Online platform users should have “full authority over their data,” said IAB Europe and IAB Tech Lab Wednesday in the group’s specifications designed to help industry comply with EU’s General Data Protection Regulation. The framework “will sit at the intersection of users, publishers, and the third-party partners (vendors) that support the publishers in monetising their content, giving both users and publishers more control and transparency in the new environment,” said IAB Europe CEO Townsend Feehan.
The European Commission will invest 1.5 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in artificial intelligence research across the region through 2020, the commission announced Wednesday, drawing guarded praise from the Computer & Communications Industry Association. “We welcome the commission’s constructive approach to boost the uptake of AI in Europe. While we support this positive approach, we caution that the current copyright proposal risks hindering Europe’s leadership ambition,” said CCIA Senior Policy Manager Maud Sacquet. “Since this is a new technology, a cautious approach to regulation will allow AI to have the space to grow.” American Enterprise Institute scholar Bret Swanson cited a report from McKinsey Global Institute projecting AI could “generate incremental value of between $3.5 and $5.8 trillion annually across nine business functions in 19 industries.”
The Department of Homeland Security failed to fully implement most of the 29 cybersecurity-related recommendations GAO has suggested since 2016, GAO reported Tuesday. “Until DHS fully and effectively implements its cybersecurity authorities and responsibilities, the department's ability to improve and promote the cybersecurity of federal and private-sector networks will be limited.” The department didn’t comment Tuesday.
Facebook expanded its appeals process to include individual posts removed for nudity, sexual activity, hate speech and graphic violence, the platform announced Tuesday, publishing internal enforcement guidelines. The appeals process was previously reserved for profiles, pages and groups removed from the platform. A Community Operations team typically reviews requests within 24 hours, the company said, and if the platform decides there has been a mistake, the post, photo or video in question will be restored. The House Judiciary Committee has a hearing Thursday to discuss online content censorship (see 1804200049).
After several years of truce, organizers of Berlin’s IFA show renewed their war of words with CES over which event reigns supreme in the world of consumer tech shows. IFA “is literally covering the world,” and is “undisputedly the No. 1 consumer electronics show,” Christian Goke, CEO of Messe Berlin, told the IFA global news conference Saturday in Rome. It’s true, “there are other tech events in the U.S., and they are formally known as CE shows,” said Goke. “But let’s be honest. It’s not always that easy to understand how these shows are structured. Sometimes it’s not that easy to go from hall to hall and hotel to hotel, even when the lights are on. For many brands, it’s always a bit of a gamble if you make your mark there are not. Which is sort of fitting, given the location.” Goke’s remarks on the lights were a reference to the blackout that struck the Las Vegas Convention Center Jan. 10 on Day 2 of CES (see 1801110030). The remarks prompted one journalist in Q&A to ask Goke why he denigrated CES to promote IFA, when IFA and CES are very different shows, serving different purposes with different audiences. Goke responded: “There was no denigration intended at all.” CTA representatives didn’t comment Monday but in the past have defended CES as having superior attendance and exhibit data as verified by global auditing authorities (see 1712140005).
Industry “can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good,” tweeted CTA President Gary Shapiro Thursday on the two recent autonomous-driving deaths involving a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, and a Tesla driver in Mountain View, California. “Self-driving car casualties are tragic. But we shouldn’t stop improving the technology,” headlined a piece Shapiro wrote for USA Today. “Only an ongoing, transparent discussion will create the sort of framework that combines consumer safety, company accountability and flexibility to advance self-driving technology” and prevent accidents like those in Tempe and Mountain View “from happening again,” he said. The “safety and security that passengers have come to expect” from commercial air travel “didn’t occur immediately,” he said. “It took years of investment and years of missteps to create the safe flight ecosystem we now have in this country.” Self-driving technology “has the same kind of potential,” he said.
The Patent and Trademark Office inter partes review process improved patent quality and restored “public confidence in the patent system, which had eroded due to bad quality patents that were harming innovation,” said High Tech Inventors Alliance General Counsel John Thorne Wednesday. PTO Director Andrei Iancu testified before Congress that day (see 1804180073). The group warned against legislative proposals potentially “stripping the vitality of Section 101” of patent law and “creating high levels of uncertainty” in the patent granting process. The Supreme Court decisions discussed Wednesday “have benefited innovation” by striking down abstract patents, the group said.
Silicon Labs completed the acquisition of Sigma Designs' Z-Wave business, including some 100 employees, for $240 million cash, they said Wednesday. Silicon Labs announced in December a definitive agreement to buy Sigma for $282 million, contingent on Sigma's sale or “wind-down” of its slumping smart TV business. The companies restructured the deal for $240 million in February (see 1801310032).
The Internet Association “continues to support a ban on paid prioritization because it hurts consumers and lets ISPs pick winners and losers online,” a spokesman responded to a Tuesday House Communications Subcommittee hearing on the practice (see 1804170037). “Strong net neutrality protections that ban blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization ensure that people get what they pay for -- access to the entire internet. Paid prioritization incentivizes ISPs to reduce investment and maintain congested networks.”
U.S. consumers strongly prefer smartphones over digital home assistants as smart home controllers, said GfK Tuesday. The company canvassed 1,000 consumers online and found that 83 percent use their smartphones at home, compared with 75 percent for laptops, 54 percent for PCs and 34 percent for videogame consoles. It's "no surprise” consumers also regard smartphones as their preferred smart home “hubs,” said GfK, “especially for the many appliances that allow controlling and viewing the home at a distance.” Users of digital assistants remain very loyal to their devices, it said. Fifty-one percent of such users regard their devices as “extremely integrated” into daily lives, even though 75 percent bought their digital assistants less than a year ago. Worries about personal privacy could account for a “major obstacle to adoption” for digital assistants, it said, with 35 percent citing privacy as a big concern.