Previously we had pointed out that the Telcos can take care of their own. They have a revenue stream (well used to, it is getting a little frayed), that is mostly never ending. The resource is finite but better than what anyone else has. So why do they want to do this to their more lesser mortal peers? —

In the dead of night, just before the latest draft of the Stevens bill came out, a helpful Telco lobbyist inserted a little provision to stack the deck in the case of judicial review. Section 1004 of the Stevens draft now places exclusive jurisdiction for all decisions by the FCC in the D.C. Circuit. This includes not just network neutrality, but media ownership, CALEA, wireless issues, anything.

Why would anyone do that you ask? Because the D.C. Cir. is, without doubt, the most activist court in the land when it comes to pressing its vision of media and telecom policy. More than any other court, the D.C. Cir. can be credited with destroying hope of telecom competition in the United States by perpetually reversing and remanding the FCC’s efforts at rulemaking and enforcement until the FCC finally gave up and effectively deregulated. The D.C. Cir. is also responsible for vacating (eliminating by judicial fiat) the rule preventing cable companies from owning television stations where they have cable systems, and overturning much of the FCC’s cable and broadcast ownership limits. Finally, through the legal doctrine known as “standing”, the D.C. Crcuit has done its best to make it impossible for regular people to challenge FCC decisions or bring individual cases on antitrust grounds.

Source: WetMachine

Why? Well to make it more costly to litigate telecom policy. So if you are a small coop outside to Duluth and are being destroyed by some arcane rule your choice would be under this suggestion having to hire a high priced heavy weight from Georgetown.

There is something else that bothers me about this that has nothing to do with Telecom. Consistency. In the history of this country we have applied the mindset that one tries a case in the jurisdiction of either the defendant or the place where the infraction occurred. Even at appellate, you remand to the closest circuit district from which the original case issued. And NOW we are going to turn this on its ear? The system as envisioned has worked reasonably well, there is no need to change it at this late date.

This provision needs to be removed. Verizon can afford to get on a damn airplane like anybody else.

Following the bosses lead on a previous post. I it is a shame but way too many consumers are not sufficiently savvy in consumer electronics of any kind. Case in point –

SAN LEANDRO — A brand-new 37-inch Sony flat screen television for $100? Great deal — until you take it out of the box and realize you just bought an oven door.

San Leandro police Lt. Pete Ballew called it a variation on the old “rocks in a box” scam, in which a box is presented as containing new, expensive electronics for sale but is actually full of rocks.

On Wednesday San Leandro police pulled over a man who had in his car a box containing what appeared to be an expensive 37-inch flat-screen television, but in actuality was a glass oven door cleverly disguised as a TV. The man is suspected of trying to sell the item for $100 in the parking lot of the San Lorenzo Wal-Mart, 15555 Hesperian Blvd.

“It was very ingenious,” Ballew said. “If you were a bargain hunter, you might think, ‘Wow, this is the deal of the day.’”‰”

Police got an anonymous call Wednesday from someone who raised suspicions about a man who tried to sell him a television out of his beige 1980 Oldsmobile Cutlass in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The witness said the seller told him he had bought the TV for $60 at a flea market.

Flat out its just a variant of the rocks in a box routine. But there are other scams as well. Many not so obvious. One we have discussed here is the subsidized phone CPE market. Thank goodness that is finally showing cracks. Another is channel bundling by the ISPs. But no matter, any of these vehicles are ripping off the consumer.

Oh, I bet that the first complaint to the scam above is — “Where is the remote?”

Linky.

Initial post: Jul 23, 2009 12:16 PM PDT
Jeffrey P. Bezos says:
This is an apology for the way we previously handled illegally sold copies of 1984 and other novels on Kindle. Our “solution” to the problem was stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles. It is wholly self-inflicted, and we deserve the criticism we’ve received. We will use the scar tissue from this painful mistake to help make better decisions going forward, ones that match our mission.

