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The BRIC That Could: How Brazil Is Changing Your TV
Europe sneers at their technology. US’s DTV transition passed them by. BBC’s intelligentsia never noticed them. No consumer electronics industry to match Asia; neighbors don’t speak their language. So how did Brazil become a world leader in digital TV? And why the tip of the hat to Brazil DTV middleware leader TQTVD, to whom I [...]
“Trust But Verify”: IPR & BBC’s Project Canvas
I have filed comments in the UK Project Canvas public consultation. To catch up on the UK context with global implications, watch James Murdock’s mesmerizing anti-BBC screed, and say… “This is the BBC.” Perhaps no other single phrase has broadcast more meaning to more people in the great call to communicate that has gripped our [...]
Is It Reasonable to Discriminate? ABA Group Weighs in on CUT FATT DTV Patent Dispute
“RAND” — Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory — is a term often used in standards contexts to describe or set expectations of fairness in patent licensing related to standards. But what does the term “RAND” really mean? As one well-known commentary on standard-setting, patents, and hold-up states: “few SSOs [standard-setting organizations] define the term ‘reasonable and nondiscriminatory’ [...]
Patent Fights Fuel US DTV’s Slide from World Stage
The “FATT” is fighting back this week in comments filed at the US FCC against the “Coalition United To Terminate Financial Abuses of the Television Transition” (CUT FATT) proposal to address patent overreaching in the US DTV system. Filings from Valley View, Philips/LG Electronics, Funai, Thomson, ATSC, Harris, Zenith, MPEG LA, Philips/Qualcomm, and Retire Safe [...]
Carterfone is Not Enough: The Missing Broadband Policy Link
Royalty-free standards, the very foundation of the Open Internet, are not even mentioned in the FCC’s 60-page Broadband Plan notice of inquiry. Surprising? Not really. Bridging even first principles of the Internet era to the realities of telecommunications policy since 1934 is a high order challenge for communications policy scholars, regulators, and network practitioners. But [...]