David Isenberg’s Freedom-to-Connect conference, which is being held this year in conjunction with PulverMedia, is coming up soon (April 3 and 4) and David sent me a scoop about two new speakers added to the line-up. In addition to an all-star DC cast of panelists, F2C will also feature former FCC Chairman Michael Powell and Level3 founder and CEO James Q. Crowe.
David has graciously extended a $300 discount for the event to IPD readers. Just enter the priority code FOBDL2 when you register and get the discount.
To reiterate, there’s no financial relationship between F2C and me or Mitch or anyone affiliated with IPD. It’s just that last year’s F2C conference generated so much discussion that, against the backdrop of serious Telecom Act rewrite momentum, this year’s event is bound to create quite a buzz and shouldn’t be missed.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 6:29 PM | Print | Comments (0)Courtesy of Russell Shaw at ZDNet’s IP telephony blog, here’s the actual wording of Senator Ron Wyden’s (D-OR) proposed Internet Non-Discrimination Act of 2006. Russell also provides some comments from Wyden’s conference call yesterday, which Cynthia discusses here.
Jay Rosen has a new blog called The Blue Plate Special that kicks off with a bang — the first topic is a study on blogging at the top 100 U.S. newspapers, which was conducted by Rosen and 17 of his undergraduate and graduate students.
The study itself is informative, and it picks the best papers in terms of blogging (The Houston Chronicle, The Washington Post and USA Today are the top three papers). But the best thing about the research is an extensive chart that details the blogging efforts at all 100 newspapers, including detailed breakdowns of blog topics and URLs.
The Blue Plate Special should pick itself as a winner of some kind of blogging award for setting a very high standard for blogs — it’s not often that I find this kind of meaty material in a blog.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:45 AM | Print | Comments (0)
Representative Mike Ferguson (R-NJ) introduced a bill yesterday that would enforce a broadcast flag for digital and satellite radio. The bill would give the FCC authority to enforce “prohibitions against unauthorized copying and redistribution.”
What’s particularly irksome about the bill, The Audio Broadcast Flag Licensing Act of 2006 (H.R. 4861), is that it would create a new category under copyright law — “customary use.” The bill would limit audio content access to uses that are “customary;” the law today allows consumers a certain amount of access to content under a concept known as “fair use.”
By limiting usage to what has been customary, the bill could make illegal new uses made possible by technology.
As usual, Cory Doctorow has some choice words for this bill:
Fergusun is committing political suicide. No constituent of Fergusun’s woke up this morning wishing for a way to do less with her radio. There’s no manufacturer who can sell more radios by advertising “Now! With fewer features!” This is a bill to steal from tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, who’ll never get to invent the next generation of awesome music tech, in order to line the pockets of yesterday’s recording industry fatcats.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:19 AM | Print | Comments (1)
On the heels of New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s investigation into the matter, the Justice Department has started an inquiry into possible online music price fixing by the record companies. As is true of most such investigations, not a lot of detail is available, but the basic gist is that the DOJ is looking into whether the big record companies — Universal Music, Sony BMG, Warner Music and EMI — have colluded in setting wholesale prices for online music services.
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