European Parliament votes against copyright reform
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| European Parliament votes against copyright reform | |
| Number | 539 |
| Broadcast Date | JULY 5, 2018 |
| Episode Length | 5:45 |
| Hosts | Sarah Lane |
Volkswagen launches electric car-sharing service, Uganda social media tax is supposed to combat lying, ZTE names XU Ziyang its new CEO.
Headlines
- The European Parliament voted against controversial Article 11 and Article 13 copyright reform proposals, meaning they will now be open for debate and amendments. A 318-278 majority of MEPs voted to reopen the debate around digital copyright reform — slowing down or possibly curbing the process of becoming law. Article 11 proposes to create a neighboring right for snippets of journalistic content in order to target news aggregator business models, such as Google News. Article 13 makes Internet platforms that host large amounts of user-uploaded content directly liable for copyright infringements by their users, and would likely mean those platforms start pre-filtering all user generated content at the point of upload.
- IBM secured a A$1 billion agreement as partner of the Australian government over the next five years. The contract includes automation and blockchain services for federal departments including defense and home affairs, and focus on employment of Australians to implement. Two years ago, IBM agreed to pay more than A$30 million to the Australian government for its role in the national census, which was hit by four distributed denial of service attacks that temporarily shut down the project. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said at the time that “overwhelmingly the failure was IBM’s.”
- Volkswagen is launching an electric car-sharing service called WE, launching in Germany next year with plans for major cities in Europe, North America and Asia beginning in 2020. The WE ehicle-on-demand platform will initially focus on car sharing but include other modes of transportation such as scooters down the road. The WE platform will be managed by UMI Urban Mobility International, a subsidiary of Volkswagen AG.
- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni says the country’s new social media tax keeps people from using platforms for “lying”, and supporting foreign-owned telecoms firms. In May Uganda’s parliament passed new tax laws that introduced a levy of 200 shillings ($0.05) per day for access to a range of online services, like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, Google Hangouts, YouTube, Skype, and Yahoo Messenger. The tax is collected by mobile internet service providers, and equivalent to about 20 percent of what typical Ugandan users pay for their mobile phone data plans. Museveni tweeted that social media was a “luxury by those who are enjoying themselves or those who are malicious...all the moral reasons are in favor of that tax.”
- At the 2018 Baidu Create developer conference in Beijing, the company announced it’s partnering with Intel to deploy Israeli developer Mobileye’s technology into autonomous vehicle effort Project Apollo. Baidu plans to merge Mobileye’s Responsibility-Sensitive Safety (RSS) model into code of the commercial Apollo Drive program and Apollo Pilot (the deployment version of Project Apollo). Baidu also will use Mobileye’s Surround Computer Vision Kit as the preferred perception solution in Project Apollo.
- ZTE named Xu Ziyang its new CEO, a 20-year veteran of the company who formerly headed up the company’s business in Germany. ZTE also named a new CFO, CTO and a new head HR. ZTE was hit with a sales ban in the US in April after it violated sactions against sales of telecom gear to Iran and North Korea. Earlier this week the US Commerce Department said it would grant a one-month waiver to some companies to resume doing business with ZTE. ZTE is required to pay a $1 billion fine, place $400 million in escrow and submit to an outside monitor as part of its deal with the Commerce Department.
- Sources tell CTech that Apple told Intel that it will not use the chipmaker’s radio chips in its 2020 iPhones. Apple reportedly was the primary customer for the combined 5G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chip, and sources say Intel has now halted development of the product.
- The Register reports that UK Metropolitan Police commissioner Cressida Dick said trials of automated facial recognition systems were expected by the public, despite criticism that the technology is “almost entirely inaccurate and wouldn't lead to “lots of arrests,” The London force ihas been deploying the technology at public events like concerts, festivals, and soccer matches. Mobile CCTV cameras are used to scan crowds and try to match images of faces to mugshots of wanted individuals. According to data released under the UK’s Freedom of Information laws, the Metropolitan’s AFR system has a 98 percent false positive rate — meaning that 98 percent of the “matches” it makes are of innocent people.
- Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reports the upcoming 6.5-inch OLED iPhone model should be priced around $1000 like the current iPhone X, and will feature dual SIM capabilities. Kuo reports the 6.1-inch LCD iPhone X style device should retail for around $700. The 6.5-inch phone will possibly come in black, white and gold. The entry-level 6.1-inch LCD iPhone will apparently debut in “grey, white, blue, red and orange.”
- TiVo CEO Enrique Rodriguez is leaving the company for a role at Liberty Global, where he will become its CTO. Rodriguez joined Tivo in November 2017. Raghu Rau, who is on TiVo’s board, has been named the interim president and CEO of the company. Rodriguez will keep an advisory role.
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| Preceded by: "Daily Tech Headlines – July 4, 2018" |
European Parliament votes against copyright reform |
Followed by: "Samsung Slows Down" |