The case followed complaints by Microsoft and others over Google’s treatment of rivals’ web services in its search results. These companies argue that Google favors its own services, which are not clearly marked as such, and also that it unfairly locks advertisers onto its platform and scrapes content from third-party search and comparison sites without consent.

A recent leak outlined the terms of the proposed settlement deal, but here’s the official version:

To address these concerns, Google offers for a period of 5 years to:

(i) – label promoted links to its own specialised search services so that users can distinguish them from natural web search results,
- clearly separate these promoted links from other web search results by clear graphical features (such as a frame), and
- display links to three rival specialised search services close to its own services, in a place that is clearly visible to users,

(ii) – offer all websites the option to opt-out from the use of all their content in Google’s specialised search services, while ensuring that any opt-out does not unduly affect the ranking of those web sites in Google’s general web search results,
- offer all specialised search web sites that focus on product search or local search the option to mark certain categories of information in such a way that such information is not indexed or used by Google,
- provide newspaper publishers with a mechanism allowing them to control on a web page per web page basis the display of their content in Google News,

(iii) no longer include in its agreements with publishers any written or unwritten obligations that would require them to source online search advertisements exclusively from Google, and

(iv) no longer impose obligations that would prevent advertisers from managing search advertising campaigns across competing advertising platforms.

Authorities in the U.S. more-or-less cleared Google over similar complaints, but it’s important to note that Google’s share of the search market there is around 67 percent, whereas in the E.U, it’s around 90 percent. This gives it stronger market power in Europe, and forces the regulators’ hand somewhat (as do local laws).

A Q&A document, which outlines the Commission’s concerns in detail, points out that “it does not seem likely that another web search service will replace [Google] as European users’ web search service of choice.”

“In this context, it is important for the Commission to intervene in order to ensure that Google’s prominent market position in web search does not affect the possibility for other competitors to innovate in neighbouring markets, including in the long-term,” the document states.

“We are looking for highly motivated individuals with the right mix of technical, organizational and communication skills to provide localization for the Netflix experience in the following languages: Turkish, Dutch, Hindi, French, and Korean.”

The company is also looking for an engineer to be the internationalization and localization evangelist at the company, further highlighting how important international markets are for Netflix.

Netflix has occasionally looked to hire employees to help with its internationalization efforts in the past, and job postings frequently contain countries that the company may not consider at all, just to make things less transparent for competitors. For example, in late 2011, a job offer listed “Turkish, Dutch, Russian, French, Hindi, German, Italian, Danish, Korean, Finnish, Japanese, and Spanish” as languages of interest.

Needless to say, Netflix hasn’t launched in Russia just yet. However, nine months after that job posting, the company announced plans to open shop in Northern Europe – including Finland and Denmark.

It’s very likely that South Korea, India and European countries such as the Netherlands, France and Belgium are at least under consideration as potential targets for further international expansion. Turkey seems less likely, but it’s certainly possible – the country has a thriving TV and movie industry, and it has seen an economic boom even as other parts of Europe have struggled.

Netflix is currently operating in over 40 countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, the Nordics, Latin America and Canada. It might take some time until we find out where Netflix will go next: executives said earlier this year that the company won’t embark on any further international expansions until late 2013 or early 2014. However, CEO Reed Hastings and CFO David Wells also made it clear that they definitely want to expand further, writing in their letter to shareholders:

“Our launch in the Nordics was very successful, confirming our belief in the large international opportunity for our service.”

Map courtesy of Flickr user kcp4911.

This week Tamiz made wave with an appeal against Google, which he was trying to sue over defamatory comments about him made on Blogger posting. In a case that goes back to 2011, Tamiz had argued that Google was effectively the publisher of a series of comments calling him, falsely, a thief and a drug dealer, and should have deleted them as soon as they were made aware of them. Google did delete the comments, but only after a five week gap.

