The FCC released last Friday its CALEA First Report and Order covering law enforcement wire-tap access to VoIP and broadband providers. The order, adopted in early August, is controversial given that CALEA, the statute governing law enforcement’s ability to wiretap communications, specifically excluded “information services” from the wire-tap requirements.
The FCC has, however, interpreted CALEA to cover both VoIP and broadband services. Susan Crawford takes a dark view of the Commission’s interpretation, and offers an amusing translation of the legalese that the FCC puts forth to justify the extension of CALEA to services so clearly within the “information services” realm.
The Commission has found a couple of ways to avoid the “information services” exclusion. If this document could talk, it might say (I’m providing the words): First. “It doesn’t matter whether something is an information service, even though we’ve fought very very hard in other contexts to keep things in the category of information service, because CALEA should cover things that are ‘substantial replacements’ for traditional telephone service. We’re not going to require empirical evidence that anything is supplanting telephone service — instead, we’re going to look at the traditional functions of telephone service and see whether they’re being provided by something new. Here, broadband access is functionally just like dial-up access that used to be provided by local telephone companies. And VoIP services that are capable of interconnection with the telephone network are just like traditional telephone service. Packet switching and circuit switching are just the same, functionally, so by using the word ‘switch’ Congress must have meant to include transmission to and over the Internet. So both broadband access and interconnected VoIP are covered under CALEA.”Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 5:01 PM | Print | Comments (0)
Ed Zander, CEO of Motorola, is in for a few tough weeks for some regrettable remarks he made during a leadership seminar (of all things) at the Churchill Club. Facing the prospect of competing against an Apple-designed phone, and after an apparently conflict-filled relationship with Apple in getting Moto’s new Razr phone out the door, Zander said: Screw the Nano.
“Screw the nano. What the hell does the nano do? Who listens to 1,000 songs?” Zander said. People are going to want devices that do more than just play music, something that can be seen in many other countries with more advanced mobile phone networks and savvy users, he said.
In truth, this poor choice of words probably reflected Zander’s real thinking at the moment. I may be alone in this, but after having been subjected to thousands of tightly controlled, wholly scripted briefings by humanoid-esque corporate executives, Zander’s remark seems totally refreshing.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 4:09 PM | Print | Comments (0)
With all the talk about Google’s expanding video capabilities and its search for a GoogleTV manager, it’s no surprise the company has jump-started its first program. Google is streaming the premiere episode of “Everybody Hates Chris,” the critically acclaimed series inspired by comedian Chris Rock’s childhood and produced and narrated by Rock himself.
The show airs on UPN, which is part of CBS Television, which in turn is an arm of Viacom.
Update: Search Engine Watch says that Google no longer requires the downloading of the Google Video player to watch video streamed from the Google Video database. Google is now using Flash.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 2:35 PM | Print | Comments (0)While Verizon makes headlines with the launch of its fiber-to-the-premise network in Keller, TX, where’s SBC’s parallel fiber-based video effort? The telco announced last fall that its fiber-to-the-node Project Lightspeed would be up and running in commercial mode by the end of fourth quarter 2005, but that’s not going to happen.
The delays are hard to pinpoint, although three factors seem to be the main culprits. First, there are hitches with Microsoft’s IPTV platform, although SBC isn’t putting the blame on MSFT, as has been rumored. Secondly, the telco faces a massive integration job with a slew of vendors including not only Microsoft, but also Alcatel, Sigma Designs, Scientific Atlanta, Motorola and Amdocs.
Finally, although SBC has been successful using VDSL technology in getting at least 20 to 25 Mbps bandwidth speeds over its copper loops, that may not be enough capacity for shipping high-definition signals. SBC is banking on shipping high-def in MPEG-4 format, instead of the traditional MPEG-2 standard, and everyone is waiting on the necessary MPEG-4 gear. Without adequate high-def delivery, SBC is going to have a tough time competing in the marketplace.
More on the status of SBC’s Project Lightspeed at IP Media Monitor.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 1:50 PM | Print | Comments (0)The Chinese government has published new rules to regulate news publishing on the web. Any news organization found guilty of publishing “false or distorted” information will be fined 30,000 yuan or $3,700 under the new regulations, which are intended to “standardize the management of news or information.”
The new rules also require any online news publisher to have least 10 million yuan, or $1.25 mil. in registered capital and it must employ at least five professional news editors with no less than three years’ working experience in the traditional media. Publishers who have been “in trouble” with online regulators are barred from publishing for two years.
News.com’s Blogma has a good round-up of the blogosphere’s sentiments on this crackdown. It’s not pretty.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:55 AM | Print | Comments (0)Courtesy of Boing Boing, I stumbled on a site called Numair’s Video Guide, which is a guide to the best uploaded videos on Google Video. They’re all straight out of college dorms, or high-school cafeterias. With subtitles like “Kid magically pulls beer bottle out of mouth, collapses drunk. I’m sort of baffled. Sort of” and “when you’re drunk, hitting your friends with a toilet plunger seems like an EXCELLENT idea.” Citizen journalism it’s not, but some of these are pretty funny.
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