[Commentary] There are legitimate reasons for keeping many diplomatic conversations secret. The latest WikiLeaks revelations will cause awkward moments not least because they contain blunt assessments of world leaders. The claim by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the leaks threaten national security seems exaggerated. The documents are valuable because they illuminate American policy in a way that Americans and others deserve to see.
[Commentary] Trolling, defined as the act of posting inflammatory, derogatory or provocative messages in public forums, is a problem as old as the Internet itself, although its roots go much farther back. Many victims are turning to legislation. All 50 states now have stalking, bullying or harassment laws that explicitly include electronic forms of communication.
But the law by itself cannot do enough to disarm the Internet’s trolls. Content providers, social networking platforms and community sites must also do their part by rethinking the systems they have in place for user commentary so as to discourage — or disallow — anonymity. Instead of waiting around for human nature to change, let’s start to rein in bad behavior by promoting accountability. Content providers, stop allowing anonymous comments. Moderate your comments and forums. Look into using comment services to improve the quality of engagement on your site. Ask your users to report trolls and call them out for polluting the conversation. In slowly lifting the veil of anonymity, perhaps we can see the troll not as the frightening monster of lore, but as what we all really are: human.
[Zhuo is a product design manager at Facebook.]
Within weeks, some of the biggest wireless companies will offer super-fast Internet connections for cellphones that rival the speeds delivered to desktop computers. As competitors follow suit with their own juiced-up networks geared for the Web, consumers can expect a cornucopia of new services - along with new charges.
For now, consumers can buy flat-rate monthly data plans from most carriers. But Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile are moving toward tiered pricing packages based on how much data a customer uses. All-you-can-eat plans are no longer available to AT&T's new customers, who must choose from a menu of data services. The Federal Communications Commission is trying to keep up, launching an effort to prevent mystery fees and confusing increases from appearing on cellphone bills. The FCC is considering rules that require carriers to text or call users when they approach their voice and data limits. The regulation is aimed at avoiding "bill shock."
But the wave of changes is only beginning. Cisco, which provides routers for wireless networks, is working with corporate clients such as Verizon to create even more options for consumers. Users could opt for "turbo charging" streaming video feeds to their smartphone for an extra fee. Just pay a little more for "gold service" compared with "bronze service" for data packages and speeds. Consumer advocates say confusion is to the advantage of carriers.
"You have a population without true knowledge of how much they are consuming compared to carriers who have true knowledge of demand on their networks, and that assymetry leads to things like bill shock," said Sascha Meinrath, a director of the open technology initiative at the New America Foundation.
European antitrust authorities have opened a full investigation into Google after allegations from smaller online search service providers that the US company had abused its dominant market position.
It follows eight months of more informal inquiries by competition officials at the European Commission into the issue, during which Google has answered questions and provided information to the authorities. The commission’s probe will investigate allegations that Google lowered the ranking of unpaid search results from competing services and gave preferential placement to the results of its own vertical search services to shut out competitors. It will also look at charges that Google lowered the “quality score” for sponsored links of competing vertical search services. This is one factor that determines the price advertisers pay to Google. A further element of the investigation centers on the claim that Google imposed exclusivity obligations on its advertising partners, and prevented them from placing competing advertising on their websites. Finally, the competition officials will look at suspected restrictions on the extent to which online advertising data can be moved to competing advertising platforms.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear Microsoft's appeal in a patent case that forced changes in the company's Word software and could cost it $300 million.
Microsoft, fighting a verdict won by closely held I4i, says the federal appeals court that handles patent cases is making it too hard for those accused of infringement to argue that a patent never should have been issued and is invalid. The software giant has support in its appeal from more than a dozen publicly traded companies, including Apple and Google. Apple told the justices that the patent system "is tilting out of balance," giving disproportionate power to people who secure patents of questionable legitimacy. The case concerns a method developed by I4i for editing documents using XML, which tells the computer how text should appear. In its 2007 lawsuit, I4i accused Microsoft of incorporating the invention into Word.
The Supreme Court agreed to hear a First Amendment challenge to an Arizona law that provides matching funds to candidates who accept public financing.
