We’re just hours away from Apple’s big iPhone event and it looks like the company may have leaked its own news. AllThings.how spotted the names of future Apple products on Apple’s own website.
According to AllThings.how, Apple updated the product sidemap file minutes before taking the Apple Store down to add the new product pages. And this sitemap pointed to pages of unreleased products.
In particular, you could see links to products pages for the iPhone Xs, the iPhone Xs Max and the iPhone Xr. It lines up with previous rumors.
According to previous rumors, Apple is going to update the iPhone X with better components. In addition to this rumored iPhone Xs, there will be a bigger version of this device — a gigantic 6.5-inch iPhone Xs Max. Finally, Apple is going to replace the iPhone 8 with the iPhone Xr, a 6.1-inch device with an LCD display and a design inspired by the iPhone X.
Based on this sitemap file, the iPhone Xs and Xs Max should come in space gray, silver or gold. You’ll get to choose between 64GB, 256GB and 512GB. The iPhone Xr should be available in black, white, red, yellow, coral or blue. Storage starts at 64GB as well, and you can pay a bit more to get 128GB or 256GB of storage.
In addition to iPhone names, the updated XML file contains interesting information about the new Apple Watch. A previous leaked image obtained by 9to5Mac showed a new edge-to-edge display.
And it looks like the Apple Watch display will be slightly larger indeed. According to today’s leak, the small Apple Watch will feature a 40mm display (instead of 38mm). The bigger version will sports a 44mm display (instead of 42mm). It doesn’t sound like a huge increase, but you should also see an improved screen resolution.
Finally, the sitemap doesn’t indicate any change in the iPad and Mac lineups. Maybe Apple won’t mention those products at all. The company might also talk about updates that will be available later this year. Or Apple could unveil updated devices in the coming months.
Again, this is just a sidemap and it doesn’t necessarily reflect the final names of those products. But given the timing of this leak, it sounds more than plausible.
Women in tech are not only significantly under-funded by venture capitalists, but they also often lack access to the early-stage support granted to their male counterparts.
To enroll in a startup accelerator like Y Combinator, for example, its expected founders relocate to the Bay Area for three months. Women, who are more often caregivers, might not be able to do that, and even if they can, the program may not cater to their specific needs.
Female Founders Alliance (FFA), a relatively new network of female startup founders, has built a free, non-dilutive 5-week accelerator for women by women. Called ‘Ready, Set, Raise,’ its goal is to help more female-founded startups raise VC through workshops, 1-on-1 coaching, legal clinics, communications and speech coaching and more. The accelerator, sponsored by Trilogy Equity Partners, kicked off at the end of August and will culminate with a private demo day with VCs in Seattle on September 27th.
“I don’t know many women who can uproot their families for three months to go live in another city,” FFA founder Leslie Feinzaig told TechCrunch. “When I was working on my company, I wanted to apply to Y Combinator but I was a new mom, it was 100% a non-starter.”
Feinzaig knows the trials and tribulations of raising VC as a female entrepreneur all too well. As the founder of an edtech startup called Venture Kits, she tried, unsuccessfully, to procure venture backing. That struggle is why she started FFA, which began as a Facebook group to connect female founders in the Seattle area but has expanded across North America.
The accelerator is designed to allow founders to tune into the programming remotely. Participants are only required to be on-site in Seattle, where FFA is based, for one week, during which the organization is providing free housing and childcare.
“I know it seems to people like there’s a lot happening around female founders and diverse founders, but in the context of the size and scale of that gender gap, we are barely getting started,” Feinzaig said. “We need all the accelerators. We need hundreds of funds. We are nowhere close to making a real dent in equal leadership.”
Today, FFA is announcing their inaugural class of startups, eight in total. Here’s a closer look at the group:
Chanlogic: Based in Seattle, the SaaS startup provides a product for e-commerce channel managers.
Esq.Me Inc.: A Portland-based document marketplace for lawyers created by lawyers.
Future Sight AR: A Houston-based AR product for engineering, procurement and construction companies.
geeRemit: Based in Raleigh, the startup leverages the blockchain to power remittances to Africa.
Magic AI: A Seattle-based AI startup for livestock care.
MoxieReader: Based in New York, an edtech startup focused on improving child literacy through tech.
Pandere Shoes: Based in Anchorage, the startup is creating expandable shoes.
Zeta Help: A San Francisco-based financial support platform for millennial couples.
Women in tech are not only significantly under-funded by venture capitalists, but they also often lack access to the early-stage support granted to their male counterparts.
To enroll in a startup accelerator like Y Combinator, for example, its expected founders relocate to the Bay Area for three months. Women, who are more often caregivers, might not be able to do that, and even if they can, the program may not cater to their specific needs.
Female Founders Alliance (FFA), a relatively new network of female startup founders, has built a free, non-dilutive 5-week accelerator for women by women. Called ‘Ready, Set, Raise,’ its goal is to help more female-founded startups raise VC through workshops, 1-on-1 coaching, legal clinics, communications and speech coaching and more. The accelerator, sponsored by Trilogy Equity Partners, kicked off at the end of August and will culminate with a private demo day with VCs in Seattle on September 27th.