Tamiz is familiar with online controversy: one reason he was a lightning rod for angry comments in the first place was because, he stepped down as a local election candidate in 2011 after calling Margate’s women “sluts” on Facebook. And so, when he did not originally win his case — the first judge ruling that Google was not the publisher of the comments — he appealed to a higher court. There Google’s inaction was found to be troubling, though it did not actually overturn the libel ruling itself.

As the Financial Times reported:

Although Lord Justice Richards and Lord Justice Sullivan agreed with the original ruling that Google was not the primary or secondary publisher of the content it hosted, they said it was “at least arguable that some point after notification Google became liable for continued publication of the material”.

The Lords Justice likened the situation to a 1930s court case in which a golf club was held responsible for defamatory material left on its noticeboard because it failed to remove it after it was notified.

Cue the shrill sound of the press screeching into action. “Blogger.com libel case opens door for internet giant being required to monitor users’ posts”, squealed the Daily Mail with barely contained delight. Except, as it outlines in the story, the headline is essentially trolling — Tamiz was denied his libel claim and asked to pay 50 percent of Google’s legal costs: likely to be a tidy sum. And it’s a stretch to suggest, as much commentary does, that this is another step towards internet regulation — asking a company to respond to notices of illegal content may not be popular (just see the DMCA) but it is reasonable to expect them to comply with local jurisdiction.

Still, Tamiz — and the kerfuffle around his case — does show the amount of energy being expended around online libel in Britain right now.

Defamation laws in the U.K. are notoriously harsh, in large part because they lean in favor of the plaintiff and put the burden of proof on the defendant: it’s a case of “prove your comments were true” rather than “prove their comments were false”.

And the precedent for defamation in online publishing stretches back 15 years, to the case of Godfrey v Demon Internet Service, in which a physics lecturer sued an ISP over comments made in a Usenet group it hosted: the ISP settled the case, because a pre-trial ruling intimated that it was potentially culpable since, despite knowledge of the situation, refused to act for 10 days. Although the award was small — just £15,000 in 1997, the equivalent of around $33,000 today — it has laid the groundwork in Britain.

It’s one major reason many media companies employ battalions of comment moderators, and carefully police the comment threads on their own stories.

But remember, we are all media companies now. And that means that we are all open to the same set of rules. There have also been plenty of high-profile cases on Twitter and Facebook against individual users, but so far there has not been much success in taking on platform providers themselves. Just last week a judge in Northern Ireland ruled that while anonymous comments made on Facebook were defamatory, Facebook itself was not liable.

Still, with Godfrey in the background and more and more cases coming along, you can understand why people see Tamiz’s case as another push at a brick in the wall between platforms and publishing.

Yes, everyone’s a media company now: and eventually that will go for Google, Facebook, Twitter and the rest as much as it does you and me.

The update got pushed out on Wednesday, with one of its new features being a beta ad-blocker. And, according to multiple apoplectic sources, the ad-blocker is turned on by default, once the user resets their set-top box.

As the Rude Baguette blog has noted, savvy users can switch the whitelist-free ad-blocking service off through the online FreeBox management portal. Others have also pointed out that the ad-blocking doesn’t actually work very well, although it is partially effective (that’ll be why they call it a beta version then). There’s also the fact that many people already employ ad-blocking plugins on the client side.

Just to be as fair as possible to Free here, it’s not yet clear whether the ISP actually meant to have the feature turn itself on as a default – again, betas are buggy. I’ve also asked Free for comment, without success.

So, assuming that this was an intentional move… wow. The irony of the situation is just stunning. For this is the same Free that is being investigated by the French telecoms regulator over its alleged treatment of YouTube traffic.

If Free really is intentionally degrading or blocking YouTube – a matter for the regulator ARCEP to determine – then its actions are one of the clearest violations yet of the net neutrality principle. And why do ISPs violate net neutrality? Generally because they either want to throttle a competitor to their own services, or they want to use traffic degradation as leverage in their ongoing quest to get high-volume traffic sources to pay them money.

