Tech Policy & Law News

PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?

There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.

Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?

The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.

PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance

The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.

Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of

Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?

Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads

Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.

Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest

Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.

Five improvements for IT managers in 2010

If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.

AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs

As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.

Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search

Gartner issues its predictions for the 10 things our phones will be doing in 2012.

Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today

Mozilla has released the latest beta its Firefox 3.6 browser software, just over one week after beta 2.

Spectrum crisis is just a part of the problem for universal broadband, says FCC

By Tim Conneally on November 18, 2009, 1:58 PM

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Early in October, Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski said there is a wireless spectrum crisis approaching, and that our wireless broadband consumption is growing so explosively that it would take more than 50 years to deliver the necessary spectrum at our current pace.

But an FCC task force has concluded that this is only a single part of the problem if we want to provide America with robust and affordable broadband. Over the last few weeks, the task force has identified critical gaps in policymaking, government programs, and trade practices in all corners of the broadband ecosystem.

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After the Psystar verdict: Send in the clones

By Carmi Levy on November 17, 2009, 2:57 AM

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I feel a little sorry for Psystar. But only a little, because the Mac clone maker should have realized it couldn't rewrite history.

Its latest courtroom loss -- where a US District Court judge last week sided with Apple and said Psystar can no longer sell hardware based on hacked versions of Mac OS X -- will in all likelihood bring the whole concept of clones to an inglorious close. And none too soon.

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'A pivot from war to peace:' The AMD + Intel armistice, in their own words

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 12, 2009, 5:27 PM

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For much of its history, AMD's image in customers' minds has been established, or at least reinforced, by its very public stance with regard to Intel. The company that AMD has tried to be, it has explained for years, begins with everything that Intel -- at least from its perspective -- is not.

So it must have been a bewildering feeling for AMD executives to approach this morning, perhaps after not very much sleep last night, in an environment that can no longer be framed by the legal and intellectual property conflicts between it and its sole rival. The legal war is gone. Only the market competition remains, the sole differentiator between the last two producers of CPUs for PCs in the world. It was what AMD said it has always wanted.

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Analysis: The end of business-by-litigation?

By Scott M. Fulton, III and Carmi Levy on November 12, 2009, 2:30 PM

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The largest and widest ranging PC technology dispute, perhaps in the industry's history, came to an abrupt end this morning with Intel and AMD agreeing to set aside most of their differences, and all of their legal disputes. Is this a signal to the various litigators in the information technology industry that litigation is no longer the way to go, that it's too expensive a way for a company to continue protecting its market position? Betanews caught up with our contributing analyst Carmi Levy, by way of his trusty BlackBerry, on a train headed to Toronto this morning.

Carmi Levy: If litigation isn't too expensive from a fiscal perspective, then it certainly is onerous from a corporate attention perspective. Specifically, getting involved in years-long, tit-for-tat pitched legal battles that spill across global borders can often be the catalyst for losing focus on core competencies. While lawsuit-laden companies inevitably claim their legal processes do not impede strategic planning or day-to-day operations, it's clear that they're being overly optimistic. Litigation is a distraction. Never-ending litigation can split a company's focus for just long enough that it can easily lose touch with the needs of its market.

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The agreement: Intel and AMD 'wipe the slate clean'

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 12, 2009, 1:35 PM

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The complete text of this morning's agreement between AMD and Intel was filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, and was made public early this afternoon. The agreement explicitly brings to an end three different legal disputes: the 2005 AMD antitrust suit against Intel in Delaware; the 2005 AMD antitrust suit against Intel in Tokyo, Japan; and Intel's objections to AMD's restructuring plan, specifically to spin off GlobalFoundries from a subsidiary to an independent unit.

The agreement acknowledges the gist of AMD's complaints about Intel's prior conduct, but Intel does not in turn acknowledge having acted as AMD suggested. But from there, the agreement effectively acts as if to say, "You know what? Let's forget about all that and start over."

