Most consumers have heard of major vMVPDs, but few know what each offers, Hub Entertainment Research reported Wednesday. More than 80 percent recognize Hulu Plus Live TV, YouTube, DirecTV Now, Sling TV and PlayStation Vue. Fewer than half could identify the value proposition of each or how its offering differed from the others. Among digital media players, Apple TV led awareness at 92 percent, followed by Amazon Fire TV (89 percent), Roku (88 percent) and Google’s Chromecast (34 percent). Knowledge of what the players offer was far lower, with Roku leading at 40 percent clarity, Apple TV and Amazon Fire TV at 38 percent each and Chromecast at 34 percent. The survey was conducted in January with 1,692 U.S. TV viewers living in a broadband household.
NTIA’s multistakeholder group “has reached broad consensus around the basic value of a software bill of materials,” the agency said Monday before its Thursday meeting (see 1904010057). The medical device industry delivered “a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the feasibility of an SBOM in practice.” NTIA hopes for other use cases across sectors. Office of Policy Analysis and Development Director-Cybersecurity Initiatives Allan Friedman wrote the update.
The FTC hasn’t become “inured” by privacy incidents, Chairman Joe Simons said Tuesday in prepared remarks for its policy hearing on consumer privacy (see 1904090073). In the past 20 years, the FTC brought hundreds of cases, conducted about 70 workshops and issued about 50 reports on consumer privacy, he said. The agency’s approach is “vigorous enforcement with every tool we have.”
Advertising industry groups launched a coalition Monday urging Congress to pass a federal, pre-emptive privacy law that creates a FTC Data Protection Bureau. Privacy for America was created by the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Association of National Advertisers, Digital Advertising Alliance, Interactive Advertising Bureau and Network Advertising Initiative. The coalition supports granting the FTC rulemaking authority.
A West Virginia man pleaded guilty to downloading child pornography over the dark web and transporting illegal material across state lines, DOJ said Friday. According to DOJ, Paul Joseph Wilson, 49, downloaded the illegal material and “subscribed to child-pornography-specific newsgroup services” while living and working at a Washington, D.C., school. Wilson also transported illegal material from D.C. to Virginia, DOJ said. Sentencing is July 12.
Pandora Now, launched Thursday as a SiriusXM channel and Pandora interactive station and playlist, is the first cross-platform initiative since SiriusXM completed its $3.5 billion all-stock Pandora buyout Feb. 1 (see 1902010005). Pandora Now “harnesses the combined strength of Pandora's extensive listener data and SiriusXM's curatorial expertise,” said the company. Bundling the SiriusXM and Pandora platforms is “a great area for combination,” because Pandora lacks a good "position" in the car, and SiriusXM "would like to do" better in the home and in mobile, SiriusXM CEO Jim Meyer said last month (see 1903120026).
Government shouldn’t use campaign advertising guidelines to regulate Facebook user speech on “divisive” issues, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr tweeted Thursday (see 1904010055). He responded to comments from CEO Mark Zuckerberg in an interview with ABC News. Zuckerberg denied the notion that he was suggesting a “policing” of the First Amendment. “Any regulation around what someone says online is protected. But I think that that’s clearly not right today,” Zuckerberg said.
As the automotive industry moves toward electrification, automation and connectivity, embedded navigation with HD maps becomes increasingly important, Navigant Research reported Wednesday. Street-level road maps are insufficient for the upcoming mobility paradigm, it said: highly automated vehicles require detailed HD maps to enable “precise localization” so vehicles can navigate. Next-generation maps will be targeted more to electronic control systems running vehicles than to drivers, said analyst Sam Abuelsamid. Several manufacturers have begun using topographical information as an input to powertrain control, and others are using road contour information to manage speed in partially automated driving systems, he said.
NTIA and the Food and Drug Administration are partnering with domain name industry groups “to curb online availability and sales of illegal opioids,” Administrator David Redl blogged Wednesday. Neustar, which manages .us domains, announced it will “step up enforcement of those who violate its existing ban on the sale or distribution of illegal opioids,” Redl wrote. The FDA and NTIA also will work with Verisign and Public Interest Registry, which respectively manage .com and .org domains.
A third-party app exposed more than 540 million Facebook user records for an unknown period, including comments, likes, reactions, account names and user IDs, UpGuard Cyber Risk reported Wednesday. The security firm linked the breach to Mexico-based media company Cultura Colectiva. Another app, At the Pool, exposed plain text Facebook passwords for 22,000 users, UpGuard said. Both data sets were stored on separate Amazon S3 buckets, which allow public downloads. “The data exposed in each of these sets would not exist without Facebook, yet these data sets are no longer under Facebook’s control,” the report said, arguing millions of app developers are responsible for securing the information. Facebook policy prohibits storing information in public databases, a spokesperson said: “Once alerted to the issue, we worked with Amazon to take down the databases. We are committed to working with the developers on our platform to protect people's data.”