And how do high-volume traffic sources make money? Uh, advertising, which is still pretty much the lifeblood of the online content industry, at least for now. It’s too early to draw conclusions about what’s intended here, but the fallout of Free’s new beta feature should be quite entertaining to watch.

Major Flemish- and French-language newspaper publishers, magazine publishers and three TV broadcasters in the country have teamed to use Media ID, a common platform for user registration and management, reports the national De Morgen.

Created by Flemish government-funded innovation research institute iMinds, which claims to have “mobilized the Flemish media sector on an unprecedented scale”, launch is penciled in for an April test, followed by a September full launch.

Media ID appears primarily to be created for registration, allowing publishers to better understand and profile individual consumers. Publishers in the last couple of years have become more interested in leveraging data about their readers — although services like Facebook, Google  and Twitter let users log in to such third-party sites, those sites do not own all the user data.

But Media ID also supports payment. In keeping with the current global trend, participating media houses will variously begin limiting free access to web content and requiring payment for more of it.

Both Corelio and Persgroep will stop republishing articles from their newspapers online for free. Broadcaster Vlaamse Media Maatschappij will use Media ID to power part of its iWatch catch-up TV service, Pond has confirmed it will use it to charge micropayments for episodes and VRT wants to leverage Media ID to offer viewers customisation but not charges.

Sticking together

Such industry-wide cooperation is more common in some non-English-speaking countries than in markets like the UK, where animosity between intensely competitive publishers reigns and previously scuppered a News Corporation attempt — labeled Project Alesia — to build a common paid digital news aggregator.

We have already seen the Project Piano payment system launch to provide paid access to small parts of publishers sites’ with one bill in Slovenia, Slovakia and Poland, albeit with few indications of large-scale success.

But initiatives like Media ID in Belgium appear to have created consensus in a country that is itself divided between Flemish- and French-speaking regions.

In 2012, Belgian papers launched GoPress, a jointly-owned kiosk for delivering digital editions of newspapers and magazines for individual prices. Media ID would extend their digital payments cooperation to web content.

Google as giver

And the publishers’ recent supposed victory over Google creates the conditions for their increased chance of success.

In 2007, a court ruled that Google did not have the right to run story excerpts Belgian newspapers’ websites. Google duly pulled the newspaper sites’ out of Google News — ironically, much to their chagrin. They later struck an agreement to restore that content in mid-2011 despite ongoing tensions.

But in December the sides reached a new agreement in which Google will pay the publishers €5 million, supposedly through advertising on their properties, in order to settle the dispute. This means that, whilst newspapers’ excerpts will remain accessible on Google News, publishers are monetising their Google relationship on two fronts — both in income from Google and through the traffic that exposure through Google will bring to their soon-to-be-paid websites.

Ironically, however, part of the agreed olive branch was Google’s assistance in powering paywalls and subscription models for the papers — likely using its Google Wallet system. Now it seems the publishers are picking their own vendor.

Whilst China’s Twitter clones have flourished, as it approaches its first anniversary, Mail.ru’s Futubra is to be closed. According to a message on the website:

“Every day since launch, we have improved and developed Futubru.Unfortunately, this was not enough for sustainable growth of the project. So, we decided to close the project.

“For us, it was a great experiment, and the knowledge gained in the course of it is extremely valuable. Our team has switched to new projects, which you will hear about in the future.”

Figures for Futubra’s user based are not available. East-West: “Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin had publicly conceded this past July that Futubra’s audience was not meeting expectations.”

What is known is that Grishin and Mail.ru’s largest shareholder Alisher Usmanov are hoping to add to their 39.9 percent stake in leading Russian social network Vkonakte (VK).

“If there is a reasonable market opportunity, we plan to increase our share in Vkontakte. Concrete negotiations are being held on a continuing basis … and we’ll [soon] reach our goals,” Usmanov said last week (via East-West).

“We are interested in acquiring any [additional] stake in Vkontakte. I believe in this company, which will be the phenomenon of the Russian internet.”

