Tag: News

Whats New:

• Orphan Works: Wait Until Next Year!
• Public Knowledge to Senate: DPI Raises Grave Privacy Concerns
• Action Alert: Thank You For Saying ‘No’ to PRO-IP
• Public Knowledge, EFF and Congress Turn up the Heat on ACTA
• NYMusicCopyright.org Helps Musicians Navigate Copyright Law

What’s New:

• FCC Approves XM/Sirius Merger
• FCC Decision on Comcast Due This Friday

What’s New:

• Action Alert: Save Orphan Works!
• Two Bills Lead Net Neutrality Push
• The New Clearwire: How Open Will America’s First WiMAX Network Be?
• Blizzard Entertainment: The Company Who Cried Copyright Infringement
• Nominations Now Open For the 2008 IP3 Awards

What’s New:

• Protect Text Messaging from Discrimination
• 700 Mhz Auction: And the Winner is…
• Comcast Cozies Up to BitTorrent
• FCC Chairman Calls for Dismissal of Skype Petition

• FCC Commissioner Kevin Martin said that proposed XM-Sirius merger faces a “high hurdle”. Public Knowledge has tentatively supported the merger, provided it met antitrust requirements and the following conditions. Terrestrial broadcasters have opposed the deal.

• EMI joined the three other major music labels in allowing YouTube to play its artists’ performances and music videos. However, the two companies have yet to agree on how or whether users can incorporate EMI’s music in personal videos and mash-ups.

• The new RealPlayer 11 will allow users to save embedded web videos, save them, put them on iPods, or burn them to CD’s (DRM-ed videos are still off-limits, but that probably won’t be enough to placate content providers).

• CNET has picked up on the MLB-Slingbox fight. MLB.com CEO Bob Bowman claims the new technology is illegal because, “is not a place-shifting device, (it) is a delivery-shifting device.” PK has coverage here.

Communications Daily reported on Monday that D.C. technology officials announced at the WCA’s wireless broadband conference that the city will have a municipal broadband network. However, the city has no specific plan for a network. It just has a plan to have a plan. Officials haven’t sent out information requests yet, and questions about what technology to use and how best to implement it between residents, businesses and government are up in the air.

On the other side of the country, Anaheim, California launched its municipal wi-fi service late last week. The fee based service currently covers 10 square miles of the 49 square mile city, and there are plans to finish the network by the end of the year. Anaheim is currently the largest U.S. city to offer municipal Wi-Fi.

AFP reports:

NEW YORK (AFP) - New York’s Central Park and a number of other public spaces will become public Internet hubs starting this summer when the city’s parks begin offering free wireless net access, the city government said.

“We expect Central Park to be launched in July, and the rest of the parks in the late summer,” the Department of Parks and Recreation said. Among those green spaces going on-line for public Wi-Fi access will be Washington Square, Union Square, Brooklyn’s Prospect Park and Flushing Meadows.

Here’s the link

a bimonthly Public Knowledge update

Contents:

• House Committee Approves Telecom Bill
• Amazon, Google and Yahoo! Targeted
• Senate Panel Tries Again on Content Controls
• Gigi Named EFF Pioneer

This issue is also available via podcast here: http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/313

BURBANK, Calif. — The Walt Disney Co. said Monday its TV group plans to offer four ABC prime-time shows including “Desperate Housewives” and “Lost” online for free beginning in May.

The offerings will also include current episodes of “Commander in Chief,” as well as the entire season of “Alias,” and will be available through June.

The shows, being offered by the Disney-ABC Television Group, will be supported by advertisers, including AT&T Inc., Ford Motor Co., Procter & Gamble Co., Toyota Motor Corp. and Unilever PLC, among others.

Link

Toll booths might start popping up on the information superhighway.

As Internet traffic starts to clog, the telephone and cable companies that control the nation’s telecommunications networks are considering charging dot-coms such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. extra to make sure their data gets special treatment — zooming along faster and more reliably than anyone else’s.

Link

By James S. Granelli, L.A. Times (registration req.)