With deep apology to our customers,

Jeff Bezos
Founder & CEO
Amazon.com

With this Amazon issues an apology. Readers how would you rate it? Good, Fair, not worth the electrons?

Here’s my take. Amazon should have ate it. The cost I mean. They should have worked out whatever deal they could with the publisher for the customers to be able to keep the books. Another words Amazon should NOT have inconvenienced the customers and ate the costs. Absurd? Well what if it had been a physical book? You think Amazon would have gone through the pain and shipping costs for something that would not have been successful? Of course not. The fact they had the delete key was the only reason they went that route. Oh and every version of Kindle made in the future should have the remote delete feature removed. Period.

So the apology was NOT ENOUGH!

Linky.

Does it all sound too good to be true? If so, that’s because it probably is. What little information is available about the services is vague, technically inconsistent, and doesn’t match up with public records.

One key player in the network of companies is Mark Petschel. He’s the CEO of Global Verge, the multilevel marketing firm that is recruiting people to sell Zer01’s service, under the Buzzirk brand. Sales associates are paying $70 initially to become part of the program and $40 a month thereafter for back-office support.

Petschel is currently on probation after pleading guilty to securities fraud. According to a bankruptcy filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, Petschel allegedly promised to invest $168,000 that he collected from several people, but instead spent some of the money on items like jewelry.

Petschel has been on the losing end of three contract disputes, including one in 2002 in which he was ordered to pay $50,000. The Circuit Court of St. Louis County has no record that he’s complied yet with any of the rulings.

If you get approached to sell cellular services where you pay for the privilege then earn credits on ’sales’ to others, be very wary. Its probably a MLM scheme and it might just be the guys above doing it.

More here.

That is its inaction makes it complicit in activities like shilling by not going after sellers who practice such tactics. The case in point –

How can you be sure the price of your latest eBay buy wasn’t shamelessly inflated by some faceless shill bidder? Well, there’s always the ad hoc investigative skills of Australian retiree Philip Cohen.

Cohen recently posted a nearly 8,000-word shill-bidding case study to the online forums at AuctionBytes, as part of a, shall we say, dogged effort to show that eBay does relatively little to stop the underhanded practice. His case study tracks an Aussie eBayer who made 190 bids on 41 items over a 30-day period, and all 41 items were listed by the same seller.

The implication is that the seller and bidder are the same person - or that they’re working in tandem to boost prices on the seller’s auctions. Cohen estimates that on one auction, the bidder in question artificially raised the price of the item by $156.

“This underbidder…stopped his ‘nibble’ bidding at the point when he equaled the maximum proxy bid value of the ultimate buyer,” Cohen writes. “At that point the underbidder would also have understood that only one more incremental bid was required for him to win the item; but he did not make that one more bid. What then is the chance that this underbidder is not a most naïve and blatant shill bidder? Absolutely none!”

Now this is out of Australia. Shilling, whether physical or virtual is against the law. So in a sense eBay if they are not aggressive in their pursuit of such practices becomes an accessory after the fact. There is however and inducement for eBay not to act. To the extent that a buyer is secured eBay’s commission on such a sale increases. That is reward enough on eBay’s part. What eBay’s intended mind frame in the matter would require a full scale investigation. To do that would require the power of the State and sufficient probable cause. Another words its not likely to happen.

Linky.

About this I mean. I doubted that the top tier IT firms would have much to do about pending tax plans. How wrong I was as one of the biggest ones — Microsoft — rattles the tax saber. –

Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Steven Ballmer said the world’s largest software company would move some employees offshore if Congress enacts President Barack Obama’s plans to impose higher taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul.

U.S. tax rules let companies defer paying corporate rates as high as 35 percent on most types of foreign profits as long as that money remains invested overseas. Obama says he wants to end such incentives to keep foreign profits tax-deferred so that companies would invest them in the U.S.

Microsoft reported an overall effective tax rate of 26 percent for 2008 in its last annual report. “Our effective tax rates are less than the statutory tax rate due to foreign earnings taxed at lower rates,” the report said.

