On Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America will confront yet another university student in court over file sharing allegations. This time, though, the RIAA may have to do so in front of an unfriendly audience, as U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner has agreed to allow live online coverage of the hearing.
Comcast Not Attending FCC Hearing
Pick a clever intro: Comcast won’t be tarred and feathered willingly; Comcast is taking its ball and going home; Comcast can’t stand the heat and won’t be going near the kitchen; Comcast won’t lie in the bed it’s made; Comcast will just hold its breath till it turns blue.I like this one:Comcast to FCC: Screw you guys; I’m going home.
Sound Bites From The Comcast Hearing
Yesterday’s FCC "hearing" to discuss Comcast’s interference with BitTorrent traffic was more "dogpile on the cable shill." Comcast chose executive VP David Cohen as the bullet-catcher/gauntlet-runner/sacrificial lamb, and Verizon sent its own executive VP, Tom Tauke, presumably for moral support.
Stakes Are High For Comcast Hearing
Cable is on course to be the next decade’s dial-up. With limited capacity, cable companies are in a pickle: manipulate network traffic like Comcast has been doing (which customers and perhaps the government won’t stand for) or go back to metered pricing, which is going back ten years in business model, like Time Warner has done, which customers ultimately won’t stand for, especially as more competition comes around.
Senators Call For Net Neutrality Hearing
Senators Bryon Dorgan (D-ND) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) sent a letter today to Sen. Daniel Inouye, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, calling for a hearing to discuss phone and cable companies’ recent discrimination against content on their networks, and whether current regulatory protections are enough.
We Won’t Be Hearing Much More About Aaron and Google
I met with Aaron Stanton yesterday, who is visiting the San Francisco Bay Area with the goal of getting Google to build his idea (his home is in Idaho, and this is the first time he’s been to SF/Silicon Valley since he was younger and visited with his parents). I see Mathew Ingram is asking “now what?”
Google To Get Belgian News Hearing
A couple of parties to a lawsuit in Belgium against Google for its news indexing have settled with the search advertising giant, but Google will have to wait until 2007 to fight an injunction against its scraping of news content managed by distributor Copiepresse.
MP3 Players With Hearing Aids?
Swiss hearing aid maker Phonak expects to cash in on people who use MP3 Players. CEO Valentin Chapero said, “”Due to the noise exposure, especially among the young, we are witnessing the creation of a hearing loss bubble in years to come”
Yahoo Hearing VoIP Ringtones
It looks like Yahoo will finally make greater use of the technology it received when it acquired VoIP firm Dialpad, and launch a VoIP competitor to Vonage and Skype.
Congressional Hearing For Google Print?
Google’s list of allies in support of its massive Google Print for Libraries project is getting shorter by the day. Yesterday, the century-old National Consumers League sent a letter to Congress urging the government body to set up public hearings on the matter.