“I don’t know many women who can uproot their families for three months to go live in another city,” FFA founder Leslie Feinzaig told TechCrunch. “When I was working on my company, I wanted to apply to Y Combinator but I was a new mom, it was 100% a non-starter.”
Feinzaig knows the trials and tribulations of raising VC as a female entrepreneur all too well. As the founder of an edtech startup called Venture Kits, she tried, unsuccessfully, to procure venture backing. That struggle is why she started FFA, which began as a Facebook group to connect female founders in the Seattle area but has expanded across North America.
The accelerator is designed to allow founders to tune into the programming remotely. Participants are only required to be on-site in Seattle, where FFA is based, for one week, during which the organization is providing free housing and childcare.
“I know it seems to people like there’s a lot happening around female founders and diverse founders, but in the context of the size and scale of that gender gap, we are barely getting started,” Feinzaig said. “We need all the accelerators. We need hundreds of funds. We are nowhere close to making a real dent in equal leadership.”
Today, FFA is announcing their inaugural class of startups, eight in total. Here’s a closer look at the group:
Chanlogic: Based in Seattle, the SaaS startup provides a product for e-commerce channel managers.
Esq.Me Inc.: A Portland-based document marketplace for lawyers created by lawyers.
Future Sight AR: A Houston-based AR product for engineering, procurement and construction companies.
geeRemit: Based in Raleigh, the startup leverages the blockchain to power remittances to Africa.
Magic AI: A Seattle-based AI startup for livestock care.
MoxieReader: Based in New York, an edtech startup focused on improving child literacy through tech.
Pandere Shoes: Based in Anchorage, the startup is creating expandable shoes.
Zeta Help: A San Francisco-based financial support platform for millennial couples.
Becoming an angel investor is simple in principle: have money and invest. Unfortunately for many of the smartest founders in the startup ecosystem, that requirement can prove a complete block on investing in the companies they see day after day, since early liquidity can be hard to find for founders.
Spearhead was launched earlier this year with a mandate to identify promising startup founders and give them cash to invest in startups autonomously. The brainchild of AngelList’s Naval Ravikant and Accomplice’s Jeff Fagnan, the program identifies promising startup founders and provides them with $200,000 of investible capital, and potentially $1 million. It also sets them up with the right legal entities to invest.
Ravikant explained to me that Fagnan and him designed Spearhead to be very different from the scout programs offered by venture firms. “This is the first program that is trying to turn you into a capitalist, and not a laborer,” he explained. “Unlike a traditional scout program, we are not training scouts, we are building full-fledged VCs … [The founders] are not getting a slice of carry in a fund, they are getting carry in their own funds.” He emphasized that “this is really about teaching, learning, and scaling the craft of investing.”
Training founders to be angels is a competitive space, with First Round offering an “Angel Track” program that teaches founders and emerging investors the ropes of investing. What makes Spearhead unique is the program’s capital commitment — you don’t just learn to make investments, you actually get a pool of capital by which to invest from.
Since Spearhead creates independent funds for its members, the founders in Spearhead are free to raise additional capital from outside investors and expand their funds beyond Spearhead’s initial seed capital.
Founders investing in founders
Fagnan noted he had some “sleepless nights” as he and Ravikant designed Spearhead. “Just because we put people in this program, we didn’t know if they are going to write a check,” he said. That was particularly true since “we definitely skewed toward people who didn’t consider themselves angels.” Being an operator and being an angel investor require very different skillsets and knowledge, and it wasn’t clear at all that founders could context-switch easily.
The good news: they can. So far, the first cohort has made roughly 50 seed investments into startups, mostly at the pre-seed and seed stages.
One major surprise with the first cohort is that the founders were much more sophisticated about venture capital dynamics than expected. “What we got wrong, we thought we would spoon-feed venture 101,” Fagnan said. But instead, during office hours, “it’s almost the same level of discussion as the principals and partners at Accomplice.”
I talked with six of the founders in the program about their experience. One pattern that came up consistently in my chats is that these founders have all had to go through their own venture capital fundraises, and they wanted to share their lessons learned with other founders to help them succeed and be the kind of venture capitalist that they needed for their own businesses.
For instance, Alice Zhang at Verge Genomics explained that she hoped to use her angel fund to bridge the gap between traditional life sciences investors and a new wave of healthtech startups that are led by computer scientists. “I have a thesis that there will be an explosion of companies that are going to be at the intersection of technology and the life sciences,” she said, but venture capitalists targeting the industry don’t fully see that emerging pattern yet. “I’m spending a lot of time on weekends helping founders in this space.” So far, she has invested in two companies.
That intention to help other founders in a focused industry also applied to Noah Ready Campbell at Ready Robotics, who says that when it comes to robotics investing, “a lot of things that were impossible five years ago are possible now.” He saw an opportunity to use his fund to “help participate in the robotics community in the Bay Area” and accelerate the industry. He’s invested in four companies so far, typically with $50k checks.
