Google updated its transparency report site. The site is more interactive, includes additional information and allows Google to highlight statistics, Google said Monday in a blog post. The report provides "a lens on the things that governments and courts ask us to remove, underscoring the importance of transparency around the processes governing such requests," it said. From June 2013 to December 2013, Google received 3,105 government requests to remove 14,637 pieces of content, it said. That's a slight decrease from the first half of 2013 due to a spike in requests from Turkey during that period, activity "which has since returned to lower levels," it said.

Fifty-five percent of Internet stakeholders said “no” when asked whether an “accepted privacy-rights regime and infrastructure” would be created in the next decade, said a Pew Research Internet Project survey released Thursday. But 45 percent of respondents said “yes” when asked if such a regime would exist by 2025, it said. The survey polled 2,511 Internet industry officials, researchers and analysts, some of whom were anonymous. Elon University also participated in the survey, which was done from Nov. 25, 2013, to Jan. 13, 2014. “I do not think 10 years is long enough for policy makers to change the way they make policy to keep up with the rate of technological progress,” John Wilbanks, Sage Bionetworks chief commons officer, told Pew. “We have never had ubiquitous surveillance before, much less a form of ubiquitous surveillance that emerges primarily from voluntary (if market-obscured) choices,” he said: “Predicting how it shakes out is just fantasy.”

“One way to provide an effective check on the ICANN board's power is to create statutory members of ICANN with extensive authority over the board,” said Daniel Castro, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation senior analyst, in a Wednesday op-ed in The Hill. Castro cited a 2010 paper by Shawn Gunnarson of Kirton McConkie, pointing to a California law, under which ICANN operates, that requires nonprofits to have statutory members. “This authority could include removing board members, overturning board decisions,” among other provisions, said Castro. ICANN didn’t comment.

ICANN was hit by a data breach in November, believed to be a “spear phishing” attack, it said in a news release Wednesday. Emails were sent to ICANN staffers that appeared to come from the ICANN domain, it said. The attack compromised the email credentials of several staff members, ICANN said. The attack also breached ICANN’s centralized zone data system (CZDS), which contained names, email addresses, telephone numbers and other information of CZDS users, it said. ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee's members-only wiki page also was breached, it said. The nonprofit is continuing to investigate the attack.

Membership in the Open Interconnect Consortium is nearing four dozen companies with the addition of 15 members, the consortium said in a Wednesday announcement. Among the noteworthy new members are CableLabs, Hewlett-Packard and Lenovo. In addition, GE Software joined as the consortium’s newest "diamond" member and took a seat on the consortium board, the group said. Other board members are Cisco, Intel, MediaTek and Samsung. Diamond is the most elite of the organization's three membership tiers, the consortium’s bylaws say. To achieve diamond, a company must pay $350,000 in annual dues (vs. $75,000 for platinum, $10,000 for gold), and must be approved by a 75 percent vote of the board, the rules say. Diamond is the only tier that qualifies for a board seat, though platinum members may chair or participate in a working group, they say. The consortium was formed this summer to promote interoperability among the billions of connected devices expected to come online by 2020, by establishing a specification, an open source implementation and a certification program, first for smart home and office solutions (see 1407090068).

The Thread Group is expected to have product certification in place in the first half of 2015 for its IP-based low-power wireless networking protocol, the alliance said Tuesday. UL will manage the product certification process for Thread with support from Granite River Labs, which will work with UL to develop the “test harness” developers will use in building, testing and certifying Thread-enabled products. Recent high-profile additions to membership, now at 50 companies, include Energizer, Kwikset, PG&E and Whirlpool. Other Thread Group member companies are Atmel, California Eastern Laboratories, Inc., CamPoint, GainSpan, Granite River Labs, Grid Connect, Imagination Technologies, Insteon, Intellihot Green Technologies Inc., iOT Tech, Jasco, Keen Home, Kwikset, leakSMART, Linx Technologies, LUX Technology Group, Marvell Technology Group, Midea Group, Nanoleaf, Net2grid, Pacific Gas & Electric, Proximetry, Salto Systems, Sansa Security, Shenzhen Rakwireless Technology, Skyley Networks, Stack Lighting, Telegesis, TÜV Rheinland Group, Tyco, UL, WigWag and Zonefirst. Three tiers of membership to Thread are available: sponsor, contributor and affiliate, it said.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) imposed an “incremental penalty payment” on Google, which could exceed $18.5 million, said a Dutch DPA blog post Monday. The Dutch DPA said Google is "acting in breach of several provisions of the Dutch data protection act with its new privacy policy, introduced in 2012.” A study by the DPA found that “Google combines personal data of internet users, amongst others to display personalised ads,” said the blog post. The DPA listed a set of privacy changes Google should enact by February. Google didn’t comment.

The Copyright Office will have three rounds of public comment on proposed exemptions under Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, said a Federal Registernotice Friday. Section 1201 allows the Librarian of Congress to exempt certain works from prohibitions against the circumvention of technological measures that control access to copyrighted works. Comments from parties that support or remain neutral on the proposed exemptions are due Feb. 6; responses opposing such exemptions March 27; replies May 1.

Comcast agreed to authenticate the HBO GO and Showtime Anytime apps on Roku streaming devices for Comcast subscribers who qualify, Roku representatives told the FCC in an ex parte filing Monday in dockets 14-28 and 14-57. Comcast and Roku have been in talks for "several months" on "a number of issues" and signed the HBO GO and Showtime Anytime agreement Nov. 25, the filing said.

“The existence of the Internet does not magically make content costless to produce just because it is costless to distribute,” said Michelle Wein, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation trade policy analyst, in a blog post Friday. Wein countered an article by Caitlin Dewey, a Washington Post blogger, on the ubiquity of file-sharing sites like The Pirate Bay. Shut down by Swedish police last week (see 1412100031), the site has made “digital piracy a casual, inarguable part of the mainstream” Internet user experience, said Dewey. Said Wein: “Given the ease with which consumers can stream content, especially for broadcast, cable, and online TV, it’s almost offensive that some people can’t just cough up the cash to watch.”