If you’re looking for the Armageddon version of net neutrality analysis, search no further than a

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Verizon isn’t a fan of the FCC’s proposed “third way” approach to network neutrality rules, and the company’s top policy people have suggested that the Internet needs an entirely new “policy framework.” Such a framework will require massive wrangling in Congress, so in the short term, Verizon has partnered with Google and others to find a “consensus” framework for the short-term. Is this a plan to avoid government rules on openness and turn the company into a maniacal bit-blocker? At a recent panel discussion (PDF), Verizon policy exec Link Hoewing said no—the company has no wish to go down Comcast’s P2P blocking route, and he called out Comcast for its earlier approach. “We came up with a standard that says any of the players on the Internet should not do anything that harms users or competition,” said Hoewing. “And I think that’s a pretty important policy principle

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Verizon: Comcast P2P blocking was wrong, we won’t do it

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It must have seemed like a pretty good gig at first: an e-mail marketing firm called e360—located just up the road from us here in Chicago—objected to being called a “spammer” and sued UK-based Spamhaus in federal court. When Spamhaus refused to show up for the lawsuit, a judge issued a default ruling in favor of e360 and awarded the company and its main employee, Dave Linhardt, the $11.7 million he claimed in losses without forcing him to prove said losses. When a Chicago law firm offered to represent Spamhaus free of charge and took the case to the Court of Appeals, the appellate judge was appalled; e360 had to prove damages, not just state them . Read the comments on this post

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Accused spammer demands $135M from Spamhaus; gets $27,002

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When was the last time you read a spectrum management document that concluded with a paragraph like this? “Spectrum policy is not easy. Technology changes.

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Three ways to shift spectrum from TV to wireless broadband

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Deep packet inspection (DPI) hardware continues to sell, with ABI Research now estimating that vendors will move $1.3 billion of the stuff in 2015, up from $207 million in 2008. According to Infonetics Research, DPI will be a $1.5 billion business—by 2013. What will DPI devices be used for? According to ABI, “optimizing” mobile networks will be one of the chief uses—and by “optimizing” they mean limiting or prioritizing traffic from data-hungry mobile devices.

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Deep packet inspection soon to be $1.5 billion business

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The plastic vuvuzela noisemaker, scourge of the human ear and omnipresent World Cup companion, may be bad for our hearing—but it has been terrific for our brains. Around the world, human ingenuity has been harnessed in pursuit of a single goal: removing the vuvuzela’s drone from World Cup football broadcasts through noise-canceling devices, EQ settings, and Linux. Read the comments on this post

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Enjoy a vuvuzela-free World Cup, thanks to technology

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Remember the DTV transition ? The nationwide switch from analog to digital over-the-air television broadcasting crossed the finish line a year ago this past Saturday. So why do we feel like we’re asking something akin to “Remember gopher ?” or “Remember the BBS days ?” That’s probably because after all the sturm und drang over the event subsided, there was remarkably little interest in what happened to the millions of people and almost 1,800 full-power TV stations impacted by the change. Who would have predicted such a blasé attitude back then

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A year of digital TV: who won the transition?

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Photos of bank robbers used to line the walls of post offices across the US as part of the FBI’s “Most Wanted” lists. You may not notice them when you have the occasion to walk into your local post office, but the Most Wanted lists are alive and well. Those lists have entered the digital age on the FBI’s website, and there’s a whole category dedicated to the top five most wanted cybercriminals .

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From post office to ‘Net: FBI’s Most Wanted cybercriminals

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Senators to FCC: get that white space thing going… now

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People don’t like DRM in large part because it removes much of their control over things like e-books, music, and movies. Want to loan a DRMed song to a friend? You probably can’t, even though sharing a physical item like a CD remains trivial. A new IEEE working group has an ambitious plan to change this and return control over “digital personal property” to consumers. DRM’s electronic tethers would be cut, but rightsholders would not need to remove all limits on sharing.

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IEEE working group considers kinder, gentler DRM

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The recent mixup that resulted in the genomic testing company 23andMe sending test results to the wrong people may end up being the least of its worries. Today, the US Food and Drug Administration sent a series of letters to other direct-to-consumer (DTC) genetic testing companies, saying their products qualified as devices under FDA rules, and therefore required premarket approval. Regulatory approval may significantly raise the costs for the companies already on the market, and dissuade others from entering it. DTC genetic tests are a relatively new market and, so far, the FDA has chosen to sit on the sidelines as companies have taken advantage of rapidly advancing DNA technology to offer the public ever more sophisticated tests.

