Author Archives: John S. Quarterman

Has YOUR Free Speech Been Infringed?

As the law firm for an English soccer league puts it in a letter about their lawsuit against google:
“HAS YOUR COPYRIGHT BEEN INFRINGED BY YOUTUBE?”

— YouTube class action lawsuit: Has YOUR copyright been infringed?, by Donna Bogatin, Digital Markets, zdnet blogs, May 5th, 2007

Well, I write books, so I should be concerned about copyright.

What else do they say?

The Defendants (Google, YouTube) have willfully violated the intellectual property rights that were created and made valuable by the investment – sometimes the life-long investment – of creativity, time, talent, energy, and resources of content producers other than the Defendants. The complaint asserts several legal claims against the Defendants, including direct copyright infringement, contributory copyright infringement, and vicarious copyright infringement.
Well, who could argue with that? Continue reading →

The Other Regulatorium

I may have mentioned that the telcos and cablecos seem to like to game legal and regulatory systems in their favor. There’s another group of companies doing the same thing:
If there was ever an example of why the DMCA needs to die, this is it. The idea that a sixteen-digit number is illegal to possess, to discuss in class, or to post on a news site is offensive to a country where free speech is the first order of the Constitution. The MPAA and RIAA are conspiring to unmake America, to turn this into a country where free expression, due process, and the rule of law take a back-seat to a perpetual set of governmental handouts intended to guarantee the long-term profitability of a small handful of corrupt companies.

—EFF explains the law on AACS keys, Cory Doctorow, boingboing, Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Why would the activities of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America be worth such a polemic by Cory, who after all lives partly by copyright in his hat as a science fiction writer? Continue reading →

FCC and Wireless Broadband

As we’ve seen, the FCC is trying to decide what to do with some 700Mhz commercial spectrum. Now we hear that:
The upcoming auction of wireless spectrum in the 700MHz band presents an opportunity for wireless technology to be a third broadband pipe beyond just DSL and cable Internet, Martin said.

&mdash FCC chairman champions wireless broadband access, Upcoming spectrum auction viewed as opportunity, By Paul Krill, InfoWorld, May 03, 2007

FCC Chair Kevin Martin said this at Microsoft offices in Mountain View, CA. One has to wonder why he’s announcing a purported competition measure at the offices of the world’s most famous monopoly. But nevermind that. Continue reading →

Home for Cryptome

I wasn’t going to comment on the disconnection of Cryptome by Verio, because I’m not sure I’m in favor of everything Cryptome does. However, the timing of the shutdown just after Cryptome published information on Coast Guard not meeting TEMPEST security standards got my attention. But what really prompted me was this text of a letter from Justin Aldridge of Verio to John Young of Cryptome:
Please refer to our Acceptable Use Policy. Unfortunately, at the technical support level, we cannot provide you with any further information about the termination.

— Cryptome Shutdown by Verio, Cryptome, May 2007

Ok, surely that’s just tech support refering to legal. Continue reading →

Early Termination Fees?

Does your cable Internet provider charge an early termination fee?
Several providers — including cable giant Comcast — assured us that they did not impose early termination fees, which we reported as part of our blog item.

So imagine our surprise when someone sent us a copy of a recent Comcast memo to a county official in Virginia about a looming rate increase, which, way down at the end, in a footnote, contained the following:

“Two year term agreement required. $150 early termination fee applies if any service is cancelled or downgraded during the 2 year period.”

Now That You Mention It, We Do Charge Early Termination Penalties… by Bob, hearusnow.org, at 04/18/07 01:15 PM

How could that be? Continue reading →

Industrial Internet Policy

Susan Crawford posted a laundry list of countries that have an industrial policy (she prefers economic policy) involving the Internet:
  • South Korea: “the government said where they wanted to go, invested in research and development, [and invested money and made micro loans], and they’re now seeing 70% of adults (not just kids) involved in online social networks. Very high speeds, very low cost.”
  • Hong Kong: “also not embarrassed to talk about economic policy and telecom.”
  • India: its “government ‘proposes to offer all citizens of India free, high-speed broadband connectivity by 2009.’”
  • Japan: Have I mentioned lately that almost every Japanese can get broadband, and usually it’s ten times faster than what we can get stateside?
Now the point here isn’t whether the specific country government policies are good, bad, etc. Continue reading →

Control to Pay for Capacity?

Save the Internet found a recent quote by new AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson
We’re going to control the video on our network. The content guys will have to make a deal with us.”

— AT&T’s New Boss Wants Your World Delivered to Him, Save the Internet, 27 April 2007

Some say this is necessary to pay for infrastructure. Continue reading →

Ramping Capacity

Hands Off the Internet notes that all major TV networks suddenly (since last year) stream programs over the net, and concludes:
But it’s also a timely reminder of how these deals are placing unprecedented strain on the web’s capacity. Internet traffic growth surged past capacity growth last year. Average traffic was up 75 percent while capacity grew only 47 percent, according to the folks at TeleGeography.

— Katie Couric, Expensive Date, Hands Off the Internet, April 20, 2007 at 12:55 pm

Poor telcos and cablecos; straining to keep up. Continue reading →

U.S. Number 25 Worldwide

While the U.S. is number 15 out of 30 OECD countries in broadband users per capita, U.S. is number 25 among all countries worldwide as of the end of 2006. That last according to a survey by Point Topic, as interpreted by websiteoptimization.com, whose writeup also contains more legible versions of graphics from the OECD report than the OECD report itself has (wso uses HTML while OECD used proprietary formats).

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U.S. Number 15

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), basically the rich countries’ club, has released a report on broadband uptake.
The United States has the largest total number of broadband subscribers in the OECD at 58.1 million. US broadband subscribers now represent 29% of all broadband connections in the OECD.

— OECD Broadband Statistics to December 2006 (all emphases are in the original)

That may sound like good news. But remember the U.S. is the third largest country in the world by population. So figuring broadband users per 100 persons, as the OECD does, the U.S. comes in number fifteen out of the thirty OECD countries. Continue reading →