A Band Battles Ticketmaster On Sales Fees

US federal trade commission looking into allegations that company’s DoubleClick has illegally promoted Google products The US federal trade commission is investigating whether Google’s DoubleClick advertising subsidiary has illegally pushed customers to buy its other products, the Guardian has established. The regulator is understood to be looking at whether the display advertiser, acquired by Google in 2008 for $3.1bn (£2bn), is being used to muscle clients into buying adverts on other Google advertising properties such as its text-based AdSense. That could constitute “tying”, which is illegal under antitrust law. FTC spokesman Peter Kaplan declined to comment. The Guardian has, however, confirmed that the investigation is under way from other sources with knowledge of the FTC’s work. The FTC, which has a remit to protect consumers, has a number of preliminary investigations under way at any time, many of which are subsequently dropped for lack of evidence or harm. The first sign that it was moving towards a formal investigation would be the issuing of investigative requests to affected companies. The Google investigation is understood to be in its preliminary stages. Reuters reported that the concerns have been raised by rivals who have complained that DoubleClick products such as its ad management system have been used to encourage sites to use other Google products such asAdExchange. An antitrust investigation by the FTC could seriously hamper Google’s freedom to manoeuvre in the advertising market. DoubleClick provides ad targeting based on various criteria. Since the purchase was completed in 2008, the number of players in the online ad market has shrunk. Google had about 15% of America’s $15bn online display advertising market in 2012, ahead of Facebook’s 14.6%, said research firm eMarketer. That’s expected to widen in Google’s favour over the next year. Microsoft famously fell foul of antitrust law in the 1990s, found guilty of illegally tying PC vendors’ ability to buy its Windows operating system to the use of its Internet Explorer browser. That shut out the rival Netscape. Microsoft escaped a direct sanction following an appeal in 2000 but had to submit to antitrust oversight until May 2011. The trial and subsequent consent decree substantially changed Microsoft’s corporate culture – and created the opportunity for Google to emerge with the rise of the internet. Separately, the European commission has yet to decide whether it will accept a number of suggestions made by Google to end an investigation into potential abuse of its search monopoly. Google in April offered a number of concessions relating to search labelling – but rivals who previously complained to the EC indicated they would reject them, which could set back any agreement and might trigger legal action. The FTC has carried out formal investigations against Google a number of times in recent years. In 2011 it investigated its Google Buzz social media system, for which it was bound over for 20 years in March 2011 on privacy-related matters. It then had to pay a $22.5m fine last August for violating that ruling by hacking Apple users’ browsers to track them online. In January, the FTC cleared Google of biasing its search results in its own favour after a two-year formal investigation that ran in parallel with – but separate from – the one in Europe. However, the FTC did slap down Google’s Motorola Mobility (MMI) subsidiary for its attempts to seek injunctions against companies including Apple and Motorola for using its “standards-essential” patents – a decision seen by many as lowering MMI’s overall value, because it reduced the amount that Google could demand for use of its portfolio of 17,500 patents. That weakness in MMI’s patent portfolio was reinforced on Thursday, when a panel at the ITC, which adjudicates on trade disputes over US imports, declined to grant MMI a sales ban against Microsoft’s Xbox, ending a dispute that had gone on since November 2010. Previously a US judge cut to just $1.8m an MMI claim under which it was demanding royalties on a standards-essential patent that would have cost Microsoft billions of dollars annually. The US district court judge argued that having a patent with comparatively small functionality used in a standard should not be an excuse for demanding a “hold-up” rate. In Europe, Apple and Microsoft have both complained to the EC’s antitrust arm – the same one investigating Google’s alleged search bias – about MMI’s use of standards-essential patents to seek injunctions. © Guardian News and Media 2013

President Barack Obama left plenty of ambiguity in new policy guidelines that he says will restrict how and when the U.S. can launch targeted drone strikes, leaving himself significant power over how and when the weapons can be deployed.

