2010-09-
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106FCCRoadMapToWiTEL-VoIPMix
106pa
"The Red Flag Rule - Will it
Prevent Phone Number ID
Theft?"
106pa
Gov: FTC: "The Red Flags Rule -
Preventing ID
Theft"
106- Gov:
The
FCC Turf War between Cable &
WiTEL®©
106 HiTech: iPad - "One of FOUR
of the Best Comeback Stories of
2010!"
106
Q&A Session with FCC
Chairman, Julius Genachowski,
"Who Created NBS
WiTEL?
106
- CarbonMonoxideLaw / New law to
require home carbon monoxide
detectors
106
- Gov: Can Arabs get Laws passed
in Israel?
YES!
106
- Gov: FTC: The Google - Smart TV
- NBS WiTEL®© 102
Yr Love
Affair!
106
- Gov: FCC Explains itself at
NAB-Las Vegas & "The
Smart-Daaf
Boys."
106
- Gov: FCC Chairman Q& A -
"Who Created the Wireless
Telephone?"
106
- Gov: The FCC RoadMap To
WiTEL-VoIP
Mix-Up
106pa - Law Suit
Bluetooth
Wireless Sues -- for
ServiceMark®© "IP"
Theft
106pa
Law Suit: Hewlett Packard Co.
settles China ServiceMark "IP"
infringement
suit.
106papa - Law Suit:
Broadcom
Corp. -- for
ServiceMark®© "IP"
Theft
106pa
- Law Suit: Kerkorian Settles
Lawsuit for $8.1-million to
Settle
Lawsuit
106pa - Law Suit:
Apple
Sues - For iPhone Service Mark
®©
Infringement
106pa - Law Suit:
Apple
Inc. -- Settles
"iPad®©
ServicMarks with
Fujitsu.
106pa - Law Suit:
Apple,
Dell, Intel,
Sony
- and
Irvine
based,
Broadcom
Corp.
Named
106pa
- Law Suit: Johnson & Johnson
Wins $1.73-billion, in
®© Service Mark
Claims
///
20-20
tviNews UpDates106 -
½
106- Today's
Patent Mess - By - Mark
Anderson
106-
FCC Adopts 'Net Neutrality' Rules
in a 3-2
vote
/
106-
HumphryBogart-TM-ID-Theft
106-
TVI-"NBS Radio Trust"
106-
TheWiTEL-ID-phoneNumber
106-
"WiTEL# "
Bailout
106-
Smart90StoresInfoOnCloud
106-
WhoOwnsSmart90CloudInfo?
106-
FCCRegulatorsVsGoogle
106-
ChinaMobileLicenseDelayed
106-
ChinaTrademarkGrabs
106-
OracleVs.Google-LarryPageTestimony
106-
YahooVsFacebook
106-
AT&TLobbying
2010-09-
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Stories
RETURN
TO
TOP
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tviNews
106FCCRoadMapToWiTEL-VoIPMix
106pa "The Red Flag Rule - Will
it Prevent Phone Number ID
Theft?"
106pa
Gov: FTC: "The Red Flags Rule -
Preventing ID
Theft"
106- Gov:
The
FCC Turf War between Cable &
WiTEL®©
106 HiTech: iPad - "One of FOUR
of the Best Comeback Stories of
2010!"
106
Q&A Session with FCC
Chairman, Julius Genachowski,
"Who Created NBS
WiTEL?
106
- CarbonMonoxideLaw / New law to
require home carbon monoxide
detectors
106
- Gov: Can Arabs get Laws passed
in Israel?
YES!
106
- Gov: FTC: The Google - Smart TV
- NBS WiTEL®© 102
Yr Love
Affair!
106 - Gov: FCC Explains itself at
NAB-Las Vegas & "The
Smart-Daaf
Boys."
106
- Gov: FCC Chairman Q& A -
"Who Created the Wireless
Telephone?"
106
- Gov: The FCC RoadMap To
WiTEL-VoIP
Mix-Up
106pa - Law Suit
Bluetooth
Wireless Sues -- for
ServiceMark®© "IP"
Theft
106pa
Law Suit: Hewlett Packard Co.
settles China ServiceMark "IP"
infringement
suit.
106papa - Law Suit:
Broadcom
Corp. -- for
ServiceMark®© "IP"
Theft
106pa
- Law Suit: Kerkorian Settles
Lawsuit for $8.1-million to
Settle
Lawsuit
106pa - Law Suit:
Apple
Sues - For iPhone Service Mark
®©
Infringement
106pa - Law Suit:
Apple
Inc. -- Settles
"iPad®©
ServicMarks with
Fujitsu.
106pa - Law Suit:
Apple,
Dell, Intel,
Sony
- and
Irvine
based,
Broadcom
Corp.
Named
106pa
- Law Suit: Johnson & Johnson
Wins $1.73-billion, in
®© Service Mark
Claims
///
20-20
tviNews UpDates106 -
½
2011-4TH
QUARTER -OCTOBER - NOVEMBER -
DECEMBER
106-SAP Pleads Guitly - Must Pay
$29M To Oracle-For ID-Theft
RedFlags
106 California joins suit to
Block AT&T-T-Mobile
$39-Billion Deal
106-First
Come - First Serve Patent Law
Signed By Obama
106-
Recording Artist Copyright
Collections -1978
106-TV
Copyright Law Targeted the Law as
"Bad For
Business"
106-Apple vs Personal Audio Award
$84M
Click
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Taxes
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tviStory-
106-
Court sides with Google in
Oracle's epic API copyright
case
Califoria
is Burning - Wild Fires out of
control.
President
Donald
J. Trump
Approves Major Disaster
Declaration
for California
WASHINGTON
-- FEMA announced that federal
disaster assistance has been made
available to
the state of California to
supplement state, tribal, and
local recovery efforts in the
areas affected
by wildfires from Aug.
14 and continuing.
The
President's action makes federal
funding available to affected
individuals in Lake, Napa, San
Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano,
Sonoma and Yolo counties.
Assistance can include
grants for temporary housing and
home repairs, low-cost loans to
cover uninsured property losses,
and other programs to help
individuals and business owners
recover from the effects of the
disaster.?
Federal
funding is also available to the
state, tribal, eligible local
governments and certain private
nonprofit organizations on a
cost-sharing basis
for emergency protective
measures by wildfire in Lake,
Napa, San Mateo, Santa Cruz,
Solano, Sonoma and Yolo
counties.
Federal
funding is also available on a
cost-sharing basis for hazard
mitigation
measures statewide.
Willie G.
Nunn has been named as the
Federal Coordinating Officer for
federal recovery operations in
the affected area. Damage
assessments are continuing in
other areas, and more counties
and additional forms of
assistance may be designated
after the assessments are fully
completed.
Individuals
and business owners who sustained
losses in the designated area can
begin applying for assistance
tomorrow by registering online
at www.DisasterAssistance.gov or
by calling 1-800-621- 3362 or
1-800-462-7585 TTY.
///
106-
Red Cross LA Sends Volunteers to
Northern California for Wildfire
Response
LOS
ANGELES, August 26, 2020 -- The
American Red Cross Los Angeles
Region concludes its immediate
Lake Fire relief operations
following the announcement that
evacuation orders have been
lifted. Caseworkers will continue
to virtually support those
affected as they begin the
recovery process. The
organization now shifts its focus
to support Northern California as
wildfires continue to spread
across the state, with hundreds
of thousands of acres burned and
many more under threat.
When the
Lake Fire began on Aug. 12, the
Red Cross mobilized its disaster
workforce to aid those affected.
Red Cross volunteers supported
three evacuation points,
providing snacks, water and
shelter for anyone fleeing the
fire. The Red Cross provided
hotel lodging for more than 20
evacuees, delivering service in
accordance with COVID-19 safety
precautions. At the hotel, Lake
Fire evacuees received constant
care from Red Cross volunteers,
including daily health checks,
disaster mental health support
and meals. In addition, the Red
Cross provided emergency supplies
and assistance returning to their
homes.
The Red
Cross provided 179 overnight
hotel stays and served more than
980 meals and snacks.
Residents
impacted by the Lake Fire, who
still are in need of assistance,
can contact the local Red Cross
at 1-800-RED CROSS
(1-800-733-2767).
VOLUNTEERS
URGENTLY NEEDED
Wildfires in
Northern California continue,
with hundreds of thousands of
acres burned and many more under
threat. The Red Cross has set up
several shelters for those
evacuating providing a safe place
for more than 3,100 people.
However,
we need help as the fires are
predicted to continue to go and
more people will need
support. Those in good
health and willing
to deploy for a period
of up to 14 days to support the
shelters and evacuation sites in
Northern California are urged to
sign up and start their training
today for one of two volunteer
roles: Shelter services or health
services.
The Red
Cross strictly follows and
enforces all COVID safety
guidelines provided by the
CDC and the Department of
Health Services.
People
need your help.
The Red Cross workforce
on the ground
needs your help. Please
sign up and volunteer. Visit
redcross.org/la today or email
volunteerservices.losangeles.ca@redcross.org.
RETURNING HOME
AFTER A WILDFIRE
Don't
return home until officials say
it's safe to do so.
Inspect
the roof immediately and
extinguish any sparks or embers.
Wildfires may have left embers
that could reignite.
Check your
home for embers that could cause
fires. Look for signs of a fire
including smoke or sparks.
Avoid
damaged or downed power lines,
poles and wires.
Keep your
animals under your direct
control. Hidden embers and hot
spots could burn them.
Wet down
debris to minimize breathing in
dust particles.
Follow
public health guidance on safe
cleanup of fire ash and safe use
of masks.
Wear
leather gloves and shoes with
heavy soles.
Throw out
any food that has been exposed to
heat, smoke or soot.
Download
the free Red Cross Emergency App
for more preparedness tips and
safety checklists, localizable
alerts, Shelter Locator and
more.
Please follow
@RedCrossLA on Twitter for the
latest updates. Visit
redcross.org/wildfire for
information on how to prepare
for, respond to and recover from
wildfires.
About
the American Red Cross:
The American Red Cross
shelters, feeds and provides
emotional support to victims of
disasters; supplies about 40
percent of the nation's blood;
teaches skills that save lives;
provides international
humanitarian aid; and supports
military members and their
families. The Red Cross is a
not-for-profit organization that
depends on volunteers and the
generosity of the American public
to perform its mission. For more
information, please visit
redcross.org/la or visit us on
Twitter at @RedCrossLA.
Click
for More
tviStory 106-s90 - Red Cross LA
sends volunteers to Northern
California wildfire
response
///
106-
SAG-AFTRA Decry The Arrest of
Journalist in
Minneapolis
LOS
ANGELES (May 29, 2020) --
SAG-AFTRA has released the
following statement in response
to the arrest of CNN reporter
Omar Jimenez and his colleagues,
Bill Kirkos and Leonel Mendez, in
Minneapolis this morning while
reporting on protests.
"As journalists it is our job to
cover protests, demonstrations,
marches and rallies -- some
peaceful, some not. We do this
without interfering with
protesters or law
enforcement. The arrest of
Omar Jimenez, who was clearly
identified as a credentialed
member of the news media, is
unacceptable."
SAG-AFTRA represents broadcast
journalists in addition to
actors, recording artists and
other performers, and the union
holds press freedoms in the
highest regard. In 2017,
SAG-AFTRA released a public
statement on its support for a
free press, and the union
reaffirms that position now. It
read:
"As a union whose membership
includes broadcast and online
journalists, SAG-AFTRA champions
the rights of a free press, whose
primary role is to provide
citizens with the information
they need to effectively govern a
democracy. These rights are
guaranteed by the First Amendment
to the U.S. Constitution, which
establishes that the press shall
be free from government
interference in the dissemination
of information, ideas and
opinions.
"SAG-AFTRA, journalists and
non-journalists alike, supports a
free and unencumbered press and
stands with any journalist who
might find his or her ability to
report on our government
challenged or compromised.
"SAG-AFTRA believes first and
foremost that citizens in a
democracy need the truth.
Furthermore, journalists have an
obligation to monitor and
question those in power, pointing
out wrongdoing when they find it,
noting when facts asserted are
not supported by evidence, and
reporting inconsistencies in the
positions of public figures.
"As working professionals,
members of the news media have an
obligation to verify the accuracy
of what they report, with loyalty
only to their readers, listeners
and viewers and not to any
political party, affiliation or
ideology.
"As a proud labor union
representing more than 160,000
broadcasters, actors and
entertainers, SAG-AFTRA stands
with all of its members in
ensuring that the basic rights of
a free and independent press
continue to be upheld."
106
SAG-AFTRA Protesting Louisville
Police Officer Assault on
Television News Journalist
Kaitlin Rust and Photographer
James Dobson
Los
Angeles, CA, May 30, 2020 --
SAG-AFTRA, a national union
representing 160,000 actors,
broadcasters and recording
artists today released the below
statement protesting the attack
on journalists Kaitlin Rust and
James Dobson by a Louisville
police officer:
"Last night, a Louisville, KY
police officer aimed and fired
pepper balls at WAVE3 News
reporter Kaitlin Rust and
photographer James Dobson. Rust
and Dobson are professional
journalists represented by
SAG-AFTRA who were on assignment
covering protests arising out of
the police killings of Breonna
Taylor and George Floyd.
"When the officer fired on them,
they were following police
instructions, behind police
lines, and were not interfering
with police activity. Both Rust
and Dobson were obviously in
performance of their duties as
journalists. They were carrying
professional production equipment
and Rust was wearing a bright
yellow reflective vest.
"SAG-AFTRA condemns the
reprehensible actions of this
police officer who, without
provocation or justification,
fired upon journalists who were
doing their jobs. The assault
also had a traumatizing effect on
viewers at home who watched the
officer aim and fire repeatedly
during the live broadcast.
"This was a brazen attack on two
unarmed citizens. It is also an
attack on our democracy and the
people's right to know how those
on whom we confer power are using
that power.
"Whether perpetrated by the
public or by the state, acts of
violence on journalists bringing
news to the communities they
serve are a betrayal of our
nation's founding principle that
a free press is necessary for the
maintenance of a free
government.
"As citizens of this democratic
nation, and as a labor union
representing broadcast
journalists and other media
professionals, SAG-AFTRA
unequivocally champions the First
Amendment rights of journalists
to gather information and report
the truth. We stand with any
journalist who finds his or her
ability to report on our
government challenged or
compromised."
About SAG-AFTRA
SAG-AFTRA represents
approximately 160,000 actors,
announcers, broadcast
journalists, dancers, DJs, news
writers, news editors, program
hosts, puppeteers, recording
artists, singers, stunt
performers, voiceover artists and
other entertainment and media
professionals. SAG-AFTRA members
are the faces and voices that
entertain and inform America and
the world. A proud affiliate of
the AFL-CIO, SAG-AFTRA has
national offices in Los Angeles
and New York and local offices
nationwide representing members
working together to secure the
strongest protections for
entertainment and media artists
into the 21st century and
beyond.
Visit
SAG-AFTRA online
Click
for More
tviStory
106-s90-
SAG-AFTRA
On TheArrest of Journalist in
Minneapolis
///
106-
1.1 BillJury Award to
Caltech
A Los Angeles jury on Jan 29,
awarded $Billion damages to
Caltech in litigation alleging
that Apple and Broadcom infringed
on four of the university's
patents related to wireless data
transmissions. Apple Inc. and
Broadcom Inc. must pay $1.1
billion in damages for infringing
Caltech patents on Wi-Fi
technology, a federal jury in Los
Angeles ordered.
The federal jury in downtown Los
Angeles ordered Apple to pay $837
million while Broadcom was hit
with a $270.2-million verdict,
according to lawyers for Caltech.
The school sued the technology
companies over patents related to
wireless data transmissions.
The California Institute of
Technology issued a statement
saying it appreciates the jury's
thoughtful attention throughout
the trial. "We are pleased the
jury found that Apple and
Broadcom infringed Caltech
patents."
"As a nonprofit institution of
higher education, Caltech is
committed to protecting its
intellectual property in
furtherance of its mission to
expand human knowledge and
benefit society through research
integrated with education."
It's the biggest jury verdict of
any kind so far this year and the
sixth-largest patent verdict of
all time, according to Bloomberg
data.
Lawyers for the two companies
have denied infringing the
patents and said the school
wasn't entitled to significant
damages even if they were using
the inventions.
Apple said it plans to appeal the
Caltech verdict. Broadcom said
that it also plans to appeal, and
that it disagreed with the
factual and legal basis for the
verdict.
Caltech filed suit in 2016,
alleging that Apple products
including iPhones, iPads, iPods,
Apple Watches and Mac computers
used Broadcom's components, which
allegedly infringed on Caltech's
patents. e Watches and Mac
computers used Broadcom's
components, which allegedly
infringed on Caltech's
patents.
Click
for
More
tviStory
106-s90- $Billion Dollar
JuryAward to
Caltech
///
106-
"Right to be forgotten Rule"
marks Google
victory
The
celebration of the 70th
anniversary of the founding of
the People's Republic of China is
an upcoming ceremonial event with
a grand military parade as its
spotlight to celebrate National
Day of the People's Republic of
China that is scheduled to take
place on October, 1, 2019 in
Beijing. General Secretary of the
Communist Party, President and
Chairman of the Central Military
Commission Xi Jinping, who will
be the guest of honor, will give
the holiday address to the nation
and Chinese expatriates abroad
before inspecting the formations
along Chang'an
Avenue.
The Alphabet Inc. unit was
challenging the French
authority's order to remove, on
demand, links on all its
platforms worldwide if they lead
to websites that contain
out-of-date or false information
that could unfairly harm a
person's reputation and whether
the right should apply globally
and where to draw the line
between privacy and freedom of
speech.
For Google, the fate of the
internet was at stake. The 2014
ruling already forces it to offer
different search results in
Europe than in the rest of the
world. The French regulator,
CNIL, says Google should purge
those results globally. The
company and its supporters,
including press freedom groups,
have warned that internet freedom
would be brushed aside if less
democratic parts of the world
embraced the same policy.
It however said search engines
must "seriously discourage"
internet users from going onto
non-EU versions of their pages to
find that information.
"The balance between right to
privacy and protection of
personal data, on the on hand,
and the freedom of information of
internet users, on the other, is
likely to vary significantly
around the world," the court said
in a statement on the decision.
The right to be forgotten was not
an absolute right, the court
said, and had to be balanced
against other fundamental rights,
in accordance with
proportionality.
Privacy campaigners hailed " a
victory for global freedom of
expression", while Google
welcomed the court's
decision.
The case originated in a dispute
between Google and the French
privacy regulator CNIL, which in
2015 called for the firm to
globally remove links to pages
containing damaging or false
information about a person.
Google introduced a geo-blocking
feature in 2016 following year,
which stopped European users from
being able to see delisted links.
However, it resisted censoring
search results for people in
other parts of the world,
challenging a (£88,376) fine
the National Commission on
Informatics and Liberty (CNIL)
tried to impose.
The technology firm argued that,
if this rule were applied outside
Europe, the obligation could be
abused by authoritarian
governments trying to cover up
human rights abuses.
Google says it has received
845,501 "right to be forgotten"
requests in the past five years,
leading to the removal of 45% of
the 3.3m links referred to in the
requests. Although the content
itself remains online, it cannot
be found through online searches
of the individual's name.
The 2014 ruling related to a test
case brought by a Spanish man
after he failed to secure the
deletion of an auction notice of
his repossessed home dating from
1998 on a Catalan website.
Google won the backing of the ECJ
court adviser Maciej Szpunar
earlier this year, who said the
right to be forgotten should be
enforced only in Europe and not
globally. Judges follow such
non-binding opinions in four out
of five cases.
The US firm was also supported by
Microsoft, Wikipedia's owner the
Wikimedia Foundation, and the
non-profit Reporters Committee
for Freedom of the Press, among
others.
Google had previously warned of
the dangers of overreach by
Europe. In a blogpost two years
ago, the company said there
should be a balance between
sensitive personal data and the
public interest and that no one
country should be able to impose
its rules on citizens of
another.
Peter Fleischer, Google's senior
privacy counsel, said: "Since
2014, we've worked hard to
implement the right to be
forgotten in Europe, and to
strike a sensible balance between
people's rights of access to
information and privacy. It's
good to see that the court agreed
with our arguments."
Google and rival search engines
will have to take measures, the
ECJ said, to "effectively prevent
or, at the very least, seriously
discourage" users in the EU from
using other versions of its site
to access removed content.
Thomas Hughes, executive director
of the freedom of expression
organisation Article 19,
described the ruling as a victory
for global freedom of expression.
"Courts or data regulators in the
UK, France or Germany should not
be able to determine the search
results that internet users in
America, India or Argentina get
to see
It is not right
that one country's data
protection authorities can impose
their interpretation on Internet
users around the world." 'Right
to be forgotten' on Google only
applies in EU, court rules.
Click
for More
tviStory
106-
"Right to Be Forgotten Rule" EU
ruling marks Google
victory
///
106-
Ceremonial events mark 70th
anniversary of the People's
Republic of
China
The celebration of the 70th
anniversary of the founding of
the People's Republic of China is
an upcoming ceremonial event with
a grand military parade as its
spotlight to celebrate National
Day of the People's Republic of
China that is scheduled to take
place on October, 1, 2019 in
Beijing. General Secretary of the
Communist Party, President and
Chairman of the Central Military
Commission Xi Jinping, who will
be the guest of honor, will give
the holiday address to the nation
and Chinese expatriates abroad
before inspecting the formations
along Chang'an Avenue.
The PRC (People's Republic of
China) was founded on October 1,
1949, with a ceremony celebrating
the forming of the Central
People's Government taking place
in Tiananmen Square on the same
day. The first public parade of
the new People's Liberation Army
took place there, following the
address by the country's first
Chairman Mao Zedong officially
declaring the formal
establishment of the Republic.
The Central People's Government
passed the Resolution on the
National Day of the People's
Republic of China on December 2,
1949, and declared that October 1
is the National Day.
It is undisputable that China has
grown in a shortest period of
time since its 'open door policy'
into a global power. Troy Cory
was among the first international
entertainers and the first
American entertainer to perform
in the People's Republic of
China, appearing at the 1988
Shanghai TV Festival, and
continuing over the following
years his multi-city stage
performances in Beijing, Anshan,
Harbin, Fouzhou, Guangzhou, and
as far as Longyang bordering
Guangdong to the south.
Back then,
there were no high rise
buildings, few cars and bicycles
still covering the streets and
the airports in Shanghai and
Beijing unimpressive
constructions. A small banner on
arrival announced "Welcome to
Beijing." Houses in narrow lanes
were small and people's dress was
modest and in muted colors.
Wherever we went there was a
group of Chinese officials always
accompanying us and showing up in
the hotel for meetings at
unannounced times.
Troy had
the time of his life performing
in front of 20,000 or more and
his performances at the Shanghai
TV festival being televised on
national TV, CCTV. A crowd of
concert goers were anxiously
waiting outside for autographs
and often after the performance
he was led out at different exits
of the round concert hall. Not to
forget this was late 80s and
early 90s and audiences were
eager to hear a singer from the
United States. The Chinese were
unforgettably hospitable to us,
and treated the Shanghai TV
Festival performers with a lit up
Bund, the waterfront promenade by
the Huangpu river. I am grateful
for the experience of a "former
China," and to have been able to
see a side of China before its
meteoric rise to an industrial
powerhouse and the world'
second-largest economy.
We could
see a change already during our
China tours in 2000 and 2004, and
back 1997, when attending a press
conference Al Gore was holding in
Beijing before we travelled on to
Shanghai to climb the Shanghai
Television Tower for the first
time when it just opened to the
public.
Click
for More
tviStory
106- Ceremonial
events mark 70th anniversary of
the People's Republic of
China
Click
for
More
tviStory ChinaExpo - Troy Cory
Show in
China
///
106- Apple and chip maker
Qualcomm
settle
Apple
and Qualcomm
in
a surprise turn
announced
Tuesday, April 16th, that they
have settled their years-long
litigation
over the use of Qualcomm's chips
in Apple's
iPhones.
The
agreement was announced after
lawyers for Apple made their
opening argument in what was
expected to be a three-week trial
in a San Diego federal court.
Apple will make a onetime payment
to Qualcomm and the two reached a
multiyear agreement under which
Qualcomm will supply chips and ,
and all the litigation between
the companies around the world
will be dismissed. No amounts
were disclosed relating to
payments and fees.
Qualcomm's shares had
underperformed this year until
Tuesday's surge soared 23% to
$70.45, their biggest single-day
gain since 1999. Apple shares
were little changd at $199.25.
Apple is due to report its
quarterly results on April 30,
while Qualcomm is scheduled to
release its numbers on May 1.
///
106-
Apple dealt legal blow as jury
awards Qualcomm $31 million
-
The
Ruling will be reviewed by
International Trade Commission
panel
The
verdict gives Qualcomm momentum
as it heads into a bigger
showdown with Apple next
month.
Judge
MaryJoan McNamara's decision is
the latest in a slew of
unfavorable rulings against Apple
in a winding and international
legal battle between the two tech
giants.
San
Diego-based Qualcomm makes chips
and other components in the
iPhone and other smartphones, and
Apple has stopped paying
licensing fees to Qualcomm via
its contract manufacturers
because it claims Qualcomm was
charging royalties for technology
it didn't actually invent.
"We appreciate Judge McNamara's
recognition of Apple's
infringement of our hardware
patent and that she will be
recommending an import ban and
cease and desist order," Qualcomm
vice president and general
counsel Don Rosenberg said in a
statement.
McNamara will officially rule on
the case within the next two
weeks. Then, it will go to the
full ITC panel for review in
July. Following that, there is a
60-day presidential review
period. Any import ban would
probably take place in the
fall.
The ITC ruled Tuesday on another
Qualcomm patent, this time siding
with Apple and invalidating
Qualcomm's patent.
Apple sued Qualcomm in January
2017 in federal court. Qualcomm,
in turn, countersued in Germany,
China and the U.S. and has racked
up some legal victories against
the iPhone maker.Apple violated
three Qualcomm patents and should
pay the chipmaker $31 million for
infringing on its technology, a
jury decided Friday, giving
Qualcomm momentum as it heads
into another legal skirmish with
the iPhone maker next month.
Qualcomm, which filed the suit in
July 2017, alleged that Apple had
used its technology without
permission in some versions of
its popular iPhone. The jury
awarded Qualcomm the full amount
it had requested at the start of
the two-week trial, which took
place in San Diego.
One disputed Qualcomm patent
covers technology that lets a
smartphone quickly connect to the
internet once the device is
turned on. Another deals with
graphics processing and battery
life. The third addresses
technology that shifts traffic
between a phone's apps processor
and modem.
The $31 million in damages -- or
$1.41 per infringing iPhone -- is
a drop in the bucket for Apple, a
company that briefly became
a $1 trillion
company last year. But it
marks an important victory for
Qualcomm, burnishing its
reputation as a mobile components
innovator. The win also lends
cre
dibility to the notion that much
of the company's innovation is
reflected in iPhones.
Click
for More
tviStory
106-s90- Apple dealt legal blow
in legal battle against
Qualcomm
///
106-
Amazon pitched facial-recognition
system to ICE
Amazon
pitched its facial-recognition
system in the summer to
Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) officials as a
way for the agency to target or
identify illegal immigrants.
At the
June meeting in Silicon Valley,
revealed in emails as part of a
Freedom of Information Act
request by the advocacy group
Project on Government
Oversight, officials from ICE
and Amazon Web Services talked
about implementing the tech
giant's Rekognition face-scanning
platform to assist with Homeland
Security investigations.
