Posts Tagged Federal Communications Commission

Random thoughts on various topics

October 28, 2010 at 1:46 pm · Filed under Boxee, Broadband, Editorial, FCC, government, history, Home Theater, Home Theatre, HTPC, Internet, issues, Opinion, Regulation, software ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Today I just want to post a few quick thoughts on various topics, none of which are sufficient for a full article:

THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS: Before you vote, or if you are thinking of not voting, you should watch Keith Olbermann’s video (transcript here), which really exposes what the Tea Party candidates are all about.  I realize that Mr. Olbermann does get a bit passionate at times and that he does not break up his talks with humor (like, say, Jon Stewart) but in this case what he has to say is really important.  If you think that the Tea Party candidates are in any way standing up for America or espousing American ideals, you really need to watch the video.  Suffice it to say that I firmly believe that if the Tea Party, every gets much of a foothold in American politics, they will destroy the Republican party and many of our cherished American principles. And people of my age and older should really be very afraid of these folks — again, watch the video if you want to know why.

HULU AND THE NETWORKS BLOCKING PLAYBACK ON BOXEE AND GOOGLE TV: This is doomed to fail.  The same folks who have figured out how to “jailbreak” mobile phones will find it extremely easy to fool Hulu, et. al. into thinking it’s communicating with a plain old web browser on a standard PC.  And the reason that Hulu and the networks should not be blocking their content on such devices is because when the “jailbreakers” do it, you can bet that they will also figure out a way to remove the commercials from the stream.  Hulu in particular is very vulnerable here, because either they’re going to have to relent or they’re going to wind up blocking playback to users that really are using a standard browser on a desktop computer.  If they don’t relent soon, then the hack that allows viewing Hulu on those devices without the commercials will begin to receive wide acceptance, and then they will be in the position of trying to put the genie back in the bottle — they will never be able to get people to accept watching the ads (which will, of course, mean that eventually they will go out of business).

THE MOST USELESS FEDERAL AGENCIES have to be the Federal Communications Commission and the federal Food and Drug Administration.  I’ll leave the FDA alone for the moment, but the FCC is so obviously in the pocket of the huge corporations that you know something is definitely wrong there. Seems like about every other day we read story after story of how Internet users in countries like South Korea get broadband speeds about 100 times what most of us can get. The thing I don’t understand is why this seems to happen even in times when the Democrats have the majority in the legislature — it’s as if the Republicans still control the agenda even when the Democrats are in power — UNLESS the Democrats are also kowtowing to the huge corporations.  If Democrats DO lose to the Tea Party loons, they have only themselves to blame, for not doing the right thing when they had every opportunity.

ZECHARIA SITCHIN PASSED AWAY ON THE MORNING OF OCTOBER 9, 2010: Many readers will not know who he was, but basically he was a researcher of ancient Sumerian texts, who offered some very interesting (and often controversial) insights into our ancient past.  Even if he wasn’t 100% accurate — and who could be when you are talking about things that happened thousands of years ago, when you consider that our news media often can’t get details right on a story that happened two days ago — his biggest contribution to humanity was to expand the thinking of everyone who ever read his work.  For example, you will never look at the evolution vs. creation debate in quite the same way after you find out what the ancient Sumerians had to say about our origins, as reported by Mr. Sitchen.  I think he is one of those people whose genius has gone largely unrecognized by his own generation (even though most of his books sold very well), but who will be recognized and revered by future generations. Whether you agree with everything he wrote or not, he was one of the great thinkers of our time. By the way, the Wikipedia article about him is extremely biased, though that doesn’t surprise me considering that his writings were probably seen as a threat to both the existing religious institutions, and to conventional “scientific” thinking regarding our origins.

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Did Comcast Hire Public Stand-ins For Neutrality Hearing? – Napping, disinterested attendees mysteriously appear, cheer Comcast – dslreports.com

February 26, 2008 at 8:39 pm · Filed under Broadband, business ethics, cable, consumer, FCC, Internet, Regulation ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

You’ve heard of a denial-of-service attack – read the following and see if it appears to you as though Comcast might have taken the same principle and applied it to citizen participation. Or, if you’re of my parents’ generation, see if this reminds you at all of the days when union organizers (or opponents) would fill a meeting with a bunch of paid shills:

The Save The Internet Coalition, a coalition of consumer advocates like the Consumers Union authors of Consumer Reports and the Free Press, is claiming that Comcast bussed in a large number of disinterested individuals to yesterday’s public FCC hearing at Harvard on network neutrality and traffic shaping. The group is claiming Comcast paid these individuals so those seats would not be filled with interested, question-asking participants. Many didn’t even know what the meeting was about …..