For others though, it’s less about industry and more about who they know. Alex MacCaw, a well-known JavaScript developer, former Stripe engineer, and founder of Clearbit, told me that a large component of his dealflow is “a bunch of ex-Stripes which I call the Stripe mafia.” He invests very early, and “sometimes there isn’t even a domain name, but I do it based on the fact that I know the founder pretty well.” He’s done five deals so far.
Building an affinity network
The founders of Spearhead (Image from Spearhead)
Beyond investing in other startups, the founders in the program also emphasized that they are learning from each other. Spearhead hosts a variety of in-person get-togethers, and also holds regular office hours to allow the founders to ask questions and get feedback on their deals from Ravikant and Fagnan, as well as Accomplice’s Cack Wilhelm and AngeList’s Jake Zeller.
Prasanna Sankar, who was director of engineering at Zenefits and left with Zenefits co-founder Parker Conrad to create Rippling, said that one of the biggest things he has had to learn is the difference between angel investing and stock market investing. “We don’t make an investment for the price, so it is like the opposite of the stock market,” he said. “If you are a new angel, it would take five years to have these experiences… but these guys can fast-track your exposure to these things.” He has invested in five startups, mostly at $25k checks and with one at $50k.
Ankur Nagpal at Teachable emphasized that learning from the other founders in the cohort didn’t just train him on being a better angel investor, but also how to operate his business better. “Everyone operates so differently,” he said, and talking with others helped him learn “not just what you should be doing, but also about how you are different from other businesses.”
Fagnan noted that a large priority in the first cohort was geographical representation, and he expected that Spearhead would design its next cohort to have “fewer people taking deeper accountability to each other.”
The next-generation of venture capitalists?
For Ravikant and Fagnan, the dream of their program was to create the next-generation of competent and committed angel investors scattered around the country. They have certainly gotten that plan underway, but the question is how far will these cohort members go in their investing careers?
Many founders I talked to insisted that their focus remains 100% on their companies, and that angel investing as just a side passion. Outside of MacCaw at Clerabit, almost no one was intending to scale up their funds beyond the initial seed capital, and even MacCaw was just looking to have a little more cash to invest since he has already invested his whole fund.
Ultimately, that might play well for Spearhead, since one of the challenges of traditional venture capital funds is their increasing scale. Ravikant noted that the sort of pre-seed checks that these investors are writing are hard for venture capital firms to do given their size.
Sankar said that “I always thought that Silicon Valley startup as an asset class is one of the most undervalued and underrated.” That seems to match Ravikant’s entire mantra, who told me that “I want to quintuple down on [Spearhead].” He hopes that more of his founders can build distinguished track records, and become the leading angel investors of their generation. We hope that they are “going to be bigger than Naval and Jeff sometime, and if not, then we have failed.”
Becoming an angel investor is simple in principle: have money and invest. Unfortunately for many of the smartest founders in the startup ecosystem, that requirement can prove a complete block on investing in the companies they see day after day, since early liquidity can be hard to find for founders.
Spearhead was launched earlier this year with a mandate to identify promising startup founders and give them cash to invest in startups autonomously. The brainchild of AngelList’s Naval Ravikant and Accomplice’s Jeff Fagnan, the program identifies promising startup founders and provides them with $200,000 of investible capital, and potentially $1 million. It also sets them up with the right legal entities to invest.
Ravikant explained to me that Fagnan and him designed Spearhead to be very different from the scout programs offered by venture firms. “This is the first program that is trying to turn you into a capitalist, and not a laborer,” he explained. “Unlike a traditional scout program, we are not training scouts, we are building full-fledged VCs … [The founders] are not getting a slice of carry in a fund, they are getting carry in their own funds.” He emphasized that “this is really about teaching, learning, and scaling the craft of investing.”
Training founders to be angels is a competitive space, with First Round offering an “Angel Track” program that teaches founders and emerging investors the ropes of investing. What makes Spearhead unique is the program’s capital commitment — you don’t just learn to make investments, you actually get a pool of capital by which to invest from.
Since Spearhead creates independent funds for its members, the founders in Spearhead are free to raise additional capital from outside investors and expand their funds beyond Spearhead’s initial seed capital.
Founders investing in founders
Fagnan noted he had some “sleepless nights” as he and Ravikant designed Spearhead. “Just because we put people in this program, we didn’t know if they are going to write a check,” he said. That was particularly true since “we definitely skewed toward people who didn’t consider themselves angels.” Being an operator and being an angel investor require very different skillsets and knowledge, and it wasn’t clear at all that founders could context-switch easily.
The good news: they can. So far, the first cohort has made roughly 50 seed investments into startups, mostly at the pre-seed and seed stages.
One major surprise with the first cohort is that the founders were much more sophisticated about venture capital dynamics than expected. “What we got wrong, we thought we would spoon-feed venture 101,” Fagnan said. But instead, during office hours, “it’s almost the same level of discussion as the principals and partners at Accomplice.”