An Amazon
Web Service official specializing
in federal sales contracts, whose
name was redacted in the emails,
wrote that the conversation
involved "predictive analytics"
and "Rekognition Video
tagging/analysis" that could
possibly allow ICE to identify
people's faces from afar -- a
type of technology that
immigration officials have voiced
interest in for its potential
enforcement use on the southern
border.
"We are
ready and willing to support the
vital [Homeland Security
Investigations] mission," the
Amazon official wrote.
Amazon's
Jeff Bezos personally owns The
Washington Post.
Amazon
has marketed the technology to
police departments as a way to
target and identify criminals,
and it is used in Florida and
Oregon. Civil rights and privacy
advocates are
concerened that the unproven
technology's expansion could have
a chilling effect on public
protests or embolden government
and police efforts to supercharge
mass surveillance.
In June
Amazon employees urged the
company to reject work that could
be used for government
surveillance. It is said hundreds
of anonymous Amazon workers wrote
CEO Jeff Bezos a letter roughly
one week after the meeting,
saying, "We refuse to build the
platform that powers ICE, and we
refuse to contribute to tools
that violate human rights."
Microsoft,
a tech giant building
facial-recognition tools that
compete with Amazon's, came also
under fire from employees for the
potential work it could do as
part of a major ICE contract.
Google
has also faced internal
resistance over its contributions
to Project Maven, a Defense
Department initiative that would
allow AI to identify objects in
battlefield drone video. [No
word on whether Google employees
oppose its Dragonfly search
engine, which was developed
secretly for China. It links
users' searches to their personal
phone numbers, making it easier
for the Communist government to
track every citizen. Google's
Dragonfly also blocks any content
Communist rulers don't want their
citizens to see.]
Amazon
has a number of government
contracts and is believed to be
the lead contender to win the
Pentagon's $10 billion
cloud-computing contract, known
as JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense
Infrastructure). The company also
operates a private cloud service
for top-secret intelligence used
by the CIA.
Bezos
has donated money to fund college
scholarships for
"undocumented" students, but
he has also publicly supported
the tech industry's contributions
to national-security efforts and
other government work.
"If
big tech companies are going to
turn their backs on the
Department of Defense, we are in
big trouble," Bezos said at a
recent event. Asked about illegal
immigration, he added, "I'd let
them in if it were me. I like
'em, I want all of them in. But
this is a great country and it
does need to be defended."
Click
More
tviStory 106-
Amazon
pitched facial-recognition system
to
ICE
////
106-
LEAAP 'Meet and Greet' with LAPD
chief Moore
The
Law Enforcement Association of
Asian Pacifics (LEAAP) in
colaboration with the LAPD hosted
a 'Meet and Greet' with LAPD
Chief of Police Michel Moore on
Sept. 13, on the front courtyard
of the LAPD Headquarters
Facility, 100 W. 1st Street,
emceed by NBC4 Southern
California Journalist, Hetty
Chang.
Photo:
lr
LA Police Chief Michel Moore,
TVI
Reporter Gary
Sunkin
This event served as an
opportunity for community members
and Department employees to meet
Chief Moore. Cultural
entertainment was provided by
UCLA Samahang Pilipino and the
East Wind Youth Foundation Lion
Dancers.
In attendance
were:
City Councilmember David Ryu,
Council District 4
City of Los Angeles Public Works
Commissioner Joel Jacinto
LAPD Chief of Police Michel R.
Moore
LAPD Deputy Chief Dennis H. Kato,
Operations-South Bureau
LAPD Commander Dominic Choi,
Homeless Coordinator
LAPD Captain Jonathan Tom,
Commanding Officer, Critical
Incident Review Division
LAPD Captain Brian Thomas,
Commanding Officer, Criminal
Investigation Division
LAPD Captain Jennifer Thomas,
Commanding Officer, Risk
Management Division
LAPD Captain Donald Graham,
Commanding Officer, North
Hollywood Division
LAPD Captain Steven Embrich,
Commanding Officer, West Valley
Division
Gardena Police Department Chief
Thomas Kang
El Centro Police Department Chief
Brian Johnson
Compton School Police Department
Chief William Woo
City of Los Angeles Personnel
Department General Manager Wendy
Macy
Police Administrator Terry
Carter, Commanding Officer,
Records & Identification
Division
Police Administrator Elena
Nihoa-Asucan, Commanding Officer,
Personnel Division
Asian Pacific Islander Community
members.
Click
More
tviStory
106-LAAP 'Meet and Greet' with
LAPD chief
Moore
///
106-
Google hit with a record fine of
5 billion dollars over Android
antitrust
violations
The
company was ordered by the
European Commission on Wednesday
to pay $5
billion
(¤
4.3
billion
euros)
for
unfairly pushing its apps on
smartphone users and thwarting
competitors.
"Google has used Android as a
vehicle to cement the dominance
of its search engine," Margrethe
Vestager, Europe's top antitrust
official, said in a
statement.
"They
have denied European consumers
the benefits of effective
competition in the important
mobile sphere," she added.
The
Commission said that Google broke
the law by requiring
manufacturers to install its
Google Search and Chrome apps as
a condition for licensing
Google's app store.
It
said that Google paid some large
smartphone makers and network
operators to install apps on
phones before they were sold. It
also prevented manufacturers from
selling devices running on
alternative versions of its
Android operating system.
Google
has been ordered to stop the
practices within 90 days, or face
additional penalties of up to 5%
of daily worldwide revenue for
Alphabet Inc., Google's parent
company.
Google
said that it would appeal the
decision.
"Android
has created more choice for
everyone, not less," it said in a
statement. "A vibrant ecosystem,
rapid innovation and lower prices
are the classic hallmarks of
robust competition."
Android
phones may becomemore expensive
thanks to Google's $5 billion
fine from the EU.
Google's
woes are no longer limited to
Europe.
Google's European fine raises
pressure on U.S. regulators to
examine the company's business
practices
Joseph
Simons, chairman of U.S. Federal
Trade Commission, said his agency
would "read what the EU put out
very closely." He said that at a
House subcommittee hearing hours
after authorities in Brussels
ordered Google to change the way
it makes Android device makers
pre-install its search and Web
browsing apps.
"In
the antitrust world, most of the
problematic conduct occurs where
firms are big and have market
power," said Simons, referring to
the duopoly of Google and Apple
in the mobile software market.
"This is one of the places we
would focus."
"The
unprecedented fine imposed by
Europe sends a clear message that
Google and other tech companies
cannot continue to abuse
international competition law,"
Blumenthal, a member of the
Senate Judiciary subcommittee on
antitrust, competition policy and
consumer rights, said in a
prepared statement.
"The
FTC should end its decade of
inaction and deference, and
confront the mounting evidence
that Google's business practices
have stifled robust competition
in a market that is critical to
our economy and society," he
added. "Europe should not be
alone setting the agenda."
The
response is one of the strongest
signs yet that the tougher
oversight Silicon Valley
companies have encountered in
Europe could ripple to the
U.S.
Ultimately,
U.S. regulators will struggle to
pin antitrust violations on
Google and other tech giants as
long as rules here are guided by
consumer prices first and
foremost.
"The
U.S. has consistently stuck to
the principles of antitrust laws
that the EU seems to have
abandoned: you can't find an
antitrust violation if consumers
aren't being harmed," said Larry
Downes, project director at the
Georgetown Center for Business
and Public Policy. "If companies
are not raising prices for
consumers, but in fact lowering
prices, as in the case of Amazon,
or they're not charging at all,
in the case of Google, then you
cannot find an antitrust
violation."
Click
More
tviStory 106- DOJ
#106-GoogleFined5BillbyEU
///
106-
DOJ Appeals AT&T TimeWarner
Merger
The
U.S. Justice Department is
appealing the ruling that federal
judge Richard Leon issued last
month allowing AT&T Inc. to
buy Time Warner Inc. in the
biggest antitrust case of this
century.
Craig Conrath, one of the Justice
Department lawyers who argued the
case, submitted the formal notice
of its appeal to the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit.
The Justice Department's move
comes after lawyers there decided
not to seek an emergency stay of
U.S. District Judge Richard
Leon's June 12 ruling that
cleared the way for the
$85.4-billion deal after a
six-week trial.
The appeal is surprising given
that Judge Leon issued a sweeping
rejection of the government's
arguments. In the trial, the DOJ
took the point that the deal
violated antitrust law because it
would harm competition in the
pay-TV market and raise consumer
prices.
The ruling was a stinging defeat
for the Trump administration.
President Trump has had a
long-standing feud with Time
Warner's CNN and in 2016 said the
merger would concentrate too much
media power in one company.
In delivering his ruling, Judge
Leon strongly urged the Justice
Department not to seek a stay
pending appeal, warning it could
cause the merger to collapse
because of a June 21 deadline the
companies had set to close.
AT&T
and Time Warner closed the deal
June 15. The new company combines
AT&T's 100 million wireless
customers and 25 million pay-TV
customers with Time Warner's wide
array of content, including TV
shows and movies from HBO, CNN,
TBS and Warner Bros.
AT&T 's General Counsel said
the company did not expect the
Justice Department to appeal.
"While the losing party in
litigation always has the right
to appeal if it wishes, we are
surprised that the Department of
Justice has chosen to do so under
these circumstances," said David
McAtee.
"It's very unlikely that they
would win," he said. "The facts
are against the government, and
the laws are against the
government."
///
AT&T: "We own Time
Warner"
AT&T
chief Randall Stephenson
questions government's challenge
of takeover: 'We own Time
Warner,' he said.
The U.S. Justice Department's
appeal of the AT&T-Time
Warner Inc. merger could help
clarify what corporate
combinations are permissible --
and it also could discourage
Comcast Corp. from making another
run at 21st Century Fox.
Analysts puzzled over why the
government would try to unravel
AT&T's purchase of Time
Warner after the government
suffered a stinging defeat in
court -- and a full month after
the acquisition closed.
AT&T Chief Executive Randall
Stephenson, while attending the
Allen & Co. Sun Valley
Conference in Idaho, was
dismissive of the government's
chances on appeal.
"It's a very narrow path that
would have to be traveled to get
this thing reversed," Stephenson
said in an interview with
business news channel CNBC. "The
merger is closed. We own Time
Warner."
Still, Stephenson noted that
experts believe a higher court
ruling could have significance,
particularly in clarifying
anti-trust law for vertical
mergers. A vertical merger is
when a company buys another firm
that is not a direct competitor
but operates in a different part
of the supply chain.
"A lot of legal minds think this
could be precedent-setting,"
Stephenson said. "This really
could end up solidifying what the
law is around vertical
mergers."
But the government still seems
determined to try to overturn the
AT&T/Time Warner merger,
suggesting that it may also go
after Comcast-Fox, which also is
considered a vertical merger.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
DOJ Appeals AT&T TimeWarner
Merger
106- Net Neutrality Repeal
Official
A Webusersguild
Report
Monday,
June 11th, marks the official end
of the federal government's net
neutrality rules giving Internet
providers the go-ahead to either
block or slow down websites or
prioritize their content over
others'.
With
net neutrality in effect as of
now, Senate Democrats are calling
on House Speaker Paul Ryan to
schedule a vote that could
preserve the broadband
regulations.
The
US Senate voted on May 16 to
reverse the Federal
Communications Commission's
repeal of net neutrality rules,
but a House vote--and President
Trump's signature--is still
needed.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
Net Neutrality Rule Repeal
Official
Charlie
Beck hands his chief's badge to
his successor, Michel
Moore
By
Gary
Sunkin
On
Wednesday, June 27, Charlie Beck
handed his chief's badge and
four-star pin to his successor,
Michel Moore. The batch and four
stars pinned to Moore's collar
were worn by Bratton before
Beck.
He
returned his gun, which he had
inherited from a police officer
who was killed in Afghanistan, to
the officer's Los Angeles Police
Department colleagues.
Beck
then walked out of LAPD
headquarters, greeted by rows of
officers, including mounted
patrols, who snapped to attention
and saluted.
After
shaking hands with Moore and his
predecessor, former chief William
J. Bratton, Beck climbed into a
vintage black Pontiac GTO with
the license plate "6T4 GTO,"
gunned the engine and drove off
to his farewell party at the Los
Angeles Police Academy in Elysian
Park.
Photo
RtoL: LA police chief, Charles
Beck; TVI reporter, Gary Sunkin
at World Police and
Fire Games.
It
was LAPD veteran Michel Moore's
first day leading the Los Angeles
Police Department,- but he
had worked closely with William
J. Bratton and then Charlie Beck
during their tenures as chief as
they transformed a department
once known for brutal tactics and
corruption into one that is on
the forefront of community
policing and efforts to reduce
police shootings.
"He's
listened to the people of this
city for three decades. He's
learned the ins and outs of every
facet," Mayor Eric Garcetti told
city officials and LAPD officers
at the Police Academy in Elysian
Park. "Our next chapter is not
something he'll need to learn on
the job. He's already been busy
writing it."
That
next chapter, Moore said in his
swearing-in speech, will include
deepening the community's trust
in the LAPD, as well as listening
to the concerns of the
department's 10,000 sworn
officers and 3,000 civilian
employees.
"A
department that once operated
with the mentality of policing a
neighborhood by force has
embraced the understanding that
our true strength is shown by our
ability to partner and
collaborate," said Moore, 57. "To
the people of Los Angeles, I am
committed to deepening your trust
by ensuring we are a department
that is highly visible,
accessible and responsive,
policing with purpose, compassion
and partnership."
In
his speech, Moore also promised
to reduce the use of deadly force
by his officers, who in 2017
fatally shot 17 people, despite
training that teaches them to
step back from dangerous
encounters and to use Tasers and
beanbag shotguns when
possible.
Moore
had already been sworn in the
previous day at City Hall, after
the City Council voted
unanimously to confirm his
appointment. The oath-taking and
pinning of the chief's four stars
were reenacted Thursday in front
of about 600 spectators.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
Charlie
Beck hands his chief's badge to
his successor, Michel
Moore
///
106-Police
need warrant to get cellphone
tracking
records.
Supreme
Court ruling updates privacy law
for a digital
age.
In a victory for privacy in the
digital era, the Supreme Court
ruled June 22, that the
Constitution protects tracking
data from a cellphone, requiring
police to have a search warrant
to obtain cell tower records that
can show a person's movement over
days or weeks.
By a 5-4 vote the justices said
the 4th Amendment protects the
tracking data, even though these
records are collected and held by
a private company, not by the
individual who is the target of
the search.
The decision is hailed as a
landmark that updates the law to
keep pace with the way modern
technology has vastly increased
the amount of data that can be
easily compiled and stored.
This nation of 326 million people
has 396 million cellphone
accounts, Chief Justice John G.
Roberts noted, and each of those
phones regularly sends signals
that record the movement of its
often-unwitting user.
Roberts further said that the
"seismic shifts in technology"
would permit total surveillance
of the public, and "we decline to
grant the state unrestricted
access" to these databases. He
was joined by the court's four
liberal justices.
The four dissenters, however,
warned the court was venturing
into new territory by extending
privacy rights to information
that is not truly private and was
not created or held by the user
of the cellphone. They also
worried the warrant requirement
could hamper investigators who
are in search of dangerous
criminals.
The ruling most likely will
require changes in the way the
FBI and police departments in
much of the country handle
investigations. However, in
California the impact will be
less since the state Legislature
in 2015 adopted a law that
requires investigators to have a
search warrant before they can
seek cellphone records.
It is not clear how the ruling
will affect other disputes over
electronic information. Roberts
said the decision in Carpenter
vs. United States was a "narrow
one" that applied only to
cellphone tracking data. The
dissenters warned the rule
inevitably will expand to shield
other types of electronic
data.
The ruling reflects the high
court's increasing concern over
the vast amount of private
information that can be obtained
and stored through digital
technology -- and often without
the knowledge of the user.
"This is a groundbreaking victory
for Americans' privacy rights in
the digital age.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
Supreme
Court ruling updates privacy law
for a digital
age
///
106-
TVI's person of the Month, Mark
Zuckerberg, to address data
privacy issues before Congress
In the
wake of the Cambridge Analytica
scandal, the 33-year-old Facebook
CEO will testify at a joint
hearing before the Senate
Judiciary and Senate Commerce,
Science, and Transportation
committees on Tuesday, April 10
at 2:15 pm Eastern time. He'll be
back on Capitol Hill the
following day for another hearing
before the House Energy and
Commerce
Committe.
That's when Mark Zuckerberg, the
company's chief executive, will
swap out his trademark gray
T-shirts for a suit and tie, and
embark on a two-day questioning
session and is about to join a
short list of chief executives
from Silicon Valley who have
stepped into the Capitol Hill hot
seat, albeit not always with
success.
On
Monday, Zuckerberg released his
prepared statement for his
testimony, issuing an apology and
taking responsibility for its
indiscretions. "We didn't take a
broad enough view of our
responsibility, and that was a
big mistake," he wrote. "It was
my mistake, and I'm sorry. I
started Facebook, I run it, and
I'm responsible.
"Facebook is an idealistic and
optimistic company. For most of
our existence, we focused on all
the good that connecting people
can bring,"
However, he concedes, "it's clear
now that we didn't do enough to
prevent these tools from being
used for harm as well. That goes
for fake news, foreign
interference in elections, and
hate speech, as well as
developers and data privacy."
Zuckerberg will lay out his
version of what happened in the
Cambridge Analytica scandal and
Russia's interference in the 2016
election as well as Facebook's
steps to remedy the events. "My
top priority has always been our
social mission of connecting
people, building community and
bringing the world closer
together," he says. "Advertisers
and developers will never take
priority over that as long as I'm
running Facebook."
"I know that a lot of the biggest
issues that we face are
fundamentally trade-offs between
different people's interests in
the community: What speech is
allowed? How do you manage the
balance between people wanting to
share but people also wanting to
see what other people are doing?
All of these really complex
interactions are what makes, I
think, the community work well,"
he said.
Community is a term that
Zuckerberg uses almost
unfailingly when discussing the
$450 billion company. But some of
Facebook's other leaders--and
some of its critics--have adopted
other terms. Sheryl Sandberg, the
company's chief operating
officer, did not push back when
an NPR reporter called Facebook a
"publisher." In New York last
year, the journalist Max Read
compared Facebook to the EU, the
Catholic Church, and a "faceless
Elder God."
Yet Zuckerberg -- who is not only
Facebook's CEO, but also the
chairman of its board and its
majority voting shareholder --
struggled to describe when his
personal thinking about the
company and its philosophy
shifted. He could not articulate
what changed his mind or drove
him to adopt a new approach.
Click
More
tviStory
106- Mark Zuckerberg Testifies
Before
Congress
///
2017
106- Sinclair Broadcast Group is
fined $13 million by
FCC
The Federal Communications
Commission has leveled a
$13.4-million fine against
Sinclair Broadcast Group for
failing to identify sponsored
content that aired on its TV
stations.
The fine is the largest ever
proposed by the commission for
such a violation and comes at a
delicate time for the
Baltimore-based company, which is
seeking Justice Department and
FCC approvals for its proposed
$3.9-billion acquisition of
Tribune Media.
The FCC said Sinclair created 60-
and 90-second spots that promoted
the Huntsman Cancer Institute in
Utah and aired them on its local
newscasts, or as free-standing
half-hour programs.
But the company did not identify
the spots as sponsored content
paid for by the Huntsman Cancer
Foundation. Other non-Sinclair
stations that were supplied the
programs and segments were also
not informed about the
sponsorship, the FCC said in a
statement.
The FCC's sponsorship
identification rules require that
paid programming be identified as
such to provide a clear
distinction for viewers between
commercials and news coverage or
editorial content.
The commission said it determined
that Sinclair had been in
violation of its rules following
an investigation based on an
anonymous complaint made in April
2016. In a statement, Sinclair
denied any wrongdoing and said it
will contest the fine.
"Any absence of sponsorship
identification in these public
service segments was unintended
and a result of simple human
error," Sinclair said in a
statement.
Sinclair has already been widely
criticized among television news
professionals for forcing its
stations to run segments with
conservative-leaning points of
view or commentaries on its local
newscasts. However, those
segments do not run afoul of FCC
regulations.
Sinclair is currently the largest
owner of TV stations in the U.S.,
and the merger with Tribune would
give it 233 broadcast outlets
reaching 72% of the country.
The proposed merger has been
opposed by both liberal and
conservative advocacy groups who
believe it will create too much
consolidation of power in the
media business.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
Sinclair Fined 13 Million by
FCC
///
Kurt
Sigl. president of BEM talks
global
eMobility
About
BEM
The Federal Association eMobility
e. V. (Bundesverband
eMobilität (BEM) has has a
longterm
committment to replace Germany's
mobility with the renewable
energy to electromobility. It is
the goal of the federal
government to become the lead
market and lead supplier for
electromobility by 2020.
One of its main tasks is the
improvement of the legal
framework for the expansion of
electromobility as a sustainable
and trendsetting mobility concept
as well as the enforcement of a
equality of opportunity with the
switch to electromobility.
To reach these goals, the BEM
combines the network from
economy, politics and media, and
promotes the public awareness for
emobility and committs itself to
the necessary infrastructual
changes.
With regard to an ever changing
society that recognizes its
social and ecological
responsibility, the BEM wants to
integrate the fascination for
electomobility in the everday
life of its citizen and through
practical experience
realisation.
Read More- BEM
Webseite www.bem-ev.de
YouTube
- Zukunfterde - Kurt
Sigl
Click
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tviStory
106-
Sigl talks global
eMobility
///
106-
The FCC sued by 22 states over
net neutrality
decision
Twenty-two
state attorneys general filed a
lawsuit Tuesday, seeking to block
the rollback of the Federal
Communications Commission's net
neutrality rules.
The
lawsuit argues that the FCC's
decision in December to eliminate
the rules that prohibited
Internet providers from slowing
down or blocking content, or
charging for access to certain
sites, was "arbitrary,"
"capricious" and "an abuse of
discretion."
"An open
internet, the free exchange of
ideas it allows, is critical to
our democratic process," said New
York Attorney General Eric
T. Schneiderman, who led the
coalition that filed the
multi-state coalition. "The
repeal of net neutrality would
turn internet service providers
into gatekeepers -- allowing them
to put profits over consumers
while controlling what we see,
what we do, and what we say
online. This would be a disaster
for New York consumers and
businesses, and for everyone who
cares about a free and open
internet."
Schneiderman
said in a statement that the FCC
had failed to justify its reasons
for abandoning net-neutrality,
and for ignoring evidence of
consumer harm. He also argues
that the commission
misinterpreted the
Telecommunications Act.
The
Federal Communications Commission
argued that the Obama-era rules,
imposed in 2015, had curbed
industry investment.
Tuesday's
lawsuit comes a day after
Democratic lawmakers in the
Senate say they're getting closer
to gathering the votes needed to
overturn the rule change, known
as the Restoring Internet Freedom
Act.
106- Net Neutrality Rule Repeald
by the
FCC
106-
FCC could kill net
neutrality
--
By Jessica
Rosenworcel, member of the
Federal Communications
Commission
I'm on the FCC. Please stop us
from killing net neutrality
Right now, you can go online and
connect with friends, watch
videos and read the news. There's
a good chance you are reading
this online right now.
We do much more on the internet
than consume content, however.
Increasingly, the internet is
also where we create. We use
online platforms and digital
services to develop, share and
spread ideas around the corner
and around the globe.
This is the open internet
experience we all know, and it's
a big part of why America's
internet economy is the envy of
the world.
But this week, the leadership at
the Federal Communications
Commission put forth a plan to
gut the foundation of this
openness. They have proposed to
end net neutrality, and they are
trying to force a vote on their
plan on Dec. 14.
If the idea behind the plan is
bad, the process for it has been
even worse.
It's a lousy idea. And it
deserves a heated response from
the millions of Americans who
work and create online every
day.
Net neutrality is the right to go
where you want and do what you
want on the internet without your
broadband provider getting in the
way. It means your broadband
provider can't block websites,
throttle services or charge you
premiums if you want to reach
certain online content.
Proponents of wiping out these
rules think that by allowing
broadband providers more control
and the ability to charge for
premium access, it will spur
investment. This is a dubious
proposition.
Wiping out net neutrality would
have big consequences. Without
it, your broadband provider could
carve internet access into fast
and slow lanes, favoring the
traffic of online platforms that
have made special payments and
consigning all others to a bumpy
road. Your provider would have
the power to choose which voices
online to amplify and which to
censor. The move could affect
everything online, including the
connections we make and the
communities we create.
This is not the internet
experience we know today.
Americans should prevent the plan
from becoming the law of the
land.
There is something not right
about a few unelected FCC
officials making such vast
determinations about the future
of the internet. I'm not alone in
thinking this. More than 22
million people have filed
comments with the agency. They
overwhelmingly want the FCC to
preserve and protect net
neutrality.
At the same time, there are real
questions about who filed some of
the net neutrality comments with
the FCC. There are credible
allegations that many of the
comments were submitted by bots
and others using the names of
deceased people. What's more,
some 50,000 recent consumer
complaints appear to have gone
missing.
As he announced this week, New
York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman
has been investigating these
apparently fake comments for six
months. The Government
Accountability Office is also
looking into how a
denial-of-service attack may have
prevented people from getting
their thoughts into the official
record.
In short, this is a mess. If the
idea behind the plan is bad, the
process for commenting on it has
been even worse.
Before my fellow FCC members vote
to dismantle net neutrality, they
need to get out from behind their
desks and computers and speak to
the public directly. The FCC
needs to hold hearings around the
country to get a better sense of
how the public feels about the
proposal.
When they do this, they will
likely find that, outside of a
cadre of high-paid lobbyists and
lawyers in Washington, there
isn't a constituency that likes
this proposal. In fact, the FCC
will probably discover that they
have angered the public and
caused them to question just whom
the agency works for.
I think the FCC needs to work for
the public, and therefore that
this proposal needs to be slowed
down and eventually stopped. In
the time before the agency votes,
anyone who agrees should do
something old-fashioned: Make a
ruckus.
Reach out to the rest of the FCC
now. Tell them they can't take
away internet openness without a
fight.
Click
More
tviStory
114-
FCC could kill net
neutrality
///
Hong
Kong celebrates 20th anniversay
of
Handover
The transfer of sovereignty over
Hong Kong from the United Kingdom
to China, referred to as "the
Handover" internationally or "the
Return" in China, took place on 1
July 1997.
Chinese
President Xi Jinping will visit
Hong Kong for the first time as
leader to mark the 20th
anniversary of the city's
handover to China on July 1,
2017l
The 1997 handover ceremony was
held at the new wing of the Hong
Kong Convention and Exhibition
Centre in Wan Chai on the night
of 30 June 1997.
The principal British guest was
Prince Charles, who read a
farewell speech on behalf of the
Queen. The newly elected Prime
Minister, Tony Blair, the Foreign
Secretary Robin Cook, the
departing Governor Chris Patten
and General Sir Charles Guthrie,
Chief of the Defence Staff, also
attended.
The United States was represented
by then Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright at the Hong
Kong handover ceremony. However,
she partially boycotted it in
protest of China's dissolution of
the democratically elected Hong
Kong legislature.
Representing the People's
Republic of China were the
President, Jiang Zemin, the
Premier, Li Peng, and the first
Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa.
The event was broadcast around
the world.
Hong Kong's territory was
acquired from three separate
treaties: the Treaty of Nanking
in 1842, the Convention of Peking
in 1860, and The Convention for
the Extension of Hong Kong
Territory in 1898, which gave the
UK the control of Hong Kong
Island, Kowloon (area south of
Boundary Street), and the New
Territories (area north of
Boundary Street and south of the
Sham Chun River, and outlying
islands), respectively.
