While the cable industry led by Comcast has slithered into the ambulance chaser never land of redefining language to fit you business practice, the studies we keep seeing say they are still blocking their subscribers’ traffic. This kind of up is down and wrong is right mumbo jumbo-ing of language is something the Telco’s have done gleefully for years. Never mind the hearings, they are just lawyer to lawyer double talk with a few members of the public mixed in for color on Cspan.

We can expect the bad behavior to continue as long as the duopoly’s two strongest competitors are named Slim and None.

Krishna Gummadi of the Institute told the Associated Press that the tests did conclusively show that Cox and/or Comcast were “blocking” P2P, because it’s possible that international carriers could be disrupting traffic as it made its way from the MSOs to the servers in Germany used to conduct the tests.

“To ensure the best possible online experience for our customers, Cox actively manages network traffic through a variety of methods including traffic prioritization and protocol filtering,” Cox said in its response to the AP.

The study, which based its findings on data retrieved from 8,175 volunteers who used a downloadable test tool, said most (573 of 599) U.S. “hosts” that observed “blocking” are located in Comcast- and Cox-run networks. In Singapore, all blocked hosts were connected via the StarHub network, according to the study. (Light Reading)

Parsons who is the current head of Time Warner has indicated that he will most likely leave that post by the end of the year. So another of the old guard are leaving the telcom fold. At this rate we might have to start a ‘Dead Pool’ website just to keep up with all the failed careers.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Time Warner Inc Chairman Richard Parsons said he is likely to step down in the next year, clearing the path for Chief Executive Jeffrey Bewkes to assume the role.

During opening remarks at the media company’s annual shareholders meeting in Atlanta, Parsons told shareholders he would be unlikely to still be its chairman by the time of the 2009 annual meeting.

“This is my last shot at this,” Parsons said. “I will be the outgoing chairman after this year, probably.”

He added: “The company is sound. The problems we had when I became CEO are behind us.”

Time Warner Inc shareholders also approved the company’s slate of 12 directors at its annual meeting, but failed to agree to a proposal to require that the roles of chairman and chief executive be split, according to preliminary results, the company said Friday.

I will only add that the problems in the board room might be solved but the problems to the customer base remain.

Linky.

You’ve seen this said time and time again on this blog, if you want to do get Wifi working in your city either the city needs to build it using existing funds to do an existing job like meter reading or internal IT, or they need to stay out all together. Successful Wifi networks either public or private have been built as funded projects either with a specific job to do or as a community supported project, not as franchises to be taxed and micro managed. More proof lies in the demise of MetroFi.

In what is proving to be yet another high-profile Metro Wi-Fi failure, MetroFi, a San Jose-based startup that raised over $15 million from Sevin Rosen & August Capital, is close to shutting down, according to WiFi NetNews and MuniWireless, two blogs that follow the MuniFi industry closely.

MetroFi is trying to sell its citywide Wi-Fi networks in Portland (Oregon), Aurora and Naperville (Illinois) and Santa Clara, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Foster City and Concord (California). MetroFi founder, Chuck Haas, says he is also exploring the sale of MetroFi itself to a third party. (GigaOm)

Verizon has made two decisons –

• Linux will be its handset platform of choice.
• The joined the LiMo alliance rather than the Android consortium.

Funny, Linux wins either way, which is good I guess. But this does put up an interesting twist to the argument for ‘open device access’ in the 700mhz space. Contrived I know, but VZ could turn and say hey we are open we use Linux and the LiMo product set. Hence freezing out Google. Yes its a stretch but that would be a way the game could be played. Nasty.

Verizon Wireless has chosen Linux as its “platform of choice,” it said. Starting with feature phones in 2009, followed by iPhone competitors, Verizon will offer Linux phones compliant with specifications from the Linux Mobile Foundation (LiMo), an industry group it and seven other companies joined today.

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In a press conference held by the LiMo Foundation, Verizon Wireless’s Kyle Malady, network VP, said his company chose LiMo over Google’s Android platform, due to LiMo’s open, board-run model, and its membership of companies that have already succeeded in shipping Linux phones. However, Verizon Wireless will continue to support RIM (Blackberry), Windows Mobile, Palm, and Brew operating systems, said Malady, and in the future will consider supporting the Linux-based Google Android platform pushed by the Open Handset Association (OHA).