I talked with six of the founders in the program about their experience. One pattern that came up consistently in my chats is that these founders have all had to go through their own venture capital fundraises, and they wanted to share their lessons learned with other founders to help them succeed and be the kind of venture capitalist that they needed for their own businesses.
For instance, Alice Zhang at Verge Genomics explained that she hoped to use her angel fund to bridge the gap between traditional life sciences investors and a new wave of healthtech startups that are led by computer scientists. “I have a thesis that there will be an explosion of companies that are going to be at the intersection of technology and the life sciences,” she said, but venture capitalists targeting the industry don’t fully see that emerging pattern yet. “I’m spending a lot of time on weekends helping founders in this space.” So far, she has invested in two companies.
That intention to help other founders in a focused industry also applied to Noah Ready Campbell at Ready Robotics, who says that when it comes to robotics investing, “a lot of things that were impossible five years ago are possible now.” He saw an opportunity to use his fund to “help participate in the robotics community in the Bay Area” and accelerate the industry. He’s invested in four companies so far, typically with $50k checks.
For others though, it’s less about industry and more about who they know. Alex MacCaw, a well-known JavaScript developer, former Stripe engineer, and founder of Clearbit, told me that a large component of his dealflow is “a bunch of ex-Stripes which I call the Stripe mafia.” He invests very early, and “sometimes there isn’t even a domain name, but I do it based on the fact that I know the founder pretty well.” He’s done five deals so far.
Building an affinity network
The founders of Spearhead (Image from Spearhead)
Beyond investing in other startups, the founders in the program also emphasized that they are learning from each other. Spearhead hosts a variety of in-person get-togethers, and also holds regular office hours to allow the founders to ask questions and get feedback on their deals from Ravikant and Fagnan, as well as Accomplice’s Cack Wilhelm and AngeList’s Jake Zeller.
Prasanna Sankar, who was director of engineering at Zenefits and left with Zenefits co-founder Parker Conrad to create Rippling, said that one of the biggest things he has had to learn is the difference between angel investing and stock market investing. “We don’t make an investment for the price, so it is like the opposite of the stock market,” he said. “If you are a new angel, it would take five years to have these experiences… but these guys can fast-track your exposure to these things.” He has invested in five startups, mostly at $25k checks and with one at $50k.
Ankur Nagpal at Teachable emphasized that learning from the other founders in the cohort didn’t just train him on being a better angel investor, but also how to operate his business better. “Everyone operates so differently,” he said, and talking with others helped him learn “not just what you should be doing, but also about how you are different from other businesses.”
Fagnan noted that a large priority in the first cohort was geographical representation, and he expected that Spearhead would design its next cohort to have “fewer people taking deeper accountability to each other.”
The next-generation of venture capitalists?
For Ravikant and Fagnan, the dream of their program was to create the next-generation of competent and committed angel investors scattered around the country. They have certainly gotten that plan underway, but the question is how far will these cohort members go in their investing careers?
Many founders I talked to insisted that their focus remains 100% on their companies, and that angel investing as just a side passion. Outside of MacCaw at Clerabit, almost no one was intending to scale up their funds beyond the initial seed capital, and even MacCaw was just looking to have a little more cash to invest since he has already invested his whole fund.
Ultimately, that might play well for Spearhead, since one of the challenges of traditional venture capital funds is their increasing scale. Ravikant noted that the sort of pre-seed checks that these investors are writing are hard for venture capital firms to do given their size.
Sankar said that “I always thought that Silicon Valley startup as an asset class is one of the most undervalued and underrated.” That seems to match Ravikant’s entire mantra, who told me that “I want to quintuple down on [Spearhead].” He hopes that more of his founders can build distinguished track records, and become the leading angel investors of their generation. We hope that they are “going to be bigger than Naval and Jeff sometime, and if not, then we have failed.”
The European Parliament has just voted to back controversial proposals to reform online copyright — including supporting an extension to cover snippets of publishers content (Article 11), and to make platforms that hold significant amounts of content liable for copyright violations by their users (Article 13).
Plenary adopts it’s negotiating position on copyright rules for the digital single market. Negotiations with Council will begin soon. pic.twitter.com/hJOhClrZyf
Today’s plenary vote in the European parliament was on amended proposals that had been rejected by MEPs in a vote in July with parliamentarians arguing for a fuller debate and more balanced measures.
The vote is a major victory for MEP Axel Voss who has been driving the copyright reform.
MEPs largely backed Voss’ amended proposals today which had narrowed the scope of the rejected text, such as, in the case of Article 11, by allowing for links to contain individual words from the linked to publishers’ content — an attempt to respond to critics’ contention that the measure would outlaw hyperlinks (which can often contain the headline of an article).
On Article 13 Voss’ amended proposal had reduced the scope to platforms that both host “significant” amounts of content and also “promote” them. It also includes an exception for small businesses.
