Blog Archives

We're well accustomed to thinking of spectrum as a limited resource. You simply can't create more airwaves.

And if there's been one [consistent refrain from the wireless industry](/mobility/article.php/3816101/Spectrum+Front+and+Center+for+Wireless+Industry.htm) in recent years, it is that the government agencies overseeing spectrum need to make more of it available to support the expansion of wireless data networks.

But, again, we're dealing with a finite resource, so that spectrum has to come from somewhere.

And that's where the fight will be.

It's no secret that MySpace has been undergoing something of an identity crisis. The company that deserves credit as the first blockbuster social networking site has been overtaken by Facebook in terms of traffic and legitimacy, and Twitter by measure of rate of growth and hype.

So what do you do?

MySpace has thrown itself into the rumor mill this week, serving up a pair of cryptic news items offering scant details about discussions about content deals it's having with a couple online heavy hitters.

When the Federal Communications Commission resolved last week to begin drafting Net neutrality rules, Chairman Julius Genachowski promised that the agency would go out of its way to invite comments from all interested parties and make its rule-making process one of transparency.

"An open Internet deserves an open process," he said.

In that spirit, the FCC has added some Web 2.0 bells and whistles to its OpenInternet.gov site, including a link to a third-party site hosted by Ideascale, which invites comments on the Net neutrality rule-making and allows visitors to vote them up or down with a Digg-like voting system.
Following the link from the FCC's official site to brings up a disclaimer that the FCC doesn't endorse the content on Ideascale, but the comments posted there (except for anonymous ones) will be entered into the official record of the rule-making process.

In case you were wondering which way the site is trending, as of this writing the comment at the top of the page with the most positive votes is authored by Tim Karr, the campaign director of Free Press. Karr, as you might imagine, tells the FCC, "The public demands the strongest network neutrality rule possible, without loopholes."

A federal judge has dismissed the case an Illinois sheriff brought against Craigslist to force it to remove its adult services listings.

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart filed the lawsuit in March, calling Craigslist the "largest source of prostitution in America."

District Court Judge John Grady rejected Dart's claim that Craigslist is a "public nuisance" that plays an active role in facilitating unlawful activity.

"[Dart] alleges for example that Craigslist knowingly 'arranges' meetings for the purpose of prostitution and 'directs' people to places of prostitution. But these allegations strain the ordinary meaning of the terms 'arrange' and 'direct' unless Craigslist itself created the offending ads. There is no such allegation, and ... we cannot treat Craigslist as if it did create those ads," he wrote (ruling available as PDF[ here](http://blog.craigslist.org/dart.dismissed.pdf)).

I don't have any skin in the [Net neutrality debate](/government/article.php/3844756/The+Net+Neutrality+Debate+in+Their+Own+Words.htm).

Of course, my livelihood depends on the Web, but I tend to fall somewhere in between the shrieking extremists of the argument who claim that Net neutrality rules or, variously, the lack thereof, will presage the end of the Internet as a free and open communications platform.

So it was with the pretense of detached objectivity that I [recorded the events this morning at the Federal Communications Commission](/government/article.php/3845096/FCC+Begins+March+Toward+Net+Neutrality.htm), where the agency voted to initiate a rule-making process that would seek to establish meaningful and enforceable parameters to hold ISPs to a standard of reasonable network management.

The same day, Sen. John McCain introduced a bill to block the FCC from doing just that.

The Federal Communications Commission has gotten another earful from GOP lawmakers who oppose Chairman Julius Genachowski's plan to initiate a rule-making procedure to strengthen the commission's stance on Net neutrality.

In a letter dated Tuesday, 18 Senate Republicans prevailed on Genachowski to rethink his position on the issue.

"Broadband service providers have invested billions of dollars in building and upgrading their networks to better serve their customers," they wrote. "However, burdensome regulations will have a chilling effect on further private sector investment, at a time when the U.S. economy can least afford such an impact."

The Department of Justice's antitrust chief today offered another reminder that there's a new sheriff in town, and that this administration is going to take a much more active role in policing markets to keep them competitive.

The DoJ today said that it is requiring AT&T to divest the assets of Centennial in eight markets in Mississippi and Louisiana where the two firms are the primary wireless provider. The agency sued to block AT&T's $944 million acquisition of the smaller provider as originally proposed, but offered the alternative settlement to address the competition concerns.

"These divestitures are necessary to preserve the benefits of competition for wireless customers in these areas of Louisiana and Mississippi," Christine Varney, the assistant attorney general who heads the antitrust division, said in a statement.

The move is the latest signal that firms can expect closer scrutiny by the nation's consumer protection agencies, particularly when it comes the wireless sector, which has already [come under the microscope at both the Federal Communications Commission](/government/article.php/3836586) and the DoJ.

The DoJ's filed its lawsuit jointly with the Louisiana attorney general.

The Federal Trade Commission's plan to hold a two-day series of workshops in December regarding the impact of the Internet on the news industry has drawn howls of protest from bloggers and other new-media merchants who resent the obvious significance of this event. That is, that the events of Dec. 1 and 2 will begin the heavy-handed incursion of government into journalism, where taxpayer dollars will flood in to prop up avaricious legacy institutions, free-wheeling bloggers will be regulated to the fringes as media and government become one, and our country will continue its inexorable march toward socialism.

What is to be done?

As it happens, the workshop has been on the FTC's public agenda since August. But the notice only recently appeared in the Federal Register, which, coupled with last week's alarming vote to approve rules that will require bloggers to make more meaningful disclosures about the payola they receive from the companies they write about, makes these early days in October as good a time as any to revisit the weary discussion of where the media is headed, and what policy prescriptions, if any, should be taken to steer its course.

Glenn Beck doesn't like it. Neither does Valleywag. Leaving aside for the moment the fact that Glenn Beck is a barking loon, and that Valleywag has a consistent track record of taking a wrecking ball to any proposal to prop up legacy media, their fears are shared by many.

That didn't take long.

The Federal Communications Commission has responded to criticism over Google's voice application, requesting information from the search giant about how the product works and, most importantly, details about why it doesn't connect calls in some rural areas.

The inquiry comes after [receiving a critical letter](/government/article.php/3843096/Lawmakers+Call+for+FCC+Probe+Into+Google+Voice.htm) from a bipartisan group of 20 lawmakers who complained that their largely rural constituencies should be able to access the service under FCC rules.

The situation gets complicated because Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) rightly points out that Google Voice is in a different regulatory category than AT&T's (NYSE: T) phone service, which is subject to common carrier laws that require it to connect all calls, even if they originate from or route to a local carrier that charges steep connection fees.