An advisory council to President Obama today said the US should identify 1,000 MHz of government-controlled spectrum and share it with private industry to meet the country’s growing need for wireless broadband.
via Bold plan: opening 1,000 MHz of federal spectrum to WiFi-style sharing | Ars Technica.
There’s a tag on this blog called monopolistic practices. This article describes something exactly opposite of that.
The manifesto, obtained yesterday by BuzzFeed, is titled “The Technology Revolution” and lays out an argument — in doomsday tones —for keeping the government entirely out of regulating anything online, and for leaving the private sector to shape the new online space.
via The Pauls’ New Crusade: “Internet Freedom”.
Let’s see here, the government gives away public rights of ways to run wires and fibre to large telecoms yet should have no say in making sure those public resources aren’t used to exploit the public through monopolistic practices?
Who paid off Ron Paul?
The judge ruled that HTC had not infringed four technologies that Apple had claimed as its own.
via BBC News – HTC defeats Apple in swipe-to-unlock patent dispute.
The Recording Industry Association of America wants to put an end to software and services that enable people to rip songs from music videos.
Two days after YouTube-MP3.org, a site that converts songs from music videos into MP3 files, was blocked from accessing YouTube, the RIAA has asked CNET to remove software from Download.com that performs a similar function. CNET, which is owned by CBS, is the publisher of this news site.
via RIAA to CNET: Follow Google, nix video-to-MP3 conversions | Internet & Media – CNET News.
I do not advise downloading and installing anything from download.com. FOSS should be vetted by a reputable organization like sourceforge. That said, this kind of tactic will start to get very interesting. Ripping songs from youtube is just an algorithm.
Chief among the ITC complaint was patent 5,570,369, a power saver designed for the GSM system and based on TDMA technology. Although, on the surface, ‘369 appears to have been tossed in the recycle bin with other 2G relics, the 1996 patent helps serve as a warning shot to competitors recycling Nokia’s technology. At the same time it reveals a possible ulterior motive to stop Google’s momentum. HTC seems to be straight in the crosshairs of Nokia’s legal assault, with three relevant – and curious – phones singled out in the ITC complaint. HTC’s Sensation 4G, Amaze 4G and Inspire 4G are all driven by Android. While similar phones based on the Windows Phone platform were missing from Nokia’s accusations.
via Nokia seeks more leverage in the forever mobile patent war | Patexia.com.
ETNO’s submission to the ITU sets out a difference between “end to end quality of service delivery” and “best-effort delivery”, and says operators should get “fair compensation”, concluding that “nothing shall preclude” commercial agreements based on differentiated service.
Net Neutrality advocates say charging for services would allow providers to kill off competitors that run on top of their networks, like VoIP services such as Skype that operate over networks and compete with telephone services. The question also raises fears of Internet taxes.
via European ISPs Lobby ITU Against Net Neutrality | | TechWeekEurope UKTechWeekEurope UK.
A year ago, the former Dutch telecoms monopolist KPN unveiled a plan to make mobile users pay extra for data used by certain third-party apps, such as WhatsApp and Skype, that replaced KPN services like text messaging and voice calls. In response, the Dutch parliament quickly added net neutrality provisions to its telecommunications law. Tuesday, the Dutch senate at last approved the law, making the Netherlands the second country in the world (after Chile) with net neutrality written into statute.
via Netherlands becomes world’s second “net neutrality” country | Ars Technica.
At the end of the 1990s, Korea developed its own encryption technology, SEED, with the aim of securing e-commerce. Users must supply a digital certificate, protected by a personal password, for any online transaction in order to prove their identity. For Web sites to be able to verify the certificates, the technology requires users to install a Microsoft ActiveX plug-in.
via For world’s most wired country, breaking Internet monopoly is hard.
But mandating the technology had a host of side effects that, according to Kim, the FSS either largely ignored or didn’t predict. It forced consumers to use Internet Explorer because it was the only browser ActiveX plug-ins were compatible with. By default, Web developers optimized not only banking and shopping Web sites for Internet Explorer, but all Web sites. For developers, this just seemed logical.
The result has been a decade-long monopoly in the Korean market, where virtually all Korean Web sites are optimized for Internet Explorer.
Apple is blocking apps that take advantage of the new Dropbox SDK because they inadvertently allow users to buy extra online storage without Apple taking a cut.
via Apple blocks Dropbox-based apps | Enterprise | News | PC Pro.
The threat to the freedom of the internet comes, he claims, from a combination of governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens, the entertainment industry’s attempts to crack down on piracy, and the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.
via Web freedom faces greatest threat ever, warns Google’s Sergey Brin | Technology | The Guardian.
He said he was most concerned by the efforts of countries such as China, Saudi Arabia and Iran to censor and restrict use of the internet, but warned that the rise of Facebook and Apple, which have their own proprietary platforms and control access to their users, risked stifling innovation and balkanising the web.