In the News
In the News
In the News

    Get Involved Today

    • The FCC handed out the final channel assignments for television stations as they make their transition to DTV. The Commission said that it aimed to accomodate stations' requestions for channels, but also worked to maintain the efficient use of spectrum. All the channels assigned were between 2 and 51.

    • Connecicut's Attorney General Richard Blumenthal issued an emergency petition to the Department of Public Utility Control, asking them to force AT&T to get a cable license for it's U-Verse service, which offers cable television programming over the Internet. Last month a US district court ruled that the U-verse system was a cable subscription service, overturning the Connecticut DPUC's earlier ruling that that it was not. Mr. Blumenthal and the Office of Consumer Counsel both argued that failure to act would create disparate regulations for different cable providers.

    • The Bush administration declined to act in the ongoing Qualcomm-Broadcom patent dispute. In June the International Trade Commission ruled that Qualcomm, which manufactures chips for cell phones, had infringed on two of Broadcom's patents, and ordered a ban on US import of Qualcomm chips. Susan Schwab, the US Trade Representative said that she “decided to permit the limited exclusion order and cease and desist order that the US ITC issued in its investigation,” in order to protect Broadcom's intellectual property rights.

    • Google announced today that it is officially joining the Open Invention Network. Licensees of the network agree not to sue to the 'Linux software ecosystem' in exchange for free use of over 100 critical patents. Large software companies often acquire vast portfolios of patents with which to act as a bargaining tool (or club) against open source developers. And so the OIN, whose members include IBM, Sony, and Red Hat, seeks to use its own patents as an effective defense against anti-competitive patent lawsuits.

    • The National Music Publishers' Association announced yesterday that it was joining Viacom in its suit against YouTube. Although Google immediately complies with DMCA takedown requests, David M. Israelite, the chief executive of the music publishers group said his organization was “very concerned about YouTube's approach to copyright.”