TVI Magazin'es publishers Troy
and Josie Cory, Feng Shusen,
Consul General of PRC in Los
Angeles, Liu Jikang, Consul of
cultural affairs, supervisor
Michael Antonovich and Mrs.
Antonovich, and other city
officials attended the Handover
celebration broadcast from China
CCTV at the Hollywood Bowl,
CA.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90-
Hong
Kong celebrates 20th anniversay
of
Handover
Transfer_of_sovereignty_over_Hong_Kong-
wikipedia
Yuzhen
Ma, former Consul General of PRC,
in Los
Angeles
Troy
Cory Show- First Stage Show To
China,
1988
101-
Cory's Road to
China
Smart90.com/timeline/china
tvimagazine/2006/2106/100ChinaInvitationKudoN.htm
106-
Trump to nominate Democrat
Jessica Rosenworcel for empty
slot at
FCC
President Donald Trump plans to
nominate Democrat Jessica
Rosenworcel for another term
on the Federal Communications
Commission. Rosenworcel would
return to FCC, but commission
also needs another
Republican.
Rosenworcel had to leave the
commission at the end of last
year when the Republican-led
US Senate refused to reconfirm
her for a second five-year
term. The departure of
Rosenworcel and former Chairman
Tom Wheeler left the FCC with
just three out of the typical
five members, with Republicans
holding a 2-1 majority.
Republican senators didn't want
Rosenworcel to stay on the FCC at
the time because it would have
resulted in a 2-2 deadlock.
Commissioners are nominated by
the president and confirmed by
the Senate. But no party can have
more than a one-vote majority, so
Trump has to nominate a Democrat
and a Republican to fill the
empty seats. When a president
needs to nominate a commissioner
from the opposing party, he takes
suggestions from the opposing
party's leadership. Senate
Democrats backed Rosenworcel
for a return to the FCC, so
Trump appears to be following
longstanding tradition by
nominating her.
The White House announced Trump's
intention to nominate Rosenworcel
last night, numerous media
outlets reported. No Republican
nominee was announced, but
Brendan Carr, the FCC General
Counsel and aide to Chairman Ajit
Pai, is reportedly
the front-runner. The
Senate would likely take up
the nominations of Rosenworcel
and a Republican at the same time
in order to let Republicans
maintain their one-vote
majority.
Click
More tviStory
106-s90-
President
Donald Trump plans to nominate
Democrat Jessica
Rosenworcel
///
106-
Federal Appeals Court Rejects Net
Neutrality Review
Request
Last
month, May 1, 2017, a federal
appeals court rejected a request
to review its decision upholding
the Federal Communications
Commission's net neutrality
regulations.
The
victory for net neutrality
supporters comes just days after
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced
that he is starting proceedings
to repeal the rules, and could
set the stage for a Supreme Court
showdown.
In its
denial for what's called an en
banc review, the D.C. Circuit
Court of Appeals cited FCC
Chairman Ajit Pai's plans to
repeal the net neutrality
rules.
"En banc
review would be particularly
unwarranted at this point in
light of the uncertainty
surrounding the fate of the FCC's
Order," the decision reads. "The
agency will soon consider
adopting a Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking that would replace the
existing rule with a markedly
different one."
"In
that light, the en banc court
could find itself examining, and
pronouncing on, the validity of a
rule that the agency had already
slated for replacement."
Conservatives
and industry advocates oppose the
rules because they reclassified
broadband as a telecommunications
service rather than an
information service -- a shift
that moved the industry under the
FCC's jurisdiction and opened it
up to tougher regulations.
Last
week, Pai unveiled a proposal to
get rid of the reclassification,
and on May 18, the commission
voted on starting the proceedings
by soliciting comments from the
public.
Pai
said in a statement on Monday
that he did not see the decision
as a setback to his mission to
undo the rules and that the
outcome is "not surprising."
"Their
opinion is important going
forward, however, because it
makes clear that the FCC has the
authority to classify broadband
Internet access service as an
information service, as I have
proposed to do," he said.
The
next step for net neutrality
opponents may be to appeal their
case to the Supreme Court. If
they're successful, the battle
over internet regulation will be
playing out simultaneously in the
courtroom, at the FCC and in
Congress.
Some
congressional Republicans are
hoping they can persuade
Democrats to come to the table to
find a legislative fix that would
put an end to the uncertainty
surrounding the issue.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90-
Federal
Appeals Court Rejects Net
Neutrality Review
Request
///
102-
'We
need all' to save net neutrality,
says John
Oliver
HBO's John Oliver
addresses
citizens to help save Net
Neutrality. He isn't about
to let the net neutrality rules
be erased without a fight.
In 2014, a 20-minute net
neutrality segment on his HBO
show "Last Week Tonight With John
Oliver" went viral. It helped
trigger an outpouring of public
comments that led the Federal
Communications Commission to
enact tough regulations
protecting the free flow of
online content.
Current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is
now moving to dismantle the tough
legal oversight behind those
rules -- which prohibit broadband
companies from blocking websites,
slowing connection speeds and
charging for faster delivery of
certain content -- Oliver took to
the airwaves again urging
Internet users to tell the agency
to leave net neutrality alone. He
encourages people to voice
displeasure to the FCC.
"Every
Internet group needs to come
together like you successfully
did three years ago
gamers; YouTube celebrities;
Instagram models; Tom from
MySpace, if you're still alive.
We need all of you," Oliver
said.
In 2015
with more than 4 million people
weighing in through public
comments, the FCC went all in and
overhauled the way it regulates
broadband Internet by
reclassifying it as a more
heavily regulated
telecommunications service,
similar to rules applied to
public utilities.
Several telecom companies
including AT&T challenged the
ruling in court, but in June
2016, a federal appeals court
upheld Net Neutrality in full
backing the principal of net
neutralitiy.
This
time as
further
encouragement, Oliver's team
created a quicker way to navigate
in the FCC website. Rather than
searching for the specific page
that solicits public comment on
this topic, people can go to
gofccyourself.com and click the
"express" link on the right side
to express their views.
In
his segment, Oliver tried to
rally support by portraying
Internet service providers as
eager to block competitors'
content. And he described Pai as
a dangerous public official who
has said he wanted to take "a
weed whacker" to
telecommunications regulations
and vowed that tough net
neutrality rules' "days are
numbered."
Pai -- who
has served on the FCC since 2012
and was appointed this year by
President Trump to head the
commission -- has argued that the
FCC's decision in 2015 to subject
broadband providers to the same
utility-like oversight as
conventional phone companies went
against the light-touch
regulatory approach that fueled
the Internet's growth.
He said the oversight imposed by
the FCC's Democratic majority by
a 3-2 party-line vote was a
political move, urged by
then-President Obama, that "put
the federal government in control
of the Internet" and chilled
broadband investment.
Click
More
tviStory
102-s90-
John
Oliver addresses citizens to help
save net
neutrality
///
106-
Inauguration of President Donald
J. Trump
On
Jan. 20, Donald J. Trump and Mike
Pence will lose the hyphens from
their titles. The next president
and vice president will take
their oaths on January 20, 2016.
Inauguration Day is about the
peaceful transfer of power and it
goes back to George Washington,
who delivered the shortest
address in history -- 135 words
-- during his second
inauguration.
The
Inauguration of President Donald
J. Trump will take place on
Friday, January 20th as part of a
long celebratory weekend to usher
in the start of the new
administration. It marks the 58th
inauguration ceremony in U.S.
history, and is expected to draw
a high volume of supporters and
protestors alike.
The
Inaugural Swearing-In Ceremony
will be held at the West Front of
the U.S. Capitol Building. where
it has been held since 1981.
The ceremony kicks off at 9:30
a.m. EST with music and
performances by the Mormon
Tabernacle Choir along with
Jackie Evancho and the Radio City
Rockettes.
The
opening remarks will begin at
11:30 a.m. and will feature New
York Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John
Roberts will swear in Donald
Trump at noon; Former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton has
announced that she will be in
attendance as will members of
Congress.
Inaugural Parade
At the conclusion of the
Swearing-In ceremony, President
Trump, Vice President Mike Pence,
and their families will walk up
Pennsylvania Avenue from the
Capitol Building to the White
House. Thousands of high school
band members, as well as
motorcyclists and military
members, will also march as part
of the historic
parade.
Inaugural
Ball
Although there are many balls
around town, there is only one
official Inaugural Ball, which
the newly sworn President will
attend. This year's theme is the
Big Apple, an open homage to the
President's hometown. It is a
black tie event at the Walter E.
Washington Convention Center.
Former first couples in
attendance: Barack and Michelle
Obama, George W. and Laura Bush,
Bill and Hillary Clinton, Jimmy
and Rosalyn Carter.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90- The Presidential
Inauguration of Donald J.
Trump
///
106-
Electronic Vs Digital
Signatures
Is
an electronic signature legally
binding?
Is there a
difference between electronic and
digital signatures? And how do
you know who is actually the
signer?
In
litigation you may have to
respond to a subpoena to produce
all relevant documents, in the
custody or control of you, your
attorneys and third-party agents.
If the documents no longer exist
or are unavailable, there may be
little you can do.
The
where when and why were the
records are deleted is a big
deal. The destruction, alteration
or failure to preserve evidence
is known as "spoliation," which
is also a criminal offense.
Unlike
the low-tech, but highly
efficient, paper shredder,
deleted computer files are not
always irretrievable and
sometimes can be found on the
hard drive, backup tapes on
Internet-based storage and backup
systems such as iCloud, Google
Drive or Dropbox.
An
electronic signature is any
electronic symbol used with an
intent to sign a
document. Under the federal
E-Sign Act and the Uniform
Electronic Transactions Act, the
parties to an agreement must
express an intent and agree to
execute the agreement
electronically, which often takes
the form of separate
correspondence or language within
the agreement indicating
such an intent.
An
e-signature,
like any
signature, though, can be
challenged by a party who claims
that it is not his or her
signature or that consent was not
given. This is where digital
signatures come in. They are
generated by software
applications and provide greater
surety to both the person signing
a document and the one receiving
it.
Last
year, to eliminate any confusion
over electronic versus digital
signatures, California adopted
Assembly Bill 2296 clarifying the
standards of what constitutes a
digital signature.
Under
the bill, digital signatures use
software to generate a signature
that is unique to the person
using it, must be capable of
verification (such as by
collecting the email and Internet
protocol address of the signer)
and are linked to the executed
document in such a way that if it
is changed the digital signature
is invalidated.
Digital
signatures are akin to
"electronic fingerprints" and
create a coded digital message
that securely links the signer
with the document being signed
and verifies the chain of custody
of the document.
A
valid contract can be created
using electronic signatures that
do not meet the stringent
criteria of a digital signature,
but the risk of having the
validity of a signature
challenged is dramatically
reduced by using digital
signatures. Digital signatures
are, in essence, the Internet
equivalent of a notary -- but
without the fancy
stamp.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90- Electronic Vs. digital
signatures
///
2016
106-FCC's
Proposal on Set-Top Boxes up for
Vote
106-
FCC: Bid for TV
Spectrum
106-
Federal Court upholds FCC's open
internet
Rules
106-
NAB 2016, Las Vegas, April
6
FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler discusses
ATSC
3.0
106-
F.C.C. Approves Broadband Subsidy
for Low-Income
Households
106- The FCC's war to liberate
your cable
box
106-FCC's
Proposal on Set-Top Boxes up for
Vote
Hardware
costs are down yet fees still
seem to climb.
The
FCC is trying to make it
easier and cheaper for you to
watch TV. But the plan to unleash
pay TV service from the set-top
box that has been its delivery
mechanism for decades has
powerful opponents -- notably,
the Big Cable lobby.
The
head of the
U.S.
Federal Communications Commission
said he might change his proposal
to allow tens of millions of U.S.
pay TV subscribers to ditch
costly set-top boxes and access
video programming online.
Last week,
FCC chairman Tom Wheeler unveiled
a proposal that would require
MVPDs (Comcast, DirecTV, etc.) to
offer their subscribers an app
that would allow them to access
the full suite of programming
they pay for, without the need
for a set-top box.
At
a Senate hearing on Thursday, he
defended his revised proposal,
which is scheduled for a final
vote on Sept. 29. The plan,
announced last week, lacks some
of the most controversial aspects
of the original proposal unveiled
in January but includes a new
licensing body to ensure that
pay-TV companies do not enter
into anti-competitive
agreements.
Jessica
Rosenworcel, a Democrat on the
five-member commission and the
key swing vote on the set-top box
issue, told the hearing that she
had some "some problems" with the
provision to create a licensing
body and wondered whether the
commission has the legal
authority to do so.
The
plan is aimed at ending the cable
industry's long domination of the
$20-billion-a-year set-top box
market and lowering prices for
consumers. Nearly all pay-TV
subscribers lease the boxes from
their cable, satellite, or
telecommunications providers at
an average annual cost of $231
box rental fees; Wheeler has
likened this stranglehold to the
way consumers once had to rent
phones from Ma Bell.
Those
fees have jumped 185% since 1994,
while the cost of televisions,
computers, and mobile phones has
dropped 90%, the FCC has
estimated.
Along
with the app, Wheeler's proposal
calls for the formation of
a body that would issue a
standard license for device
makers so that the app will work
on their hardware
products. The body would be
made up of representatives from
MVPDs and content companies,
but the FCC would have
oversight.
The
FCC insists that control of the
app will be in the hands of
pay-TV providers and content
producers, and that the
terms of their own copyright
and distribution agreements will
remain in place.
But
opponents see the proposal as a
big overreach of authority by the
commission, establishing a
"shadow copyright office," in the
words of one TV-industry
lobbyist, that could seek to
expand its authority down the
road.
The
proposal is set for an FCC vote
on Sept. 29.
As the date approaches, a
lobbying blitz is largely
centered on Democratic
commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel,
who is seen as the linchpin
vote.
A
group representing organizations
including the Screen Actors Guild
and Motion Picture Association of
America said this week that the
plan included an "unworkable de
facto compulsory licensing regime
that requires creators to allow
their work to be shared across
multiple platforms without
compensation."
Cable
companies have previously
expressed concerns that rivals
like Alphabet googl and Apple
could create devices or apps and
insert their own content or
advertising in cable
programming.
The
new rules would require companies
covering 95% of U.S. TV
subscribers to comply by
September 2018.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
FCC's
Proposal on Set-Top
Boxes
///
106-
FCC: 62 Applicants Qualified to
Bid for TV
Spectrum
The FCC announced that
62 applicants will be bidding for
TV spectrum in the forward
incentive auction. The FCC Public
Notice indicated the forward
auction will begin August 16,
2016.
Among
the list of the willing
are
Cellco Partners d/b/a Verizon and
AT&T, as expected, plus a
host of regional and rural
wireless providers, including
East Kentucky Network in Ivel,
Ky.; Iowa RSA 2 Limited
Partnership, NE Colorado
Cellular, Inc., and Northeast
Nebraska Telephone Co. Many of
the smaller entities will receive
bidding credits, which amount to
a discount on spectrum. Of the
total 62 applicants, 19, or 30
percent, received a bidding
credit related to rural service
or a small-business revenue
threshold.
These
bidding credits are described in
the Forward
Auction User
Guide.
-
A bidder who qualifies for a
rural service credit receives a
15 percent discount on "a winning
bidder's bid." Bidders who
qualify for the small business
discount get either a 15 or a 25
percent discount off whatever
price at which they may win
spectrum.
Of the 62 qualified bidders, 13
will receive the rural service
provide bidding credit of 15
percent. Another 12 bidders
listed their revenue range at
less than $20 million. Two more
still listed revenues at between
$20 million and $55 million.
These 62 bidders must lay out
$86.4 billion to cover the cost
of spectrum sold by broadcasters
in the forward auction, plus
$1.75 billion to move displaced
broadcasters, and another $207
million for the FCC's
administrative costs -- chiseled
down from a previous estimate of
$226 million.
The forward auction system
will become available to the 62
qualified bidders on Tuesday,
July 19. -
It will include files on impaired
spectrum where interference is
expected. The commission has said
that it reached its 126 MHz
clearing target with 99 percent
of spectrum unimpaired.
The FCC will conduct forward
auction practice the week of July
25-29. Two scenarios will be
covered -- one in which the final
stage rule of auction is met, and
the other, if it is not and an
extension round is needed. (See,
"FCC Releases Forward Auction
Bidding Guide," July 13, 2016.)
During the practice auction,
bidders will not be bidding on
the spectrum they'll be vying for
in the live auction. The idea is
to get comfortable with the
system. A mock auction, more
reflective of the live event,
will be held Aug. 11-12.
"The scenarios that will be used
for the practice auction are
designed so that within several
rounds of bidding, bidders will
experience key forward auction
events or benchmarks," today's
Public Notice states.
The
The Public
Notice
also was accompanied by a list of
bidding applicants who did not
qualify to participate, many of
whom are listed by individual
names.
Given this, an outlay of $86
billion seems highly unlikely at
this time. To put it in
perspective, this is two to three
times the typical annual capital
spending of the industry. That's
an awful lot to bite off in one
big chunk.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
Bid
for TV
Spectrum
///
106-
Federal Court upholds FCC's open
internet
Rules
The US Court of
Appeals for the District of
Columbia on Tuesday, June 14,
upheld the legality of the
Federal Communications
Commission's landmark net
neutrality policy, in a
resounding vindication of federal
rules designed to ensure that all
content on the internet is
equally accessible.
The ruling affirms the
Commission's ability to enforce
the strongest possible internet
protection -- both on fixed and
mobile networks -- that will
insure the internet remains open,
now and in the future," after a
decade of debate and legal
battles.
A public interest advocates say
the FCC's policy is necessary to
maintain the internet as an open
platform for free speech,
economic growth, and civic
empowerment. The nation's largest
broadband companies challenged
the rules, arguing that the FCC,
which has twice before seen its
open internet policy thrown out
in federal court, overstepped its
authority.
"Today's ruling is a victory for
consumers and innovators who
deserve unfettered access to the
entire web, and it ensures the
internet remains a platform for
unparalleled innovation, free
expression and economic growth,"
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in
a statement.
Now consumers will be
assured the right to full
access to the internet without
interference from
gatekeepers."
Open internet advocates argue
that without net neutrality, the
emergence of the next Facebook or
YouTube might be imperiled,
because broadband providers could
discriminate against such
services in favor of their own
offerings. Free speech advocates
say that the FCC's policy is
necessary to maintain the
internet as an open platform for
political organizing and
activism.
The ruling is a victory
for consumers and
innovators.
For FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler, the court
ruling amounts to a vindication
of the centerpiece of an
ambitious agenda defined by his
surprising willingness to
challenge powerful industry
interests.
In their
legal challenge, the nation's
largest cable and phone companies
argued that the FCC overstepped
its authority in 2015 by
reclassifying internet service
providers, or ISPs, as "common
carriers" under Title II of the
Communications Act.
By doing so, the FCC claimed the
authority to apply utility-style
regulations originally designed
for phone service to broadband
internet access, in order to
prohibit blocking, throttling,
and paid prioritization deals, in
which ISPs like Comcast, Verizon
and AT&T favor certain
content to the detriment of
rivals.
"Today's ruling proves the FCC
chose a legal path to protect
internet users from
discrimination by AT&T,
Comcast, Verizon and other
broadband providers,"
Even as the broadband industry
plan an appeal of its DC Circuit
defeat to the Supreme Court, many
of the nation's cable and telecom
giants are experimenting with
ways to get around the FCC's
policy. One such practice, known
as "zero-rating," undermines net
neutrality, according to open
internet advocates, because it
involves broadband companies
favoring certain services by not
counting them against monthly
data caps.
For FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, the
court ruling amounts to a
vindication of the centerpiece of
an ambitious agenda defined by
his surprising willingness to
challenge powerful industry
interests.
Click
More
tviStory
106-
Open
Internet Rules Upheld by US Court
of
Appeals
///
106-
NAB 2016, Las Vegas, April
16-21
FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler discusses
ATSC
3.0
LAS VEGAS
-- Federal Communications
Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler
said the commission will take up
ATSC 3.0.
The
chairman spoke at the NAB Show on
Wednesday with Marci Burdick, NAB
board member and former chair of
Schurz Broadcasting. In addition
to the ATSC 3.0 Public Notice, he
said the spectrum optimization
plan, which will "give us an idea
of the size and the scope of who
is showing up," and the clearing
target, also will be released
before the end of the month.
"ATSC 3.0
is significant," he said. "We
need to move with dispatch to get
that into the public debate. I
intend to put that out for public
notice before the end of the
month."
He
congratulated engineers for
creating 3.0, but he said policy
would be another matter.
"I've
been hearing about 3.0 for a long
time, and they've pulled it off
technically. The question is,
you've got the technology part
licked, now we've got to figure
out the impact on the market and
on the consumer," he said.
"We'll
know the band plan, then we'll
start the reverse auction in
May," he said.
"Wireless
providers keep saying they need
more spectrum," Wheeler said.
"There will be a very significant
chunk of it before the end of the
month. Then we'll know how badly
they really needed the spectrum.
Then we'll find out how much
they'll bid, and if they don't
bid enough, we'll do it again,
and again
" He said the
auction would go through as many
stages as necessary to achieve
market balance.
Wheeler
did note that, "if there is a
place where the internet has
fallen down, it's ultra local.
And that's where
broadcastersare."
Burdick
asked about the tardy ownership
reviews. Wheeler said the 2010
and 2014 reviews would be
completed by
June."There
will be a proposal on the floor
that will garner at least three
votes," he said.
Burdick
asks why there has not been
meaningful change in ownership
regulations,
whereto
Wheeler
said his predecessor tried to
find consensus and could not. He
said consensus on ownership
regulations was difficult.
Burdick asks if it will have to
be hashed out in court. Wheeler
said probably not, that
post-auction, broadcasting would
be a different world.
Burdick
noted that millions of people
listen to radio and asked Wheeler
what it saw for it in the
future."I've
got something that's portable and
free. With two criteria like
that, never sell them short," he
said.
Wheeler
said he listens to NPR all day in
his office. He's also a fan of
satellite radio and listens to
Broadway show tunes. He also said
the AM revitalization had led to
500 applications for AMs to
transmit on FC frequencies, and
"that speaks for itself," he
said.
He
also said wireless carriers
increasingly are unlocking FM
chips in cellphones.
"I
think the marketplace is
succeeding," he said.
Click
for
more
tviStory
106- NAB 2016
Wheeler
On ATSC 3.0
///
106-
F.C.C. Approves Broadband Subsidy
for Low-Income
Households
WASHINGTON
-- The Federal Communications
Commission approved a $9.25
monthly broadband subsidy to help
millions of low-income households
connect to the Internet, in a
move aimed at bridging the
digital divide.
The vote
went 3-2 along party lines to
expand a 3-decade-old program
that subsidizes phone service for
people who cannot afford it.
The
vote ensures that "Americans can
access the dominant
communications platform of the
day," said Tom Wheeler, the
chairman of the F.C.C.
Now
consumers will be able to apply
the monthly Lifeline subsidy to
broadband service or a bundled
voice-and-data package from an
Internet service provider. The
Internet service could be wired
or wireless and the FCC
anticipates the new option will
be available Dec. 1.
"This
meets the 21st-century needs for
those most vulnerable," said
Mignon Clyburn, a Democratic
commissioner.
Under the
rules proposed by Wheeler to
restrict use of personal
information, cable and wireless
companies that offer broadband
service would in most cases need
permission from customers to use
or share the data collected about
them as they access the
Internet.
The
new regulations would apply only
to broadband providers and not to
individual websites or social
networks. For that reason,
Internet service providers oppose
the proposed rules.
Among the
biggest concerns is how
financially disadvantaged
families are being strained by
their inability to connect to the
Internet at home. Seven out of 10
schools assign homework that
requires Internet access, for
example. Most jobs are posted
online, and applications for
employment are increasingly
becoming online-only.
The
F.C.C. plans to appoint a
third-party administrator to
check for double-billing or other
instances of fraud.
The
vote over the Lifeline plan was
delayed for three hours because
of back-and-forth between the two
Republican commissioners and the
three Democratic commissioners
over the program's details. The
Republican commissioners, who
ultimately voted against the
subsidy, said the F.C.C. needed
to put a lower and hard cap on
the Lifeline program's budget.
Started in 1985 to bring phone
services to low-income families,
Lifeline later added subsidies
for mobile phone services, but
some homes started double-billing
the program and the budget for
the fund ballooned.
"The
commission's failure to clean up
the waste, fraud and abuse in the
program puts the entire
enterprise in jeopardy," said
Ajit Pai, a Republican F.C.C.
commissioner.
The
agency's two Republican
commissioners also voted against
the broadband privacy rules,
which have drawn strong protest
from cable and telecom firms. Pai
and O'Rielly voted against
launching the rule-making
process, saying broadband
providers should not be regulated
more strictly than search engines
and other companies that collect
consumer data on the
Internet.
But
the three Democratic
commissioners voted in favor,
pushing the rules toward a
monthslong period of public
comments and consideration.
Comcast
has protested the agency's
privacy proposal, pointing to
several recent regulatory
decisions that target Internet
service providers. The company
said that broadband providers had
not harmed consumers by abusing
their collection and sharing of
data. Comcast also pointed to
Google and Facebook as more
concerning, saying those Internet
companies are unregulated, even
as their businesses rely on the
collection of consumer data for
targeted advertising.
The
unfortunate result of the
F.C.C.'s extreme regulatory
proposals will be more consumer
confusion and less competition,
and a bunch of collateral damage
to innovation and investment
along the way," said senior
executive vice president at
Comcast.
Consumer
advocacy groups cheered the vote
for Lifeline.
///
Click
for
more
tviStory
106- F.C.C. Approves Broadband
Subsidy for Low-Income
Households
106- The FCC's war to liberate
your cable
box
That costly box that funnels
cable or satellite service into
your TV might be going the way of
the black rotary-dial telephone
-- in the technology trash
bin.
Those boxes soon could face new
federal regulations designed to
break the hold of Comcast,
Verizon, DirecTV and other
providers on the devices that
millions of Americans depend on
to watch TV.
About 99% of the nation's 100
million pay TV subscribers lease
a set-top box, with the average
household paying $231 a year in
rental fees, according to a
survey by Sens. Edward Markey
(D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal
(D-Conn.).
Those costs being the reason a
growing number of so-called cord
cutters are dropping their
conventional pay TV service and
now are streaming programming
over the Internet directly
through smart TVs or via much
smaller devices, such as
Chromecast, Roku, and Apple TV,
that they can purchase instead of
rent.
Still, providers like Time Warner
Cable Inc, and others are
experimenting with their own
customized apps that would enable
customers to ditch the set-top
box and gain access to their
programming on a variety of
devices. Pay TV companies are
warning against adding new
federal mandates as video options
rapidly evolve.
"There is no quicker way to
disrupt this vibrancy that is
creating the greatest TV
programming in the world than for
the government to try and fix
something that isn't broken,"
said Brian Dietz, a spokesman for
the National Cable &
Telecommunications Assn. trade
group.
Changes aren't coming fast enough
for some lawmakers and consumer
advocates as well as tech
companies such as Google Inc.,
which are eager to jump into the
set-top box market. They want the
Federal Communications Commission
to require that pay TV providers
make their services more easily
compatible with third-party
set-top boxes or similar
devices.
"I think the time has arrived for
the FCC to enable millions of
Americans to access the enormous
amount of content in new,
innovative and less costly ways,"
Edward Markey said. "Any phone
will work with any cellphone
company and any video box should
be able to work with any video
company."