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FDA wants safety, accuracy data on consumer genetic tests

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If you’re one of the 14,000+ US citizens targeted by the US Copyright Group for allegedly sharing movies with BitTorrent, a letter has already arrived or will do so shortly. That letter will contain a polite request: pay us around $1,500 within the next few weeks or run of the risk of a federal copyright lawsuit, where lawyers will demand the maximum $150,000 penalty. We’ve heard from many readers in this position, most confused about how to proceed (and many claiming bafflement and total ignorance of the charges ). Should they try to quash the initial subpoena

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Accused of file-sharing? The EFF can point you to help

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The OECD this week released an update to its much-watched set of broadband metrics . The data set now extends through December 2009, and the US continues to look anemic on most OECD measures. How about price? The US comes in 19th when measured on “cost per Mbps.” The OECD numbers use Purchasing Power Parity to ensure that the dollar amounts are comparable between countries, and US broadband turns out to cost $8 for each advertised Mbps of service. In Korea, it’s $1.76.

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US broadband: still expensive, underwhelming

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We mentioned recently that India was rounding up opposition to the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and that it wanted to stop the deal from being made outside of existing international institutions. This week, it made good on its promise to object . The new standards envisioned by ACTA “could short-change legal process, impede legitimate competition and shift the escalated costs of enforcing private commercial rights to governments, consumers and taxpayers,” said an Indian representative at the World Trade Organization. “They also represent a systemic threat to the rights of legitimate traders and producers of goods, and fundamental rights of due process of individuals.” Read the comments on this post

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India launches offensive against ACTA, cites "due process"

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The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating a security breach on AT&T’s servers that revealed the names and e-mail addresses of iPad 3G owners . The FBI confirmed its inquiry to the Wall Street Journal Thursday, though the organization said the probe was still in the early stages. “The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation,” was all FBI spokesperson Katherine Schweit said.

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FBI looking into AT&T iPad 3G data breach

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SCO was dealt yet another blow in court today when District Judge Ted Stewart rejected the company’s motion requesting a new trial or judgement of law. In a ruling issued today, Judge Stewart sided with a jury that issued a verdict against SCO in April, finding that Novell was the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. According to Judge Stewart, SCO failed to demonstrate that the jury’s verdict contradicted the evidence presented in the case. SCO’s campaign against the Linux operating system began in 2003 when the company claimed that Linux is an unauthorized derivative of UNIX

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SCOwned: no new trial, Novell can shut down IBM lawsuit

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Let’s say it right up front: some large percentage of those targeted in the recent wave of P2P movie lawsuits are no doubt liable for their piratical behavior. But those who “didn’t do it” face an agonizing choice—pay $1,500 to $2,500 to settle the lawsuits brought by Dunlap, Grubb, & Weaver, or pay even more money for a lawyer to plead their innocence. And innocent or not, a case that goes to court always runs the risk of ending in a $150,000 fine. The sheer size of the penalties for online infringement would give anyone pause, and we’ve heard recently from several of those currently wrestling with what to do.

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Songs of Innocence: accused P2P users speak out

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The library system of the University of California may call upon the schools’ faculty to boycott journals originating from the Nature Publishing Group if they can’t come to an agreement on licensing costs for journal access. The libraries are being hammered by budget cuts resulting from California’s deteriorating state budget situation, and have already alerted content providers that it would need to work out flexible licensing arrangements in order to maintain journal access for their faculty and students. NPG has apparently chosen not to heed that request, raising the potential for a showdown. The UC system includes campuses at Berkeley, Davis, San Francisco, Merced, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Irvine, Riverside, and San Diego.

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California libraries gearing up for fight against Nature (Updated)

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The FCC has stirred up plenty of controversy with its own “third way” approach to regulating network neutrality , with ISPs routinely arguing that decisions about network management should be made by their experts and their engineers, not by a government agency. To that end, companies like Time Warner cable, Verizon, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Comcast, AT&T, and others today joined forces and announced the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group. The inelegantly acronymed BITAG will serve as an industry-driven forum to “develop consensus on broadband network management practices or other related technical issues that can affect users’ Internet experience, including the impact to and from applications, content and devices that utilize the Internet.” Read the comments on this post

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Net neutrality advisory forum wants engineers to hash it out

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Federal judge Rosemary Collyer sits on the DC District Court, where several of the recent US Copyright Group lawsuits against alleged P2P users have been filed. A few of those lawsuits ended up on Judge Collyer’s calendar, one of them filed against over 4,000 anonymous “John Does” at once. This week, Judge Collyer issued a terse demand to the lawyers behind these cases: convince me within two weeks that jamming 4,577 people into a single lawsuit is a proper use of the court system. Judge Rosemary Collyer A brief entry in the official court docket lays out the order. “MINUTE ORDER requiring Plaintiff to show cause in writing no later than June 21, 2010 why Doe Defendants 2 through 2000 should not be dismissed for misjoinder under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 20,” wrote the judge in The Steam Experiment case.