As the votes were announced a visibly delighted Voss beamed, clapped and hugged his seat neighbours, as well as giving a broad thumbs up to all those watching.
At the same time critics and free speech advocates were describing the result as a catastrophe…
“Members of the house, a heartfelt thanks for the job that we have done together. This is a good sign for the creative industries in Europe,” said Voss after the vote, as he asked for the report to be sent back to committee to begin institutional negotiations with Member States, via the European Council.
MEPs duly obliged.
There was just one interruption — with a single MEP standing up to denounce the result as “an enormous strike against freedom of speech on the Internet”. Proceedings continued.
Other amendments that had been tabled by MEPs but rejected by the parliament as a whole included various middle ground positions but also ditching the reforms entirely and leaving the current law as is.
Expanding on her criticisms of the reform in a statement after the vote, Julia Reda, Pirate Party MEP and VP of the Greens/EFA group — who has been a trenchant critic of the copyright reforms — said the parliament had voted to make “nothing but cosmetic changes”, reiterating her warning that the proposal would result in platforms imposing upload filters that would catch “perfectly legal content like parodies and memes”, as well as imposing a pointless EU “link tax”.
“Today’s decision is a severe blow to the free and open internet,” she said. “By endorsing new legal and technical limits on what we can post and share online, the European Parliament is putting corporate profits over freedom of speech and abandoning long-standing principles that made the internet what it is today.”
“Five years after the ‘link tax’ came into force in Germany, no journalist or publisher has made an extra penny, startups in the news sector have had to shut down and courts have yet to clear up the legal uncertainty on exactly where to draw the line,” she added. “The same quagmire will now repeat at the EU level — no argument has been made why it wouldn’t, apart from wishful thinking.”
MEP Marietje Schaake also expressed disappointment, telling us: “The Parliament squandered the opportunity to get the copyright reform on the right track. This is a disastrous result for the protection of our fundamental rights, ordinary internet users and Europe’s future in the field of artificial intelligence. We have set a step backwards instead of creating a true copyright reform that is fit for the 21st century.”
“This is a terrible result for users, consumers, innovators and researchers,” added MEP Catherine Stihler. “This will do nothing for the European digital economy, it will stifle free speech and create barriers of entry to the market for European start-ups.”
Above the fray, the Commission welcomed the result of the vote.
In a joint statement, the European Commission’s VP for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip and commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, said:
We welcome today’s vote at the European Parliament. It is a strong and positive signal and an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernising the copyright rules in the European Union.
Discussions between the co-legislators can now start on a legislative proposal which is a key element of the Digital Single Market strategy and one of the priorities for the European Commission .
Our aim for this reform is to bring tangible benefits for EU citizens, researchers, educators, writers, artists, press and cultural heritage institutions and to open up the potential for more creativity and content by clarifying the rules and making them fit for the digital world. At the same time, we aim to safeguard free speech and ensure that online platforms – including 7,000 European online platforms – can develop new and innovative offers and business models.
The Commission stands ready to start working with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, so that the directive can be approved as soon as possible, ideally by the end of 2018. We are fully committed to working with the co-legislators in order to achieve a balanced and positive outcome enabling a true modernisation of the copyright legislation that Europe needs.
Also exceptionally happy are a swathe of creative industries, with the music industry first in line — which has long been pointing out they’re the ones losing out as things stand online…
The European Publishers Council welcome the adoption of the Publisher’s neighbouring right.
“Today, we give credit to MEPs who voted for press freedom, democracy, professional journalism and European values. We thank the Rapporteur, Axel Voss, MEP, for working tirelessly to achieve a balanced outcome,” said its exec director, Angela Mills Wade, in a statement.
A coalition of European press publishers — representing the European Magazine Media Association, theEuropean Newspaper Publishers’ Association, the European Publishers Council and News Media Europe — added: “This reform is not just about the modernisation of copyright but about the fundamental function of our democracies. Today the European parliamentarians prove they value the European independent press by voting for a publishers’ right that will help ensure the sustainability of the European press sector”.
While the parliament has now agreed its negotiating position on the reform the process is not yet over.
There will be trilogue discussions with Member State representatives, via the European Council, and a final vote to pass the law — likely early next year.
Reda warned that without filters being “explicitly excluded in the negotiations” there will be increased public protest — suggseting also that the entire Directive “may well still be rejected when it comes up for a final vote right before next year’s European elections”.
Now that Parliament and Council have adopted their positions, we will have one final chance to reject #UploadFilters and #LinkTax in the final vote on the directive after trilogue, probably in the spring. Talk to your governments meanwhile! #SaveYourInternet
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which is also not a supportor of the reforms, urged the Council and Parliament to “come to a balanced outcome in final negotiations”.
“We regret that a majority of Members of the European Parliament today ignored the warnings of the online sector, academics, innovative publishers, research institutions and civil rights groups on the real threats this proposal causes,” said its senior policy manager, Maud Sacquet, in a statement.
BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, also denounced the result of the plenary vote, warning that if the plans MEPs backed today become EU law the “benefits of the Internet for consumers will be at risk”.
“It is beyond comprehension that time and again EU policy makers refuse to bring copyright law into the 21st century. Consumers nowadays express themselves by sampling, creating and mixing music, videos and pictures, then sharing their creations online. MEPs have decided to thwart this freedom of expression which is dangerous for creativity and innovation,” said Monique Goyens, director general of BEUC, in a statement.
“The consequence of this vote is clear. Platforms will have no other option than to scan and filter any content that consumers want to upload. Experience shows that this will lead to many uploads being unjustifiably blocked. This is not the type of internet consumers need or expect. This protectionist reform will only benefit the copyright industry at the expense of consumers.”
The European Parliament has just voted to back controversial proposals to reform online copyright — including supporting an extension to cover snippets of publishers content (Article 11), and to make platforms that hold significant amounts of content liable for copyright violations by their users (Article 13).
Plenary adopts it’s negotiating position on copyright rules for the digital single market. Negotiations with Council will begin soon. pic.twitter.com/hJOhClrZyf
Today’s plenary vote in the European parliament was on amended proposals that had been rejected by MEPs in a vote in July with parliamentarians arguing for a fuller debate and more balanced measures.
The vote is a major victory for MEP Axel Voss who has been driving the copyright reform.
MEPs largely backed Voss’ amended proposals today which had narrowed the scope of the rejected text, such as, in the case of Article 11, by allowing for links to contain individual words from the linked to publishers’ content — an attempt to respond to critics’ contention that the measure would outlaw hyperlinks (which can often contain the headline of an article).
On Article 13 Voss’ amended proposal had reduced the scope to platforms that both host “significant” amounts of content and also “promote” them. It also includes an exception for small businesses.
As the votes were announced a visibly delighted Voss beamed, clapped and hugged his seat neighbours, as well as giving a broad thumbs up to all those watching.
At the same time critics and free speech advocates were describing the result as a catastrophe…
“Members of the house, a heartfelt thanks for the job that we have done together. This is a good sign for the creative industries in Europe,” said Voss after the vote, as he asked for the report to be sent back to committee to begin institutional negotiations with Member States, via the European Council.
MEPs duly obliged.
There was just one interruption — with a single MEP standing up to denounce the result as “an enormous strike against freedom of speech on the Internet”. Proceedings continued.
Other amendments that had been tabled by MEPs but rejected by the parliament as a whole included various middle ground positions but also ditching the reforms entirely and leaving the current law as is.
Expanding on her criticisms of the reform in a statement after the vote, Julia Reda, Pirate Party MEP and VP of the Greens/EFA group — who has been a trenchant critic of the copyright reforms — said the parliament had voted to make “nothing but cosmetic changes”, reiterating her warning that the proposal would result in platforms imposing upload filters that would catch “perfectly legal content like parodies and memes”, as well as imposing a pointless EU “link tax”.
“Today’s decision is a severe blow to the free and open internet,” she said. “By endorsing new legal and technical limits on what we can post and share online, the European Parliament is putting corporate profits over freedom of speech and abandoning long-standing principles that made the internet what it is today.”
“Five years after the ‘link tax’ came into force in Germany, no journalist or publisher has made an extra penny, startups in the news sector have had to shut down and courts have yet to clear up the legal uncertainty on exactly where to draw the line,” she added. “The same quagmire will now repeat at the EU level — no argument has been made why it wouldn’t, apart from wishful thinking.”
MEP Marietje Schaake also expressed disappointment, telling us: “The Parliament squandered the opportunity to get the copyright reform on the right track. This is a disastrous result for the protection of our fundamental rights, ordinary internet users and Europe’s future in the field of artificial intelligence. We have set a step backwards instead of creating a true copyright reform that is fit for the 21st century.”
“This is a terrible result for users, consumers, innovators and researchers,” added MEP Catherine Stihler. “This will do nothing for the European digital economy, it will stifle free speech and create barriers of entry to the market for European start-ups.”
Above the fray, the Commission welcomed the result of the vote.
In a joint statement, the European Commission’s VP for the Digital Single Market Andrus Ansip and commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Mariya Gabriel, said:
We welcome today’s vote at the European Parliament. It is a strong and positive signal and an essential step to achieving our common objective of modernising the copyright rules in the European Union.
Discussions between the co-legislators can now start on a legislative proposal which is a key element of the Digital Single Market strategy and one of the priorities for the European Commission .
Our aim for this reform is to bring tangible benefits for EU citizens, researchers, educators, writers, artists, press and cultural heritage institutions and to open up the potential for more creativity and content by clarifying the rules and making them fit for the digital world. At the same time, we aim to safeguard free speech and ensure that online platforms – including 7,000 European online platforms – can develop new and innovative offers and business models.