Biggest losers? Any firm using a closed development platform, like Nokia.

Linky.

Well now it looks like Charter Comm is going to start doing targeted ads based on customer searches. Earth shaking? No. Google already does this. And I fully expect Google to pursue this at the wireless end as well. But the think is we are getting to the point that we are not far from the scene in ‘Minority Report’ where an ad stream follows you thru life. Nagging you constantly.

[HSI] Charter to monitor surfing, insert its own targeted ads

I just received a letter from Charter informing me of an “enhancement” that I find very disturbing. They are going to monitor the websites I visit and the searches I perform, and substitute their own ads for the ones that would otherwise be displayed on the page. The privacy implications of this are obvious. Although Charter claims that my personal information will remain confidential and that my online activity will never be linked to my personal identity, I find that completely disingenuous. There is no way the system can work without tying it to my IP or MAC address, which is inextricably linked to my identity.

There are also performance implications. If the system is analyzing every page download and substituting its own ad server links for the ones originally in the page, what is the performance hit? Do we really think Charter is going to invest in more network equipment to compensate for this?

Finally, I have to believe that ad-supported website publishers are also disturbed by this and hope they will communicate this to Charter (FWIW).

The letter does mention that you can opt out via setting a cookie by going to »www.charter.com/onlineprivacy.

The problem as I see it is that the barrage is a game of diminishing returns. One of the biggest reasons quoted why people like their DVR is that they can FF thru the commercials! Pretty soon somebody is going to come up with a scheme that blanks out the appropriate [DIV] flags that include Google and Charter ads. Consumers are having a commercial version of pilot cockpit fatigue.

Linky.

In a turnabout, the judge in the Thomas-RIAA case is indicating a new trial for the case. His cover is that he erred in procedural instructions to the jury. My gut says the judge is having second thoughts having reviewed other cases and assessment of the ‘distribution’ component of Copyright law. –

The federal judge who oversaw the Recording Industry Association of America’s lawsuit against Jammie Thomas said Thursday he might have erred with one of his instructions to the jury, and is considering granting a new trial.

In response, an RIAA spokeswoman said, “if we have to re-try the case, we will do so without hesitation.”

U.S. District Court Judge Michael Davis, who presided over the nation’s only file sharing case to go to a jury, noted in a brief order (.pdf) Thursday that, under federal case law, infringing a copyright likely requires actual dissemination of the pirated content, not merely making copyrighted works available.
Thomas_testimony
Jammie Thomas testifying in her civil trial last October, while U.S. District Judge Michael Davis watches from the bench.
Courtroom sketch: Wired News/ Cate Whittemore

In October, Davis instructed jurors that infringement occurs the moment a Kazaa user makes copyrighted music available to others from their share folder — an instruction he now regards as a “manifest error of the law.”

The Duluth, Minnesota, jury found Thomas liable for infringement and awarded the music industry plaintiffs $222,000 for 24 songs.

The so-called “making available” argument is at the center of the legal battle over file sharing. But whether Thomas could ultimately prevail on a retrial is unclear. After three days of testimony, it took jurors only five minutes to conclude that Thomas was liable, and a few more hours to affix a price tag.

One of the cases Judge Davis cited in his order Thursday is also something of a double-edged sword for the defense. In that April decision, Atlantic v. Howell, an Arizona judge said that merely making a copyrighted work available for downloading wasn’t infringement. But the judge also held that the RIAA’s own investigators can effectively turn it into an infringement just by downloading a copy from the share folder involved.

What this shows is that our legal system is not infallible. Judges do make errors and ordinary citizens are the lesser for the loss of justice before notches. Best guess is that this is not a situation that will overturn the original award. The error was procedural not a fact of case law. So the result will probably be the same.

But our legal system should not be a game.

Linky.