Some of the measures are terrifically obvious, none more so than the legalization of format-shifting – yes, copying music from a CD to your iPhone is still technically illegal in the UK, although no-one gets prosecuted for it.

Others bring the UK much closer to the U.S. fair use system. For example, a copyright exemption will now be brought in for parody, caricature and pastiche. In other words, stuff like that Newport State Of Mind parody will no longer be illegal. Witness the tentative relief of Rob Manuel, the man behind the hilarious and usually NSFW B3ta:

Has the Government made B3ta / photoshopping (sort of) legal? Yay. Huzzah.news.bis.gov.uk/Press-Releases…

— Rob Manuel (@robmanuel) December 20, 2012

Bafflingly, the government says it will “allow limited copying on a fair dealing basis which would allow genuine parody, but prohibit copying disguised as parody”. The Intellectual Property Office, which the reforms will put in charge of “clarifying areas where there is confusion or misunderstanding on the scope and application of copyright law”, clearly needs something to keep it busy.

The reforms should have a big impact on the educational and research sectors. Again with some absurdity, the current IP regime makes it legally risky for teachers to show copyrighted material over interactive whiteboards and distance-learning systems – this will be fixed, as will the ban on allowing the copying of sound recordings, films and broadcasts for private study and non-commercial research.

Don’t go thinking this is exactly like the U.S. fair use system, though. As a spokesperson for the government’s business department handily spelt it out for me:

“The proposals to reform UK copyright exceptions include a number of specific exceptions which are limited by a requirement that any use of the exception be fair dealing. This is not the same as the US ‘fair use’ approach which allows a broad range of unspecified uses as long as they are fair.”

Still, much closer than before. There’s good news too for people with disabilities: the reform gives them the right to “obtain copyright works in accessible formats” if an accessible version isn’t already on the market.

And for those doing big data research? The reforms will also “allow non-commercial researchers to use computers to study published research results and other data without copyright law interfering”.

“Making the intellectual property framework fit for the 21st century is not only common sense but good business sense. Bringing the law into line with ordinary people’s reasonable expectations will boost respect for copyright, on which our creative industries rely,” business secretary Vince Cable said in a statement.

“We feel we have struck the right balance between improving the way consumers benefit from copyright works they have legitimately paid for, boosting business opportunities and protecting the rights of creators.”

Which is very true. If you’re trying to get people to stop unlawfully copying stuff, as is the case with the UK government, you’ll want to legalize the kinds of copying that people don’t even know are illegal. It’s a lot easier to sell a system that makes sense.

The government also reckons that the changes will contribute “at least £500m” ($813m) to the UK economy over the next 10 years. I suspect that precise figure has been pulled out of someone’s posterior, but the research implications alone should generate significant value.

We have recognized that fact for some years now — but France’s lead is getting greater and greater. Now over a quarter of French homes’ primary TV sets receives an IPTV service, according to IDATE and other data crunched by U.K. communications regulator Ofcom’s International Communications Market Report 2012.

That compares with a measly five percent in the U.S. and below one percent in the U.K.

Why is France forging ahead? The relative slow adoption elsewhere is “due in part to the challenges of gaining a foothold in the face of a range of well-established competing digital platforms,” Ofcom said.

That is, many countries beside France already have strong broadcasting ecosystems with major pay-TV operators offering a multitude of content. In France, pay-TV only began over digital networks, which support wider choice, in 2005. But most French ADSL providers offer digital TV through internet-enabled set-top boxes.

Non-Francophones should not fret, however. The French may have more IPTV-enabled main sets — but that doesn’t mean they use internet video more than the rest of us.

According to Ofcom research, only 13 percent of French consumers use the internet to watch TV on a weekly basis. That’s less than 17 percent in the U.S. and almost half as many as do so in the world-beating U.K.

Says Ofcom: “This is probably driven by the popularity in the U.K. of internet TV catch-up services from the free-to-air broadcasters, such as BBC iPlayer, 4oD and ITV Player.”