Barry Bosworth, an economist in Washington at the Brookings Institution research center, said many software companies such as Microsoft have exploited tax and trade rules in the U.S. and other countries to achieve a low overall tax rate.

No Microsoft won’t go over lock, stock, and barrel but they will shift as much of their labor force as possible to sites other than US. Which means that if MS is thinking it, you can bet the CFO’s of ALL the top IT suppliers have been given the order by the CEO to run the numbers and make a recommendation.

Bottom line. If they up the tax, more jobs will be lost, the recession deepens and tax receipts fall. Obama, good move dude. If you wanted to destroy the economy of the US that is.

Linky.

[Update]: The political blog HotAir give its tongue-in-cheek coveted ‘Louis Renault Award’ to Ballmer for his blatant shock of the implications of being a big Obama contributor. Link.

Generally Fox has their act together. But a Bill O’Reilly flap has generated some controversy —

Due to violations of the Terms and Conditions of BillOReilly.com attributed to your account, your Premium Membership is hereby terminated effective as of the date of this notice. The termination is final and any attempt to use the site or to renew membership either directly or indirectly will similarly result in termination and/or blocking use of the site.

I’m not sure what terms and conditions I supposedly violated. I never posted any comments (or “blog postings”) on O’Reilly’s site. All I did was quote (and screencap) two embarrassing comments from the message boards.

Oh, wait. I just reviewed the Terms and Conditions again, and I believe I have found the relevant language: “4. Do not expose Bill O’Reilly as a rank hypocrite.”

This all started when BOR accused the blog HotAir with not policing their website. Problem is what HotAir was accused of came from a commenter not one of the site authors. BOR then went on to say his site does not engage in this kind of mongering. Which brings us to the irony portion of this post. The blog Patterico Pontifications paid the entry fee and found — the very same mongering that BOR accused HotAir of! Then BOR had the tumidity to then ban him for reading comment entries.

Now all of this is mildly amusing. But quite honestly both sites lose in a tit for tat battle of words. It leads one down the same journalistic rat hole that is killing the pulp press. At this point both sides just ought to call an armistice and cool it.

Linky

Yes sir, Verizon is on the ball again! This time with the Sheriffs dept in Ohio. –

Sheriff Sgt. Ron Clapper and firefighters found the man about 1 a.m. after 11 hours of searching in an area just north of Augusta, including Manfull Orchards, where there is a Verizon cell phone tower.

Williams said he attempted to use the man’s cell phone signal to locate him, but the man was behind on his phone bill and the Verizon operator refused to connect the signal unless the sheriff’s department agreed to pay the overdue bill. After some disagreement, Williams agreed to pay $20 on the phone bill in order to find the man. But deputies discovered the man just as Williams was preparing to make arrangements for the payment.

The sheriff organized the search party for the man after deputies responded to the domestic call Wednesday at 2:21 p.m. at the Kensington Rd. residence. The sheriff said the caller said the man was destroying the house and breaking windows and other items.

But when deputies arrived they were told the man had fled and had taken several bottles of pills.

“I was more concerned for the person’s life,” Williams said. “It would have been nice if Verizon would have turned on his phone for five or 10 minutes, just long enough to try and find the guy. But they would only turn it on if we agreed to pay $20 of the unpaid bill. Ridiculous.”

Hmm. I wonder if Verizon would respond that way had 911 called? As it is Verizon could have had the hospital tack it on to the patient’s bill. Sigh….

Linky.

Yes, it is not like when they were riding high Skype could care less about being interoperable. Fact they were down right rude about it, setting trip wires in their own systems so third parties could not use the IM capabilities, etc. But oh now that they might be spun off and have to make a profit they come sniffing with a call for ‘interoperability’ because they smell cash in corporate accounts. –

In particular, Skype wants support for Skype calls that come in to businesses using PBXs that support Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking, said Stefan Oberg, general manager and vice president of Skype for Business “This is an area where we’d like to cooperate with you.”

