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2 July 2012 | The Guardian

France may extend TV licence fee to computer screens

The French government is considering extending the television licence fee to include computer screen owners to boost revenues for public-sector broadcasting operations, the culture minister said on Saturday. President Francois Hollande's Socialist government aims to raise an extra EUR 7.5bn this year through tax rises included in an amended budget bill to be unveiled next week. The licence fee – EUR 125 in mainland France and EUR 80 in its overseas territories – is used to finance public television and radio. According to a Global TV survey in March, more than 11 million French people watch television programmes on computer screens, tablets or smart phones, a rise of 41 percent on 2011 .

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2 July 2012 | CNN

Venezuelan private broadcaster to pay fine after seizure order

A private Venezuelan television station openly critical of President Hugo Chavez said Friday it will pay a hefty fine after the country's highest court ordered that its assets be seized. The supreme court's announcement, which came down Thursday evening, ordered seizure of the broadcaster's property and equipment for failure to pay a USD 2.2m fine levied last year. Globovision is currently fighting the fine in court, and accused the high court of interfering with their appeal process. The station also questioned why the supreme court ordered seizures worth USD 5.7m, more than double the value of the original fine. The high court's "grotesque and despotic" decision forces the station to pay the original fine immediately, before its validity is decided in a lower court, Globovision said. In its statement, the court said the seizure amount was the calculation of twice the original fine, plus the costs of executing the action. Globovision is Venezuela's last remaining television broadcaster that is openly critical of President Hugo Chavez. The seizure announcement comes days before the electoral campaign officially kicks off.

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2 July 2012 | Deutsche Welle

EU data portability law could benefit everyone

More and more people are uploading their photos, videos, audio or even their texts online in the form of blogs. But many do this without backing up for their content. The need to link and connect to your data is felt by many Internet users. German Commissioner for Data Protection and Information Freedom, Peter Schaar, says users should be able to switch services when the providers change terms and conditions or prices. No one is stopping you from moving, but if you have a lot of data, you might find it is no simple process. In January, the EU released a draft for new data protection regulations. The proposals include the creation of a standard to allow users to transfer data from one service to another across all 27 EU member states. If the regulation is approved by the European Parliament, individuals and companies could benefit. Cloud computing has taken off as an alternative to servers. Data is saved remotely - making it cheaper and more accessible to hold. The European Parliament is expected to vote on the current proposal on data portability in 2014 at the earliest. And if it passes, service providers will have another two years to comply.

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2 July 2012 | Forbes

Earth’s rotation slows, breaks Internet

There’s nothing like a slowdown in the earth’s rotation to ruin a Saturday night. System administrators around the country were called away from dinner dates and gaming sessions on Saturday after an extra second was added to the evening by the world’s timekeepers, causing widespread failure among computers that keep the world’s websites online. Among the sites to have problems: Gawker, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Reddit, StumbleUpon and Yelp, plus countless others. The addition of the so-called “leap second,” wasn’t a surprise. It was scheduled months in advance by the timekeepers at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), whose job it is to make sure the world’s clocks are properly set. The IERS created the leap second in 1972 to keep atomic time aligned with solar time. Since then 25 leap seconds have been added to attomic clocks. The last leap second was added December 31, 2008. At first, leap seconds weren’t a problem. Computers accomodated them by setting their clocks backwards by one second at the end of the day. But growth of the web, and the rise of global Internet companies, made synchronization more crucial.

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2 July 2012 | Reuters

Apple pays USD 60m to settle China iPad trademark dispute

Apple Inc has paid USD 60m to Proview Technology (Shenzhen) to end a dispute over the iPad trademark in China that saw the world's most valuable technology company engaged in a protracted legal tussle with a near-bankrupt Chinese firm. The lawsuit had hampered some sales and delayed the launch of the new iPad in China. Prior to the launch, Proview requested Chinese authorities in scores of Chinese cities to order re-sellers to take all iPads off their shelves. The court-mediated settlement, announced on the website of the Higher People's Court of Guangdong province, will allow Apple to get on with selling its popular tablet PC in one of its most important markets, analysts said. Apple and Proview Technology (Shenzhen), a unit of Hong Kong-listed Proview International Holdings Ltd, have been negotiating to reach a settlement since the court conducted an initial hearing in February, after Apple appealed a lower court ruling against it. The iPad dominates China's tablet PC market with more than 70 percent market share, though Lenovo Group Ltd's Lepads and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd's Galaxy Tabs have been gaining traction.

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2 July 2012 | Reuters

Romania PM plagiarized thesis, panel says

A panel of Romanian academics concluded on Friday that Prime Minister Victor Ponta plagiarized a large part of his doctoral thesis, but Ponta said the finding was politically motivated and he would not resign. Plagiarism charges have forced several European politicians to quit: Hungary's president, a German defense minister who was tipped as a possible successor to Chancellor Angela Merkel, and the man Ponta nominated as education minister. Romania's National Council for Certification of Titles, Diplomas and University Certificates (CNATDCU) said 85 pages of Ponta's thesis were copied, without correct attribution. Earlier in the day, Ponta's leftist government - in power since early May - said the panel must be expanded and new members brought in, which would mean its judgment was invalid. Ponta also said the conclusion was political and illegal. Science magazine Nature last week reported more than half of Ponta's Romanian-language thesis on the International Criminal Court, submitted for his doctorate at the University of Bucharest, consisted of duplicated text. The prime minister has said his only error was to list sources in his bibliography rather than give credit in footnotes and has asked a separate ethics panel to investigate the accusations.

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