Full article here:
Did Comcast Hire Public Stand-ins For Neutrality Hearing? – Napping, disinterested attendees mysteriously appear, cheer Comcast – dslreports.com

The real question is, are the FCC Commissioners so isolated from reality that they can’t figure out that this sort of thing might be happening right under their noses? I mean, if we assume that the critics have the right take on this, it would seem to me that once the Commission discovers that Comcast apparently believes their case is so weak that they dare not allow opponents to fairly participate in the process, that would work against them. I might be wrong, but to me this sort of seems like an admission that if the hearings are conducted in a fair and open manner, Comcast doesn’t believe their position will be the one with which the FCC sides.  But then, that (and everything in this article other than the article excerpt and link) is just my personal take on what I’ve read in the linked article. As always, feel free to leave a comment if you disagree.

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IP Democracy: Verizon’s War with Cable over VoIP Customers

February 12, 2008 at 6:02 am · Filed under cable, FCC, litigation, patents, Verizon, VoIP ·Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

It appears as though Verizon is resorting to lawsuits, as well as allegedly violating FCC rules, in an attempt to defeat or delay the widespread use of VoIP.  It won’t work, of course, and Verizon should beware the unintended consequences, by which I mean increased scrutiny by three-letter Federal agencies.  The problem for big telco is that no one will be able to kill VoIP – even if it were to die here in the United States (which could only happen if one of the telco brass somehow managed to become absolute dictator), it would still flourish in other countries around the globe.  So, the phone companies are in the unenviable position of playing the role of the buggy whip manufacturers trying to hobble the introduction of the automobile.  As IP Democracy reports:

Top telco Verizon has seemingly had enough with cable operators stealing away its local voice customers. Fresh from its VoIP patent lawsuit victory over independent VoIP provider Vonage, Verizon is now flexing its legal muscles to take on the even more threatening cable industry.

Last week the telco filed its second infringement suit against a cable operator, Charter Communications, accusing Charter of violating its VoIP patents. Verizon seeks an injunction plus monetary damages. The Charter suit follows a similar lawsuit Verizon filed against cable operator Cox Communications last month.

Charter and Cox are not, apparently, alone in feeling Verizon’s jab at their VoIP businesses. Three other cable companies, Comcast, Time Warner and Brighthouse Networks, filed a complaint with the FCC yesterday claiming that Verizon is violating the Commission’s rules by dangling retention incentives to landline customers that have already decided to switch to cable digital voice services.

Read the full story here:
IP Democracy – Verizon’s War with Cable over VoIP Customers

If I were a Verizon shareholder (which I am not – I’ve never played the stock market, and have no intention of doing so), I think I’d be a little worried about Verizon taking on big cable. The lawsuit against Vonage was sort of like an elephant taking on an ant, in terms of available legal resources, but taking on the cable industry is a whole other matter.

It’s interesting to me that so far, Verizon apparently hasn’t sued Comcast, but that doesn’t mean that Comcast has no interest in the outcome of the other lawsuits, and if they get involved that could change the balance of power.  If the cable industry chooses to unite to fight these lawsuits, under the theory that “you pick on one of my brothers, you take all of us on”, Verizon could suddenly find themselves in a clash of relative equals. Granted that at the moment, the Federal Communications Commission seems to show undue favoritism toward the telephone companies, but that may make the cable companies all the more willing to move the contest into the courts, where the FCC has relatively little influence.  And, if this turns into a prolonged fight, it’s quite possible (some would say quite likely) that the makeup of the FCC will change. So, the ultimate outcome of this clash isn’t at all a foregone conclusion. However, in the long run, history never seems to favor the party trying to hold back technology. In the case of a company, even if they don’t cease to exist entirely, they become much less of a force to be reckoned with.

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