Last year, Congress directed the
FCC to appoint a panel of experts
to study whether there was a "way
to create a more competitive
market for set-top boxes that
would not be "unduly
burdensome."
Only two of the top 10 pay TV
companies -- DirecTV and Dish
Network -- offer their set-top
boxes for purchase by
customers.
Set-top boxes typically cost less
than $10 a month, but the average
customer rents about 2.6 set-top
boxes to cover multiple TVs.
Those rentals generate about
$19.5 billion a year in revenue
for pay TV companies, so they're
not eager to open up the market
to other manufacturers who could
produce more innovative devices
for viewers to buy.
Read
FCC
unlock set-top
proposal
Click
More
tviStory
106-"FCC to provide options for
set-top
boxes
///
2015
106-
SEC Passes Crowdfunding Rules
106-Happy
Birthday to You ruled public
domain
106-
Top Hollywood Studios face EU
antitrust
probe
106-Broadband
loses to Music Union
106-
Net Neutrality rules formally
published; first legal challenge
filed
106-
Gaye's point to point - note by
note copyright infringement $7.4
Million
106-
Is the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act a Safe Harbor?
--
106-
The FCC's Net Neutrality Rules
Vote -
Is
the FCC in Charge of the
Internet?
CES
2015: 106- Net neutrality
rules reclassification
proposed
106-
SEC Passes Crowdfunding
Rules
The
Securities and Exchange
Commission approved crowdfunding
rules that will make it easier
for start-ups to sell shares
directly to the masses.
The rules
have been years in the making
after President Obama signed the
Jumpstart Our Business Startups
Act in 2012, which authorized the
commission to write the
crowdfunding rules.
The
new rules and forms would be
effective 180 days after they are
published in the Federal
Register, except that the forms
enabling funding portals to
register with the Commission
would be effective January 29,
2016.
The new
rules under the JOBS Act are
starting to peel back investment
regulations that in some cases
date back to the Great
Depression.
Those
regulations limited investments
in most private companies to
so-called accredited investors --
people who, today, make $200,000
or more a year or are worth at
least $1 million -- and also
blocked companies from seeking
investors publicly without the
use of a broker.
Howard
Marks, executive chairman of
Start- Engine Crowdfunding, a
Santa Monica firm that connects
companies with private investors,
said he expects thousands, even
tens of thousands, of start-ups
to try to raise money under the
new rules.
The rules
approved Oct. 30, allow people
with annual incomes or a net
worth less than $100,000 to
invest a maximum of 5% of their
yearly income or net worth, or up
to $2,000 if that's greater.
Those with higher incomes can
invest up to 10%. Investors
generally would not be able to
sell shares for at least a
year.
They also
exempt firms raising $1 million
or less in a year from having to
provide financial statements
audited by an independent
auditing firm, which can be an
expensive proposition. The idea
is to open equity crowdfunding to
true start-ups, ones that might
not have the cash to pay an
auditor.
Larger
companies trying to raise as much
as $50 million have already been
able to take investments from
non-accredited investors since
this summer. But to do so,
companies have to file regular
reports and audited financial
statements with the SEC, much
like big, publicly traded
companies.
Because of
those requirements, there's been
limited interest so far, and just
a few dozen firms have attempted
such offerings.
All the
crowdfunding transactions would
have to be made through a portal
registered with the commission.
Crowdfunding portals would also
have to comply with a number of
rules to monitor investors and
businesses to help reduce risk
and fraud.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90-
SEC
Passes Crowdfunding
Rules
///
106-Happy
Birthday to You ruled public
domain
A federal court judge in Los
Angeles has declared the song
Happy Birthday to You belongs in
the public domain, dealing a blow
to the music publishing company
that for decades has been
collecting royalties from the
songs.
US district judge George H. King
ruled on Tuesday the copyright
originally filed by the Clayton F
Summy Co in 1935 applied to a
specific arrangement of the song,
not the tune itself.
King ruled that Summy never
acquired the rights to the song's
lyrics, and the defendants'
claims to the contrary were
"implausible and
unreasonable."
"Because Summy Co never acquired
the rights to the Happy Birthday
lyrics,[the] defendants,
as Summy Co's purported
successors-in-interest, do not
own a valid copyright in the
Happy Birthday lyrics," King
wrote in a judgment posted
online.
"Happy Birthday is finally free
after 80 years," said Randall
Newman, an attorney for the
plaintiffs. "Finally, the charade
is over. It's unbelievable."
Up until now, Warner Chappell
Music, a division of the Warner
Music Group, has charged people
for use of the song.
Among the plaintiffs was
film-maker Jennifer Nelson, who
was told she would have to pay
$1,500 USD in order to include
Happy Birthday in a documentary
she was making about its
history.
Warner Chappell Music has been
enforcing the copyright claim
since it bought Summy's
successor, Birchtree Ltd, in
1988. It reportedly paid $25m for
the company.
Jay Morgenstern, then executive
vice president of the Warner
Chappell Music Group, told the
New York Times a year after the
acquisition the song had proved
"a very good investment".
Happy Birthday was written by
sisters Parry and Mildred Hill of
Kentucky in 1883, and is often
claimed to be the world's most
popular song.
Without the court judgement, it
would not have been freely
available in the public domain in
the US until 2030, and in the EU
until 31 December 2016.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90- Judge throws out
copyright claim as he rules
"Happy Birthday to You" public
domain
///
106-
Top Hollywood Studios face EU
antitrust
probe
The EU accused six top
Hollywood studios and the Sky TV
pay channel of breaching
antitrust laws, in the latest
salvo in Brussels' efforts to
break down digital barriers in
Europe.
Brussels accuses Disney,
NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures,
Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and
Warner Bros, as well as Britain
and Ireland's Sky TV of using
movie licenses to block access to
their content in other European
Union countries. The charges are
the newest in a series made by
the EU's new Competition
Commissioner Margrethe Vestager,
fresh from taking on Internet
giant Google and Russian energy
behemoth Gazprom.
"European consumers want to watch
the pay-TV channels of their
choice regardless of where they
live or travel within the EU. Our
EU economy Internet antitrust
investigation shows that they
cannot do this today," Vestager
said in a statement.
"We believe that this may be in
breach of EU competition rules,"
she said. "The studios and Sky UK
now have the chance to respond to
our concerns."
There was no immediate reaction
from the Hollywood studios or Sky
TV to the announcement, which
follows an investigation launched
in January 2014.
High-profile
investigations
The new probe specifically puts
into question Europe's copyright
rules, which allows Hollywood
studios to sell their content
individually to national markets,
creating a divided European
market in defiance of EU rules,
according to the commission.
Since taking office in November
Vestager has made a name for
herself with a series of
high-profile investigations.
US-based firms, in particular
tech companies, have been a
particular target for Vestager
amid concerns that companies
across the Atlantic are
distorting the EU's single
market.
But the investigations have
raised deep suspicions in
Washington over EU trade
regulation.
They have also raised alarm in
Moscow after the EU in April
charged Gazprom with abusing its
dominant market position in
Europe, risking a new battle with
Russia amid tensions over
Ukraine.
///
106-Broadband
loses to Music
Union
Pandora Media Inc lost a
major legal fight over how
musicians and music copyright
owners are paid for their
work
A federal district court
in New York ruled in favor of BMI
(Broadcast Music Inc.) which has
a huge representation of popular
songwriters. The group had asked
the court to raise Pandora's
payments to 2.5% of its revenue
from 1.75%.
More or
less half of Pandora's revenue,
($921 million in 2014), is paid
to rights holders that include
record labels and music
publishers.
Pandora,
has 79 million active users, and
has had a series of recent
victories regarding royalty
payments. Performing rights
organizations BMI and its
competitor ASCAP, collect
royalties from the use of their
members' songs and compositions
on radio, television and Internet
services. However, the
organizations do not represent
performers or record labels.
BMI hailed
the decision as an enormous
victory for its more than 650,000
songwriters, composers and
publishers.
The
ruling follows two recent legal
victories for Pandora. A federal
appeals court last week ruled
against ASCAP to keep Pandora's
rate at 1.85%, agreeing with a
lower court.
The
Federal Communications
Commission, in a separate
dispute, recently cleared the way
for Pandora to buy a South Dakota
terrestrial radio station.
Pandora hopes that move will help
it argue that it should quality
for the lower royalties paid to
BMI and ASCAP by traditional
broadcast radio
companies.
Pandora
pledged to appeal the court's May
14th ruling.
The
ongoing fight over music
royalties is taking place on
multiple fronts. The Justice
department, last year has opened
a review of its consent decrees
governing BMI and ASCAP, which
had asked for changes to the
rules. As part of its review, the
Justice Department invited
comment from songwriters,
composers, publishers, licensees,
and service providers.
On another
front a coalition of artists,
labels and other industry players
are supporting the Fair Play,
Fair Pay Act introduced in
Congress this year. Among other
things, the legislation would end
broadcast radio's long practice
of not paying labels performance
royalties. Also it would seek to
ensure that satellite and
Internet radio companies pay
labels for pre-1972
recordings.
///
106-
Net Neutrality rules formally
published; first legal challenge
filed
WASHINGTON
-- Tough new net neutrality
regulations were published in the
Federal Register on April 13,
2015, that started a 60-day clock
on its effective date of June 12
and triggering the first formal
legal challenge to the
controversial online traffic
rules.
US
Telecom, a trade group whose
members include AT&T Inc. and
Verizon Communications Inc.,
filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of
Columbia Circuit to stop the
rules, arguing the rules are
"arbitrary and capricious" and
violate federal law.
The
Federal Communications Commission
approved the regulations by a 3-2
vote on Feb. 26.
They hanged the legal
classification of wired and
wireless broadband, treating it
as a more highly regulated
telecommunications service in an
attempt to ensure that providers
don't discriminate against any
legal content flowing through
their networks to consumers.
But
FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler who
pushed for the regulations, has
said, "we are confident the FCC's
new open Internet rules will be
upheld by the courts, ensuring
enforceable protections for
consumers and innovators
online."
The
group's members support the goals
of the regulations, to ensure the
free flow of legal online
content, US Telecom President
Walter McCormick said. The suit
was filed because the more
stringent government oversight
that comes with broadband's new
regulatory classification will
hinder investment in expanded
networks and increase costs for
users, he said.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90-
Net
Neutrality Rules Published in
Federal
Register
///
106-
Gaye's point to point - note by
note copyright infringement win
($7.4 Million) for the Gaye
Family
A federal
jury in Los Angeles
found that the 2013 hit song
"Blurred Lines" infringed on the
effects, elements and components
of the Marvin Gaye chart-topper
"Got to Give It Up," the soul
singer's 1977 hit, awarding
nearly $7.4 million to
Gaye's children. It was 2013's
biggest hit. The song brought in
$5.6 million for Thicke, $5.2
million for Williams,
about
$700,000 went to T.I and
another $5 million to $6 million
or more for the record companies,
(Interscope, UMG Distribution and
Star Trak) as well as an
additional $8 million in
publishing revenue. Overall,
the Gaye family sought more than
$25 million in damages. Jurors
found against singer-songwriters
Pharrell Williams and Robin
Thicke, but held
harmless the record company
and rapper T.I.
Gregory Butler, Los Angeles based
composer and producer said
colleagues in the industry were
stunned by the verdict. "You've
made it illegal to reference
previous material," said Butler,
also a managing director at music
startup WholeWorldBand. "I'm
never going to come up with
something so radically different
that it doesn't contain
references to something
else."
Joe
Escalante, an entertainment law
attorney, said he was concerned
that the jury's decision had been
driven by emotion rather than
what's protected under copyright
law.
On the
other hand, a veteran music
industry executive said that
protecting creative work was just
as important to musicians, and
that inspiration bordering on
copying was becoming too
common.
"Somebody should be protecting
that," said the executive, who
asked not to be named because he
might work with those involved in
the case in the future. "If it
has a chilling effect on
copyright infringement, that
should happen.... Stopping theft
is what we're talking about."
The Gayes
contended that they instantly
recognized striking similarities
between the two songs when they
first heard "Blurred Lines." They
called to the stand a
musicologist who analyzed the
songs and concluded there was a
"constellation" of eight similar
elements. Others outside court
had also noticed
similarities.
According
to Mark Anderson, of PSI, the
infringement is an analogy to the
copycat telecom carriers using
Nathan B. Stubblefield's 1902
telekey number systems.
Copied
elements-
An
attorney for the Gaye children,
Richard Busch, said there were
copied elements -- including the
bass and keyboard line, the hook
and a repeated theme -- in all
but two bars of "Blurred
Lines."
Williams
alone wrote the song with no
input from Thicke, and that
neither Gaye nor his song was
discussed in the song's
creation.
Thicke,
during his turn on the stand,
played a medley of pop songs on a
keyboard to demonstrate that many
of them share the same chord
progression and can sound
similar.
According
to Mark Anderson, of PSI the
infringement is an analogy to the
copycat elecom carriers using
Nathan b. Stubllefieldes telekey
phone number systems.
The verdict is
notable-
because Gaye's 1977 hit was
published just before a major
overhaul of copyright law in
1978, so the jury had to fall
back on 1909 copyright law to
determine whether Thicke and
Pharrell had infringed.
In
an early pretrial hearing, the
judge ruled that the 1909 law
only protected the song's sheet
music, not the actual sound of
the song.
But
in a later hearing, the judge
changed his mind, ordering Thicke
and Williams' lawyers to produce
an audio version of the specific
elements of the song that were
copyrighted and on file at the
Library of Congress.
That
version included a bass line and
some keyboard chords under Gaye's
voice, but not the similar
percussion that tends to draw
people to make the connection
between the two songs. The jury
heard "Blurred Lines" repeatedly
throughout the trial but never
heard the full version of "Got To
Give It Up."
Williams,
41, also signed a document
stating he didn't use any other
artists' work in the music and
would be responsible if a
successful copyright claim was
raised.
Jurors repeatedly heard the
upbeat song Blurred Lines and saw
snippets of its music video, but
Gaye's music was represented
during the trial in a less
polished form. Jurors did not
hear Got to Give It Up as Gaye
recorded it, but rather a version
created based solely on sheet
music submitted to gain copyright
protection.
That
version lacked many of the
elements --; including Gaye's
voice --; that helped make the
song a hit in 1977.
An
expert for the Gaye family said
there were eight distinct
elements from Got to Give It Up
that were used in Blurred
Lines.
The
verdict could have implications
for songwriters everywhere and
may also have implications beyond
the massive verdict.
Still, while testifying last
week, Williams said the two songs
share "feel -- not
infringement."
The
attorney for the Gaye family,
Richard Busch, will also seek to
halt sales of "Blurred Lines,"
and said he will file official
paperwork by next week.
The
verdict may face years of
appeals.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90- Gaye's point to point -
note by note copyright
infringement
win
///
106-
Is the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act a Safe Harbor?
--
Court denies Grooveshark DMCA
protection for songs like "Johnny
B. Goode"
In April 2013, a New York
state appellate court made a
curious decision in a matter
being litigated between
Grooveshark parent company Escape
Media Group, Inc. and UMG
Recordings, Inc. The court ruled
that due to an peculiarity in
copyright law, the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act does not
apply to songs that were licensed
under state law before February
15, 1972. As such, for these
recordings, Grooveshark is not
eligible for what is known as
safe harbor -- an immunity to
liability if users upload
copyrighted works without the
website's knowledge.
As a website that allows users to
upload their recordings,
Grooveshark's business model
depends on the DMCA. Users upload
songs on Grooveshark and are
warned about uploading
copyrighted material. If a rights
holder discovers that a user has
uploaded a copyrighted song, the
rights holder notifies
Grooveshark. As long as the
website takes the song down
quickly enough, Grooveshark
avoids being held responsible for
the infringement.
1972
But an anomaly in copyright law
is throwing a wrench in that
system. In 1971, Congress
overhauled copyright laws, making
most protection a federal matter.
However, recordings copyrighted
before February 15, 1972 would
remain under the purview of the
common law and statues of the
individual states. The new
federal copyright prescriptions
noted that "any rights or
remedies under the common law or
statutes of any State shall not
be annulled or limited by this
Title until 2067."
With this in mind, UMG brought
litigation against Grooveshark
saying that the DMCA, a federal
act, does not apply to these
recordings under common law. So
the website is still liable for
copyright infringement if a user
uploads, say, Chuck Berry's
"Johnny B. Goode" (written in
1958) without Grooveshark's
knowledge.
A 2010 filing by UMG in the case
says that these titles under
state copyright protection
include works from "Buddy Holly,
The Carpenters, Cat Stevens,
Chuck Berry, The Jackson Five,
The Mamas and the Papas, Marvin
Gaye, The Supremes, The
Temptations, and The Who."
While a New York District court
initially ruled in Escape Media
and Grooveshark's favor, the New
York appellate court took a very
different view. "Initially, it is
clear to us that the DMCA, if
interpreted in the manner favored
by defendant, would directly
violate section 301(c) of the
Copyright Act," the court's
decision read.
About the DMCA
The
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) is a United States
copyright law that implements two
1996 treaties of the World
Intellectual Property
Organization (WIPO). It
criminalizes production and
dissemination of technology,
devices, or services intended to
circumvent measures (commonly
known as digital rights
management or DRM) that control
access to copyrighted works. It
also criminalizes the act of
circumventing an access control,
whether or not there is actual
infringement of copyright itself.
In addition, the DMCA heightens
the penalties for copyright
infringement on the Internet.
Passed on
October 12, 1998, by a unanimous
vote in the United States Senate
and signed into law by President
Bill Clinton on October 28, 1998,
the DMCA amended Title 17 of the
United States Code to extend the
reach of copyright, while
limiting the liability of the
providers of online services for
copyright infringement by their
users.
The DMCA's
principal innovation in the field
of copyright is the exemption
from direct and indirect
liability of Internet service
providers and other
intermediaries. This exemption
was adopted by the European Union
in the Electronic Commerce
Directive 2000. The Copyright
Drective 2001 implemented the
1996 WIPO Copyright Treaty in the
EU.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90- Is the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act a Safe
Harbor?
///
106-
Did FCC's New Internet Rules Put
the FCC in Charge of the
Internet?
March 10, 2015- It's been
two weeks since the Federal
Communications Commission voted
3-2 to overhaul the way broadband
Internet service is regulated,
changing it from a Title I
information service to a Title II
telecommunications service - by
expanding the definition of
conventional phone service to
include Internet address as well
as phone numbers, according to
the order
And
only now is the 400-page order,
not released prior to the vote,
that was drawn up by FCC Chairman
Tom Wheeler and supported by the
commission's two Democratic
members, available for public
viewing. This was perhaps the
most significant and far-reaching
shift in Internet policy in
nearly two decades, and put in
place without full public
access.
The FCC's catchall,
'just and reasonable'
provision.'
And
yet even though the rules are now
available for all to see, it
still remains somewhat unclear
how exactly they will work in
practice. As noted by the New
York Times, the FCC is "set to
decide what is acceptable on a
case-by-case basis. The
regulations include a subjective
catchall provision, requiring
'just and reasonable'
conduct."
What
counts as 'just and reasonable'
will, naturally, be up to the
whims of the FCC.
In
some ways, this is the worst part
of the agency's net neutrality
push. It's not even that it puts
in place bad rules; it's that it
installs potentially strict but
ultimately vague rules, and
leaves the FCC as the final
arbiter of what is and isn't
acceptable. The FCC will have
some guidelines, of course, but
Wheeler's book-length
bureaucratic proposal will surely
provide legal ammunition for
whatever creative interpretation
the agency settles on - or
desires - at any given time.
New net
neutrality rules give the agency
veto power over ISP
innovation
This
is give or take what to expect in
the wake of the FCC's rules; ISPs
will probably invest and innovate
more cautiously, knowing that the
FCC has veto power over their
decisions. And armies of
expensive telecom lawyers will
spend their days arguing about
what, exactly, constitutes "just
and reasonable" in a wide variety
of situations.
As
telecom analyst Roger Entner told
the Times, "Telecom lawyers in
Washington popped the corks on
the champagne," when the rules
were passed last February 26. "It
will be at a least a hundred
million in billable hours for
them. This will go on for an
unforseeble time."
Critics
at times describe net neutrality
as a government takeover of the
Internet. This is in most ways an
exaggeration; the Net will remain
for the most part privately
operated, with competing though
heavily regulated firms
continuing to own and operate the
infrastructure.
ISPs will
now need the FCC's permission, at
least tacitly, to innovate and to
invest, and they will inevitably
make major business decisions
with the FCC's veto power in
mind. The agency, and its
nebulous "just and reasonable"
standard, will be a shadow
presence whenever any major move
is contemplated. The publication
of the FCC's order, in other
words, mostly serves to confirm
that the rules will mean whatever
the agency wants them to
mean.
Click
More
tviStory
106-s90-
Did
FCC's New Internet Rules Put the
FCC in Charge of the
Internet?
Click-
FCC Open Internet Rules and
Order
///
CES
2015: 106- Net neutrality
rules reclassification proposed
Federal Communications Commission
Chairman Tom Wheeler strongly
hinted Wednesday at the Consumer
Electronics Show in Las Vegas
that he would propose net
neutrality rules next month that
treat broadband Internet service
providers as utilities subject to
much stricter regulation. That
however would clash with powerful
cable tv operators that offer
Internet access.
If Wheeler does propose to
reclassify ISPs and regulate them
under Title II of the
Communications Act, that would be
a stinging defeat for ISPs and a
victory for advocates of a
stringent approach to net
neutrality -- including President
Obama, who appointed Wheeler. It
also would almost certainly draw
a challenge in court and from the
Republican-controlled
Congress.
The commission is expected to
vote on a new set of net
neutrality rules Feb. 26.
Wheeler
initially resisted the idea of
bringing ISPs under Title II,
hoping to craft net neutrality
rules that continued to treat
ISPs as lightly regulated
"information services." His
original proposal would have
allowed ISPs to strike deals with
content companies and online
services as long as they were
"commercially reasonable."
This approach has drawn support
from ISPs, but many net
neutrality advocates argue that
it would allow broadband
providers to divide their
networks into fast and slow
lanes. That would give
deep-pocketed companies another
advantage over start-ups, harming
competition and innovation, these
critics say.
Wheeler, though, said he had an
"aha moment" over the summer when
he considered how the
Telecommunications Act of 1996
treated wireless phone networks.
That law applied Title II rules
to wireless companies, but
exempted them from most of its
provisions &emdash; most notably,
the ones requiring regulators to
approve changes in rates.
"Under that for the last 20
years, the wireless industry has
been monumentally successful,"
Wheeler said.
Meredith Baker a former
Republican FCC commissioner who
now heads the wireless phone
industry trade group pushed back
against Wheeler's comment.
"Comparisons to the regulatory
framework for mobile voice are
misplaced and irrelevant," she
said noting theat Congress
applied parts of Title II to the
mobile phone companies to reduce
their regulatory load.
Wheeler cannot now use that same
deregulatory tool to extend
regulations and government
intrusion where it has never been
before," she said.
A spokesman for he NTCA blasted
Wheeler's shift in strategy.
Click
More
tviStory
115-s90- FCC Proposes New Set of
Net Neutrality
Rules
///
2014
106-
Supreme court rules Aereo
illegal
106-AereoVs.Broadcasters
-
The
Areo Debate "To Be or Not to
Be,"
106-
Global Internet panel
formed
106-
Secretkeepers of Patent
Trolls
106-
ATBA says FCC report spells war
on
broadcasters.
106-
AereoVs.Broadcasters.Broadcasters
106-
Is Comcast lobbying the
FCC?
106-
Viacom and Google settle YouTube
copyright
lawsuit.
106-
Global Internet panel
formed
106-
Supreme court rules TV streaming
service Aereo
illegal
Justices accept
argument of major broadcasters
that Aereo's service amounts to a
violation of copyright law.
The US supreme court has
ruled that Aereo, the TV
streaming service backed by media
mogul Barry Diller, is
illegal.
Aereo,
which launched in 2012 in the New
York area, has expanded across
the US and is now available in
cities including Atlanta, Boston,
Denver, Houston and Miami.
Backed
by Diller's IAC, Aereo has
clashed repeatedly with the
television networks. Last October
broadcasters including ABC, CBS
and Fox filed a petition to the
supreme court after an appeals
court rejected their call for a
ban on the service
In
a 6-3 decision, the court
rejected an earlier appeals court
decision which had ruled the
fledgling service did not breach
broadcasters' copyright. The
Supreme Court has ruled that
Aereo, the upstart television
streaming service, violated
copyright laws by resending
broadcast signals without paying
licensing fees.
The ruling effectively means the
court sees Aereo as similar to a
cable company &endash; and
therefore liable to pay for the
content it broadcasts.
Aereo
captures the over-the-air signals
of network broadcasters and
streams them to customers via
their computers, smartphones or
devices such as Apple TV or Roku.
It has thousands of tiny aerials
that it assigns to each of its
customers, which allows Aereo to
argue that its clients are merely
renting antennae of the sort they
would otherwise have in their
homes.
Customers
pay between $8 and $20 a month
for the service, which includes a
cloud-based digital video
recorder &endash; far less than
the average cable bill. The
company does not pay fees to the
media companies whose signals it
redistributes, while the cable
companies pay about $3bn. The
broadcasters argued that Aereo
violated copyright law.
The
justices said the law forbids
unlicensed companies to
"transmit" copyrighted shows to
the viewing public. Aereo argued,
unsuccessfully, that it was
transmitting signals to
individual customers through the
use of tiny rented antennas.
The
decision represents a major
victory for TV broadcasters, who
depend increasingly on licensing
revenues from cable and satellite
services.
Two
veteran Washington attorneys,
Paul Clement and David Frederick,
presented the contrasting
arguments in the case, ABC vs.
Aereo.
Clement,
a former solicitor general who
represented ABC and other
broadcasters, called Aereo a
"gimmick" that allows "thousands
of paying strangers to watch live
TV online" without paying a
licensing fee to the broadcasters
for their copyrighted
programs.
This
violates the Copyright Act of
1976, he said, adopted in part to
deal with the advent of cable TV
service. Broadcasters were given
an exclusive right to any program
that is "publicly" performed or
transmitted to the public "by
means of any device or process."
This could describe a cable TV
tower, and it also describes
Aereo precisely, he said.
However,
Aereo came up with what some say
is a way to skirt around the law.
It denies that its service
amounts to a "public" airing of
programs, but is merely a new way
for individual consumers to watch
programs they could see for
free.
With
the service for instance in New
York, subscribers rent a tiny
antenna devoted to their own
individual use at a Brooklyn
facility. Through it, they
capture free over-the-air TV
signals in the area. Frederick,
representing Aereo, compared this
to a set of old-fashioned "rabbit
ears" on a TV set.
"It's
no different than if I'm at home,
and I have an antenna or rabbit
ears on my TV, and I know what
channels I can get," attorney
Frederick said. "Consumers have a
right to get over-the-air signals
that are free to the public," he
added.
He
likened Aereo to the 1980s-era
video recorders that allowed
consumers to record copies of
programs to be viewed at home. In
1984, the high court ruled that
recording programs at home for
later viewing did not violate
copyright laws.
The
argument centered on the
interpretation of a federal law
that applies to the public
performance of copyrighted works.
Aereo argued that its antennae
meant it was facilitating
thousands of individual
performances and not a public
performance, which would violate
the Copyright Act of 1976, which
gives the copyright owner the
"exclusive right" to "perform the
copyrighted work publicly".