Skype has announced its Skype for SIP capability that would make the link between its calls and corporate PBXs. Oberg was seeking cooperation to make interoperability easier for corporate customers. Skype has also issued Skype for Asterisk, which enables using Skype client software as softphones in businesses that use open-source Asterisk IP PBXs.

Oberg saod the company is building a stable of channel partners who will sell Skype to businesses and developing a premium support service that businesses require in order to ensure uptime for their communications. That will include local tech support with staff that speaks the local language, he said.

The company is also working on a business control panel, software that will enable a business to buy Skype credit and distribute it among individual users within the business.

I have only one thing to say to Skype. —

You are late to the party. You want to play now YOU interop with the standard, not the other way around. You had the opportunity to have your say in the matter years ago but decided not to play. Well tough. Play with the cards you dealt yourself. The world does not owe you favors. SIP is now the defacto standard live with it.

The gall.

Linky.

A lot has changed since angry consumers sought revenge on mass marketers by taping postage-paid return envelopes to bricks and putting them in mailboxes. A new generation uses online mobs to launch swarm-style attacks aimed at shutting down Web sites or at disrupting business in ways that an individual never could. Sites such as whocalled.us collect data about certain marketers to warn other consumers.

Ever received such a call? We have. Its a mere annoyance. And their repeated calling makes for problems for many hence the tactics above. But that is not all –

Michael Silveira decided to strike back. The 22-year-old laboratory technician, who doesn’t own a car, says he was getting unsolicited sales pitches as often as twice a day on his cellphone.

So last week, Mr. Silveira began calling back an auto-warranty company that has become the focus of an Internet crusade. He left it voice-mail messages that contained nothing but a recording of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit song “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Using phone numbers for Auto One Warranty Specialists Inc. that users posted to a Web site called Reddit.com, Mr. Silveira joined dozens of activists who have peppered the warranty company with messages including elevator music, threats and offers of rude services.

“I thought, if you get a bunch of people together, you could blow up their voice-mail boxes,” says Mr. Silveira.

The recipient of their efforts is David Tabb, the 42-year-old president of Auto One, an Irvine, Calif., warranty company with 60 employees. He says Reddit users overloaded his phone lines with computerized calls, changed voice-mail greetings on his company’s system, and even threatened arson. People have been conspicuously honking outside his home, he says. To cope, he redirected some of the numbers that activists had been calling.

Now being obscene or making threats is a tad over the top. At least in our view. So don’t do it. You could land in hot water legally. And don’t assume you can’t be tracked down if you do. With the assistance of the phone company(s) it is highly likely you will be if it is accompanied by a criminal investigation.

But that is not the whole story of course. As it is right now, 1st Amendment stands tall in saying you can’t stop them from calling. But there is a far cry from that standard. If I am walking down the street and and some guy is on a soapbox bellowing out some missive I can politely ignore him and keep walking. Neither party was harmed in the fact that I chose to ignore him. The speaker still retained his right to bellow his missive.

However the phone is not a manifestation of the fellow in the soapbox. By design phones are not multithreaded like the environment of the fellow on the soapbox. They only allow a single conversation at a time. By rote they block all other callers. When a robocall comes through I am effectively blocked from receiving the conversations I wish to hear. It would be equivalent to, once having reached within 50′ of the fellow on the soapbox, required to stop and listen for 1 minute. No one would stand for that actually or legally. So why do we persist in this fiction via the phone?

So a little bit of advise for those who want to swarm the robocallers –

• No obscene comments or threats. The idea of the music was a nice touch. Might I suggest the winning tune toward the end of the movie Mars Attacks?
• Make sure evey phone you have is on the federal do not call list. If your state has a registry also add your phone numbers there too.
• Look at your phone bill and make sure the number is listed there. Keep a copy. Its evidence they called you. If you end up in court it will be requested anyhow so be prepared.
• Assess whether it is worth your time. Acquiring personal satisfaction can be a time consuming business.

Welcome to the world of the Wild West of Telephony.

Linky.