli plans to publish soon a "visionary manifesto" on what's needed to maintain GDPR enforcement, what national authorities can do to be more effective and how to set global principles for big data and artificial intelligence.

Reddit recorded a perfect score on an Electronic Frontier Foundation survey of the tech industry’s content moderation practices. Reddit scored credit in all six categories for practices on legal requests, platform policy requests, notice, appeals mechanisms, appeals transparency and Santa Clara Principles. Apple and GitHub scored five, failing to receive credit for appeals transparency. YouTube and the Google Play Store recorded four each; Twitter, three; Facebook, two; and Instagram one.

Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant “routinely records and voiceprints millions of children without their consent or the consent of their parents,” alleged a class action complaint (in Pacer) in U.S. District Court in Seattle Tuesday. It said the practice violates laws in Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington that prohibit recording oral communications without the consent of all parties to the communication. Representing Massachusetts 10-year-old plaintiff C.O. through her guardian, Alison Hall-O’Neil, the suit seeks redress for all minors in those states who have used Alexa in their home. Echo and Echo Dot users expect that a digital query is sent over the internet for processing, that a digital response is returned and that the device then converts the response into Alexa’s voice, it said: Users don’t expect that “Alexa is creating and storing a permanent recording of their voice.” The lawsuit alleges Amazon could process audio interactions locally on an Echo device “and send only a digital query, rather than a voice recording,” to Amazon servers, saying it wouldn't be as cost effective “or commercially advantageous” to the company. Apple records communications in a similar manner to Alexa with its Siri voice assistant, but it stores the recordings in an “identifiable form” for only a short period of time, “and then deletes the recordings entirely,” said the complaint. Amazon didn’t comment Wednesday. It referred us to a blog post outlining the company’s approach to privacy and safety.

A digital company's acquisitions of nascent competitors -- if seemingly solely to block that potential competition, protect a monopoly or hurt competition -- could raise Antitrust Division suspicions, DOJ antitrust head Makan Delrahim said Tuesday at the Antitrust New Frontiers Conference in Tel Aviv, per prepared remarks. He said exclusivity issues can be anticompetitive in digital markets, though it's not always easy to ascertain when exclusivity agreements are pro-competitive vs. substantially foreclosing competition. He said coordinated conduct in digital markets "also could trigger closer scrutiny" in some situations by DOJ. He said the Antitrust Division isn't so myopic in its view of competition that it doesn't see that competition has non-price dimensions and that price effects alone don't fully illuminate digital market dynamics where the profit-maximizing price is zero. Competition is lost when an unlawful acquisition stops a product from reaching market, he said.