In a statement, 21st Century Fox,
formed from the breakup of News
Corp, said: "21st Century Fox
welcomes the US supreme court's
ruling, a decision that
ultimately is a win for consumers
that affirms important copyright
protections and ensures that real
innovation in over-the-top video
will continue to support what is
already a vibrant and growing
television landscape."
Objecting
to the ruling, supreme court
justice Antonin Scalia compared
Aereo to a photocopier and said
the company "should not be
directly liable whenever its
patrons use its equipment to
'transmit' copyrighted television
programs to their screens". But
the majority of the judges
rejected that argument given
Aereo's "overwhelming likeness to
the cable companies."
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
Aereo, the TV streaming service
ruled
illegal
///
106-
ATBA says FCC report spells war
on
broadcasters.
WASHINGTON DC &endash;
After consideration and study of
the GN Docket No. 12-268 REPORT
& ORDER released by the
Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) on June 2nd, the Advanced
Television Broadcasting Alliance
(ATBA) voiced concern that the
FCC has declared war on
broadcasters, especially LPTV and
Translator stations. The FCC is
seemingly denying a significant
amount of the nation free
over-the-air television access in
favor of providing well-funded
wireless carriers with more
spectrum for profit. The FCC in
the R&O concluded that the
concerns of broadcasters "are
outweighed by the detrimental
impact that protecting LPTV and
TV translator stations would have
on the repacking process and on
the success of the incentive
auction."
"The Report and Order released on
Monday shows that the FCC has
declared war on Low Power
Television (LPTV); and LPTV will
not and cannot roll over just to
save Chairman Wheelers incentive
auction," said Louis Libin,
Executive Director of the ATBA.
"The LPTV industry is a vibrant
industry, a good contributor to
the US economy as well as to the
diverse, cultural, religious and
rural audiences. In the R&O,
the FCC has wrongly defined LPTV
to a status below wireless. This
is not a harmless auction; this
is a completely poisonous auction
to LPTV."
ATBA is troubled by the FCC
position on LPTV in the R&O
knowing that their actions "will
result in some viewers losing the
services of these stations, may
strand the investments displaced
LPTV and TV translator licensees
have made in their existing
facilities, and may cause
displaced licensees that choose
to move to a new channel to incur
the cost of doing so."
"While I was encouraged by the
comments attached to the document
by Commissioner Clyburn
recognizing the value of LPTV and
translators to the national
dialogue &endash; the basic
intent of the document seems to
place LPTV in a secondary class
below what it has historically
occupied," said Rod Payne, ATBA
Chairman and a station owner in
Wichita Falls Texas. "The
document shows a majority of the
commission seemingly viewing LPTV
as secondary even to wireless
carriers &endash; something one
would think would require action
outside of the Commission
itself."
The ATBA was also struck by the
dissenting comments of
Commissioner Pai who wrote, "As a
result (of the auction as it is
being proposed in this document)
there is a greater risk that some
Americans will be left without
any over-the-air television
service after the incentive
auction. This is wrong."
.
Randy Weiss, ATBA Board Member
and LPTV owner expressed extreme
concern over the R&O. "My
wife and I invested in the
construction of Christian LPTV
stations to bring hope to the
hopeless. Like every LPTV
broadcaster, we had a very clear
understanding of the FCC'S
definition of "secondary status."
There was no mistake as to whom
we were secondary--exclusively to
Full Power TV stations. The
agency and the industry operated
with an unmistakable
understanding within the Media
Bureau of the FCC. It is
unconscionable that the FCC would
now try to redefine secondary
status with the singular intent
of enabling the confiscation of
spectrum licensed to small
broadcasters for the benefit of
wireless monopolies. Such an
overreach is malicious. No
government institution should be
permitted to quietly pull the rug
out from Christian broadcasters
or helpless community stations
after we have invested our time
and treasure to serve the public.
It is time for the public to rise
up and inform the FCC that they
must protect LPTV and translator
television stations."
Payne continues, "This is indeed
wrong. I can only hope for a
grassroots movement of those in
the industry, full, low-power and
translators, along with
associated manufacturers,
programmers and more AND the
people of this country coming
together and telling the FCC,
Congress and others that we are
not going to stand by while the
nation's communication resources
are sold to the highest bidders
&endash; most which have no
incentive in serving the
communities that will now be
denied so much for the wants of a
few well-financed
corporations."
"I call on everyone, both
in this industry and those who it
serves, to join together to send
a re-sounding "NO" to this
methodology.
The Advanced Television
Broadcasting Alliance is an
industry organization comprised
of low power television
broadcasters, translators, full
power television broadcasters and
allied industry organizations and
companies. The goal of the
Alliance is to preserve and
promote the efficient and
effective use of all television
broadcast spectrum.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
FCC Report Spells War On
Broadcasters
///
106
Is Comcast lobbying the
FCC?
Big
companies often try to hitch
former Washington insiders for
its lobbying team; but the cable
giant Comcast has been especially
aggressive in picking up former
congressional aides and Federal
Communications Commission staff
members -- even a former FCC
commissioner -- as company
lobbyists.
Many of
them are now fully engaged on the
company's $45-billion takeover
venture of Time Warmer Cable.
Such deal would widen Comcast's
lead as the nation's biggest
cable and Internet provider, but
requires the approval of the FCC
and the Justice Department's
antitrust division and may face
questions in Congress.
Accountability
Initiative's LittleSis website
lists 28 former congressional and
White House staffers working
Comcast's side of the street on
the merger
deal.
They form
a subset of the 76 Comcast and
Time Warner Cable lobbyists
having ties with congressional
committees, current and former
members of Congress and minority
organizations expected to voice
an opinion on the merger.
Meanwhile,
the OpenSecrets blog of the
Center for Responsive Politics
revisits dealings and scandal
between Comcast and the FCC,
which prompted the resignation of
FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell
Baker in May 2011 to take a
lobbying job at Comcast -- a mere
four months after she voted to
approve Comcast's acquisition of
NBC Universal.
OpenSecrets
counts 18 people who "have both
lobbied for Comcast and spent
time in the public sector. Of
those, 12 are currently
registered lobbyists for Comcast,
with five of them having spent
time at the FCC." Its list
doesn't even include current FCC
Chairman Tom Wheeler, who was
president and chief executive of
the National Cable Television
Assn. from 1976 to 1984, and
president and CEO of the Cellular
Telecommunications & Internet
Assn. from 1992 to 2004. His
lobbyist roots, in other words,
run deep.
LittleSis
(a name take-off on "Big
Brother") earlier disclosed the
role of Robert Schumer, the
brother of Sen. Charles Schumer
(D-N.Y.) in the merger deal:
Robert Schumer is Time Warner
Cable's lead outside attorney on
the matter. The disclosure led to
Sen. Schumer's announcement
that he will recuse
himself from any
congressional consideration of
the deal.
The merger
would help an even larger Comcast
get its way with greater
impunity, which is one more
reason to reject it such a
merger.
///
106-AereoVs.Broadcasters
-

The
Areo Debate "To Be or Not to
Be," provided food for a
heated discussion at the Digital
Hollywood Spring conference May
7, 2014. Moderated by James M.
Burger, Partner, Thompson Coburn,
Neil W. Netanel, Professor of
Law, UCLA Law School; John C.
Ulin Partner, Arnold and Porter
midway through the debate were
interreupted by questions of the
audience which became
increasingly agitated. It did
make for a lively debate though
considering the fact that most
panelists usually take questions
only at the end of a panel
discussion.
A
ruling to be followed closely by
advocates of net neutrality, and
broadcasters, the
US Supreme
Court justices questioned the
legality of Areo as they weighed
whether the starup violates
copyright law by recording
over-the-air programming from an
off-site antenna and delivering
it to customers via the internet.
Areo aims to upend the broadcast
industry's decades-old business
model by letting customers in 11
cities watch live and recorded
shows for as little as $8 a
month.
Barry
Diller, Chairman and Senior
Executive of media company,
IAC/InterActiveCorp, said
broadcasters are seeking to
stifle innovation for their own
financial gain by suing to shut
down Aereo Inc., the
streaming-video company he's
backing. "I am really tired of
being accused of stealing anyone
else's programming when we are
not," Diller said. "It's kind of
obnoxious to take away
programming they have promised
the public they could receive
directly simply because they want
to take away every dollar from
consumers.
Aereo's
faceoff at the nation's highest
court against broadcasters
including
21st Century Fox Inc., and CBS
Corp, stemmed from its bid to
forge a technological route
around the television companies'
copyrights.
It was
Diller, co-creator of Fox's
broadcast network, who
pushed Aereo
beyond its original plan to offer
services only in parts of New
York, Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia
stated.
The
Supreme Court arguments didn't
indicate a like outcome, as
justices, including Stephen
Breyer repeatedly questioned
whether ruling against Aereo
would broadly imperil
cloud-computing technologies that
let consumers remotely store
content such as video and access
it through the Web.
U.S.
copyright law gives owners the
exclusive right to perform their
works "publicly." If Areo is
deemed to be a public rather than
private performance, the ruling
may affect cloud storage
offerings from companies like
Google Inc., Dropbox Inc., Apple,
Amazon.com Inc. and Box Inc.
"If you
stop Aereo, you stop technology,"
Diller said.
Click for More tviStory
106-s90-
Aereo Vs. Broadcasters
///
106- Viacom and Google settle
YouTube copyright
lawsuit.
The
case was filed back in 2007,
which was like the Dark Ages of
Internet video.
The
billion dollar long-running legal
clash between old and new media
giants, Viacom Inc. and Google
Inc., has ended in a settlement,
without having terms of the
settlement disclosed.
Viacom
initiated the suit filed in
federal court in New York in
2007. The New York cable
television giant complained that
Google's YouTube had knowingly
posted Viacom videos on its site
without Viacom's permission.
Viacom asserted that postings of
clips from "South Park," and "The
Daily Show with Jon Stewart,"
constituted copyright violations
worth at least $1 billion.
In court
documents, Viacom argued that
YouTube essentially built its
business on infringing videos,
and the media company produced
e-mails in which some of the
site's founders discuss the
prevalence of copyrighted videos
uploaded by users and their
propensity to generate more
traffic.
The
case tested the reach of the
federal Digital Millennium
Copyright Act, a 1998 law that
made it illegal to produce
technology to circumvent
anti-piracy measures, but limited
liability of online service
providers for copyright
infringement by users.
In
its suit, Viacom maintained that
YouTube had a responsibility to
immediately remove all pirated
content from its site. YouTube
countered that it had only the
duty to take down specific videos
identified by copyright
holders.
The
judge rejected what he called
Viacom's "ingenious" yet
"extravagant" argument that
YouTube should monitor the
content of videos being uploaded
at a rate of more than 24 hours
of viewing time per minute.
He also
said YouTube did not interact so
closely with people uploading
content that it could be said to
have engaged in infringing
activity.
Stanton
had in 2010 also ruled for
YouTube. The 2nd Circuit revived
Viacom's case in April 2012,
saying a reasonable jury could
find that YouTube was aware of
specific infringements.
In his
April 2013 ruling, Stanton had
concluded that Google and YouTube
were protected from Viacom's
copyright claims by "safe harbor"
provisions in the law.
Tuesday's
settlement comes after several
legal setbacks in the case for
Viacom. Last year's decision by
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton
was his second ruling
against Viacom. Viacom's damages
claims were tossed out for the
postings of Comedy Central and
Nickelodeon clips on YouTube from
2005 to 2008.
Viacom had
been appealing that ruling.
In theJune
2010 ruling, Stanton sided with
YouTube by granting Google's
request for summary judgment in
the case. He found that YouTube
operated within the law.
When
"YouTube was given notices, it
removed the material," Stanton
wrote in his 30-page decision in
2010. "It is thus protected from
liability" under a provision in
the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act in which Google relied on to
make its case that policing the
Internet was as much the
responsibily of the copyright
holders as it was the Internet
sites.
Viacom did
not receive monetary compensation
as part of the settlement a But
did receive some of its initial
demands. During the course of the
lengthy legal battle, Google
instituted a better system of
filtering and removing
unauthorized videos found
YouTube
Viacom now
is one of 5,000 copyright holders
that use Google's Content ID
system to identify and help
manage their content that appears
on YouTube. These days when you
upload videos to YouTube, the
clips are scanned against a
database of files that have been
submitted to Google by the
various content owners. Rights
holder can block the video or
choose to share in the revenue
generated by ads that appear
around their content.
Supporters
of Viacom during the battle have
included the Associated Press,
Gannett Co, the Motion Picture
Association of America, the
National Football League, the
Screen Actors Guild, Garth
Brooks, the Eagles and Sting.
Google and
YouTube won backing from eBay
Inc, Facebook Inc, Tumblr Inc,
Yahoo Inc, Consumers
Union, Human Rights Watch and
others.
Click for More tviStory
106-s90-
Viacom vs Google YouTube
copyright lawsuit settlement
///
106-
Global Internet panel
formed
Internet
governance to become one of the
most pressing global
policies.
DAVOS,
Switzerland -- A global
commission has been created to
investigate how to ensure
Internet freedom and security at
a time of growing concerns over
privacy breaches.
The
creation of the Global Commission
on Internet Govenmancy was
announced at the World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The
commission was set up by Canada's
Centre for International
Governance Innovation and
Britain's Royal Institute of
International Affairs.
The
two-year inquiry,, will be
wide-ranging but focus primarily
on state censorship of the
internet as well as the issues of
privacy and surveillance raised
by the Snowden leaks about
America's NSA and Britain's GCHQ
spy
agencies.
Sweden's
foreign minister, Carl Bildt,
will head a group of some 25
experts from various backgrounds,
including academia, government
and civil society. They will work
together over the coming two
years to create "a strategic
vision for the future of Internet
governance."
Bildt,
the former Swedish prime
minister, said: "The rapid
evolution of the net has been
made possible by the open and
flexible model by which it has
evolved and been governed. But
increasingly this is coming under
attack.
"And
this is happening as issues of
net freedom, net security and net
surveillance are increasingly
debated. Net freedom is as
fundamental as freedom of
information and freedom of speech
in our societies."
The
Obama administration announced
the initial findings of a White
House-organised review of the
NSA. There are also inquiries by
the US Congress and by the
European parliament, but this is
the first major independent
one.
The
inquiry has been set up by
Britain's foreign affairs
thinktank Chatham House and by
the Center for International
Governance and Innovation (CIGI),
which is partly funded by the
Canadian
government.
In
a joint statement, Chatham House
and the CIGI said the current
internet regime was under threat.
"This threat to a free, open and
universal internet comes from two
principal sources. First, a
number of authoritarian states
are waging a campaign to exert
greater state control over
critical internet
resources."
The
statement does not name the
countries but it is aimed mainly
at China and Iran, both of whom
are censoring the
internet.
The
other big issue, according to
Chatham House and the CIGI, is
the revelations from
Snowden.
"Second,
revelations about the nature and
extent of online surveillance
have led to a loss of
trust."
The
issue of internet governance is
set to become one of the most
pressing global policy issues of
our time, said Robin
Niblett, director of Chatham
House, said: "The issue of
internet governance is set to
become one of the most pressing
global policy issues of our
time."
Among
those on the panel are: Joseph
Nye, former dean of the Kennedy
school of governance at Harvard;
Sir David Omand, former head of
GCHQ; Michael Chertoff, former
secretary of the US homeland
security department and co-author
of the Patriot Act that expanded
NSA surveillance powers; the MEP
Marietje Schaake, who has been a
leading advocate of internet
freedom; Latha Reddy, former
deputy national security adviser
of India; and Patricia Lewis,
research director in the
international security department
at Chatham House, who said:
"Internet governance is too
important to be left just to
governments."
Gordon
Smith, who is to be deputy chair
of the commission, said: "For
many people, Internet governance
sounds technical and esoteric but
the reality is that the issues
are 'high politics' and of
consequence to all users of the
internet, present and
future."
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
Global
Internet Commission
///
2013
106-
A Lawsuit seeks to put "Happy
Birthday" in Public
Domain.
106- Supreme Court rejects gene
patents
--
106-
FCC's Genachowski Steps
Down
106-ResellerCopyrightRuling
106-
Hollywood Studios & The Safe
Harbor
Legal
LoopHole: was a Winner for
YouTube vs
Viacom
106-
WUG reports -
Privacy-WhatsAppStockpilingPhone#s
106-
Email vs PostalMail - 1 Penny
Rise in 2013.
106-
The Secretkeepers of Patent
Trolls
(coming)
Sooner
or later a major webplayer has to
give
us
something we will never
forget."
www.Google.com
. . . was that
something
in
1997 . . . it was the
NBSWirelessTelephone- in
190.2.
The
SmartPhone is the:
www.thedealtosteal.com
www.nbs100.com
www.speedollars.com
www.lookradio.com
www.smartPhone90.com
www.witel.org
www.smart90.com
www.patent887.com
www.kudoad.com
www.secretkeepers.com
www.webusersguild.com
www.chinaexpo2000.com
www.troycoryshow.com
wirelesstelephone.org.
MORE- Trolling
Secrets
Beyond its intended aims, patents
are being abused to benefit the
few.
Patent trolls are a widely
reported problem for technology
makers and big business. They are
companies that exist primarily to
buy up patents and then collect
money, in the form of licenses or
lawsuit settlements, from alleged
infringers of those patents.
Trolls take advantage of a patent
system with serious flaws, and
their abuse of the system is
creating, as a White House fact
sheet recently put it, a "drain
on the American economy."
And, as it turns out, a drain on
you, the ordinary consumer.
Let's assume you're a technology
consumer -- and these days,
that's almost all of us. Patent
abuse can cut off your access to
the latest and greatest products
and services. When a troll waves
the specter of a lawsuit or an
overly broad patent in front of a
tech startup, it is not uncommon
for the startup to drop features
from products, drop products
altogether or even fold up shop;
this was the key finding of a
2012 study, from Santa Clara
University in Silicon Valley, on
startups and patent trolls. Big
companies have millions to fight
a patent battle; small businesses
must give in or give up.
The other way that patents affect
you is more complicated. It
begins with the realization that
you are not just a consumer, but
as a user of technology, you are
a player in the patent
system.
Have you connected computers to a
wireless network? There are
patents on doing that. Have you
scanned a document and emailed
it? There are patents on that
too. Have you used a smartphone
app to purchase something? Then
there are a few more patents you
should look at.
These are no mere hypotheticals.
All three examples represent real
cases in which consumers of
technology -- albeit small
businesses, not individuals --
have been caught up in patent
fights just because they used a
product as it was designed to be
used. In fact, the patent owners
have turned from attacking big
companies to threatening
mom-and-pop stores, Internet
cafes and hobbyist app developers
too small to put up the requisite
million-dollar defense, and that
are likely to cave in and pay on
demand.
As new technologies develop, the
problem only worsens . Simpler
programming languages,
open-source hardware and 3D
printing will enable individuals
to tinker, invent, create and
manufacture -- and suffer at the
mercy of a confounding and costly
world of patent law.
To be clear, the patent system is
intended to reward inventors and
incentivize invention, bringing
new technologies to you, the
consumer. To that extent, the
patent system is to be
applauded.
But when questionable patents are
granted and then used, not to
vindicate rights but to extract
nuisance settlements; when a
company called Innovatio IP
Ventures can threaten 8,000 cafes
and bed-and-breakfasts offering
Wi-Fi to customers; when Dallas
businessman Erich Spangenberg can
take the patent system and, as he
told the New York Times, "exploit
its ambiguities and pokiness" to
the tune of $25 million a year,
it should tell you that the
system is being stretched beyond
its intended aims, that patents
are being abused to benefit the
few.
When envisioning the promise of
future technology, you can
imagine a world where you have
access to the newest products and
services; where you can use those
new innovations to creatively
solve your problems and improve
your life, whether that involves
connecting with friends on the
latest social network, fixing
things around the house with
3D-printed parts, organizing your
photos on your newest phone or
even something you can't even
dream of today.
And imagine a world where you can
do all that without the looming
fear of becoming a victim to
patents.
Abuses of the patent system
threaten the way of the path to
accessible, available, usable
technology for all. As consumers,
we must demand patent reform to
protect that promise of the
future.
Click
for More tviStory
106s90-
Patent
Trolls
///
106- Supreme Court rejects gene
patents
--
In unanimous ruling,
justices declare that human genes
are a product of nature and
cannot be patented and held for
profit. a decision that medical
experts said will lead to more
genetic testing for cancers and
other diseases and to lower costs
for patients.
In a unanimous ruling,
the nine justices declared that
human genes are not an invention,
so they cannot be claimed as a
type of private property.
The decision invalidates
Utah company Myriad Genetics
Inc's patents on two genes that
are linked to breast and ovarian
cancer, and the ruling is likely
to lead to several thousand other
gene patents being tossed as
well.
"This is a landmark
decision," said Dr. Stanley
Robboy, president of the College
of American Pathologists.
"Genomic medicine has the
potential to be a cornerstone of
medical testing, treatment and
clinical integration, but the
question of who owns your genes
needed a definitive answer. Now
we have it."
The broad reach of the
court's decision goes well beyond
genetic testing for cancer.
Supreme Court Justice
Clarence Thomas, writing for the
court, left little room for doubt
about the justices' view.
"Myriad did not create
anything," he wrote. "To be sure,
it found an important and useful
gene, but separating that gene
from its surrounding genetic
material is not an act of
invention."
"This will drive down the
costs of genetic testing. It
should open up the competition
and improve the quality of
testing," said Ostrer, a
professor of pathology and
genetics at Albert Einstein
College of Medicine in New
York.
Ostrer sued to challenge
Myriad's gene patents when the
company tried to block him from
testing patients who had the
genetic mutation that put them at
high risk for breast or ovarian
cancer. Myriad said patients
could use only its test --at a
cost of more than $3,000.
The court's decision also
came as a relief to much of the
biotech industry. While the
justices agreed a "naturally
occurring DNA segment" cannot be
patented, they also said DNA
"synthetically created" in a lab
is an invention that can be
patented.
Industry lawyers had
worried the court could issue a
sweeping decision that would wipe
out patents for genetically
engineered drugs or farm
products, on the theory they were
derived from or copied from
natural genes.
The worst fears of the
biotechnology industry have not
been realized, and inventions in
the field of molecular genetics
remain patent eligible,
Striking down gene
patents had become a rallying cry
for cancer patients and their
doctors. The nation's major
medical groups had urged the
court to rein in the patent
office and free doctors and
researchers from the hold placed
on so-called patented genes.
The ruling is the latest
to reflect the high court's
growing skepticism about the
nation's patent system. Patents
are supposed to spur innovation
by giving inventors an exclusive
license to profit for up to 20
years from what they have
created.
Critics have said that
granting too many patents in a
fast-changing area of technology
can discourage
innovation
if one company has legal control
over an area and can charge
monopoly profits and keep out
competion.
The U.S. justices during
the last decade have taken up the
issue and issued a series of
unanimous rulings rejecting the
views of the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office and the federal
courts that handle patent
claims.
The justices have said
that supposed "inventors" cannot
obtain patents for claimed
innovations that are obvious or
rely on natural laws such as
gravity or natural processes such
as chemical reactions in the
body.
They said that parts of
the human body --whether a kidney
or a tiny gene --cannot be
patented even if it takes great
skill to isolate this body
part.
In a one-paragraph
concurring opinion, Justice
Antonin Scalia said he could not
vouch for the "fine details of
molecular biology" set out in
Thomas's opinion, but agreed with
the conclusion that DNA "in its
natural state" cannot be
patented
Click
For More tviStory
106s90-
U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Gene
Patents
///
106-"Happy
Birthday to You" has a history
dating back 120 years. A Lawsuit
seeks to put "Happy Birthday " in
Public
Domain.
A filmmaker filed a
class-action lawsuit to make the
song "Happy Birthday to You" free
for everyone to use.
The plaintiff, Good
Morning to You Productions Corp.,
a New York-based company that is
making a
documentary about
the song, said it belongs in the
public domain.
The publishing arm of
Warner Music Group,
Warner/Chappell Music Inc., owns
"Happy Birthday to You," and
copyrights extend them exclusive
rights over the song's
reproduction, distribution and
public performances.
According to the
plaintiff's lawsuit, filed in New
York, the company had to pay
Warner/Chappell $1,500 for a
license to use the song.
As the 26-page court
document notes, the song has a
history dating back 120
years.
The tune's origins date
back to the 1893 song "Good
Morning to All" by sisters
Mildred J. Hill and Patty Smith
Hill.
The lyrics were: "Good morning to
you / Good morning to you / Good
morning dear children / Good
morning to all;
That song eventually
evolved into "Happy
Birthday."
The legal filing aims to
return "millions of dollars" in
licensing fees from
Warner/Chappell to thousands of
people and groups that have paid
the company to use the song.
Click For More tviStory
106s90-A
Lawsuit seeks to put "Happy
Birthday " in Public
Domain.
///
106-
FCC's Genachowski Steps
Down
WASHINGTON
-- After nearly four years on the
job Julius Genachowski, a former
venture capitalist and technology
executive will step down in the
coming weeks as Chairman of the
Federal Communications Commission
(FCC).
In a 20-minute speech, to
FCC employees in a gathering in
the commission's meeting room,
Genachowski highlighted the
agency's accomplishments. He
noted that the FCC released a
national broadband plan three
years ago that called for
increasing high-speed access.
Part of that strategy
included expanding access to
wireless spectrum, and the agency
has worked to try to lure
broadcasters to give up someof
their airwaves in exchange for
money from the government's
auction of rights to use them to
telecom companie
He said his biggest
accomplishment was focusing the
agency on expanding high-speed
Internet access. For example, he
pushed the FCC to make more
public airwaves available to
deliver the Internet over
smartphones and other mobile
devices.
"Three
years ago, the U.S. mobile market
was on the doorstep of duopoly.
It would have been bad for the
American innovation economy and
bad for consumers," said
Genachowski, who helped derail
AT&T Inc.'s proposed
$39-billion purchase of T-Mobile
USA Inc. in 2011.
Consumer
advocates acknowledged that
Genachowski deserved credit for
helping block the
AT&T-T-Mobile deal. But some
leading public interest groups
said the FCC under Genachowski
approved other mergers that have
reduced competition.
When he was appointed the
first Democratic FCC chairman in
eight years many hoped for a
tough regulator that he would
bring to connclusion such major
issues as the limits of media
owwnership in major makets. But
these issues remain
unresolved..
However,
Genachowski worked on some
longtime thorny issues that
didn't get widespread
attention.
Under
his leadergsuuod the FCC
in 2011 overhauled the $8-billion
Universal Service Fund. The fund,
paid for by fees on consumer
phone bills, provided subsidies
for phone service to rural and
low-income households. The FCC
refocused the fund on providing
subsidies for high-speed Internet
service.
Genachowski
touted a huge believer in
wireless.
David Kaut, a
telecommunications regulatory
analyst at brokerage Stifel,
Nicolaus & Co., said
Genachowski
has been "a huge believer in
wireless."
Kaut noted the FCC's push
to encourage broadcasters to give
up some of their airwaves in
exchange for some of the proceeds
from government auctions of
spectrum use to telecom
companies. The first such
auctions could take place next
year, freeing up more airwaves
for mobile Internet access.
"Cleary
the wireless industry has boomed
over the last few years," he
said. "I think there will be a
lot of debate about how much of
that was because of the FCC."
Some
public interest groups, such as
Free Press, said Genachowski's
should have pushed for tougher
"net neutrality" rules to
preserve open Internet
access.
Public
Knowledge, a public interest
group that has pushed for more
protections for consumers against
large telecommunications
companies, said Genachowski's
tenure was one of missed
opportunities. The group urged
Obama to appoint an FCC chair
"who will put the public interest
first.