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European ministers approve watered-down 'neutral net' language

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 10, 2009, 3:10 PM

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The question before the European Council -- made up of heads of state and key ministers from the EU's 27 member nations -- was whether Internet access should be interpreted as a fundamental human right, and whether obstructing access could be construed as a rights violation. The answer came this morning, and it is apparently no.

A declaration from the European Parliament this morning provided glimpses of a newer round of compromise language for the EU's new regulatory framework for telecommunications. That language will be even more conciliatory than last week, when the European Commission (EC) announced the new regulatory authority. Although the EC made it appear at the time that adoption of its new framework was merely a formality at that point, that wasn't actually the case.

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It's the US vs. the EU over Oracle+Sun and the meaning of 'open source'

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 10, 2009, 12:15 PM

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Late yesterday, Sun Microsystems gave the first public notice to the US Securities and Exchange Commission that Oracle Corp., its prospective suitor, had received a Statement of Objections from the European Commission with regard to Oracle's plan to acquire Sun. Not only had 62% of Sun shareholders already cleared the deal last May, but the US Justice Dept. cleared the deal last August.

At issue was the fate of MySQL, the open source database product that Sun acquired in January 2008. In Sun's one-paragraph 8-K filing, it mentioned the EC's sole focus: "The Statement of Objections sets out the Commission's preliminary assessment regarding, and is limited to, the combination of Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's enterprise database products and its potential negative effects on competition in the market for database products."

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Supreme Court considers patentability of abstract methods today

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 9, 2009, 1:27 PM

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The US Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this afternoon in the case of a pair of inventors who produced a formula for enabling energy commodity companies to manage the costs of energy that is often both bought and sold at fixed prices as "hedges" against future fluctuations. If you're thinking, what in the world has that to do with information technology, the outcome of this case -- whatever it is -- will have a tremendous impact on the IT industry, particularly with respect to companies that hold intellectual property portfolios.

The argument deals with whether a methodology that boils down to a mathematical formula for determining the safest hedge for a commodity that both buys and sells energy -- basically a business method -- is worthy of a patent. The decision the Supreme Court will render will determine whether simple formulaic concepts or principles that are case-specific deserve patents, and if they are not, whether existing patents granted in such situations may be canceled.

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New European counterpart to FCC will ensure 'a more neutral net'

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 5, 2009, 9:21 PM

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During one of the more noteworthy weeks in Europe's modern history, as the 27 member nations of the European Union prepare for a newer and more centralized executive authority, the EU will also be making way for a powerful regulatory authority for telecommunications: the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). This is the name for the new European Telecoms Authority; and whereas in the US, there remains considerable debate over whether the Federal Communications Commission can and should have regulatory authority over Internet transactions, in Europe, the debate has officially been settled: BEREC will have authority to propose regulations for telecommunications in all forms, including the Internet.

But the power for approving, exercising, and then administering those regulations has been delegated to the European Commission. So although the new telecoms authority will be comprised of the national telecom regulatory heads from each member nation, the EC will have the authority to overrule them. Negotiations over this single provision extended for hours and eventually days, according to the EC, with the central point of contention being this and only this provision.

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New York: Intel's agreements to lower CPU prices led to overcharges

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 4, 2009, 4:29 PM

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This morning, the State of New York filed an antitrust suit against Intel, joining its voices with those of the European Commission, Korea, and other countries in alleging that its ability to make exclusivity deals was illegal. The claims made this morning by the State Attorney General's office were not at all unprecedented. Essentially, A-G Andrew Cuomo focused on two of the issues already central to the EC's existing case against the company: its CPU purchasing deals with major PC makers Hewlett-Packard and Dell, the existence of which is no longer truly disputed.

But the theory of damages in the case may be difficult to prove, and the lawsuit complaint makes a calculated move in not really arguing damages at all, beyond the fact that they exist. While presenting more evidence than the general public has seen to date of negotiations between Intel and its leading OEMs, clearly suggesting they conspired to keep CPU maker AMD at a safe distance, that evidence also supports the notion that PC prices were rendered lower as a result of those deals, not higher.

