Website blocking has been shown around the world to be "a fair, effective, and proportionate tool" for tackling pirate sites, and the U.S. needs to follow suit with a legal route for rightsholders to get ISPs to block websites involved in mass dissemination of copyright-infringing content, said the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Wednesday. Since Congress failed in 2012 to pass the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act, 33 nations have adopted laws letting rightsholders obtain injunctions requiring ISPs to block access to pirate sites "and the Internet continues to flourish," ITIF said. It said those nations have shown that SOPA/PIPA-era criticisms "simply do not hold up to scrutiny" and that website blocking "is a fair, effective, and proportionate tool to target sites involved in the mass, illegal dissemination of copyrighted content and that it does not undermine human rights, free speech, or net neutrality."

Comments are due March 25 in docket DOC–2021–0010 in the Commerce Department’s request for information with its National Institute of Standards and Technology to help the “planning and design” of “potential programs” authorized under the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to promote investment in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and R&D, said an item in Monday’s Federal Register. In a detailed, five-page RFI, Commerce wants to know how incentives written into NDAA Section 9902 can “be designed and deployed to encourage additional and new private capital investment in the semiconductor ecosystem.” It seeks input on how federal funds can “incentivize the creation of a broad semiconductor ecosystem that includes producers of semiconductor manufacturing equipment and other upstream suppliers.” Section 9906 would establish a National Semiconductor Technology Center as “a hub (or multiple hubs) of talent, knowledge, investment, equipment, and toolsets,” said the notice. Commerce wants to know “what attributes or capabilities of the NSTC would make it attractive and beneficial for companies, universities, and other agencies to want to send employees for assignments” there. It also wants to know what types of research and training opportunities should be made available at the NSTC “for students and early career staff.”

Though ATSC “is not directly involved in patent licensing, we are pleased to hear the announcement of the ATSC 3.0 patent pool” by MPEG LA (see 2201200058), emailed ATSC President Madeleine Noland Friday. “Recognizing that patent pools often add licensors over time, we are delighted to see this group of thirteen licensors working together to simplify and accelerate ATSC 3.0 adoption into an expanding line-up of NextGenTV products.”

Samsung applied Jan. 14 to trademark “SmartThings Home Tablet” for commercializing “smart home hubs” in a tablet form factor to connect robotic vacuum cleaners and other home appliances to a wireless network, Patent and Trademark Office records show. The company announced the launch of Samsung Home Hub earlier this month, billing it as a “new way to manage home appliances” via a “tablet-style touchscreen device” that uses AI and SmartThings technology “to understand users’ needs and automatically provide the right solutions” to household tasks. Samsung didn’t comment about its commercial deployment plans for the SmartThings Home Tablet trademark. Samsung bought the SmartThings IoT platform in August 2014, making it part of the Samsung Open Innovation Center (see 1408180053).

U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Hegarty of Denver granted a motion by movie production companies compelling WideOpenWest to disclose the identities of 375 IP addresses of WOW subscribers and begin notifying them of the impending disclosures. In the docket 21-cv-01901 order Wednesday, Hegarty said the plaintiffs estimate their statutory damages from alleged movie piracy by WOW subscribers at $14 million.

Inter-satellite optical communications is another front in the tech cold war between China and the West, with Chinese startups like HiStarlink emerging while Western suppliers like Mynaric aren't being allowed to operate there, blogged Larry Press, a professor of information systems at California State University-Dominguez Hills, Sunday. Such startups are behind established Western firms in terms of products and organization, but "perhaps the best thing they have going is the cold war itself -- they will not have to face strong international competition," Press said. "The cold war, like tariffs, offers protectionist cover for domestic industry."

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia should block “onerous copyright rules that violate the First Amendment and criminalize certain speech,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a filing last week. EFF wants to reverse a district court decision in Green v. DOJ, in which EFF challenged anti-circumvention and anti-trafficking provisions in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Those measures prevent researchers, educators and others from “creating and sharing” their work. EFF filed its 2016 lawsuit on behalf of researcher Matthew Green and technologist Andrew Huang, whose projects could “run afoul” of the DMCA’s “anti-speech provisions,” EFF said. Section 1201 makes it illegal to work around software restricting “access to lawfully-purchased copyrighted material,” like films, songs and computer code, EFF said. Their projects are “highly beneficial” to the public and “perfectly legal” outside the scope of the DMCA, the organization said.

The FTC scheduled an open meeting Jan. 20 where staff will present on the agency’s identity theft program. Staff will report about recent trends and online resources for consumers. The public will have a chance to comment, and submissions are due Tuesday. The meeting begins at 1 p.m. EST.

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr met virtually with Taiwan leaders, the FCC said Wednesday. Carr spoke with the country's National Communications Commissioner Yeali Sun and Jeff Liu, director-general of the Department of Archives, Information Management and Telecommunications, for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “Their discussion covered the two countries’ approaches to 5G and network security threats, as well as Commissioner Carr’s view that international telecom bodies should officially recognize Taiwan’s leading regulatory work,” said a news release. “As two vibrant democracies, our countries are vital economic and national security partners,” Carr said: “We also share a core set of values that inform our regulatory approaches to everything from next-gen networks to network security.” Carr has criticized Chinese policies. China's President Xi Jinping has made reunification with Taiwan a priority. China's Embassy didn't comment.

The “extraordinary reach” and “sheer pointlessness” of FCC foreign-sponsored content disclosure rules violates the First Amendment, said NAB, the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters and the Multimedia, Telecom and Internet Council in support of the groups’ stay request (see 2201040057) before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in docket 21-1171. “The Order applies to every lease, even infomercials and church-service broadcasts,” the groups said Monday: “The object of the mandatory investigation is to redress a phantom harm never known to occur.” The FCC's filing cited examples of foreign entities leasing broadcast time, but those entities weren’t registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the groups said. If the broadcaster investigation determines that an unregistered foreign entity controls the leasing entity, the information needed for the required broadcast identifications of the foreign entity won’t be in the database, they said. The requirements are unreasonable and are outside the agency’s authority, the groups said. There were "multiple narrower alternatives that would have burdened significantly less speech.”