The Commission stands ready to start working with the European Parliament and the Council of the EU, so that the directive can be approved as soon as possible, ideally by the end of 2018. We are fully committed to working with the co-legislators in order to achieve a balanced and positive outcome enabling a true modernisation of the copyright legislation that Europe needs.
Also exceptionally happy are a swathe of creative industries, with the music industry first in line — which has long been pointing out they’re the ones losing out as things stand online…
The European Publishers Council welcome the adoption of the Publisher’s neighbouring right.
“Today, we give credit to MEPs who voted for press freedom, democracy, professional journalism and European values. We thank the Rapporteur, Axel Voss, MEP, for working tirelessly to achieve a balanced outcome,” said its exec director, Angela Mills Wade, in a statement.
A coalition of European press publishers — representing the European Magazine Media Association, theEuropean Newspaper Publishers’ Association, the European Publishers Council and News Media Europe — added: “This reform is not just about the modernisation of copyright but about the fundamental function of our democracies. Today the European parliamentarians prove they value the European independent press by voting for a publishers’ right that will help ensure the sustainability of the European press sector”.
While the parliament has now agreed its negotiating position on the reform the process is not yet over.
There will be trilogue discussions with Member State representatives, via the European Council, and a final vote to pass the law — likely early next year.
Reda warned that without filters being “explicitly excluded in the negotiations” there will be increased public protest — suggseting also that the entire Directive “may well still be rejected when it comes up for a final vote right before next year’s European elections”.
Now that Parliament and Council have adopted their positions, we will have one final chance to reject #UploadFilters and #LinkTax in the final vote on the directive after trilogue, probably in the spring. Talk to your governments meanwhile! #SaveYourInternet
The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which is also not a supportor of the reforms, urged the Council and Parliament to “come to a balanced outcome in final negotiations”.
“We regret that a majority of Members of the European Parliament today ignored the warnings of the online sector, academics, innovative publishers, research institutions and civil rights groups on the real threats this proposal causes,” said its senior policy manager, Maud Sacquet, in a statement.
BEUC, the European Consumer Organisation, also denounced the result of the plenary vote, warning that if the plans MEPs backed today become EU law the “benefits of the Internet for consumers will be at risk”.
“It is beyond comprehension that time and again EU policy makers refuse to bring copyright law into the 21st century. Consumers nowadays express themselves by sampling, creating and mixing music, videos and pictures, then sharing their creations online. MEPs have decided to thwart this freedom of expression which is dangerous for creativity and innovation,” said Monique Goyens, director general of BEUC, in a statement.
“The consequence of this vote is clear. Platforms will have no other option than to scan and filter any content that consumers want to upload. Experience shows that this will lead to many uploads being unjustifiably blocked. This is not the type of internet consumers need or expect. This protectionist reform will only benefit the copyright industry at the expense of consumers.”
If you don’t think the healthcare market is prepping for the radical transformations that remote care, persistent diagnostics, as well as and monitoring and improving targeted treatments are going to bring to the industry, think again.
Healthcare companies are steeling themselves for the shift in healthcare services in the most desperate way they can — by launching venture funds. The latest to make the move is Cigna, the multi-billion-dollar healthcare insurer which is now launching a $250 million venture fund called Cigna Ventures.
Starting a venture fund has often been the last, worst best hope of corporations that have been overtaken by dramatic changes in technological platforms. At the tail end of the last internet bubble, as everything was about to fall apart, big companies began to realize that technology was bringing hordes of new barbarians to the gate. And they swung into action to finance these companies, and get a window into them, even as the hordes were immolating themselves on pyres of wasted cash and incomprehensible business models.
This time, corporations in industries like health insurance may not have the luxury of startup ignorance to protect them from the slow march of progress.
The mighty combination of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase loom large in the visions (or nightmares) of healthcare services providers — and the potential for a single-payor healthcare system in the U.S. can’t be far behind. And while one (ahem… single payor) is almost surely the stuff of nightmares, the announcement of a new chief operating officer is making the venture increasingly real.
Cigna says it will focus on investing in companies that will bring improved care quality, affordability, choice and greater simplicity to customers and clients in three strategic areas: insights and analytics; digital health and retail; and care delivery and management.
Companies in the portfolio include Omada Health, a digital therapeutics company treating chronic diseases; Prognos, a predictive analytics company for healthcare; Contessa Health, a home-patient care service; Mdlive, which provides remote health consultations; and Cricket Health, a special kidney care provider.
“Cigna’s commitment to improving the health, well-being and sense of security of the people we serve is at the front and center of everything we do,” said Tom Richards, senior vice president and global lead, strategy and business development at Cigna, in a statement. “The venture fund will enable us to drive innovation beyond our existing core business operations, and incubate new ideas, opportunities and relationships that have the potential for long-term business growth and to help our customers.”
Cigna has been spending like a drunken sailor to acquire businesses in an effort to build out an organization to withstand the assault of Amazonians, the government and upstart startups alike. Its stock fell off a cliff in March after it announced the $67 billion acquisition of ExpressScripts, months before Amazon acquired PillPack in a roughly $1 billion transaction.
