Finally (maybe) . . . Fleeting Expletives

The Supreme Court today released their decision in FCC v. Fox holding that the FCC properly adopted the fleeting expletive rule. Noting that it is a court of final review and not of first impression, the Court remanded to the Second Circuit the question of whether it violated the First Amendment or not.

Conficker

There's a new worm out there set to strike on April 1 called Conficker that's set to strike. Nobody seems to know what it does except that all infected computers will come under the control of a master machine. This is the third variant and expected to be bad. You could get a free online safety scan from Microsoft here.

Titanic

It is widely expected that Judge Rebecca Beach Smith will rule that salvaged items from the Titanic must stay together and accessable to the public. RMS Titanic Inc., a subsideriary of Premeir Exhibitions Inc., is the current salvor-in-possession but does not "own" the artifacts. It appears that RMST will try to sell the rights to a museum.

This Bud Isn't For You

European Court of First Instance has just ruled that Anheuser-Busch-InBev does not have the rigths to the name Budweiser in the EU, awarding it to Budejovicky Budvar NP. It's not certain how the ruling will affect InBev's marketing of American products in Europe.

Kindle 2 Copyright Royalty Controversy

Audiobooks and printed material are paid at different royalty rates. Amazon's Kindle 2 could possibly violate the copyright laws in that its automated text to speech feature could be producing a different version of the book. You can read more here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123419309890963869.html

Mail 5 days a week

Postmaster General Potter has said that the post office needs to drop one day a week of mail, such as a Tuesday. The USPS experienced a 4.5% drop in volume last year, a rise in prices, and may experience the first year that revenues drop. Maybe somebody should look at controlling costs or improving customer service.

Comcast Redux, but this time with Cox

A few months ago, the FCC ruled that Comcast violated principles of net neutrality by restricting downloads on peer to peer networks to a lower priority than other network traffic. Now comes word that Cox is trying to do the same thing, giving what it considers time sensative data higher prioirty on networks when there is congestion.

New Patent for Apple

The USPTO has awarded a patent to Apple for "multitouch" technology. This allows a cell phone touchscreen to register multiple touches. It looks like Apple will try to use the patent to stop the new Palm Pre from being released, or at least extort significant licensing fees from Palm.

Click!

Peter King, a congressman from New York, has introduced the Camera Phone Predator Alert Act which would require a cameraphone to make an audible sound within a reasonable radius of the phone when a picture is taken.

Mac Malware

As PC users watch, thousands of Macs are getting hit by a vicious malware attack by iServices.A Trojan horse. The malware is being distributed over a BitTorrent copy of a bootleg copy of the iWorks 9.0.

Gotta Spare Satellite? Anyone?

FCC rules require mobile satellite providers to have a spare satellite available before rolling out a ground repeater network. ICO Global just received a license from the FCC without the spare satellite so long as the company committs to having a spare spacecraft in place within one year of starting operations, relaxing the FCC's previous position that the spare had to be in place at the time of licensing.

GateHouse, NY Times Settlement

GateHouse Media and the NY Times reached an agreement over the weekend regarding the Boston Globe's alleged copyright infringement of posting headlines and lead sentences from the NY Times website. Trial was scheduled to begin today.

Retaliation

In a unanimous opinion, the US Supreme Court just decided Crawford v. Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, holding that federal laws prohibiting job discrimination cover an employee who cooperate with internal investigations of retaliation by their employees.

Reset Option

In an effort to raise company moral, Google has announced that it will allow more than 8 million stock options held by more than 17,000 company employees to be exercised at lower prices, but the company extended the vesting period for those options by one year. Starbucks has already joined the repricing bandwagon, although not as generously as Google. 72 percent of the Fortune 500 companies could follow suit in that their employee options are underwater.

Trademarking Emoticons

In a move that seems surprising to me, the Rospatent Federal Patent Agency, Russia's patent authority, ruled that a businessman did not trademark ;-), an emoticon that denotes a smiling wink, by itself but as a part of a name, denying the businessman a chance to earn a fortune in licensing fees.

Buy Me Now!!!

In related stories, Google pulled out of the deal with Yahoo because in their opinion it would have been too hard to appease the Justice Department's antitrust division regarding the advertising deal. On the flip side, Jerry Wang has asked Microsoft to come back to the table.

Are you kidding me?

Mark Lange's editorial in the Christian Science Monitor I think is suspect. He basically calls for regulation of the derivatives market as a solution to the current financial "crisis". Let's consider the facts - most derivatives of the type he considers are held by large financial instutions and work really well. The ones that we need to look at are asset securitizations which are done by everone from a retail store with accounts receivable to banks with huge mortgage portfolios. The people in charge of buying and selling them for huge financial instutions shouldn't be protected by the government. Imagine having to file additional security disclosures with the SEC prior to a company like Sears selling its credit card receivables to Bank of America. Do companies like Sears and BoA really need government protection from making "computer-generated casino wagers" that have been well-vetted and understood by the fianancial community the past 30 someodd years?

Stellar Patents

Mobile Satellite Ventures has received 25 patents for communications systems for rovers exploring the Moon or Mars. Currently pending is one for an extraterrestrial communications systems covering satellites orbiting other planets, a base station of the planet, and repeaters.

Supreme Court Takes Up Profanity Case

Let's talk about those words you can't say on television. The Supreme Court is going to hear the case about fleeting explatives on appeal from the 2nd Circuit. The Supreme Court did turn down without explanation C-SPAN's request to release a recording of oral arguments.

FCC cancels vote on telecom overhaul

Kevin Martin cancelled the vote on telecom overhaul bill.

ATT's Pareto Principle

According to AT&T, 5% of their subscribers take up 50% of the capacity of their internet usage. So starting in November, they're going to test 20 gig download limits in Reno, NV, for DSL services and increasing to 150 gigs at the 10 mbs level, or approximately 75 DVD quality movie downloads per month.

Google's Growth and Ad Deal

There's two good stories out there this week about Google. First, there's substantial questions about Google's storage of search queries. As the Yahoo article says:

Why does Google log the details of search queries for so long? What does it do with the information? Does it combine data from the search engine with information it collects through other avenues — such as its recently released Web browser, Chrome?

The other story is that Yahoo and Google have redefined their internet advertising partnership agreement to help settle antitrust concerns at the Justice Department. According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo would be limited to just 25% of the search advertising revenues, the agreement would sunset in two years, and Google's customers will have the option to opt-out of the deal.

Get Your New Web Browser Here!

Chrome was supposed to be released today by Google. But I don't see anything yet.

Opt-Out's Don't Work - Proof

NebuAd, Inc., provides monitoring of websurfing so that an ISP can provide targeted advertising to its clients. Six of the smaller ISPs reported the following results:

• Bresnan Communications - 18 people opted out of the trial out of 6000 participants
• Cable One - 14000 customers, no specific notice, no opt outs
• CenturyTel - 82 opt outs, 20000 affected subscribers
• Embarq Corp. - 15 out outs with 26000 participants
• Knology - unknown
• WideOpenWest - 330000 customers and 3,355 out-outs, though many from the same customer

All these companies did suspend the trial and testing because of privacy and related issues.

I think these numbers are quite telling on how effective the out-out strategy really is. With those number of opt-outs, I question how many people were really informed of the intrusion into their privacy they faced.