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On the eve of a new EU constitution, Poland suggests distance from 'open source'

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 3, 2009, 5:19 PM

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5:45 pm EST November 3, 2009 · A press officer with the Delegation to the European Commission in Washington contacted Betanews this afternoon, stating that the press office could not attribute the document being circulated as "EIF 2.0" this week as an official European Commission document. It is therefore not a leaked version of EIF 2.0 as was suggested elsewhere; and it's extremely unlikely that the Commission is actively considering replacing its last draft of EIF 2.0, completed in July 2008, with the version that Betanews was able to trace to the Polish Ministry of the Interior.

Just hours ago, Czech President Vaclav Klaus was the last to add his signature to a list of 26 others, effectively ratifying sweeping amendments to the Treaty of Lisbon -- effectively, the constitution of the European Union. A new centralized executive authority will be created, dramatically expanding the roles of the EU's President and formalizing the role of its own, continent-wide Foreign Minister. A country upon countries is born.

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Insider trading scandal claims former AMD CEO after IBM SVP indictment

By Scott M. Fulton, III on November 2, 2009, 12:06 PM

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In what may become the most wide-ranging insider stock trading scheme to be uncovered this decade, evidence uncovered last month by the US Securities and Exchange Commission led to the indictment last week of IBM Senior Vice President Robert Moffat, believed to have been the next-in-line for the CEO post. Moffat was indicted on October 16, arrested on criminal insider trading charges, and has posted $2 million bail, according to reports.

Now, the latest name to become linked to the alleged scheme has submitted his resignation, effective next January, and will take a leave of absence in the interim. Dr. Hector Ruiz was chairman of GlobalFoundries, the manufacturing entity spun off from AMD, which Ruiz led as its chairman and CEO during the dawn of the multicore era.

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How to solve the net neutrality issue

By Sonia Arrison, TechNewsWorld on November 2, 2009, 10:19 AM

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The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently voted to move forward on a rule-making process that could lead to new government regulations for the Internet. That is what the FCC and some activist groups want, although they claim to be supporting only "neutrality." Even key players seem confused.

The Open Internet Coalition (OIC) says neutrality "is about keeping the hands of several powerful network operators -- AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast -- off the Internet, preventing them from taking steps to change the basic open nature of the Net that has led to its success."

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Google answers the FCC: Google Voice blocks fewer than 100 numbers

By Tim Conneally on October 28, 2009, 6:56 PM

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While most of the tech world today is reveling in the introduction of Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 and its first host device, the Motorola Droid, there's still plenty of Google left to talk about.

Earlier this month, Google Voice was subject to yet another inquiry by the US Federal Communications Commission -- specifically the Wireline Competition Bureau. Its intent is to re-examine what Google Voice exactly is, evaluate whether it is unfairly blocking certain connections and how, and to determine how it should be regulated.

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US Chamber: Fake site by Yes Men not a parody but a fraud

By Scott M. Fulton, III on October 27, 2009, 3:31 PM

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In a lawsuit filed yesterday in US District Court for DC, the US Chamber of Commerce charged the company that manages the team of self-styled comedians and social activists known as the Yes Men with criminal fraud, including the creation of a fake Web site designed to resemble the real Chamber site, specifically to promote sales of their new film and paraphernalia surrounding that film. Along the way, the Chamber bypassed any allegation that might lead directly to the "parody defense" -- that appropriating the appearance of the target of parody is necessary in order to "bring to mind" the subject of that parody, as the law puts it.

Instead, the Chamber went straight for the heart, alleging that the creation of a Web site at www.chamber-of-commerce.us was done to dilute the value of the real Chamber trademark. "Defendants' use of Plaintiff's marks without the authorization or consent of the Chamber causes tarnishment by associating those marks with Defendants, whose positions and tactics are inconsistent with positions and conduct of the Chamber, its members, and prospective members."