Cigna had invested in startups before the creation of this new venture fund. According to Crunchbase, the company’s investment activity in startupland dates back to 2016.
“Our partnership with Cigna has been about so much more than capital,” said Sean Duffy, co-founder and CEO of Omada. “The ability to collaborate with, learn from, and integrate deeply with a health services company so dedicated to delivering a 21st-century care experience to its customers and clients has enabled us to accelerate innovation, advance our capabilities, and grow our customer base.”
If you don’t think the healthcare market is prepping for the radical transformations that remote care, persistent diagnostics, as well as and monitoring and improving targeted treatments are going to bring to the industry, think again.
Healthcare companies are steeling themselves for the shift in healthcare services in the most desperate way they can — by launching venture funds. The latest to make the move is Cigna, the multi-billion-dollar healthcare insurer which is now launching a $250 million venture fund called Cigna Ventures.
Starting a venture fund has often been the last, worst best hope of corporations that have been overtaken by dramatic changes in technological platforms. At the tail end of the last internet bubble, as everything was about to fall apart, big companies began to realize that technology was bringing hordes of new barbarians to the gate. And they swung into action to finance these companies, and get a window into them, even as the hordes were immolating themselves on pyres of wasted cash and incomprehensible business models.
This time, corporations in industries like health insurance may not have the luxury of startup ignorance to protect them from the slow march of progress.
The mighty combination of Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JP Morgan Chase loom large in the visions (or nightmares) of healthcare services providers — and the potential for a single-payor healthcare system in the U.S. can’t be far behind. And while one (ahem… single payor) is almost surely the stuff of nightmares, the announcement of a new chief operating officer is making the venture increasingly real.
Cigna says it will focus on investing in companies that will bring improved care quality, affordability, choice and greater simplicity to customers and clients in three strategic areas: insights and analytics; digital health and retail; and care delivery and management.
Companies in the portfolio include Omada Health, a digital therapeutics company treating chronic diseases; Prognos, a predictive analytics company for healthcare; Contessa Health, a home-patient care service; Mdlive, which provides remote health consultations; and Cricket Health, a special kidney care provider.
“Cigna’s commitment to improving the health, well-being and sense of security of the people we serve is at the front and center of everything we do,” said Tom Richards, senior vice president and global lead, strategy and business development at Cigna, in a statement. “The venture fund will enable us to drive innovation beyond our existing core business operations, and incubate new ideas, opportunities and relationships that have the potential for long-term business growth and to help our customers.”
Cigna has been spending like a drunken sailor to acquire businesses in an effort to build out an organization to withstand the assault of Amazonians, the government and upstart startups alike. Its stock fell off a cliff in March after it announced the $67 billion acquisition of ExpressScripts, months before Amazon acquired PillPack in a roughly $1 billion transaction.
Cigna had invested in startups before the creation of this new venture fund. According to Crunchbase, the company’s investment activity in startupland dates back to 2016.
“Our partnership with Cigna has been about so much more than capital,” said Sean Duffy, co-founder and CEO of Omada. “The ability to collaborate with, learn from, and integrate deeply with a health services company so dedicated to delivering a 21st-century care experience to its customers and clients has enabled us to accelerate innovation, advance our capabilities, and grow our customer base.”
Aclima, a San Francisco-based startup building Internet-connected air quality sensors has announced plans to integrate its mobile sensing platform into Google’s global fleet of Street View vehicles.
Google uses the Street View cars to map the land for Google Maps. Starting with 50 cars in Houston, Mexico City and Sydney, Aclima will capture air quality data by generating snapshots of carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), and particulate matter (PM2.5)while the Google cars roam the streets. The idea is to ascertain where there may be too much pollution and other breathing issues on a hyper local level in each metropolitan area. The data will then be made available as a public dataset on Google BigQuery.
Aclima has had a close relationship with Google for the past few years and this is not its first ride in Street View cars. The startup deployed its sensors in London earlier this year using Google’s vehicles and three years ago started working with the tech giant to ascertain air health within Google’s own campus as well as around the Bay Area.
“All that work culminated in a major scientific study,”Aclima founder Davida Herzl told TechCrunch, referring to a study published in Environmental Science and Technology revealing air pollution levels varied in difference five to eight times along a city street. “We found you can have the best air quality and the worst air quality all on the same street…Understanding that can help with everything from urban planning to understanding your personal exposure
That initial research now enables Aclima to scale up with Google’s Street View cars in the hopes of gathering even more data on a global basis. Google Street View cars cover the roads in all seven continents and have driven over 100,000 miles in just the state of California collecting over one billion data points since the initial project began with Aclima in 2015.
The first Street View cars with the updated Aclima sensors will hit the road this Fall in the Western United States, as well as in Europe, according to the company.
“These measurements can provide cities with new neighborhood-level insights to help cities accelerate efforts in their transition to smarter, healthier cities,” Karin Tuxen-Bettman, Program Manager for Google Earth Outreach said in a statement.
