[Cybertel-Ann] 1.29.8 :: And Now For Something Complete Different :: I Want to Applaud Harold Also, How About Your? :: Things Are Going Very Well :: Victory! ::

Tue Jan 29 16:54:08 PST 2008

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             CyberTelecom News  
      Federal Internet Law and Policy
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RSS Feeds â€“ Fed Notices â€“ Blog â€“ Clips â€“ Daily
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http://www.cybertelecom.org/news.htm 
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Charlotte Ross in Shower (This May Cost You $1.4m)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnsxFvCaZJ8

FCC Sends YouTubers Searching For Butt Scene,
WebproNews
The Federal Communications Commissions (FCC) thought
long and hard about whether Charlotte Ross's buttocks
were both shocking and titillating. Five years later,
they've decided they were indeed, and are fining 52
ABC stations $1.4 million.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/01/28/fcc-sends-youtubers-searching-for-butt-scene
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/cda/firsta.htm

How Kevin Martin Got Over A Million People To Look At
A Woman's Naked Buttocks, Techdirt
Since taking over the FCC, Kevin Martin has supposedly
been against regulations -- except in two areas: the
cable industry and "indecency." He's been a strong
proponent of cracking down on whatever he considers
indecent programming, and much of his support for a la
carte cable is based on how it might block indecent
content. The latest crackdown on indecency has a
number of people shaking their heads. It involves
fining ABC affiliates $1.43 million for a brief clip
of the TV show "NYPD Blue," that aired in February of
2003, and included images of a naked woman from
behind.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080128/16592098.shtml
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/cda/firsta.htm

700 MHz and the D block, Susan Crawford
I want to applaud Harold Feld for writing
energetically about what has happened to the planned
public-private partnership for creating a dedicated
public safety network.  Key post is here.
http://scrawford.net/blog/700-mhz-and-the-d-block/1103/
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/broadband/w700.htm

Not Giving Up On The Great Google Prophecy, Tales from
the Sausage Factory
You can read a far more brilliant analysis by Greg
Rose on why the punditry on the trickle of data from
the 700 MHz auction is all wrong here. Briefly, Greg
maintains that this slow convergence on the reserve
price over several weeks of bidding i...
http://www.wetmachine.com/item/1026
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/broadband/w700.htm

3650-3700 MHz Band in Use -- Tales from the Field.,
Sasha Meinrath
For long-time readers, you know that I've been working
on the 3650-3700 MHz FCC proceedings for a few years
nowthe FCC created a rather unique quasi-(un)licensing
rule for the band, allowing community networkers,
WISPs, and other interested parties to access this
resource. By 2007 we began to see the widespread
availability of 3650-3700 MHz equipment.
http://saschameinrath.com/2008/jan/29/3650_3700_mhz_band_use_tales_field
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/broadband/wireless.htm

Why Net Neutrality is Important: Packaging Picture,
Peerflow
Andrew Sayer from Kensington, Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia, publishes a self-explanatory picture.
http://riskman.typepad.com/peerflow/2008/01/why-net-neutral.html
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/ci/neuatral.htm

P2P users blast Comcast in FCC proceeding, Ars
Technica
Two weeks into a Federal Communications Commission
public comment period on whether Comcast deliberately
degrades P2P broadband traffic, there's no shortage of
angry users who feel cheated and want the tampering to
stop. Evidence is also mounting that Comcast is
blocking more than just P2P traffic.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080129-p2p-users-blast-comcast-in-fcc-proceeding.html
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/ci/neutralfcc.htm

Norwegian Public Broadcaster Uses BitTorrent for
Content Distribution, Michael Geist
BoingBoing points to a new initiative by the Norwegian
public broadcaster to distribute one of its most
popular programs without DRM via BitTorrent.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/MichaelGeistsBlog/~3/225282108/
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/ci/neutralfcc.htm

Google Evicts 'Domain Name Tasters' From AdSense,
Ecommerce Times
The online advertising leader Google said Friday it
would help make it less lucrative to tie up millions
of Internet addresses using a loophole and keep those
domain names from legitimate individuals and
businesses. Over the next few weeks, Google will start
looking for names that are repeatedly registered and
dropped within a five-day grace period for full
refunds. Google's AdSense program would exclude those
names so no one can generate advertising revenue from
claiming them temporarily, a practice known as
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/61399.html
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/dns/

IPv6, Tech Liberation Front
Over at Techdirt, I question whether the
long-predicted IPv6 transition will ever actually
occur:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techliberation/~3/223599716/043272.php
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/dns/ipv6.htm

ABA IP Section Quietly Considering Anti-Consumer
Proposals to Regulate Keyword Advertising, Tech &
Marketing Law
this is a bit of an unusual post for this blog,
http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2008/01/aba_ip_section.htm
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/ecom/advertising.htm