Continued here:
Judge may dismiss 4,576 of 4,577 P2P defendants from lawsuit

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When the US entertainment industry looks at India, it sees one gigantic copyright problem. That’s why it wants India to remain on the US government’s “Priority Watch List” for intellectual property issues in 2010, and that’s why it blasted the country’s new copyright proposals for (among other things) having too many legal reasons to bypass DRM. But what happens when you look at India from the perspective of culture and consumers? The country comes out number one. Read the comments on this post

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Best copyright policies in the world? Try India

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16% of US homes can now get fiber, but deployments slowing

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So it is The Year of Our iPad 2010, and we’ve all got mobile phones, netbooks, laptops, desktop computers, and hybrid devices like PS3s and XBoxes. Given all our gadgets, does this mean that in the event of a tornado or terrorist attack, we’ve got a better emergency information communications system?

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SCO’s fate has been placed in the hands of 12 Utah jurors who will resume deliberations on Tuesday. They are tasked with deciding whether the UNIX SVRX copyrights were transferred from Novell to SCO in a 1995 asset purchase agreement. SCO’s legal battle began in 2003 when the company claimed that Linux includes code that was misappropriated from UNIX. Novell claims that SCO does not have standing to pursue litigation relating to SVRX copyright infringement because it does not own the relevant copyrights.

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Jury deliberating UNIX ownership in ongoing SCO trial

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Is it time to stick a fork in Palm? Sales are way below Palm’s and Wall Street’s expectations, the company has little cash left on hand, and shares of PALM have dropped all the way back down to $4. There’s a growing consensus—as expressed by the market—that there are only two possible futures for Palm : acquisition, or insolvency. Sorting out the real resolution of the Nexus One’s screen is much more than a minor technical exercise, because a lot of Nexus One buyers based their purchasing decision at least in part on the amazing-sounding screen resolution, and many of us were disappointed in the lack of crispness of text.

Excerpt from:
Week in tech: last rites for Palm, Nexus One displays, Ubuntu 10.04b

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Is it time to stick a fork in Palm? Sales are way below Palm’s and Wall Street’s expectations, the company has little cash left on hand, and shares of PALM have dropped all the way back down to $4. There’s a growing consensus—as expressed by the market—that there are only two possible futures for Palm : acquisition, or insolvency. Sorting out the real resolution of the Nexus One’s screen is much more than a minor technical exercise, because a lot of Nexus One buyers based their purchasing decision at least in part on the amazing-sounding screen resolution, and many of us were disappointed in the lack of crispness of text. Ars investigates

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Week in tech: last rites for Palm, Nexus One displays, Ubuntu 10.04b

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Bashing current copyright law is easy—just ask Jessica Litman , a professor of law at the University of Michigan. She calls current US copyright a “swollen, barnacle-encrusted collection of incomprehensible prose.” Or, to change the metaphor to aging, copyright law is “old, outmoded, inflexible, and beginning to display the symptoms of multiple systems failure.” Suggesting something new to replace it can be a harder job, and Litman turns her attention to that task in an unpublished new paper called ” Real Copyright Reform ” (PDF). Part of a spate of recent reform proposals (Public Knowledge is heading another high-profile effort , for example), Litman’s quest to reform the 1976 Copyright Act is, as she acknowledges, quixotic.

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Cleaning the barnacles from the S.S. Copyright

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People love easter eggs. There are a number of humorous yet undocumented features hiding beneath the surface of some of the most popular open source software applications. We ran down five of our favorites .

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Week in tech: easter eggs, pirates aren’t cool, and thinking robots

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The FCC has had it with ISPs. For more than a decade, the agency has relied on ISP reports to get a picture of broadband speeds and availability in the US, and the results have been uniformly terrible. The ISPs don’t want to report numbers detailed enough to be useful, so the feds finally dropped a pile of cash on the table last year to do some proper broadband mapping. Last week, the FCC went a step further, rolling out tools for Android, the iPhone, and the Web that enable users to test—and, crucially, to report—their broadband speeds.

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150,000 take FCC broadband speed test in first week

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Earlier this week, we noted that the major parties in the European Parliament had all agreed on a resolution trashing the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) and the secret process that has been hashing it out. That resolution has passed Parliament by a huge margin —633 yes votes, 13 no votes, and 16 abstentions. The Greens/EFA coalition praised the vote .

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Europe trashes ACTA as Obama praises it

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