The gap between France’s leading IPTV penetration and the U.K.’s leading internet TV viewing habit is explained by the relative higher attractiveness of actual internet broadcast content, and because many British viewers are using the web, not TV, to watch internet TV.

As adoption of internet-connected TVs grows, much of that consumption is likely to move from the desktop to the big screen. But whether actual French consumption of internet video grows in lock-step remains to be seen…

And now Last.fm is cutting back even further on playing tunes, as it struggles to turn a profit for owner CBS.

The service, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary currently, will in 2013 require subscription for the “radio” features of its desktop client in the US, UK and Germany, and will stop offering the service elsewhere in the world except Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and Brazil (announcement). Curiously, web radio will remain free.

A CBS VP with Last.fm oversight told me in 2010 it hoped to turn a profit that year, but we have since received no confirmation, when asked, that has yet happened.

Last.fm introduced the £3-a-month subscriptions belatedly in March 2009 as it dawned on the industry that ad-supported music streaming could not support online businesses in the same way it does traditional radio. A year later, it abandoned on-demand music streaming — the most costly of all to license.

Instead, Last.fm is happy to advise users to listen instead through services like Spotify, which have overtaken it in the sexy stakes and inside which Last.fm now even has an app of its own. At the end of the day, why shouldn’t Last.fm charge for the same kind of service Pandora does?

With less and less music — at least, free music — Last.fm is reverting to its original core concept of tracking listening habits (or, “scrobbling”) and making connections through the data. The site is celebrating its tenth birthday by outputting historic artist and track popularity data as charts in press releases. Like a 90s boy band reforming for one last tour, if there were a more potent illustration that much of the value of Last.fm  – which CBS acquired for $280 million in 2007 — is in the past, I don’t know what it would be.

But this diminished focus is, at the same time, joyous — for, connecting data about songs and their listeners has always been Last.fm’s strong suit…

• Any lapsed Last.fm users like me who revisit the site today will find the recommendations and gig listings based on their listening habits are excellent.
• When experienced inside Spotify, Last.fm’s recommendations are one of the best things about the Swedish music player, which has lacked meaningful discovery features until last week’s upgrade announcement.
• Meanwhile, the Xbox Last.fm app, free for those who subscribe to a Gold Xbox Live membership, is an excellent way to program eclectic music during parties.

Last.fm’s radio subscriptions may keep ticking over with perhaps a couple of hundred thousand subscribers. But now it’s probably time to mine the music data, not the music itself, to find Last.fm’s real value.

But, as more and more consumer commerce is carried out online through etailers that operate independently, how can customers gauge sellers’ trustworthiness?

That is a problem Denmark-based Trustpilot has been trying to crack in Europe since it was founded in 2007. And now it is taking on a further €10 million ($13 million) to fund entry to the United States (announcement).

The money comes from Index Ventures, which is joining previous  backers SEED Capital Denmark and Northzone, which gave €4.5 million a year ago and which think Trustpilot’s method of letting buyers rate and review merchants will be big. CEO Peter Mühlmann writes that he wants to double staff from over 100 in the next year.

Trustpilot says: “The benefit for businesses using Trustpilot is that they can backtrack each customer review to the transaction on which the review is based. This helps businesses pinpoint where and how to improve customer satisfaction.”

But, as it tries to unlock the large US market, the outfit may nevertheless still face challenges at home. Despite operating in the UK, France, Germany, Netherlands and Italy, I have never heard of it; it simply would not have occurred to me to use it to find trustworthy sellers.

That means it is starting from a lower base in the States. But Trustpilot also supplies reviews to Google product search pages — a place where people are more likely to see them.

But Trustpilot claims merchants who display its reviews on their site can increase purchase conversions by 20 percent. Its focus on providing value to businesses through highlighting positive reviews seems to take second place to providing a service to consumers.

The service claims to have garnered over six million reviews of over 100,000 merchants.