Special Tuesday edition! Having been very busy hitting a launch window for a client, I had to skip Friday and Monday. So to make up for it, this week I start on Tuesday.
Riddle me this: FCC refuses to be transparent about its dealings with LightSquared (who by the way just changed CEOs, as the firm continues to flail desperately in response to the FCC’s LTE refusal), but FCC wants broadcasters to put files online. I’m with Richard Burr: Let’s look closer at that plan before we let FCC go ahead with it.
And speaking of the un-transparent FCC, Democrats are trying to talk down Chuck Grassley over his insistence on transparency, but have no fear: the House is now on the case.
The insistence by both the FCC and by LightSquared that no information be turned over to Chuck Grassley is itself suspicious. More investigation is essential.
Remember SOPA? Barack Obama signed an executive order creating a censorship-free alternative: use international trade mechanisms to fight infringers. Hollywood sure got that from him quickly enough.
Spectrum reform! The FCC is bristling that Republican spectrum reform is too restrictive. Imagine that: FCC being forced to do its job implementing law, not writing it. Now we just need FCC to get out of the way of the Verizon/Cable deal, and let the market allocate our precious limited resource.
Where are all the people who get outraged about phony privacy scares when Wikileaks and the radical fringe globowarmo lobby actually violate people’s privacy?
I’ll tell you where they are. Barack Obama, Congressional Democrats, and (inexplicably) the allegedly-conservative Joe Barton are pushing for expanded government powers using a perceived crisis as cover. Joe Barton wanted to be Chairman? Now he’s just a useful idiot, just like Lamar Smith was over on Judiciary.
Let’s just hope electrical grid cybersecurity isn’t the next crisis used to expand the powers of the Barack Obama runaway regulators.
This could be big: AT&T loses in small claims court to one of its customers on an unlimited data plan over data rate throttling. I’ve been saying it’s fundamentally wrong if AT&T is actually trying to have it both ways, keeping we (yes, I’m one of them) on unlimited data plans locked under our contracts, while changing the service provided. Let us go if you don’t want us. We’ll be happy to go take Verizon LTE service if you don’t want to honor the terms of our deal.
PATENT WARS: reversing an earlier setback. Apple also beat Proview’s iPad trademark claim in China, proving that Proview wasn’t as well-connected as it seemed. Proview threans to sue Apple worldwide. Somehow I doubt that’ll have as much limited success as the attempt in China had.