We have reported here the semi-strike by the Florida Verizon field staff in not being permitted to work on POTS services sufficiently. It looks like the FLA AG is agreeing with them to the tune of a $6.5m fine. You can repair a heck of a lot of equipment for that fee. –

TAMPA - Florida’s attorney general is calling for steep fines of Verizon Communications Inc. and an investigation into what he calls a failure to comply with state telephone repair rules and a “steady decline in Verizon’s repair performance since 2002.”

The attorney general’s office will call on state telephone regulators to issue up to a $6.5 million fine for “repeated violations of service rules during 2007,” such as Verizon taking too long to restore landline phone service to customers who lost it.

Verizon officials could not immediately be reached for comment early this afternoon. This action does not apply to Verizon Wireless, a separate corporate entity that handles cellular phones.

A Tribune investigation this spring showed a variety of repair and customer service issues at Verizon, including billing problems and long waits for telephone repair.

Verizon’s telephone outages were not by accident, says the office of Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. Rather, “Verizon willfully violated the Florida Public Service quality rules in 262 cases during 2007.”

It is becoming very clear that the game Verizon is playing is shortchanging the PSTN services to the customers detriment in hope that they will switch to FIOS instead. What is the problem with that thought? Well illegal for one. But the Tampa service area is retiree haven. In many cases the folks only use a phone half the year. Fact, there is a ’stasis service’ that only costs $2-3/mo but essentially has the POTS line closed. When the snowbird returns in the fall they call up for reactivation without incurring a install charge.

FIOS does not have the provision. So why would a retiree sign up only to get hit with either a ETF or pay for a service they only use half of the year but pay for anyway? Yeah I thought so.

Anyway write that check VZ. Otherwise the next PUC meeting might be a little testy.

Linky.

Yes folks were talking the Tanya Anderson case. The one where RIAA accused her of downloading files even though she does not have sharing software loaded and their own expert testified that she had not done so. The outcome is that the RIAA must pay $108,000 in legal fees so far. The class action suit, a seperate action, is still pending. But it ain’t looking good for the RIAA right now in regards to Anderson.

An Oregon federal magistrate has awarded nearly $108,000 to a Beaverton single mother who said the recording industry falsely accused her of illegally downloading music.

The money represents Tanya Andersen’s attorney fees and costs in successfully fighting a lawsuit filed by the recording industry against her.

The attorney fee award is separate from a national class action lawsuit Andersen filed against the recording industry last year.

RIAA’s biggest problem is that once they lose one case they will start losing many. The first winning case becomes a template to all further defense actions.

If you’re foolish enought to be holding Comcast stock, get ready to take a hit. If you’re a Comcast broadband customer, they have a message for you: They’ve already invested enough in taking care of you and are moving on to bigger and better things. Since many Comcast customers have no alternative, we send our condolences.

Comcast, the Philadelphia-based cable giant, has finally announced that it’s buying Plaxo, a Mountain View, Calif.-based social networking & connected address book company, for an undisclosed amount of money. Plaxo, whose co-founders include Sean Parker, has raised $23 million since 2002 from VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Globespan Capital Partners and DAG Ventures.

This has been the worst-kept secret, with people speculating about the price of this acquisition. Plaxo and Comcast officials declined to comment on the price when I had a conference call with them earlier today. Even today the price range is being pegged between $100 million and $170 million. I have on authority that the price is $170 million including earnouts. This is yet another megamillion-dollar bet by the cable firm in its ongoing transformation into a web-based company with an eye on advertising dollars. (Gigaom)

Even in a non competitive environment, any company that constantly rations, raises prices and has adversarial customer service for a commodity product is doomed. An agressive competitor will eventually find a way to work around the last mile. When that happens, owning Plaxo will be irrelevant. The missed opportunity of growing and nurturing the core business will be gone. So will most of the shareholder’s equity.

If at first you don’t succeed, ask for more feedback. Or at least that is how the FCC is proceeding with the reauctioning of the ‘D’ block that did not sell the first time around. But that is not a knock, but how the FCC must proceed as a Congressional functionary in the Federal Space.

If you want to chime in here’s where you start. If you have been following our postion, you know of course that we think the auction route is not the best interests of the US populace.