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Nokia invokes a 'NATO defense' strategy against Apple's iPhone

By Scott M. Fulton, III on October 27, 2009, 2:42 PM

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The usual reason commonly given for the creation of technology standards is to enable a more open, seamless process for licensing and adoption. But in its lawsuit filed last week against iPhone maker Apple, Nokia is attempting a rather interesting spin on this definition, a spin which may very well reflect reality: It argues that standards are broadly licensed in order to increase the size of the market which those standards can address.

As a result, when a transgression against the standard comes about -- for instance, by way of failure to pay royalties -- the rights holders throughout the market enabled by that standard, have a duty to come to its defense. An attack against one, in other words, is an attack against the whole portfolio.

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Nokia lawyers up, chooses to fight Apple in court rather than the market

By Carmi Levy on October 26, 2009, 7:16 PM

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If timing is everything in business, Nokia apparently didn't get the memo. Apple's iPhone has been on sale for about 28 months now, but only last week did Nokia file a wide-ranging lawsuit in Delaware District Court that covers no fewer than ten alleged patent infringements.

This isn't anything new in the tech industry. In a business where intellectual property accounts for a disproportionately huge slice of any given product's value proposition -- and ultimately its market success -- fights over who came up with what idea first are common. For example, Research in Motion has paid out over a billion dollars over the last three years to settle two significant patent lawsuits that, if left unresolved, could have shuttered its popular BlackBerry devices for good.

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At long last, Microsoft to release Outlook .PST file specifications

By Scott M. Fulton, III on October 26, 2009, 2:53 PM

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Three weeks ago, the European Commission signaled its approval of Microsoft's revised plan for a more vendor-neutral Web browser selection screen for European Windows users. But that revised plan was buffered with a big bonus: a promise to supply the general public with a wealth of interoperability information, including about proprietary formats.

Among the most sought after formats on that list has been for Outlook Personal Folders -- the much-maligned .PST file format, whose lack of comprehension has been the pet peeve of certainly every developer who's ever worked on a calendar or smartphone synchronization utility. Now the manager for Microsoft's new Office Interoperability Group announced this morning that work is under way on public documentation for the file format.

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Yes, but is it funny? US Chamber issues takedown notice for Yes Men parody

By Scott M. Fulton, III on October 26, 2009, 12:25 PM

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It looks like the US Chamber of Commerce Web site, and has a convincing URL: www.chamber-of-commerce.us. It bears the seal of the Chamber, a private organization that advocates for business issues before federal legislators. And where you'd expect to find links to the real Chamber Web site, there they are -- real links to www.uschamber.com.

But it's another daring act of imitation crafted by the self-proclaimed impostors known as the Yes Men -- the same group that, in 2004, successfully pretended to be Dow Chemical representatives, appearing on the BBC to take responsibility for the Bhopal chemical plant tragedy. This was after Yes Men posted a similar impostor Web site purporting to come from Dow Chemical. That site had a press response address, to which the BBC addressed its request for an interview, and from which Yes Men -- still pretending -- complied.

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McCain's 'Real Stimulus' to go head-to-head against FCC's 'net neutrality'

By Scott M. Fulton, III on October 23, 2009, 4:55 PM

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The day after the US Federal Communications Commission voted unanimously to begin debate on the possible introduction of new federal regulations governing how Internet service providers may delineate and manage services for their customers, Sen. John McCain (R - Ariz.) announced he will be proposing simple and swift legislation that would forever separate the Internet from the FCC's purview.

Sen. McCain's office presented Betanews with the very latest draft of the bill this afternoon, which has yet to be reported to the floor (thus it does not yet have a number), and has within the last few hours been renamed the "Real Stimulus Act of 2009." Its earlier name, the "Internet Freedom Act," clashed too strongly with competing pro-net-neutrality legislation introduced earlier this year in the House. As it stands now, it's only a two-page bill, the principle clause of which reads: "The Federal Communications Commission shall not propose, promulgate, or issue any regulations regarding the Internet or IP-enabled services." Exceptions would be in cases of national security, to ensure public safety, or to aid in law enforcement activities; and existing regulations to that effect would still be considered in effect.

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