The law, enacted in 1998, gives an initial sum to candidates for state office who accept public financing. Then it provides additional matching funds based on the amounts spent by privately financed opponents and by independent groups. There is reason to think the Supreme Court will find that second part of the law problematic. In June, the court issued an order barring its enforcement while appeals were prepared. And recent decisions from the court, including Citizens United in January and one striking down a federal measure known as the “millionaire’s amendment” in 2008, suggest that a majority of the justices are skeptical of government efforts to level the playing field in the area of political speech.
According to middle-mile Internet provider Level 3, on November 19, 2010, Comcast informed Level 3 that, for the first time, it will demand a recurring fee from Level 3 to transmit Internet online movies and other content to Comcast’s customers who request such content. By taking this action, Comcast is effectively putting up a toll booth at the borders of its broadband Internet access network, enabling it to unilaterally decide how much to charge for content which competes with its own cable TV and Xfinity delivered content. This action by Comcast threatens the open Internet and is a clear abuse of the dominant control that Comcast exerts in broadband access markets as the nation’s largest cable provider.
On November 22, after being informed by Comcast that its demand for payment was ‘take it or leave it,’ Level 3 agreed to the terms, under protest, in order to ensure customers did not experience any disruptions.
Comcast’s Joe Waz, Senior Vice President for External Affairs and Public Policy Counsel emailed a statement characterizing this as a peering issue and noted that Level 3 has even dealt with these imbalances in traffic in the same manner as Comcast is– by charging a provider that sends the greater amount traffic across the network more money to compensate for the fact that it’s using more of the resources than it is providing.
The timing of the fee request is suspicious given that in the middle of November, Level 3 announced that it would provide content from Netflix the online video rental and streaming service, whose streaming traffic generates a lot of online traffic. Netflix declined to comment on the issue today, but Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt recently said Netflix ships “over half a billion” DVDs a month. CEO Reed Hastings previously said Netflix will stream more content online than it will ship on DVD in the fourth quarter, so one can assume Netflix is currently streaming more than 40 million DVDs’ worth of video each month.
Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America, is open to supporting a Federal Communications Commission network neutrality order that doesn't reclassify broadband as a public utility.
"I'm not religious about Title I or Title II as long as it's effective to get the job done," Cooper said. "When I say effective, it means not having a [Congressional] resolution of disapproval stop it and not having the court stay the order." Whether the FCC needs to regulate broadband as a common carrier (Title II of the Communications Act) in order to protect the openness of the Internet is the central issue in the ongoing net neutrality debate. Cooper's comment comes as the FCC is rumored to be preparing a network neutrality order to vote on during its December meeting.
The Supreme Court has decided not to hear the appeal of Whitney Harper, leaving her facing a $27,750 bill for having downloaded 37 tracks from Kazaa when she was 16.
In 2008, a trial judge ruled in San Antonio, Texas that Harper was a so-called "innocent infringer" and ordered her to pay $200 per track -- the minimum for innocent infringers. The statutory floor for those who aren't innocent infringers is $750. That ruling was reversed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that Harper wasn't an innocent infringer because the copyright statute says that only people without access to published phonorecords -- in this case compact discs -- can be considered "innocent." That court also deemed Harper's age and lack of legal knowledge irrelevant to her liability. Harper then asked the Supreme Court to take up the case, arguing that the copyright statute's wording about notices on phonorecords should not apply in her case because she didn't infringe by copying a CD. The Supreme Court didn't give a reason for turning down Harper's appeal, but the order issued today shows that the decision wasn't unanimous. Judge Samuel Alito Jr. wrote a three-page dissent explaining why he wanted the court to consider Harper's appeal. He said there was "a strong argument" why the part of the statute dealing with notices on records doesn't apply in cases involving digital downloads, noting that the provision dates to 1988, "well before digital music files became available on the Internet."
Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), also known as the economic stimulus package, certain recipients of funds appropriated in ARRA (most grant and loan recipients, contractors, and subcontractors) are required to report the number of jobs funded through the law after the end of each calendar quarter. ARRA also requires CBO to comment on those reported numbers. In its latest report, issued today, CBO provides estimates of ARRA’s overall impact on employment and economic output in the third quarter of calendar year 2010. When ARRA was being considered, CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would increase budget deficits by $787 billion between fiscal years 2009 and 2019. CBO now estimates that the total impact over the 2009–2019 period will amount to $814 billion. By CBO’s estimate, close to half of that impact occurred in fiscal year 2010, and about 70 percent of ARRA’s budgetary impact was realized by the close of that fiscal year. ARRA policies the third quarter of calendar year 2010:
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