Online Content Providers in Turkey Now Regulated by RTUK
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| Online Content Providers in Turkey Now Regulated by RTUK | |
| Number | 908 |
| Broadcast Date | AUGUST 5, 2019 |
| Episode Length | 5:40 |
| Hosts | Rich Stroffolino |
Huawei delays the Mate X foldable device, Microsoft patches four remote exploits, and Twitter will soon let you follow topics.
Headlines
- A new regulation in Turkey places all online content providers under the oversight of the country's radio and television watchdog RTUK. This will require all free and paid streaming services in the country to obtain a broadcast license, and subject content to approval of the regulator. Content providers will have 30 days to adjust content to meet RTUK standards, or face having licenses suspended for three months. However, announcement of the regulations did not specify what exact standard content providers are expected to meet. These new regulations were originally approved by Turkey's parliament back in March 2018.
- Cloudflare terminated DDoS protection services to the forum website 8chan as of August 5th, according to a blog post by CEO Matthew Prince. Prince cited 8chan as inspiring recent mass shootings and stated "we reluctantly tolerate content that we find reprehensible, but we draw the line at platforms that have demonstrated they directly inspire tragic events and are lawless by design." Two years ago, the company made a similar move to stop services to The Daily Stormer. Prince said Cloudflare will continue to engage with policymakers to help them understand and define remedies for sites that actively thwart or ignore the rule of law.
- Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has joined the lists of state attorneys suing to block the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, bringing the total number of states to 15. The merger has received approval from the Department of Justice and FCC with provisions for transferring some prepaid service, infrastructure access and spectrum to Dish. However, the objections of the state attorneys need to be resolved before the merger can occur.
- The US Federal Trade Commission is investigating an agreement between Amazon and Apple to sell Apple products directly on Amazon. As part of the deal, Amazon agreed to only allow Apple-authorized resellers to sell Apple products on Amazon, eliminating many small sellers of refurbished items. A Minnesota man named John Bumstead says he was contacted by a group of FTC officials who wanted to know how selling on Amazon and eBay worked and how being barred from selling Apple products on Amazon had affected his business.
- Walmart's Flipkart reportedly plans to rollout a free streaming video service in India for Flipkart Plus loyalty members ahead of the Diwali shopping season. The service will not initially feature original content, instead licensing from Disney and Indian studios like Balaji Telefilms. Unlike Amazon, which costs 999 rupees annually in India, Flipkart Plus is loyalty program members join by amassing "super coins" that are earned for every 100 rupes spent on the platform. Flipkart is the biggest online retailer in India, and was acquired by Walmart in 2018 for $16 billion.
- The US Department of Defense has delayed a decision to award a contract for the development of its Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure or JEDI program. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are the last two bidders being considered to run the program which will offer AI analysis and hosting of classified information plus other services over a ten year period. The contract will likely be worth more than $10 billion. US Secretary of Defense Dr. Mark T. Esper took over the position July 23 and wants to review the process. Secretary Esper was previously Secretary of the Army. Amazon had been expected to win the JEDI contract. It has an existing contract with the CIA. Microsoft is expected to win the Defense Enterprise Office Solutions (DEOS) contract which involves providing email, calendar, video-calling and other productivity tools to the US military.
- Amazon updated the Alexa smartphone app to now give users the option to remove their recordings from being eligable for analysis from Amazon employees and contractors. Human review of recordings was not previously stated in Amazon's privacy policy. The app now includes the language: “With this setting on, your voice recordings may be used to develop new features and manually reviewed to help improve our services. Only an extremely small fraction of voice recordings are manually reviewed.”
- Facebook confirmed it will rebrand Instagram and WhatsApp, to “Instagram from Facebook” and “WhatsApp from Facebook.” The move follows similar rebrands for Workplace and Oculus. The new names will appear on Google Play and the App Store, but will keep using the previous shorter names on installed app icons. According to a Facebook spokesperson: “We want to be clearer about the products and services that are part of Facebook.”
- ZTE launched the Axon 10 Pro 5G, the first 5G phone for sale in China. The device features a 6.47-inch 1080p AMOLED display, three rear cameras with a 48 megapixel main sensor joined by telephoto and wide angle lenses, a Snapdragon 855 SoC and a Qualcomm X50 5G modem, starting at 4,999 yuan (about $720 US). 5G service isn't currently available in China, with TechCrunch reporting that China Mobile is hoping to begin commercial 5G availability in October, with plans to have 5G service in 50 cities by the end of 2019.
- Chinese ride hailing giant Didi Chuxing announced that it spun off its autonomous driving unit into an independent company. The unit was created in 2016, has over 200 employees in California and China, and has approval to test self-driving vehicles in California. The CEO of the new company is Zhang Bo, the CTO of Didi.
Links
| Preceded by: "Week in Review for the Week of 7/29/19" |
Online Content Providers in Turkey Now Regulated by RTUK |
Followed by: "DOJ: AT&T Employees Took Bribes To Unlock Phones, Install Malware" |