But
Mark Cooper, director of research
at the Consumer Federation of
America, said Genachowski did a
good job balancing the needs of
consumers without squelching
innovation.
Speculation
about Genachowski's
replacement --
Among
them so far are Democratic FCC
Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and
Jessica Rosenworcel; Catherine
J.K. Sandoval, a member of the
California Public Utilities
Commission; Karen Kornbluh, the
U.S. ambassador to the
international Organization for
Economic Cooperation and
Development; Lawrence Strickling,
head of the Commerce Department's
National Telecommunications and
Information Administration; and
Washington, D.C., venture/
capitalist Tom Wheeler.
Clyburn
told reporters Friday that
Genachowski had "done remarkable
things." Asked about her
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106-s90-
FCC's
Genachowski to step
down
Click
FCC
Direct
///
106-ResellerCopyrightRuling
Supreme Court sides with book
reseller in copyright ruling
The Supreme Court gave foreign
buyers of books, video discs and
other copyrighted works a right
to resell them in the U.S.
without permission of the
copyright owner, giving discount
retailers a victory and the
entertainment industry a
setback.
The 6-3 decision Tuesday came in
the case of Supap Kirtsaeng, a
USC graduate student from
Thailand who figured he could
earn money for his education by
buying low-cost textbooks in his
native country and reselling them
in the United States.
John Wiley & Sons, a textbook
publisher, sued him over
copyright infringement and won
$600,000 in damages from a New
York jury. Kirtsaeng was ordered
to turn over his golf clubs,
computer and printer as partial
payment.
But in Tuesday's decision, the
Supreme Court found the Thai
student's view of U.S. copyright
law "more persuasive" than the
publishing industry's, and it
threw out the verdict against
him.
In doing so, the justices adopted
a version of ebay's motto: "If
you bought it, you own it, and
you have a right to sell
it.".
Judges
had been divided over whether
--
copyright
protection extended to works that
were lawfully made and sold
abroad, but were imported for
resale in the United States. One
part of the law says the U.S.
copyright holder has an
"exclusive right to distribute
copies" in the United States.
A second part of the law says the
rights of the copyright holder
are protected only for the "first
sale" of a work. For example, a
book publisher profits from the
first sale of a novel, but the
buyer is then free to sell it as
a used book.
In Kirtsaeng vs. John Wiley, the
high court decided the copyright
holders get only the protection
for a first sale and not a
protection against copies being
imported into the U.S. for
resale.
"This decision is a landmark win
for consumers, small businesses,
online marketplaces, retailers
and libraries," said a coalition
called the Owners' Rights
Initiative. Its members include
EBay and Overstock.com as well as
libraries, used-book stores and
discount retailers.
But U.S. companies that sell
books and software around the
world said they were disappointed
by the ruling.
"The truth is, the ruling for
Kirtsaeng will send a tremor
through the publishing
industries, harming both U.S.
publishers and students around
the world," said Keith
Kupferschmid, counsel for the
Software & Information
Industry Assn.
Indeed, the ruling has
ramifications that extend beyond
books to all types of copyrighted
works -- including music and
movies -- sold around the world,
said Tom Allen, chief executive
of the Assn. of American
Publishers.
The motion picture and recording
industries had told the court
their international marketing
strategy would be upset if they
could not prevent unauthorized
sales of video discs or CDs in
the United States. They said
filmmakers often introduce films
at different times in other parts
of the globe.
"Under Kirtsaeng's view, a studio
could not release a movie on home
video disc in one market while
the movie was still in theaters
in the United States
without incurring risk that
unauthorized importation of those
discs could detract from the
success of the U.S. theatrical
release," the Motion Picture
Assn. of America argued in its
friend-of-the court brief.
In response to the ruling, the
MPAA said the decision "will
hinder American business' ability
to compete overseas to the
detriment of the long-term
economic interests of the United
States, and particularly its
creative industries."
Howard Gantman, its spokesman,
stressed the ruling dealt only
with resale of products made
abroad, such as DVDs, not with
theatrical releases or online
distribution of movies.
Kirtsaeng, who returned to
Thailand to teach after earning a
doctorate in math, was
unavailable to comment on the
ruling. His New York attorney,
Sam P. Israel, said he had not
yet spoken with his client.
"I'm delighted the Supreme Court
has found the logic in the
statute that has eluded many
others," he said. "There is
nothing inherent in the copyright
law that makes subsequent sales
after a first sale illegal."
The case had been closely watched
in the retail industry because
many products, such as watches,
have copyrighted logos or labels
that could have prevented their
resale in the United States
without permission of the
copyright holder.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer,
speaking for the majority, said
the justices were wary of
extending copyright protection to
all manner of products, including
books and artworks, that were
lawfully made and sold
abroad.
In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader
Ginsburg called the ruling a
"bold departure" from "Congress'
aim to protect copyright owners
against the unauthorized
importation of low-priced,
foreign-made copies of their
copyrighted works." Justices
Antonin Scalia and Anthony M.
Kennedy agreed with her.
Allen, head of the publishers
group, said the Supreme Court's
ruling would harm the ability of
American publishers to compete in
global markets.
"That ruling creates a
disincentive for American
educational publishers to
continue to produce Asian
editions or editions for foreign
markets," Allen said. "If that
disincentive takes hold, there'll
be fewer American educational
materials, which are the gold
standard, available for students
and educators around the
world."
The entertainment industry has
long relied on the more
restrictive reading of the
copyright law to prevent the sale
of movies licensed for sale
abroad from being purchased and
imported to the U.S. for
resale.
"Now those types of movies cannot
be stopped," said Jonathan
Kirsch, a publishing and
intellectual property lawyer in
Los Angeles.
It is unclear how the movie,
music or video game industries
will be affected by the high
court's decision, as more
entertainment content is sold
digitally.
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106-s90-
Reseller Copyright
Ruling
///
106- Hollywood Studios & The
Safe Harbor Legal LoopHole: was a
Winner for YouTube vs
Viacom-.
A
federal New York federal judge
ruled on April 18, 2013, that:
YouTube had not violated Viacom's
copyright even though users of
the popular online site were
allowed to post unauthorized
video clips from some of Viacom's
most popular shows, including
Comedy Central's "The Daily Show
with Jon Stewart" and
Nickelodeon's "SpongeBob
SquarePants."
After
winning the big YouTube vs Viacom
copyright legal action between
search engine Google, its video
website YouTube has scored
another huge victory in the
long-running claims over
copyright infringement brought by
television giant Viacom
Inc.
U.S.
District Judge Louis L. Stanton
wrote in a --
24-page opinion dated: April
18, 2013, that YouTube was
shielded from copyright
infringement claims by a
safe-harbor provision in the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
Stanton dismissed Viacom's
lawsuit, and ordered Viacom to
pay some of YouTube's
costs.
Google's
general counsel Kent Walker
stated --
in a
statement. "The court correctly
rejected Viacom's lawsuit against
YouTube, reaffirming that
Congress got it right when it
comes to copyright on the
Internet," "This is a win not
just for YouTube, but for people
everywhere who depend on the
Internet to exchange ideas and
information."
YouTube
founder Chad Hurley --
taunted Viacom Chief
Executive Philippe Dauman, a
longtime corporate lawyer, in a
Twitter message, asking: "Hey
Philippe, wanna grab a beer to
celebrate?! YouTube Again Beats
Viacom's Massive Copyright
Infringement
Lawsuit."
This
is the second time that arguments
of Viacom, which is controlled by
media mogul Sumner Redstone, have
been rejected.
Viacom
filed the copyright infringement
suit in 2007 and demanded that
YouTube pay $1 billion in
damages. The dispute erupted as
established media titans,
including Viacom, were struggling
to cope with the disruption of
digital media and trying to
figure out how to rein in the
unauthorized distribution of
their
content.
The
case has been closely watched
because media companies had hoped
the courts would help enforce
their copyright protections
because the Internet made it so
easy for people to pirate clips
from their hit TV
shows.
In
2010, Stanton ruled against
Viacom --
in favor of YouTube in the
case, and Viacom appealed. A year
ago, an appeals court panel
revived the case. That group of
judges said the safe-harbor
provision protected Internet
services companies from liability
if they lacked specific knowledge
that a piece of infringing
material existed -- or if they
acted quickly to remove the
material once
notified.
The
case was sent back to Stanton.
Viacom argued that it was
impossible to prove that YouTube
had specific knowledge that
certain clips were
protected..
But
Stanton determined that the sheer
volume of content uploaded onto
YouTube made it impractical for
the video site to know when an
infringing clip appeared. The
burden, the judge said, fell to
Viacom to alert YouTube when
unauthorized uses of its
copyrighted material popped up on
the
site.
After
the judgement, Viacom vowed to
appeal once
again.
"This
ruling ignores the opinions of
the higher courts and completely
disregards the rights of creative
artists," Viacom said in a
statement. "We continue to
believe that a jury should weigh
the facts of this case and the
overwhelming evidence that
YouTube willfully infringed on
our rights, and we intend to
appeal the decision."
FOR
MORE CLICK --
wug4.com/news#106-YouTube-ViacomSafeHarbor
/
or
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
YouTube-ViacomSafeHarbor
///
106-
WUG reports -
Privacy-WhatsAppStockpilingPhone#s
Regulators
in the Netherlands and Canada say
the popular messaging application
"WhatsApp.com," . . . (
http://www.whatsapp.com ) -- is
violating internationally
accepted privacy norms by
stockpiling phone numbers
belonging to people who don't
even use the
service.
Officials
in both countries say Whatsapp is
going through its users' address
books and copying every single
phone number before transmitting
them to the Mountain view, Calif.
company.
Under
canadian and Dutch law,personal
information belonging to nonusers
must be destroyed once it's no
longer being used.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
WhatsApp Stockpiling of Phone
Numbers
///
106-
Email vs PostalMail. First-Class
Postage: - Prices will rise 1
penny on January 22,
2013.
Stock
up on one-cent stamps; you
might need them. Beginning
Sunday, the price of first-class
postage will increase from 44
cents to
45.
The
price change, the first postage
markup since 2009, was announced
in October. It follows last
summer's announcement that the
United States Postal Service was
considering shuttering thousands
of post offices
nationwide.
The
price increase is intended to
raise revenue for the struggling
public enterprise, which faces a
projected $238-billion deficit
over the next decade, postal
service officials have
said.
As
fewer people rely on so-called
snail mail, the agency has
considered not just closing post
offices but also cutting Saturday
mail delivery. Last month, the
U.S. Postal Service proposed
eliminating overnight delivery of
first-class mail to help it cut
$20 billion in operational costs
by
2015.
In
2011, the postal service
delivered almost 168 billion
pieces of mail -- a 21% decline
from 2007 -- resulting in a $5.1
billion loss in revenue,
according to the postal service's
financial
reports.
U.S.
Postal Service officials proposed
in 2010 raising first-class mail
postage by 2 cents, but that was
blocked by the Postal Regulatory
Commission, an independent
government agency charged with
overseeing the postal
service.
Among
the other changes taking
effect:
The cost of mailing a postcard
will increase 3 cents, to 32
cents.
The cost of mailing letters to
Canada and Mexico will rise 5
cents, to 85
cents.
The cost of mailing a letter to
other countries will rise 7
cents, to
$1.05.
A
full list of price changes can be
found on the USPS website.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
Email Vs. Postal
Mail
///
2012
- 1st & 2nd Quarter: -
2012 - JANUARY - FEBRUARY - MARCH
- APRIL - MAY -
JUNE
///
106-
HumphryBogart-TM-ID-Theft
106-
TVI-"NBS Radio Trust"
106-
TheWiTEL-ID-phoneNumber
106- "WiTEL# "
Bailout
106-
Smart90StoresInfoOnCloud
106-
WhoOwnsSmart90CloudInfo?
106-
FCCRegulatorsVsGoogle
106-
ChinaMobileLicenseDelayed
106-
ChinaTrademarkGrabs
106-
OracleVs.Google-LarryPageTestimony
106-
YahooVsFacebook
106-
AT&TLobbying
///
106
Mitt Romney Accepts Nomination
for US President -First since
'52: No talk of war in GOP
speech
With America entangled in its
longest armed conflict, Mitt
Romney became the first
Republican since 1952 to accept
his party's nomination without
mentioning war.
Three election cycles after the
2001 terrorist attacks, neither
Romney nor his running mate, Rep.
Paul Ryan, had anything to say
about terrorism or war while on
their party's biggest stage. The
only one who did was actor Clint
Eastwood, who won cheers for
suggesting invading Afghanistan
was a mistake and calling for an
immediate withdrawal of troops --
a line that might have earned
boos and catcalls four years
ago.
79,000 troops remain in
Afghanistan, but public support
has eroded for the decadelong
campaign there and a majority of
the US population believes the
country should not be involved in
Afghanistan anymore.
The Romney strategy
reflects the weakening public
support for the Afghanistan war,
fatigue over a decade of
terrorism fears and the economy
as central role in the campaign.
But it was still a notable shift
in tone for a party that, even in
times of peace, has used the
specter of war to call for
greater military spending and
tough foreign policy.
Candidates Barry Goldwater and
Richard Nixon criticized the
handling of the Vietnam War. Bob
Dole said the way to prevent
conflict is to prepare for more,
greater wars than a country will
need to fight. Ronald Reagan
warned that a weak nation would
tempt the Soviet Union.
"Four times in my lifetime
America has gone to war, bleeding
the lives of its young men into
the sands of beachheads, the
fields of Europe and the jungles
and rice paddies of Asia," Reagan
said in 1980. "We know only too
well that war comes not when the
forces of freedom are strong, but
when they are weak."
Even President Gerald Ford, who
in 1976, declared that, "not a
single American is at war
anywhere on the face of this
Earth tonight," went on to say,
"A strong military posture is
always the best insurance for
peace."
Republican strategist Tony Fratto
said was it odd,, to hear a major
Republican speech with no mention
of the issue that has so
dominated the past ten years.
Fratto served as a White House
spokesman and aide to the George
W. Bush, whose presidency was
consumed by the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
But with over 8 percent
unemployment nationwide,
Republicans see the economy as
the driving issue this year. And
Fratto said Romney's primary goal
was to connect with voters on a
personal level and redraw an out
of touch characterization.
"If you're going to leave some
things out, you're going to leave
out things that aren't highest on
the list of concerns of voters,"
Fratto said. "It's more
reflective of what Americans are
interested in hearing from their
candidates right now."
Romney did briefly refer to Iran
and said President Barack Obama
had not done enough to prevent
that country from pursuing
nuclear weapons. But his only
mention of war was not Iraq or
Afghanistan. It was World War II,
and he used it as a way to frame
his life story.
"I was born in the middle of the
century in the middle of the
country, a classic baby boomer,"
Romney said. "It was a time when
Americans were returning from war
and eager to work."
None of the presidential or vice
presidential candidates for
either party has ever served in
the military, a first in 80
years.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-106RomneyAcceptsNominationForUSPres
///
106-
Can Investors & Users Sue
Their Boss & Board
Members?
Yes
It's A Fact that
investors,
product users, pension funds can
sue, as Allergan Inc. investors
did in June - 2012. The legal
action seeks to hold directors
responsible for criminal
sanctions and a $600-million
penalty that the Irvine maker of
the wrinkle smoother Botox was
ordered to pay for marketing the
drug for unapproved uses, a judge
ruled.
Two pension funds that content
the Allergan's board failed to
properly oversee executives who
marketed Botox for ailments that
hadn't been approved by
regulators have amassed enough
evidence about the illegal sales
effort to proceed with their
claims, Delaware
Chancery Court Judge Travis
Laster said.
On the other side of
the coin . . .
A
group filed a lawsuit on behalf
of the company itself against the
executives.
The Group filed a lawsuit on
behalf of the company itself
against the executives. The goal
in such cases, known as
"derivative actions," is not to
reap big financial rewards but to
change the way a company is
run.
The funds own 5.6 million shares
of Wal-Mart. The group of New
York pension funds is suing
current and former Wal-Mart
stores Inc. executives, saying
they mishandled an alleged
bribery scheme at the world's
largest retailer. -
Click
For More tviStory 106s-90-
106-
CanInvestors&UsersSueBoardMembers
///
106-
HumphryBogart-TM-ID-theft-
2012
Style.
May-2012.
Bogart
heirs and Burberry are at odds
over the 1942 trench coat image
featured in the movie -
the
1942
film
"Casablanca."
Burberry
Group and heirs of Humphrey
Bogart are suing each other over
an image ID of who owns what the
rights of the late actor
wearing the 1942 Burberry trench
coat in the film
"Casablanca."
Burberry
asked a federal court to declare
that its use of Bogart's name and
image in social media doesn't
infringe Bogart Corp.'s trademark
rights or rights of publicity, it
stated in a complaint that was
filed in May 2012 in New
York.
Bogart,
which is majority owned by
Bogart's children, answered that
action by filing a
trademark-infringement complaint
n Los Angeles. The company seeks
a court order preventing Burberry
from using Bogart's name and
image, and unspecified
damages.
Buberry,
the London-based fashion company
said it licensed from photo
agency Corbis an image of Bogart
wearing the trench coat in the
final scene of the 1942 film. The
picture was used in a Burberry
historical timeline to illustrate
the influence of the brand,
according to the complaint.
Burberry said the image wasn't
used to sell merchandise.
"Defendant
is attempting to exert and assert
against Burberry rights which it
does not possess," Burberry said
in its complaint. The company
said its reference to Bogart in
the timeline is protected under
the 1st Amendment to the
Constitution.
Burberry
mentions Bogart contacted it in
April and ordered it to cease and
desist using the image.
Bogart
then contacted the company at
least two other times and "made a
significant monetary demand,"
according to Burberry.
"This
is such an incredibly
disappointing and disrespectful
action by Burberry," Stephen
Bogart, the son of the late
actor, said in a news
release.
"What's
next, a cigarette company can
start an advertising program
claiming Bogie smoked its brand,
and there's nothing our family
can do about it?"
Bogart,
who died in 1957 of cancer, was
nominated for an Academy Award
for his role as Rick Blaine, an
exptriate nightclub owner, in
"Casablanca." The film won the
Academy Award for best
picture.
Click
For More tviStory 106s-90-
106-
HumphryBogart-TM-Use
CLICK FOR MORE:
smart90.com/tvimagazine/1987/fall49.htm
///
106
The Book --"A Deal to Steal -
Wireless
TelePhone®© -
the Movie" -- (Library
of Congress: Catalog#
2012906001) -- was featured
at
the
Hollywood Digital, Ritz Carlton,
May
1st;
and the
Los Angeles Times Festival of
Books, USC Campus - April 21st -
2012
also click to
"109-
The Deal to
Steal."
106-
PUC-AT&T vs Magic Jack; Skype
& VONAGE?
106
TVI- The NBS Wireless
TelePhone®©
Trust"
--
In another
move to beef up its Worldwide
rights to its NBS Radio
intellectual property rights . .
. offerings, NbsWitel.com has
contracted with the
WebUsersGuild.com to unify VoIP
and WiTEL mobile users.
"Of
course, that includes any/and all
existing WiTEL TeleKey Area codes
system®© users,"
says Mark Anderson of PSI
International. "Today, we're
happy to announce that our PSI
team is joining the
WebUsersGuild.com group where
we'll have the opportunity to
build amazing consumer contacts
for over 5-Billion mobile users
around the globe." The
WebUsersGuild.com has become a
global problem of sorts with the
TeleCom industry.
The various copyrights,
trademarks, and drawings used
within its May 12, 1908 Patent .
. . Wireless
Telephone®©
experience, have all become a
father of sorts for the shorthand
text that has created product
names like,
WiTEL®©,
iPhone®©;
cellPhone®©.
It was just recently
that the NBS Trust
organization,
(wirelesstelephone.org),
negotiated with a Universal City
firm to lease a segment of its
Area Code numbers -- for an
undisclosed sum. See
115-
Digital Hollywood -
April
30 - May 3, Marina Del
Rey.
The NBS Wired-Wireless
Telephone®©
organization -- has been a
moniker to the Wireless industry
for over ten decades. With
Wireless
Telephone®©
namesakes like,
WiTEL®©,
iPhone®©, and the
cellPhone®©, how
could you lose. It's been a deal
to steal since its first
demonstrations and
®© registrations
by members of the NBS-TCS family
-- commencing in 1892, 1898,
1902, 1907 through 2012.
"People do what they
want," said Wikipedia's founder,
at a 2010 Digital Hollywood
Spring keynote address. "There is
no master plan what people are
interested in." The question is,
how can Wiki partner with people
to who have a symbiotic
realationship. Look at the Wiki
model for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Stubblefield.
The
www.webusersguild.com, announced
the acquisition to buy sections
of its PSI collections. (See
106-
NBSWiTEL Bailout For Its EMW
Wireless Carriers,
below). The Guild said the deal
will allow it to put the iconic
"NBS Radio Trust" Witel logo on
goods, products, and services as
well as build "NBS Radio Trust"
information clouds around the
world.
FOR THE
RECORD: --
Not
included in the deal are its NBS
Asian TeleCom telephonic
properties.
"This is a
brand of Anti-ID Theft benefits
with a lot of equity, not just in
China, but around the world,"
said Troy Cory-Stubblefield,
president and CEO of NBS. Our
ChinaExo2000/com affiliates will
be responsible for expanding the
brand. He declined to reveal the
price tag, but said, "I think we
will see north of $300 million in
revenue over the next three
years." http://www.webusersguild.com.
http://www.chinaexpo2000.com.
Webusersguild.com is a media firm
that has a webusers membership
division.
"What
"NBS Radio Trust" and his family
have done is maintain the
Wireless Telephone Company of
America enterprise that has
always been about technology and
innovation and providing
something unique to the savvy
wireless telephone customer,"
said Mark Anderson, of
pacificsunrise.org. " So we have
an opportunity to take the "NBS
Radio Trust" brands
worldwide."
Anderson
said that although possible new
commercial uses for our new
patent pending Anti-ID Theft
program would reflect local
software developers and wireless
nbsWiTEL.com merchandise, the
established international country
code system, will keep with what
Troy Cory calls "a kind of a
Kentucky southern comfort
feeling." "That's what NBS
smart90.com is all about --
concept. You can go into any
smart90.com kudoad link Click a
GoogleAd, or Amazon, and you can
buy everything from shoes to
diamonds."
#
115-
digitalhollywoodspring2012
---- /
#
115-Los
AngelesFilmFestival2012---
#
106-
PUC-AT&TvsMJskypeNBS
Cory-Stubblefield,
founded the family-run
Hollywood-based "NBS Radio Trust"
- and the Signet Credit Card
Group in 1968.
Troy, who
heads the Trust, said: "We've
have maintained
WiTEL®©
connections for over 100 years,
so it was the right time to start
our NBS100.com collection
efforts. We weren't out searching
for Wireless
Telephone®©"
users, it just worked out that
way." "We're
in good hands," says Cory. "I'm
extremely excited about the FCC's
efforts in setting the record
straight, and the possibilities
are endless."
Click
For More tviStory 106-s90-
106
TVI-"NBS Radio
Trust"
///
106-
TheWiTEL-ID-phoneNumber
In
a threat to the 4th Amendment,
law enforcement is using location
data as a crime-fighting
tool.
Concerned
that mobile phone networks are
becoming surveillance tools, the
American Civil Liberties Union
recently asked hundreds of local
law enforcement agencies whether
they've tracked people's
movements through their
cellphones. Most of those that
responded said they had, usually
obtaining the information from
mobile phone companies without a
warrant. The practice has become
so routine, the ACLU found, that
phone companies are sending out
catalogs of monitoring services
with detailed price lists to
police agencies. The alarming
findings should persuade Congress
to clarify that the government
can't follow someone
electronically without showing
probable cause and obtaining a
warrants.
USA
The
Supreme Court has long held that
the 4th Amendment guarantee
against unreasonable searches and
seizures
requires police to obtain a
warrant if the intrusion would
violate a target's "reasonable
expectation of privacy." That
standard has barred law
enforcement agents from
surreptitiously recording what
people say on the phone without a
warrant, even when the
conversation is taking place in a
public phone booth. But the court
and Congress set a significantly
lower bar for monitoring other
aspects of a phone's use. The
government can obtain records
about numbers dialed and calls
received -- either from the past
or live and in real time -- with
a subpoena, which a court will
grant if shown that the records
sought are relevant to an
investigation.
Landlines vs WiFi towers
Mobile phone networks collect
another -
type
of data that wire-line networks
don't: They register a phone's
location continuously as long as
it's turned on, even when it's
not in use. Those records can be
exceptionally revealing; as the
ACLU put it, the potential
insights range "from which
friends you're seeing to where
you go to the doctor to how often
you go to church." Nevertheless,
the Justice Department and many
local law enforcement agencies
view location data as no
different from calling records.
With the acquiescence of mobile
phone carriers, they've been
quietly collecting this
information through subpoenas,
not warrants backed by a showing
of probable cause. And in some
cases, the subpoenas have been
frighteningly broad; for example,
one police department sought data
on all the mobile phone users in
the vicinity of a planned
protests.
$$
The
fact that phone companies are
collecting fees
--
for
providing this information raises
the additional question of
whether their financial interests
trump their customers' privacy
interests. Looking for an answer,
Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.),
co-chairman of the Congressional
Bipartisan Privacy Caucus,
recently asked the major wireless
carriers how much money they've
collected from law enforcement
agencies and whether they
actively market their
information-gathering
services.
Location
data can undoubtedly help solve
crimes, but there's a broader
principle at stake. New
technology enables people to
trade information about
themselves -- sometimes
consciously, sometimes not -- for
commercial benefits, convenience
and insights into the world
around them. They agree to share
that information with service
providers because of the unique
benefits it brings -- for
example, users of the Roamz app
can arrive in an unfamiliar town
and see what previous visitors
have said online about the best
places to eat and stay. But if
sharing this information
automatically makes it the
government's for the asking, what
will be left of the 4th
Amendment?
A growing number of courts have
been pushing
back
against the Justice Department's
permissive approach, but the
rulings haven't been uniform. Nor
are there clear rules to
distinguish emergencies from
routine investigations, live
tracking from the examination of
stored data, or any
of the many other complexities.
Rather than trusting judges to
sort it all out, Congress should
make it clear that the
protections that apply to phone
conversations also apply to
location data. No warrant, no
tracking.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
106-
TheWiTEL-ID-phoneNumber
///
106- NBSWiTEL Bailout For Its EMW
Wireless
Carriers
Like a bank, we make loans.
But
unlike a bank, we're part of
nbsWiTEL.com. Before it became a
DotCom company
we
were, and still are that same NBS
Wireless Telephone Company of
America, established in 1902,
that invented and delveloped the
EMW technology that helps move,
cure, power and link the world
with its nbsWiTEL phone
numbers.
So
not only can we provide smart
financing, we can also offer
access to the insights and bet
practices of nbsWiTEL.com to make
that financing work harder.
Chances are we have the expertise
you need to make your company
more competitive - and we're
happy to share. Stop just
banking. And start building.
NbsWiTEL.com works.
NBS bailout of a few of
"nbsWiTEL.com Users --
may net an estimated
$20.1-billion profit for its
Collection Group, PSI.
The estimate
depends on the timing - of
the monthly payment of the debt
owed by each U.S.A. and FCC
approved carrier. nbsWiTEL.com
said the profit projection did
not factor in the nbsWiTEL.com
cost to subsidize each Carrier's
"WiTEL debt during the last few
years; that cost was not
calculated.