Frontlines Growing Up Online: What about the digital
dossier?, Berkman
PBS recently aired Growing Up Online (and posted the
entire episode on their website) - an inquisitive look
into the lives of so-called Digital Natives.  The
program presented a world of young people spending
much of their lives immersed in digital media -
constantly connected to friends and others via mobile
phones and web sites such as MySpace and YouTube.
These are the lives of young people who are the first
generation to grow up online, or those born digital,
to borrow the term from John Palfreys and Urs Gassers
forthcoming book of the same title.
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/home?wid=10&func=viewSubmission&sid=3159
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/education.htm

FiOS TV Passes Million Subscriber Mark - Verizon
earnings: 8.2 million broadband customers servedâ€¦,
dslreports
erizon this morning posted their fourth quarter
earnings, which indicate the company added 264,000 net
new broadband subscribers last quarter, 245,000 of
which were FiOS. The company says they added 226,000
FiOS TV customers, and their TV total now exceeds one
million. The company now serves over 8.2 million DSL &
FTTH customers. Verizon Wireless continued to drive
profits, and now serves 65.7 million subscribers.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/FiOS-TV-Passes-Million-Subscriber-Mark-91349
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/industry/verizon.htm

Verizon Profit Up 3.9 Percent, NYT
The company earned $1.07 billion in the fourth
quarter, helped by steady but moderate growth in its
core operations.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology/AP-Earns-Verizon.html?ex=1359262800&en=432bd55e04e6da90&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/industry/verizon.htm

Vonage CEO: 'Things Are Going Very Well' - 3% churn,
cable dominance, bottomed out stock & patent fights?
No Problem., dslreports
Despite the 90% drop in stock price since its IPO, the
contstant stream of costly patent disputes, and the
fact that cable providers are now dominating the VoIP
market -- Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron puts on the brave
face for USAToday. "Things are going very well," the
CEO tells the paper, insisting the company can making
a living catering to a niche audience. His plan for a
turnaround focuses on improving customer support:
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Vonage-CEO-Things-Are-Going-Very-Well-91386
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/industry/vonage.htm

EFF Testifies Before House Committee in Support of
State Secrets Privilege Reform, EFF
EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston testified
before the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the
Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties today,
using EFF's case against AT&T as an example of the
misuse of the State Secrets Privilege by the
Administration. The hearing was the Oversight Hearing
on Reform of the State Secrets Privilege.
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/01/eff-house-committee-let-our-cases-go
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/security/bigbrother.htm

Damage under CFAA must involve some diminution of the
system to be actionable, Internet Cases
A recent decision from the U.S. District Court for the
Northern District of Illinois presents a pretty
typical fact pattern (employee leaves with sensitive
data to work for a competitor), but also gives some
useful guidance on the scope of the Computer Fraud and
Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030 et seq. (CFAA).
http://blog.internetcases.com/2008/01/28/damage-under-cfaa-must-involve-some-diminution-of-the-system-to-be-actionable/
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/security/crime.htm

Victory! (battle not war), Isen.blog
NetHeads mobilized enough senators to derail telecom
immunity yesterday. Sweet. Temporary?
http://isen.com/blog/2008/01/victory-battle-not-war.html
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/security/fisa.htm

Man Arrested in eBay Sale of Historic Documents,
Internet News
Authorities recover 400 items from upstate New York
home.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/InternetnewsRealtimeNewsForItManagers/~3/225322682/3724496
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/security/fraud.htm

Using E-Mail as Storage: A Cautionary Tale, Ecommerce
Times
Desktops crash all the time, but e-mail is forever. Or
so some 14,000 customers of Charter Communications may
have thought until they tried to log on recently and
found their messages and photos gone and never to
return. It was a software glitch during routine
maintenance that caused Charter to permanently dump
the 14,000 active accounts. To compensate the people
affected, it is offering $50 credits. The deleted
e-mails had been provided free of charge to the
communication provider's triple play customers, which,
in theory, should dampen their ire.
http://www.ecommercetimes.com/rsstory/61395.html
More Info:
http://www.cybertelecom.org/spam/emailpro.htm

German Government Struggles To Tap Encrypted Skype
Calls, Techdirt
The Wikileaks project is starting to bear fruit, with
documents leaked to the site beginning to get a lot of
attention. The latest example is correspondence
between the German government and a vendor (via
Slashdot) that apparently makes software for
intercepting Skype calls. Interestingly, the
interception technology appears to be pretty primitive
and rather expensive. The software has to be installed
on the Skype client, and the vendor suggests that this
can be accomplished by attaching a trojan to an e-mail
or physically entering the premises to install the
software on the target machine.
http://techdirt.com/articles/20080127/10382079.shtml
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/voip/fcc.htm

Google's political advertising guidelines, PFF
Last week on the Google Public Policy Blog, Peter
Greenberger of Google's Elections and Issue Advocacy
Team posted Google's new guidelines for political
advertising on the site. Most of the guidelines seem
fairly straightforward and sensible to me since they
relate to general principles of fairness and
transparency. But sandwiched in between those
principles is the following guideline:
http://blog.pff.org/archives/2008/01/googles_politic.html
More Info: http://www.cybertelecom.org/vote/

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