High court rules that up to 161 allegedly unlawful killings by British military should be subject of coroner-style hearings A series of public inquests should be held into the deaths of civilians who are alleged to have been killed unlawfully by the British military following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the high court has ruled. In a ground-breaking judgment that could have an impact on how the British military is able to conduct operations among civilians in the future, the court ruled on Friday that up to 161 deaths should be the subject of hearings modelled upon coroners’ inquests. In practice, a series of hearings – possibly amounting to more than 100 – are likely to be held as a result of the judgment, which follows a three-year legal battle on behalf of the Iraqis’ families. Each hearing must involve a “full, fair and fearless investigation accessible to the victim’s families and to the public”, the court ruled, and should examine not only the immediate circumstances but other issues surrounding each death. As a first step, the court ordered Philip Hammond, the defence secretary, to announce within six weeks whether any of the deaths are to result in prosecutions, or to explain any further delays over prosecuting decisions. After years of judicial review proceedings, and in the face of determined opposition from the Ministry of Defence, which appeared anxious to maintain control over any investigative process, the court concluded that hearings modelled upon coroners’ inquests were the best way for the British authorities to meet their obligations under article 2 of the European convention on human rights (ECHR), which protects the right to life. The court rejected calls for a single public inquiry to be held to examine British military detention and interrogation practices during the six-year occupation of the south-east of Iraq, on the grounds that such an inquiry would take too long and cost too much. The first public hearings are expected to focus on 11 cases in which civilians died in British military custody. These will be followed by public examinations of other incidents in which civilians died – often in circumstances that were unclear or are disputed – but where it is alleged that British personnel used unlawful force. The court also ruled that this should be just the start of the process by which public hearings will examine the alleged misconduct of some members of the British armed forces who served in Iraq. Following the completion of the Article 2 hearings – into allegedly unlawful killings – further hearings should be established in order to meet the UK’s obligations under Article 3 of the ECHR, the court said. These will inquire into allegations of torture and lesser mistreatment of individuals detained by British troops in Iraq, focusing on a sample of the most serious of the 700-plus cases in which such allegations have been made. In December last year the MoD said it had paid out £14m in compensation and costs to 205 Iraqis who alleged unlawful imprisonment and mistreatment, and that it was negotiating a further 196 payments. Several hundred more claims were expected to be lodged. Many of the hearings that examine allegations of torture and mistreatment are expected to shed light on the activities of a British interrogation unit known as the Joint Forward Interrogation Team, whose personnel, drawn from all three branches of the services, appear to have received training in the abuse of prisoners. The deaths in custody include those of a number of teenagers who drowned after allegedly being pushed into canals. In another case, an RAF police investigation into the death of a man who was allegedly kicked to death while on board an RAF helicopter failed to establish the cause of death, or even the dead man’s name. A Guardian investigation established that there were concerns that MoD officials may have interfered with the initial investigation because they feared a prosecution could lead to the discovery that the dead man – and large numbers of other prisoners – were being ferried to a secret interrogation centre that had been concealed from both British army lawyers and the Red Cross. A third case concerns a mother who was shot and wounded in November 2006 when troops raided her home. She was certified dead on arrival at a first aid post, and her body was later dumped at the side of a road in a British army body bag. Several other victims died after being detained for interrogation, and are thought to have been beaten to death in a manner similar to that of Baha Mousa, the Basra hotel receptionist who was murdered by British soldiers in September 2003. The court said it had examined “allegations of the most serious kind involving murder, manslaughter, the wilful infliction of serious bodily injury, sexual indignities, cruel inhuman and degrading treatment and large scale violation of international humanitarian law”. The judgment from Sir John Thomas, president of the Queen’s Bench Division, and Mr Justice Silber, added that there was evidence to support claims that some of the abuse had been systemic, and questioned whether responsibility for poor training and a failure to investigate promptly lay with senior officers and figures in government. Many of the cases have been under investigation for a number of years by a body known as the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (Ihat), which is made up of retired civilian detectives and service police, answering to an MoD panel. The court ruled that Ihat was an independent body, and rejected completely claims made by a former Ihat official-turned-whistleblower, who had dismissed it as a face-saving exercise. Nevertheless, the judgment concluded, Ihat was not capable of examining the instructions, training and supervision of troops, and the way in which this is alleged to have led to the abuse. Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the Iraqis, said: “My clients welcome, at last, the opportunities for accountability flowing from the judgment. “I trust that the various and troubling systemic issues emerging from these cases will lead to further reforms following the Baha Mousa inquiry report of September 2011. The secretary of state must ensure that UK forces abroad respect and apply the rule of law.” An MoD spokesperson said: “We welcome the court’s finding that Ihat is independent and carries out its duties with competence and integrity. We are also pleased that the court has agreed that the secretary of state was justified in concluding that a single comprehensive public inquiry into allegations of abuse in Iraq should not be established. This would have led to unnecessary expense and unacceptable delay. “Ihat continues to make progress in its task of investigating allegations which have been made against British troops serving in Iraq.” © Guardian News and Media 2013

No one answered the tax-help hotline at the IRS. Forget about getting advice on avoiding foreclosures at any of the Housing and Urban Development offices nationwide.

Paula Broadwell speaks publicly for the first time about the extramarital affair that led to the CIA director’s resignation The woman whose affair with David Petraeus cost the four-star general his job as CIA director has spoken of her remorse over her role in the scandal. Six months after Paula Broadwell’s personal relationship with her subject became public knowledge, she has given her fullest comments yet regarding the extramarital relationship. “I have remorse for the harm that this has caused, the sadness it has caused in my family and other families and for causes that we belong to,” she told North Carolina news channel WSOC-TV. She went on to credit her husband for standing by her. The comments come two months after Petraeus publicly apologised for his part in the affair, which led to his resignation from the CIA in November. Speaking at the University of Southern California’s annual Reserve Officers’ Training corps dinner in March, the former CIA director prefaced his address with: “Please allow me to begin my remarks this evening by reiterating how deeply I regret and apologise for the circumstances that led me to resign from the CIA and caused such pain for my family, friends and supporters.” His affair with Broadwell was discovered as part of an FBI investigation into emails she had sent to another woman, seemingly under the impression that the recipient was a rival for Petraeus’s affections. The resulting scandal toppled him from his post at the CIA. In a resignation message to staff, Petraeus admitted to displaying poor judgement in conducting the affair. He added: “Such behaviour in unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organisation such as ours.” For her part, Broadwell has said little publicly about the affair. Earlier this month at a YMCA prayer breakfast in Charlotte she did admit to making “some mistakes in the past”. She elaborated on this during Friday’s interview. Meanwhile Petraeus has begun his post-government life, taking on a part-time teaching role at the University of Southern California. © Guardian News and Media 2013