The nbsWiTEL.com -
forecast
followed the nbsWiTEL.com
decision to further reduce its
ownership stake in its Account
Receivable Assets.
The
report came as nbsWiTEL.com this
week continued to wind down its
stake in WiTEL phone numbers
handling its own Collection deal
it has
with
PSI,
and its Speedollars.com
system.
Financial
execs have a forward-thinking
strategy
WiTEL.com's arrangement with
PSI's Speedollars.com program
will help kick off the TeleKey
Code systems multimillion-dollar
effort to iBond its affiliates.
The iBond concept is dubbed "the
Global Creative Investment
Program" -- to form ventures with
its TeleCom carriers, and other
tech-savvy entrepreneurs in the
WiTEL.com business.
"VRA TelePlay" -
TroyCoryShow.com whose global
WebPlay makes it a popular
KudoClick site, is looking to tap
into hot young talent to remain
relevant and connect to a new
generation of consumers.
"There's a new social
contract emerging between media
companies, and on-line
entrepreneurs using $peedollar$,"
Troy Cory said. "The challenge
comes in creating a structure
that is open to opportunity in
the midst of a discombobulation
of everything we've ever
known."
A side by side look at
"WiTEL.com" and "Speedollars.com"
seem an unlikely couple. Their
first connection took place 9
years years ago, when
"LookRadio.com" became a
streaming video hit in China and
PSI's $peedollar$.com was a
whippersnapper payment plan for
Internet users.
The
nbsWiTEL.com said it has been
offered by outside financial
institutions, to buy $5.75
billion worth of outstanding
invoices.
Pacific
Sunrise International officials
propose to convert their Account
Receivables into iBonds,
according to the documents, which
are included in the agenda
materials.
The proposal would allow the
Franchised Carriers to take a
loan of up to 80% of any and all
cost for its $5.00 per month per
nbsWiTEL phone number assigned to
its WiTEL users . . . to help
cover expenses. It's unclear how
the nbsWiTEL.com Franchised
Carrier would pay it back -- if
the loan and interest could not
be repaid within 10 years --
would nbsWiTEL.com or the FCC be
able to resell the Franchise by
Auction?
The iBond proposal is separate
from the $5.00 per monthly
Invoice for each
WiTEL®© TeleKey
area Code phone number assigned
to users. TeleCom industry
experts following the iBond
concept will give virtually all
the benefits to the
WiTEL®© TeleKey
area Code user, with the
blessings of the FCC. The value
of of each NBS WiTEL franchise
assigned 1-Million
WiTEL®© TeleKey
area Code phone number -- is
valued at $5-Billion each,
according to
PSI.
Under the proposed lease, PSI's
financial backer would fund about
$45-Billion in Bank Guarantees.
PSI is seeking control of the
U.S.A. operations for a total of
99 years.
The
iBond sale would reduce the
nbsWiTEL.com debt holdings to
about $45 billion, with another
financial group holding an
additional $5 billion in
complicated loans secured by a
bank guarantee.
One
financial group said they hoped
to recover all the iBond loans
money given to NBSWiTEL
affiliates during the life of
their iBond for Cash
agreement.
"When
all the assistance is considered,
the amount the nbsWiTEL.com, and
its iBond for Cash partners
ultimately take in could exceed
the total support extended to the
nbsWiTEL.com affiliates by more
than $15.1 billion per month,"
the webusersguild.com watchdog
agency reported.
Unlike
banks, however, there is no
insurance for the security -- and
replacement -- of our digital
stuff. Although nearly every
provider's terms read
differently, one thing remains
the same. They all tell you
explicitly they are not
responsible for any loss of
WiTEL®©
phone numbers. http://smart90.com/pacificsunrise.org/
Cick
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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NBSWiTEL Bailout For Its EMW
Wireless
Carriers
///
106-
Smart90 Stores Info On Cloud
Google adds to the cloud with
Drive
In
addition to remote storage, Drive
gives users the ability to
collaboratively edit documents in
real time. Users will get access
to 5 gigabytes of storage free of
charge.
The expanding cloud storage space
business got more crowded as
Google launched its much-rumored
and highly anticipated remote
storage service, Drive.
Cloud-based
storage gives users a place to
park their documents, photos,
presentations and other files so
they can easily and immediately
access and share them with
various digital devices wherever
they have an Internet
connection.
But
Google said its Drive service
also gives users the ability to
collaboratively edit documents in
real time. As expected, the
service also integrates search
capabilities -- by keyword, file
type, author and image.
"Google
Drive is significant because now
all Google account holders have
one-click sign-up to free file
storage, sync and sharing, which
has the potential to quickly
build a large volume of users,"
said Frank Gillette, an analyst
with Forrester Research.
Google's offering is the latest
in --
the
burgeoning role of cloud
computing, he said.
"Integration
with Google Docs/Apps and
eventually with Gmail will make
it more natural and seamless than
managing from a separate account.
The most interesting thing is
integrated search within major
file types, not just by title. So
Google Drive will cause more
individuals to begin using
personal cloud services and more
companies, those that use Google
Apps, to use cloud-based file
sync and sharing."
The
service goes head to head with
established popular services such
as DropBox and SugarSync. Google
Drive users will get access to 5
gigabytes of storage free of
charge, as they do with SugarSync
and Box. DropBox, however, offers
2 gigabytes free of charge. Users
can pay for more storage, from 25
gigabytes for $2.49 a month up to
1 terabyte for $49.99 a
month.
"It's
an insanely exciting time in the
cloud storage and collaboration
space, and Google's entry
underscores the importance of
this multibillion-dollar
category," said Box co-founder
and Chief Executive Aaron Levie.
Box serves 10 million personal
users.
Levie
said Google's new service, which
is mainly targeting consumers, is
not expected to compete directly
with Box, which is focused on
providing secure cloud storage
for businesses.
DropBox
said in a statement that it is
focused only on providing
personal cloud storage services,
which it said it does "better
than anyone else."
"Companies
of all shapes and sizes have
tossed in their hats over the
years, but we've stayed ahead by
building the best possible
experience and making a product
that millions of people love,"
said a DropBox spokesman.
DropBox
founder Drew Houston had a more
direct, sarcastic response on
Twitter: "In other news, @Dropbox
is launching a search engine.
:)"
Google said
its remote storage drive will
work like a folder on both
Windows- and Mac-
based
computers. "An application for
Android-based smartphones and
tablets is available, with one
for Apple's iPhone and iPad in
the works," the company said.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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Smart90StoresInfoOnCloud
///
106-
WhoOwnsSmart90CloudInfo?
IP
Marks
Remember that when you upload
content --
you
are essentially publishing it --
even if it's just for your eyes.
For any cloud service to
work
as designed, you give the service
permission to store and make
copies of the content
you
upload -- that's how your stuff
ends up everywhere you want it.
The cloud copy is the master.
Intellectual Property
Rights
Google,
for instance, clearly states in
its terms of service that apply
to all things Google: "You retain
ownership of any intellectual
property rights that you hold in
that content. In short, what
belongs to you stays
yours."
And
that permission continues even if
you stop using the services,
according to the contract.
Google
issued a statement, explaining
why it, or for that matter others
such as SkyDrive or SugarSync,
would need to spell out its
rights with your content. "Our
Terms of Service enable us to
give you the services you want --
so if you decide to share a
document with someone, or open it
on a different device, you
can."
Dropbox says -- "You retain full
ownership to your stuff." --
Competing
cloud service Dropbox makes no
claims to user
content, the terms of service
read. "We don't claim any
ownership to any of it. These
Terms do not grant us any rights
to your stuff or intellectual
property except for the limited
rights that are needed to run the
Services."
No Insurance On Privacy --
One thing is certain:
The
services offered by Google, and
Dropbox -- are likely to become
more and more integral to how we
live our digital lives. The
companies will need to prove
themselves trustworthy as we bank
our bits and bytes with them.
"All
this comes back down to trust,"
said Frank Gillette, an analyst
at Forrester Research. "These
organizations, like banks, have
to convince people they are
trustworthy."
Unlike
banks, however, there is no
insurance for the security -- and
replacement -- of our digital
stuff. Although nearly
every provider's terms read
differently, one thing remains
the same. They all tell you
explicitly they are not
responsible for any loss you
experience.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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WhoOwnsSmart90CloudInfo
///
106-
FCCRegulatorsVsGoogle
Silicon
Valley finds Washington
regulators uncomfortably
close.
Google
is the latest tech giant to be
investigated by regulators and
lawmakers.
This
isn't the first time that Silicon
Valley has found itself in
regulatory cross hairs. In 2006
Hewlett-Packard, the
standard-bearer of business
ethics symbolized by the "HP
Way," tried to plug leaks to the
media by spying on the private
phone records of board members
and news reporters.
At
the same time, Apple was just one
of more than 100 companies, many
in Silicon Valley, that were
suspected of rigging stock
options to sweeten the paychecks
of executives and employees. --
The episodes helped reinforce
Silicon Valley's reputation for
bending -- if not breaking -- the
rules. And regulators in the U.S.
and overseas are again taking a
long hard look at the business
practices of companies here.
"Saying
'don't be evil' may be all well
and good when you are a scrappy
upstart, but once you become a
behemoth, you get served your
motto on a plate. Live by the
platitude, die by the platitude,"
said crisis management specialist
Eric Dezenhall, author of "Damage
Control."
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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FCCRegulatorsVsGoogle
///
106-
ChinaMobileLicenseDelayed
Those
officials, known collectively as
"Team Telecom," review FCC
applications by
foreign-owned
companies. They could advise the
FCC not to issue the license, but
may
instead
demand a signed agreement
designed to satisfy security
concerns.
The
review is being led by the
Justice Department, which
declined to comment, as did the
BI and DHS.
China
Mobile, which has nearly 670
million subscribers, is not
applying to provide domestic U.S.
telephone or Internet service.
But traffic from U.S. carriers,
such as Verizon Communications
Inc. or AT&T Inc., could be
routed to the China-owned network
should a license be granted.
Team
Telecom's review of China
Mobile's application is
complicated by the fact that two
other Chinese government-owned
firms, China Telecom and China
Unicom, were granted similar
licenses in 2002 and 2003,
respectively, well before Chinese
cyber espionage was viewed as a
pressing concern. Both carry
phone and Internet traffic
between the U.S. and China.
Security -WiTel
Satellites-WiFi Towers vs
Landlines
Tens
of billions of dollars in U.S.
intellectual property has been
stolen, much of it through
hacking originating in China,
U.S. intelligence officials have
said. In addition, China has
obtained national defense
information, the officials have
said.
On
April 8, 2010, China Telecom,
China's largest fixed-line
telephone company, rerouted 15%
of the world's Internet's traffic
through Chinese servers for 18
minutes, according to the
U.S.-China Economic and Security
Review Commission.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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ChinaMobileLicenseDelayed
///
106-
Filing China Trademark Is is a
SmartGrabs
The Kardashian sisters don't sell
their clothing and perfume in
China, and you can't buy
authentic J. Crew khakis here.
However, both names are already
trademarked by Chinese
businesspeople looking to profit
from American enterprises that
want to tap China's booming
retail markets.
Extortion?
Nope. It's called "trademark
squatting." And it's legal in
China, where trademarks generally
are awarded to those who are
first to register them with
government authorities.
If
these and other U.S. companies
want to use their own names, they
probably will have to pay the
Chinese holder for the
rights.
The
practice has been given renewed
attention with Apple Inc.
embroiled in a legal battle with
a financially troubled Chinese
electronics company that holds
the rights in China for the iPad
names.
Proview
Shenzhen is seeking $1.6 billion
in compensation from the
Cupertino, Calif., technology
giant.
Proview
has owned the iPad trademark
since 2000, a decade before
Apple's tablet computer was
launched. Therefore, experts
don't consider it a typical
example of squatting. Still, they
said the high-profile case could
inspire countless others to join
China's trademark free-for-all.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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ChinaTrademarkGrabs
///
106-
OracleVs.Google-LarryPageTestimony
Larry
Page evasive in Oracle patent
suit testimony
Sun-Micro
Oracle Deal - Java Codes
During
his nearly one hour testimony,
Page repeatedly denied knowing
the details of documents and
negotiations and deflected
questions. Page did, however,
insist that Google had done
nothing wrong. He said Google
tried to negotiate a deal to
license Java, the programming
language that Oracle obtained in
2010 when it bought Sun
Microsystems for $7.3 billion,
but conceded that it never had.
Google used Java to build its
Android mobile softwares.
"We
really wanted to use Sun's
technology," Page said. "It would
have saved us a lot of time and
trouble to use Sun's technology.
When we weren't able to have our
business partnership, we went
down our own path."
Boies
was trying to prove that Page and
other Google executives knew as
far back as 2005 that they would
have to pay licensing fees for
Java. It was unclear if Page's
foggy memory worked for or
against him with the jurors.
"His
denial of knowledge and
recollection contrasts with
evidence of his personal
involvement with the decision to
use Java without a license," said
Florian Mueller, an intellectual
property analyst and author of a
popular blog on
patents.
"There's a lot at stake here not
only for his company but also for
his own
reputation."
Click
For More tviStory 106-s90-
106-
OracleVs.Google-
LarryPageTestimony
///
106-
Yahoo Vs
Facebook
Yahoo adds two patent suits to
legal fight with Facebook.
Yahoo
is escalating the hostilities and
the stakes in its increasingly
acrimonious patent battle with
Facebook.
In
papers filed in San Francisco
federal court, the Internet
search company expanded its
lawsuit against Facebook to
include two more charges of
intellectual property theft. It
now claims Facebook is infringing
on 12, rather than 10, of Yahoo's
patents.
"The
filing underscores the scope of
Facebook's violation of Yahoo's
intellectual property," a Yahoo
spokesman said in an emailed
statement.
As
to Yahoo's filing of the suit
against Facebook, the lawsuit
raised eyebrows in Silicon
Valley, where companies often use
patents to defend themselves, but
not to go after each other so as
to avoid stifling innovation.
Facebook countersued, claiming
Yahoo was infringing on its
patents.
Yahoo
denied claims that it was
infringing on 10 of Facebook's
patents and accused Facebook of
engaging in unfair tactics. It
said Facebook violated an
agreement between the two
companies to notify each other of
possible patent infringements
before going to court.
"We
remain perplexed by Yahoo's
erratic actions. We disagree with
these latest claims and we will
continue to defend ourselves
vigorously," a Facebook spokesman
said in an emailed statement.
The
patent battle is unfolding
against the dramatic backdrop of
Facebook's pending initial public
stock offering that is expected
to be the largest in Silicon
Valley history.
Facebook
has been adding patents to
fortify its portfolio against
attacks. It paid Microsoft $550
million for patents from AOL and
bought hundreds more from IBM. It
has warned investors that an
"unfavorable outcome" in the
patent dispute with Yahoo could
damage its business.
"Yahoo
wants to show to Facebook that
escalation always goes both
ways," said intellectual property
blogger Florian Mueller. "And it
tries to make Facebook's
counterclaims look dubious and
weak, with a view not only to the
court but also the general public
and existing or prospective
Facebook investors."
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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YahooVsFacebook
///
106-
AT&T
Lobbying
AT&T wields enormous power in
Sacramento
No
other single corporation has
spent more trying to influence
legislators in recent years. It
dispenses millions in political
donations and has an army of
lobbyists. Bills it opposes are
usually defeated," says Josie
Cory.
As
the sun set behind Monterey Bay
on a cool night last year, dozens
of the state's top lawmakers and
lobbyists ambled onto the 17th
fairway at Pebble Beach for a
round of glow-in-the-dark
golf.With luminescent balls
soaring into the sky, the annual
fundraiser known as the Speaker's
Cup was in full swing.
Lawmakers,
labor-union champions and
lobbyists gather each year at the
storied course to schmooze, show
their skill on the links and
rejuvenate at a
22,000-square-foot spa. The
affair, which typically raises
more than $1 million for
California Democrats, has been
sponsored for more than a decade
by telecommunications giant
AT&T.
At
the 2010 event, AT&T's
president and the state Assembly
speaker toured Pebble Beach
together in a golf cart, shaking
hands with every lawmaker,
lobbyist and other VIP in
attendance.
The
Speaker's Cup is the centerpiece
of a corporate lobbying strategy
so comprehensive and successful
that it has rewritten the
special-interest playbook in
Sacramento. When it comes to
state government, AT&T spends
more money, in more places, than
any other company.
Click
For More tviStory
106-s90-
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AT&T
Lobbying
///
109-dealtosteal680.html
106
The Book --"A Deal to Steal -
Wireless
TelePhone®© -
the Movie"
--
Featured at Hollywood
Digital, Ritz Carlton, May
1st;
and the
Los
Angeles Times Festival of Books,
USC Campus - April 21st -
2012
"109-
The Deal to
Steal."
106-
PUC-AT&T vs Magic Jack; Skype
-
VONAGE?
Reading; wRriting
aRrithmetic
and
wiReless
(eBooks)."
The
Wireless
Telephone®© -
"the
Movie,"
(Library of Congress: Catalog#
2012906001)
--
featured at Hollyood Digital, and
the
17th Los Angeles Times Festival
of
Books.
The
new published Book, was written
by Troy-Cory Stubblefield &
Josie Cory. The Movie Script, and
Anti-ID Theft Patent were
co-authored by Donna Jefferies,
and Mark Anderson, respecfully.
Author/performer
Troy Cory-Stubblefield calls the
LATimes Book Fair, "the annual
event as the: "Four R's of
Education . . . Reading;
wRriting, aRrithmetic and
wiReless
(eBooks)."
106-
PUC-AT&T vs Magic Jack;
Skype; NBS Telekey Codes
$13B
rtf
"TheDealtoSteal.com"
web site is so believable,"
says author, Anderson, "the
"iPRmarks" (Intellectual
Property Rights
®©) must be valued
at Billions of
"USA-Dollars," . . . or as
they say in the real world of
Magic
Jack, Skype, and NBS Telekey
Codes,
Billions
of USDs per month."
FOR
MORE CLICK Direct:
www.latimes.com/festivalofbooks.
More
TVI Story @ s90Brief/#115 LA
Times Festival of
Books
109-dealtosteal680.html
--
The Wireless
Telephone®© -
"the Movie."
"Sometimes
an idea whose
time
has come -- just a little too
soon
is just the thing that can last .
. .
"FOREVER
MINUS A
DAY
!"
This fast-moving,
epic-scale 440 page
tviPublishing.com book, not only
documents the 110 year old
history of The
Wireless
Telephone®©,
device itself, but factually
explains the growth and the
enhancement of the basic elements
that are now found in today's
SmartPhones. The pictorials
published in the Book demonstrate
the purpose of elements and
effects first developed,
registered, demonstrated, and
published by: NATHAN B.
STUBBLEFIELD, of MURRAY,
KENTUCKY.
The
primary purpose of N.B.
Stubblefield's public
Wireless
Telephone®©
demonstrations
was to sell territorial deeds
throughout the U.S.A. to connect
the user of the land-line
telephone to moving vehicles,
such as the smartphone we use in
today's world of mobile phone
subscribers. His Wireless
Telephone Company of America gave
permission to his NBS licensed
Corporate TeleCom
WiTEL®© carriers
to broadcast and receive voice --
with or without his 7 digital
TeleKey Area Code connecting
system.
Since that time, (1892 to 2012),
Nathan's grandson, Troy
Cory-Stubblefield, the CEO of the
NBS organization, has validated
the laws imposed on by the FCC,
and sovereign nations to control
TeleCom EMW spectrum, and
frequencies.
Each Telecom carrier utilizing
the NBS TeleKey phone number Area
Code system are valued at $5.00
per month per 7-digial number
assigned to a
WiTEL®© device.
The assignment of each NBSwitel
intellectual property rights
assigned to his original Wireless
Telephone®©
territorial deed holders, are
given priority, not only by the
FCC, but by the NBS
organization..
A few of the name changes used,
and accepted by the NBSwitel.com
organization to identify and
update the Wireless
Telephone®© name
to fit modern-day unsage include:
Radio, Television, LookRadio,
WiTEL, CellPhone, iPhone,
Firewire-187,
etc.
Like authors of the Bell &
Edison inventions, the NBS
WirelessTelephone.org family will
own the nbswitel.com intellectual
property rights -- "FOREVER
MINUS A
DAY."
The five
chapters of WiTEL facts, and
true-life adventures of one of
the most unsung inventors in
history, whose revolutionary
innovations have effected every
human being on the planet over
the last three generations! Based
on the true story of inventor and
part-time melon farmer Nathan B.
Stubblefield's (and subsequently
his grandson Troy Cory's) battle
with the government and U.S.
telephone industry.
"Firewire"
tells the tale of two very
different men from two very
different eras who share not only
the same blood, but the same
fight - whose battle to receive
recognition for the invention of
the wireless telephone would come
at a heavy price. But the
determined small-town inventor
and the impassioned big-city
entertainer both refused to be
silenced, and they took on the
rural backstabbers and the
corporate titans alike in a
battle that nobody thought either
could win.
The
Stubblefields started out as a
typical 1880's Kentucky family,
trying to live their version of
the American Dream, but ended up
as anything but! When Nathan
invents a unique device that he
prophesied would eventually be
used by nearly everyone in the
world -- he was not far from
wrong. Decades later, when his
grandson learns that it was his
relative who indeed invented the
wireless phone, Cory thinks he's
struck gold. But his aspirations
are dashed after the telephone
monopolies and political pirates
who initially seized
Stubblefield's creation as their
own are just as determined to
shut out his descendant decades
later, as well.
Ignored,
threatened and then buried in
years of struggle, Cory is
haunted by what was done to his
family. He becomes a man obsessed
with justice and the conviction
that his grandfather's life work
-- or for that matter, anyone's
work -- be acknowledged by those
who stood to benefit. And while
paying the toll for refusing to
compromise his dignity, this
everyday David will try the
unthinkable: to strategically
bring Goliath to his knees in a
cooperation with truth and
justice for all. --Donna
Jeffries
"You don't get to bust through
the
airwaves without catching a
little static
Across the
landscape of the American
Industrial Revolution, within the
field of urban electrification
and communication, the legacy of
prominent inventors such as
George Westinghouse, Thomas
Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell
stand proud. Their achievements
celebrated, their status
recognized. But they do not stand
alone. Concealed by the shadows
of history, and even more by the
deviousness of corrupt men in
power, is the figure of Nathan B.
Stubblefield, a contemporary of
those great men and one of that
era's most innovative and
prolific inventors..
At the
time of his death in 1928,
Stubblefield had been granted
dozens of patents, mostly
relating to electrical and
wireless technologies. His
inventions completely
revolutionized the world of
communications that we know
today, yet not many people even
know his name. With over 5.6
billion wireless phones in use
today - there's no denying,
wireless technology has
irreversibly changed the
world..
This story
will open your eyes and challenge
what you think you know about not
only your cell phone, but the
challenges and the victories that
brought these innovations to us
in the first place. More
importantly, it gives us insight
into the human tragedy and
triumph that was and still is a
part of the reality of our most
innovative technological pioneers
today in America. ---Donna
Jeffries
Article by: Josie Cory - Troy
Cory-Stubblefield AUTHOR OF THE
HISTORY OF BROADCASTING
5
VOLUMES
"Cliches
for Social Climbers, Social
Rhymers, Songwriters and for
Special Occasions"
More
TVI Story @ s90-109-115-
Brief/#DealToSteal
///
2011
- 1st - 2nd - 3rd - 4th Quarter:
///
106-AppleInfringedPersonalAudio /
Apple infringed patents, jury
Awards
$84M
+
Apple
Inc. was told to pay closely held
Personal Audio $8 million after a
federal jury in Texas found that
the maker of iPods infringed
patents for downloadable
playlists.
Personal
Audio, a patent licensing
company, sued Apple in 2009 for
$84 million in damages, claiming
infringement of two
patent.
The
jury Friday found that the
patents were infringed and upheld
their validity, Personal Audio's
lawyer
said.
The
inventions cover an audio player
that can download navigable
playlists and skip forward or
backward through the
list.
More
SmartBriefs 106-s90 -
Legal
///
106-ApplevsAmazonAppsGeneric
/
106-Apple
vs Amazon Apple denied
injunction!
+
July 9, 2011. The Problem? Amazon
launched Appstore for Android on
March 22, one day after Apple
filed its suit against the online
retail giant alleging trademark
infringement over the name of the
storefront, which sells apps for
Google's Android operating system
found on smartphones and
tablets.
But
. . . Apple denied injunction to
stop Amazon's use of 'appstore'
name; trial date
set
Apple
has been denied a preliminary
injunction that would have halted
Amazon.com's use of the term
"appstore" in a ruling by an
Oakland federal
judge.
U.S.
District Judge Phyllis Hamilton
ruled Wednesday that she didn't
agree with Amazon's argument that
the names "app store" and
"appstore" are generic and can be
used by anybody, but she said
Apple had failed to show "a
likelihood of confusion" for
customers who use the Apple App
Store and the Amazon Appstore for
Android, according to a Reuters
report.
Hamilton
has set a trial date in the
dispute between the two companies
for October 2012, reported
Reuters.
CLICK
FOR MORE
t
106-S90
tviNews
///
106-WellsFargoVsPensionFunds
106-Wells
Fargo vs Pension Fund
$125M
Settlement.
+
June 31st Week: Wells Fargo
& Co. agreed to pay $125
million to investors in its
mortgage-backed securities who
alleged that before the Great
Recession hit, they were misled
about how much equity the
borrowers had in their
homes.
'WellsFargo']The
proposed settlement, filed
Wednesday in federal court in San
Jose, ended consolidated lawsuits
filed by the pension funds of
Alameda County, Detroit, New
Orleans, Guam, the Louisiana
sheriffs and other
plaintiffs.
At
issue were mortgage-backed
securities -- financial
instruments derived from a pool
of mortgages -- whose value
depended on borrowers' payments
on loans made at the peak of the
housing bubble in 2006 and
2007.
Certain
other claims over mortgage
securities filed by Charles
Schwab Corp. and the Federal Home
Loan Banks of Chicago and
Indianapolis are excluded from
the class, Wells Fargo has said
in regulatory
filings.
The
litigation named as defendants
Wells Fargo and about 20 trusts
holding mortgages backing $8
billion in securities, along with
various Wall Street banks and
credit-rating agencies involved
in issuing the mortgage
bonds.
The
proposed settlement, which still
requires judicial approval, did
not include any admission of
wrongdoing by Wells Fargo. A
spokesman for the San Francisco
bank said the intent was to avoid
the expense and risk of further
litigation.
CLICK
FOR MORE
t
106-S90
tviNews
///
106-
California Sales Taxes &
AMAZON.
+/
Will the new California tax
collection requirement Effect
Your Monthly Phone Bill? YES, it
might HAPPEN. Part of California
budget-related legislation -- is
expected to raise an estimated
$317 million a year in new state
and local government revenue.
Other
states currently are considering
similar sales tax collection
bills.
California's
new law was drafted to circumvent
a 1992 U.S. Supreme Court ruling
that sellers can't be forced to
collect sales taxes unless they
have a physical presence in the
state.
The new
statute would establish that
presence in two ways: when
sellers pay commissions to other
Internet sites in California,
known as affiliates, that refer
buyers; and when sellers have a
related company operating in the
state.
One
affiliate, Ken Rockwell of San
Diego, the owner of a 12-year-old
photography website, said he
planned to move out of state.
"Will it
be Las Vegas or Scottsdale or
Ensenada?" he said. "It's a
question of where, not if."
California
tells online retailers to start
collecting sales taxes from
customers
Beginning
Friday, July 1st, 2011,
Amazon.com and other large
out-of-state retailers, like
AT&T, Verizon, and Spring
utilizing California Area Code --
will be required to collect sales
taxes on purchases that their
California customers make online.
CLICK
MORE ABOUT 106- California Taxes
&
AMAZON.
/
CLICK
FOR MORE Munich
California Taxes & AMAZON.
t
106-S90
tviNews
///
106WiTEL-ForeverMinusOneDay
TodaysPatentMess-Anderson
106 WiTEL's Global Assets
®© - Forever -
Minus a Day! By Mark Anderson,
PSI
Since the moment I discovered
N.B. Stubblefield several years
ago, my job required me to
surround myself with his U.S.A.
Wireless
Telephone®©
innovations. His NBS
wired-WiTEL®©
innovation has been either in my
pocket, in my vehicle, or left at
home on table-top surfaces
amongst my wireless PC laptop, a
volume of a Smart-Daaf Boys book
about the effluvia of NBS, and a
stack of Invoices worth
$Billions.
Since the moment I discovered NBS
WiTEL®©? No, not
even. Before I could even call
myself a user of today's
WiTEL®© iPhone,
CellPhone, WiFi, or whatever
you'd like to call it, I needed
to know who was paying for the
various software, and Service
Mark ®© fees that
made the thing work. Also --
was a phone number, and antenna
necessary?
This was to become an essential
part of me . . . like, "as to why
the sky was blue." What were
the components, elements and
effects of wired-wireless.
Are AT&T's, Bell,
Edison, and NBS WiTEL's -- 100
year old service marks
®© really viable
forever - minus a day? . . . It
had to be understood.
It was the late Jack Valenti,
who
was Hollywood's ubiquitous
lobbyist that helped set the
record straight. He was all about
protecting the service marks
®© -- and
licensing fees due to those
"certain 60 year old Show Biz
film related intellectual
property right owners, he was
representing. The proper term,
Valenti would always say is,
"forever, minus a day."
It was free enterprisers Ted
Turner, and Troy
Cory-Stubblefield; and educators
like Dr. Molfield and Dr. Horton
of Murray State University,
(MSU), that helped perfect
Valenti's colorful service marks
Validation; ®© are
"forever, minus a day."
Together, it took the group along
with organizations like MPPA,
SAG, CITA, and even the Kentucky
Colonels, only a couple of years
to convince Congress and
intellectual property asset
owners to fully appreciate and
agree that copyright terms should
be limited. Valenti would always
remind the Pres. Johnson White
House staff, the proper term for
®©, was, and still
is, "forever, minus a day."
Murray State University,
Kentucky
The NBS WiTEL®©
organization got started, in
1902. In 1930 -- the city of
Murray, Kentucky, not only
dedicated a monument, and
journalistic PR structure on the
MSU campus, but they purposely
did so . . . to carry-on, and
sell the NBS
WiTEL®© valuable
Service marks - "forever, minus
three days." One day for
"©," - day two for ","
-- and day three for "®."
Like
Ted Turner, Troy
Cory-Stubblefield followed the
MSU pattern in Hollywood. Turner
bought a million dollar film
library, updated the copyrights
by colorizing his MGM film
product, then digitized the
Classic Film product -- to create
a superior earning power. NBS
WiTEL®©, headed by
Troy and Josie Cory, bought Vine
Street Studio and Rosemont
Studios, founded VRA TelePlay
Pictures, and formed the Cinema
Prize Award organization.
As you can see, within a
four-decade span, not only was a
new HiTech DVD/CD lasar format
born, but a new WITEL smartphone
Service Marks ®©
vContent distribution system
model was created by Sony of
Japan -- for the Film maker.
Those certain trademarks owners
include Hollywood's major
studios, Warner Bros., MGM, Sony,
Disney, Paramont, NBS WiTEL, and
their producers, heirs, writers,
stockholders, and members of the
Motion Picture Producers
Association (MPPA).
6 Dumb Ways to Kill A Deal
&endash; and 1 Great Way to
Validate
It has been only recently that I
could comfortably sit at my desk
-- and speak knowingly and
intelligently back and forth into
the offices in far away places,
asking those AT&T, Verizon,
T-mobile and Sprint executives
who knew, or should have known
about the; "forever, minus a day"
Validation Theory.
Confirming "How Many WiTEL
customers are users of their
"" was the easy part of
Q&A sessions. So was the
validating of -- "How Many of
their WiTEL users are paying more
than $30.00 per month for
"©" fees. AT&T took the
®© "Validation
Theme" the hardest. Paying $5.00
to $10.00 per month as a
recurring licensing fee for
utilizing the service mark
®© owned by JAVA,
Microsoft, and NBS WiTEL for the
use of their ®©
WiTEL, might be the best
solution, say legal experts.
CLICK FOR MORE
INFO: (Infringing on existing
intellectual property rights,
wireless phone numbers).
Q&A - Rober Roche. CITA
leading to the best way -- to
Validate
®©
I usually feel the same cinematic
magic resaoning of Valenti, and
Turner when I'm personally
speaking via
WiTEL®© -- to the
educators, and authors of
wireless literature like: Robert
Roche, of the CITA, Prof. Bob
Lochte of MSU, and to author,
Troy Cory-Stubblefield.
My first Question to both -
Robert Roche, and Prof Bob
Lochte, of Murray State U, and to
Troy Cory, the grandson of N.B.
Stubblefield -- went something
like this:
Hi, Mr. Roche, it's always a
pleasure speaking with
you, your quote on this
topic is needed for educational
purposes.
Question 1.
Technologically speaking,
would you say, "the only
components and elements needed to
make a "Wireless
Telephone" would be:
(1) - a Microphone - "to talk";
(2) - an Earphone - "to
listen"; (3) - an Antenna
- "to transmit and receive voice,
music and message"; (4) -
a Battery - "to energize the
trans-receiver apparatus," and
(5) - a Switch,
Switchboard or finger component -
"to dial phone numbers."
Answer: Certainly the
first four items are components
of a wireless phone -- though
wireless-enabled laptops or
netbooks are also wireless
devices, which may or may not
necessarily include a microphone
(though you can often acquire
such accessories).
Wireless devices --
feature phones, or other
wireless-enabled devices, such as
wireless-enabled laptops, PDAs,
netbooks, tablets, and
smartphones -- have effectively
put the power of voice and data
communications in the hands of
millions of users in the U.S. and
billions of people around the
world. These devices have
brought the Internet to people,
rather than places (in other
words, they have given people
mobile Internet access).
The International
Telecommunications Union (ITU)
has reported that there were an
estimated 4.6 billion wireless
subscriptions around the world as
of the end of 2009.
CLICK
FOR MORE
INFO:
At that point in time, the U.S.
had 285.6 million active wireless
subscriptions (based on CTIA's
measurements). By June 2010,
wireless subscribership in the
U.S. had risen to 292.8 million.
CLICK
FOR MORE
tvinews+
INFO:
Now, not every one of those
subscriptions -- in the world or
in the U.S. -- reflects a
single, unique individual. Some
folks have two or more devices
capable of being simultaneously
active (such as a cellphone and a
wireless-enabled laptop).
The Pew Internet & American
Life Project has measured how
people use and think about their
wireless devices in a number of
reports, looking at both adults
and teens.
CLICK
FOR MORE PEW INFO:
In the U.S. and around the world,
these devices have empowered
people to connect socially and
economically with each other on
many levels and having made
possible political changes in
places like the Philippines where
they helped "people power" change
the government. They have also
made possible heroic actions and
contributions, speeding
assistance in response to
emergencies both large and small,
from roadside rescues to
hurricane and earthquake
responses.
These devices form parts of
systems, to which they are
connected by radio-waves, (EMW).
In ending Bob Roche says:
"I hope this helps." An
explanation of these systems can
be found on CTIA's website in a
brief piece on "how wireless
works."
CLICK
FOR MORE
INFO:.
LOCHTE'S
HANG-UP
Today's Patent Mess -
"Discoveries" vs. "Inventions,"
-- & SpyKing90.com.
Service Mark Law -- which
includes all service marks, both
unregistered, and U.S.A.
registered (®©),
used to have no problem
distinguishing between -
Patentable - "DISCOVERIES" -- and
the word "INVENTIONS." Today, it
depends how the effects and the
elements of the inventions
"Trademark" and "Copyrights" --
play out.
"DISCOVERIES" -- which used to be
elucidations of the natural
world, were not patentable. The
word "INVENTION" denoted items
that were creations of evident
utility, and were patentable.
Over the last few decades that
distinction has been eroded,
under pressure from commercial
interests.
Today, a company can patent
portions of a DNA molecule,
--
even
if it has no idea what that
sequence does; pharmaceutical
companies can patent natural
organisms if they can claim a new
way to isolate and purify
them.
Because of the widespread use of
the effects, elements, and
components of the Wireless
Telephone®© mark,
"the NBS WiTEL Trust organization
just recently filed its secondary
meaning on September 10th and
13th respectfully," said
Stubblefield. "Said action was
necessary to attach itself to the
original Service Marks registered
in same name and mark,
established in 1898 and 1907
respectfully.
This helps to explain as to why,
and how "business methods" - like
"SpyKing.com," "Stubbyte.com" and
"WiTEL Global," can . . . and
have applied for NEW patent and
other new service marks status to
protect its 100 year old batch of
updated WiTEL®©
service marks.
The new service marks includes
its claim to all
WiTEL®© phone
numbers, now valued at several
$Billions of dollars per
month.
The new NBS Trust's "SpyKing.com"
patent, also backs-up the recent
FTC "Red Flags Rule -- the law
enacted by Congress to help out
in the prevention of ID theft, in
the Buy/Sell world of Credit
Cards, used to purchase valid
Goods, Products, Service with
legal title.
CLICK
FOR MORE - tvinews+106+
/
106 WiTEL's Global Assets
®© - Forever -
Minus a Day! By Mark Anderson,
PSI
/EL®©
-
SM Forever - Minus a Day! By M.
Anderson
CLICK
FOR MORE - tvinews+106+
/
106
WiTEL's Global Assets
®© - Forever -
Minus a Day! By Mark Anderson,
PSI'''
///
106-
USPTO®© Service
Marks
-ForeverMinusOneDay
+ + Short Version
106-Six Dumb Ways to Kill A Deal
&endash; and One Great Way to
Validate
+
106 WiTEL's Global Assets
®© - Forever -
Minus a Day! By Mark Anderson,
PSI
+ +
Short Version
Since the moment I discovered
N.B. Stubblefield several years
ago, my job required me to
surround myself with his U.S.A.
Wireless
Telephone®©
innovations. His NBS
wired-WiTEL®©
innovation has been either in my
pocket, in my vehicle, or left at
home on table-top surfaces
amongst my wireless PC laptop, a
volume of a Smart-Daaf Boys book
about the effluvia of NBS, and a
stack of Invoices worth
$Billions.
Since the moment I discovered NBS
WiTEL®©? No, not
even. Before I could even call
myself a user of today's
WiTEL®© iPhone,
CellPhone, WiFi, or whatever
you'd like to call it, I needed
to know who was paying for the
various software, and Service
Mark ®© fees that
made the thing work. Also --
was a phone number, and antenna
necessary?
This was to become an essential
part of me . . . like, "as to why
the sky was blue." What were
the components, elements and
effects of wired-wireless.
Are AT&T's, Bell,
Edison, and NBS WiTEL's -- 100
year old service marks
®© really viable
forever - minus a day? . . . It
had to be understood.
It Was The Late "Jack Valenti"
--
who
was Hollywood's ubiquitous
lobbyist that helped set the
record straight. He was all about
protecting the service marks
®© -- and
licensing fees due to those
"certain 60 year old Show Biz
film related intellectual
property right owners, he was
representing. The proper term,
Valenti would always say is,
"forever, minus a day."
It Was Free Enterprisers -- "Ted
Turner" --
and
Troy Cory-Stubblefield;
and
educators like Dr.
Molfield and Dr. Horton of
Murray State University,
(MSU), that helped perfect
Valenti's colorful service mark
Validation; ®© and
the smartBrief headline:
"Forever - Minus A
Day."
Together, it took the group along
with organizations like MPPA,
SAG, CITA, and even the Kentucky
Colonels, only a couple of years
to convince Congress and
intellectual property asset
owners to fully appreciate and
agree that copyright terms should
be limited. Valenti would always
remind the Pres. Johnson White
House staff, the proper term for
®©, was, and still
is, "forever, minus a day."
Murray State University,
Kentucky
106-Six Dumb Ways to Kill A Deal
&endash; and One Great Way to
Validate
It has been only recently that I
could comfortably sit at my desk
-- and speak knowingly and
intelligently back and forth into
the offices in far away places,
asking those AT&T, Verizon,
T-mobile and Sprint executives
who knew, or should have known
about the; "forever, minus a day"
Validation Theory.
Confirming "How Many WiTEL
customers are users of their
"" was the easy part of
Q&A sessions. So was the
validating of -- "How Many of
their WiTEL users are paying more
than $30.00 per month for
"©" fees. AT&T took the
®© "Validation
Theme" the hardest. Paying $5.00
to $10.00 per month as a
recurring licensing fee for
utilizing the service mark
®© owned by JAVA,
Microsoft, and NBS WiTEL for the
use of their ®©
WiTEL, might be the best
solution, say legal experts.
CLICK FOR MORE
INFO: (Infringing on existing
intellectual property rights,
wireless phone numbers).
CLICK
FOR MORE
INFO:
At that point in time, the U.S.
had 285.6 million active wireless
subscriptions (based on CTIA's
measurements). By June 2010,
wireless subscribership in the
U.S. had risen to 292.8 million.
CLICK
FOR MORE
tvinews+106
INFO:
Now, not every one of those
subscriptions -- in the world or
in the U.S. -- reflects a
single, unique individual. Some
folks have two or more devices
capable of being simultaneously
active (such as a cellphone and a
wireless-enabled laptop).
The Pew Internet & American
Life Project has measured how
people use and think about their
wireless devices in a number of
reports, looking at both adults
and teens.
NBS Wireless
Telephone®©
devices, WiFi Towers, and
Stubbyte.com
form parts of systems, to which
they are connected by
radio-waves,
(EMW).
In ending Bob Roche says:
"I hope this helps." An
explanation of these systems can
be found on CTIA's website in a
brief piece on "how wireless
works."
CLICK
FOR MORE
INFO:.
CLICK
FOR MORE - tvinews+106+
/
106
WiTEL's Global Assets
®© - Forever -
Minus a Day! By Mark Anderson,
PSI
CLICK FOR MORE - AT&T, NBS
WITEL®©
-
SM Forever - Minus a Day! By M.
Anderson
///
106 Wireless TelephoneUSPTO
the $-21Billion
Question
101NBS-More02 Challenges USPTO
History & Fees
106-101-102 NBS Challenges USPTO
Ruling-01
106 The NBS
WirelessTelephone.Org Challenges
USPTO Ruling.
The Politics of Washington D.C.
has rarely seen a
SmartDaafBoys.com photo or NBS
documentary it didn't like. Ever
since Nathan B. Stubblefield
bombarded music and voices into
the air around and over the
Potomac River in 1902, the users
of today's smartphone have been
most willing to put up with his
WiMax187 cellphone towers, and
paying the $90.00 per month phone
bill.
Even with the massive on-line
traffic jam vista that go along
with a Google smartphone,
searching PhoneNumber.com for
NBS100.com's latest SinTrends.com
News, doesn't seem to bother the
User . . . yet."
But that was before the American
100-year-old media company
-
- came
forward with it's $21-Billion US
dollars in charges to its TeleCom
users, and its plan to file its
September 2010, USPTO
Applications; the $-Billion NBS,
"Wireless
Telephone®©"
TradeMark upgrade, and Patent
pending status for it's unique
WiTEL Global Stubbyte ID Theft
System.
Based on the newly activated
FTC's Red Flags
Anti-ID
theft Rules
--
as of June, 2010, "the NBS
Wireless
Telephone®©
will become the $-Billion iconic
ServiceMark Organization which
people worldwide will want to be
part of -- because of its
"separate and distinct" WiFi-187
coolness," says "MARK" Anderson,
the CEO of the PSI group. The
short name for the 104-year-old
"company" and its U.S. trademark
is WiTEL®©. The
global ® www names are:
WiTel.com, WiMax187.com, and
WirelessTelephone.Org. All are
ICANN registries.
The by-product, "the ABCees" of
WiTEL, (compona elements, and
effects) created by the arts and
science established the distinct
and separate components of
today's Wireless
Telephone®© --
have long dominated the thoughts
and actions of many American
companies. Bill Gates, and Paul
Allen of Microsoft; Steve Jobs of
Apple; and Larry Page and Sergey
Brin of Google are a few of those
Americans who earned $Billions.
But that has started to change.
China has Baidu.com, and Germany
has Google.de.
Imagine, explains Troy
Cory-Stubblefiield -- "the USPTO"
finally
telephoned."
The unexpected "generic" move
took place when they set the 20th
day of January for a telephonic
meeting with the principals of
the WirelessTelephoneOrg. Their
intentions? "To explain the
reasons, as to why they should,
or should not decline the
granting of our "104-year-old
Wireless
Telephone®©
trademark and logo."
During the course of the
telephonic meeting --
"it
was quite obvious I wasn't
talking to WITEL achievers like,
Steve Jobs or Larry Page of Apple
or Google," said Troy. Each one
of the three USPTO examining
attorneys, Aneeta Jordan, John
Lincoski, and Nicholas A.
Coleman, expressed their desires
to take away the art and science,
and monetary authority the
Wireless
Telephone®©
TradeMark provided NBS.
The existing 104-year-old NBS
TradeMark could become extinct,
only if and when . . . by
enacting their "generic
phraseology theory." Anderson
explains their theory would in
essence -- "jeopardize NBS's
current $21-Billions of Dollars
in revenue receivables, by
USPTO's name seizure."
101NBS-More02ChallengesUSPTO /
"Defending the
Source-Identifier
Part Two
101NBS-More02ChallengesUSPTO /

"Defending
the Source-Identifier
Demonstrations, and ServiceMark
creations from 1898 to 2011, is
easy, it's about both Legal
History &
Money."
"SO .
. . Let's not become to
generous!" says Charles Portz,
the WirelessTelephoneOrg's lead
counsel. "We are confident our
Trademark will be validated, and
if it isn't -- we are prepared to
defend our contentions in any
forum."
Were they exceeding their USPTO
authority? --
"We believe, they were" said
Charles Portz, the lead attorney
for the WirelessTelephoneOrg
®©. "Not only does
their assertion of authority go
well beyond any authority
provided by Congress, but the
USPTO theory would jeopardize NBS
WirelessTelephoneOrg's
collections of over $21-Billion
in revenue.
A negative decision could, and
would completely destroy the
separate distinct art, and
science by U.S. innovators, and
the loss of the trademark
"Wireless Telephone" owned by the
Wireless Telephone Organization,
(WirelessTelephone.Org) --
since 1902, would create an
uncertainty, and weakness within
the U.S. communications, iPhone,
and iPhone, CellPhone industry,
and doubt in the minds of
existing iPhone, and/or CellPhone
users."
Demonstrations,
and ServiceMark creations from
1898 to 2011, "is easy,' says
Troy
From 1892 to date, Kentucky,
Washington, D.C. Philadelphia,
California, China, and Germany
were the NBS Wireless Telephone
Organization's favorite location
to sell, demonstrate, and pick-up
a few high-profile witnesses, and
users to ID the dates of
continual sales created by the
assignment of
WiTEL®©.
The first major Source-Identifier
demonstrations were held in 1902.
Photo Top shows 1907
Patent; Photo 02 shows pre-MSU
campus;
Photo 03
pictures
Nikola Tesla, and GE's
co-founder, Edwin Houston with
NBS, identifying the EMW source
that enabled the Voice-Music to
be transmitted into the
atmosphere -- to and from moving
vehicles, ships, and flying
machines, then back again to a
fixed land-line phone#.
Photo 04 left, pictures
--
Inventor N.B. Stubblefield with
his Wireless
Telephone®©.
Troy
Cory-Stubblefield, the grandson
of Nathan,
and
the co-author of 'Bank of
America, The Tortfeasors, and the
'Smart-Daaf Boys" -- says "It's
about Law, History, Fees, and
Greed. The late King of Torts,
attorney," Melvin Belli was the
co-author of the BofA
publication.
Troy
xplains that our nation is
facing a major global do or die
crossroad, "is it all about
"MAKING" money? BUT NO, say the
experts! Only counterfeiters, and
new rules of law -- "MAKE" money,
says Troy. "We need a new
strategy to excite our people in
"EARNING" money. The NBS WiTEL
innovations, along with the
Kingsbury Commitment, moved the
country forward throughout the
20th century, pushing Americans
to succeed and strive for media
commodities they never dreamed
of.
After 1980, to fulfill its USPTO
"source-identifier" obligations,
Globally -- the NBS
WirelessTelephone Organization
commenced introducing its
$-Billion Dollar NBS
WiTEL®© arts, and
science future -- into various
profitable global markets.
CLICK
FOR MORE ABOUT THE 1911 U.S.A -
KINGSBURY
COMMITMENT.
The most exciting hits in China,
were NBS WiTEL's smart90's,
"FireWire," -- nbs100's,
speedollars, Area-Codes,
LookRadio.com, VRAtv, and the
Brooke Sisters. The Troy Cory
Show became the distribution arm,
that set up NBS affiliates in
Shanghai, Beijing, Munich, and
back again to Hollywood, and
Murray, Kentucky. The 12,000
student campus of Murray State
University, (MSU), has been
preserving, and continuously
disseminating the NBS
"source-identifier" -- for over
80 years.
"The
first major NBS
WirelessTelephoneOrg's --
USPTO ServicMark
®©
--
registries came in 1898, 1907,
1912, and through 2010 in the
form of ® Patents, and
copyrighted "Smart-Daaf Boys"
publications, respectfully,
--said "MARK" Anderson. He
explains that throughout its
history America's media
innovators and --entrepreneurs
have been the drivers of the
U.S.A.'s economic success. It
appears to me . . . we can only
preserve the American Dream by
doing what we do best --doing
things better, "by making a WRONG
. . . RIGHT." Some say . . . it's
just good business sense.
Throughout my media career as a
performer,
and as
head of the NBS Wireless
Telephone.Org, explained Troy, "I
have always found that it depends
on what role you're playing in
front of a live audience -- with
the camera rolling." What if
America lost most, if not all of
the $21-Billion worth of of
WiTEL®© high-tech
intellectual property rights to
China? Would the deal include the
Asian Area Code phone numbers,
now under the jurisdiction of
America?
"But
again, let's not become too
generous!" says Houston attorney,
Charles Portz, --
-- "We are confident
our Trademark will be validated,
and if it isn't -- we are
prepared to defend our
contentions in any forum."
In other words explains Portz, --
"should the USPTO wish to once
again seize any one of our NBS
"Wireless
Telephone®©"
intellectual property rights,
like the NBS - EMW spectrums were
in 1911, by Regulatory Seizure,
(the Kingsbury Commitment).
.Under
U.S. Article 5 of the U.S.
Constitution, payment should have
been made to NBS, for the RF
spectrums seized. "Wallkie
Talkies, (without phone numbers)
-- were the big telecom hits of
both World War One, and Two" --
continued Portz.
///
Extending
the Wireless Telephone of
America's Goods, Products &
Services with a Flying Machine!
Click for RFpatent
drawings
Photo
Imgag665. Prove to yourself
that it was the 1908 NBS
Wireless. CLICK FOR LARGER IMAGE
Nathan02
----
Telephone®©
patented invention, that made it
possible to first broadcast and
receive voice and music without
wires from your Home, Automobile,
Ships and from Trains. A Nathan
Stubblefield "Wireless
Telephone®©" --
had the ability to extent the
broadcast to anyone around the
world that was connected to the
Bell and AT&T's landline
telephony system. Please note the
horse carriage and telephone
poles in the Patent drawing. At
the time, there were no
automobiles.
The Memory Twist?
Q. Is This Another AT&T, GE,
RCA, or Bell Monopoly Deal?
Answer: CLICK
FOR MORE ABOUT THE 1913 U.S.A -
KINGSBURY
COMMITMENT.
106NBS More Challenges USPTO
Ruling-01 ?
CLICK
Below FOR MORE Smart90.com.
Smart90 is the Internet media
distributor for the Wireless
Telephone®©
organization. Each web-site is
part of our continuous daily
commercial-academic publications.
CLICK
FOR MORE NBS100.com TimeLines -
FREE!
(01)
NB
Stubblefield Pat02
Auto.htm
(02) NBS100
Stubblefield Pat03
Train.htm
/
(03) Smart90.com
stubblefield
(04) Smart90.com/nbs100/NBS100reportK.htm#1892
/
(05) Smart90.com/timeline/
CLICK
FOR MORE
1902
STORY.
///
102-106 The Kingsbury Commitment
1913
/

The
Kingsbury Commitment of 1913
formalized AT&T's monopoly.
The Bell System and Independent
telephone companies reduced
competition out of concern for
government intervention. The
government had been increasingly
worried that AT&T and the
other Bell Companies were
monopolizing the
industry.
Under
Theodore N. Vail from 1907
AT&T had bought
Bell-associated companies and
organized them into new
hierarchies. AT&T had also
acquired many of the
independents, and bought control
of Western Union, giving it a
monopolistic position in both
telephone and telegraph
communication. A key strategy was
to refuse to connect its long
distance network --
technologically, by far the
finest and most extensive in the
land -- with local independent
carriers. Without the prospect of
long distance services, the
market position of many
independents became untenable.
Vail stated that there should be
"one policy, one system
[AT&T's] and
universal service, no collection
of separate companies could give
the public the service that
[the] Bell... system
could
give."
AT&T's
strategies prompted complaints
and attracted the attention of
the Justice Department. Faced
with a government investigation
for antitrust violations,
AT&T entered into
negotiations.
In
the Kingsbury Commitment,
actually a letter from AT&T
Vice President Nathan Kingsbury
of December 19, AT&T agreed
with the Attorney General to
divest itself of Western Union,
to provide long distance services
to independent exchanges under
certain conditions and to refrain
from acquisitions if the
Interstate Commerce Commission
objected.
The
Commitment did not settle all the
differences between independents
and Bell companies and averted
the federal takeover many had
expected. However the Commitment
played into AT&T's hands -
the company was allowed to buy
market-share, as long as it sold
an equal number of phones.
Critically, while with the
Kingsbury Commitment, AT&T
agreed to connect its long
distance service to independent
local carriers, it did not agree
to interconnect its local
services with other local
providers. Nor did AT&T agree
to any interconnection with
independent long distance
carriers.
Consequently,
AT&T was able to consolidate
its control over both the most
profitable urban markets and long
distance traffic. Between 1921
and 1934, the ICC approved 271 of
the 274 purchase requests of
AT&T.
WikiPedia
notes, that the entire network
was nationalized during World War
I from June 1918 to July 1919.
Following re-privatization,
AT&T resumed its
near-monopoly position. In 1934,
the government acted to set
AT&T up as a regulated
monopoly under the jurisdiction
of the Federal Communications
Commission. This was maintained
until AT&T's divestiture in
1984.
CLICK
FOR MORE 102-S90
STORY
///
106 Patent Infringement -
DishVsTiVo
Dish
lawsuit against TiVo is
reopened
Dish
Network Corp., the
satellite-television provider
formerly known as EchoStar
Communications Corp., won a
ruling in Texas that reopens a
2005 patent-infringement lawsuit
filed against TiVo
Inc.
|