Much of the hacking scene is a fractious free-for-all, with rival groups and lone wolves engaged in tit-for-tat attacks on each other, often on political or ideological grounds but sometimes for no better reason than to outwit — or out-hack — the other guy.
[Commentary] Congress has a predilection for creating special-interest exemptions in the federal tax code and a long and sordid history of doing the same to state tax bases. Even now, as states struggle with lagging revenue, increased needs and balanced-budget requirements, there are numerous bills in Congress to exempt special interests from state taxes — for rental cars, cellphones, online travel services and “digital goods.” Such efforts include a splashy communications strategy and sound bite justifying the exemptions as preventing “discriminatory” taxation. But in reality, they all preempt state taxing authority to give special tax treatment to the politically well-connected. For Congress, state tax preemptions are attractive because none of the normal fiscal rules apply. There is no Congressional Budget Office score, no pay-as-you-go rules, no appropriations — it’s all a “free” tax cut using state tax dollars.
The most pernicious erosion of state sales tax bases is the proliferation of the sales of goods and services on the Internet — goods and services that if purchased from a local business would have sales tax collected. In other words, Internet sellers receive a tax subsidy for much of what they sell. This is unfair to local retailers that not only collect sales taxes but also contribute to the local economy, pay state and local taxes, operate as showrooms for Internet sales and technical services, create most of our jobs and contribute to our communities by sponsoring Little League teams and more. Legislation under consideration, known as the Main Street Fairness Act, would reverse the decades-old federal court case that created this problem, but it faces some familiar foes. Namely, opponents claim that closing this loophole is a tax increase, a tax on the Internet and an administrative nightmare for business.
[Crippen, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, is executive director of the National Governors Association.]
As the Federal Communications Commission reviews AT&T’s $39 billion bid for T-Mobile, major staff changes at the agency are creating uncertainties about when and how the commission will vote, experts say.
One Republican-held chair is open on the five-member commission now that Meredith Attwell Baker has resigned to take a position at cable giant Comcast. Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps will leave later this year -- months before the agency’s review of the deal is expected to be complete. The staff changes, as well as growing opposition by state utilities and competitors such as Leap Wireless and Sprint Nextel, have spurred intense lobbying over the deal. No one at the agency has indicated how they will vote, and the commission could approve the deal with two empty seats. That makes for lots of guessing games. Adding new commissioners could prolong the review process if they need time to get up to speed on the issues.
The average cost of using smartphones and tablets when travelling in the European Union will be more than halved under new plans from Brussels that will delight customers but deliver a big blow to mobile operators.
The strict regime of price caps on mobile phone roaming within the EU is to be extended by four years to 2016, the European Commission will announce this week. It wants eventually to abolish premium charges for roaming data and voice services. In a setback to mobile operators, which had lobbied to stave off further regulation of what remains a lucrative segment, new price caps will from next year be imposed on data downloads as well as on voice calls and SMS messages. Browsing the Internet or receiving e-mails while abroad will cost no more than 90 euro cents ($1.31) per megabyte from July 2012, descending to 50 cents by 2014, compared with an average of more than €2 today despite prices being capped at the wholesale level. In a move to inject more competition into the roaming market, European travellers will be allowed to choose a different network while overseas than the one they subscribe to at home, in effect, upending the business models of operators.
Unlike some of the criticism other stimulus priorities got, rural broadband initiatives not only put people to work but also do things that would not been done and have an enduring payoff, a 21st century version of the federal government’s programs to bring electricity and telephones to all citizens.
Take for instance the Mandan, Hidatsa & Arikara Nation reservations in northwest North Dakota, where the Reservation Telephone Cooperative (ResTel) is putting in a 50-Mbps connection to the Elbowwoods Memorial health care center. That connection, made possible by fiber optic cable and broadband stimulus funds, will enable the center to connect patients to doctors and doctors to specialists. “With this technology, we will have rapid analysis; our tribal members will have access to state-of-the-art medical care and services; an x-ray can be taken and read by a radiologist at a facility miles away,” says Tex Hall, the nation’s chairman. “Our providers will talk to physicians at clinics like Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota, about critical-care patients; our dialysis patients will have immediate access to nephrologists 200 miles away and we will be able to monitor a diabetic patient from their home. Importantly this will be state of the art, no slow upgrades, no fuzzy images; we will have real-time second-by-second network monitoring.” And it’s not just the hospital that’s getting fiber optic net connections on North Dakota’s reservations. ResTel got a mix of grants and loans from the government totaling $21.9 million — which had to be matched by the cooperative — to lay fiber for businesses, individuals and even cell phone towers.
In Vermont's remote Northeast Kingdom an aging Belgian draft horse named Fred is part of a team racing to bring broadband Internet access to all corners of the state by 2013.
A pair of analyst reports yielded notable details about retransmission consent payments, including that Comcast could be on the brink of moving big bucks from one pocket to the other. Other matters involve NBC and its affiliates, and CBS and its Showtime network.
Wells Fargo's Marci Ryvicker wrote that NBC should begin receiving retransmission payments for its 10-owned stations in 2013, which should have Comcast paying itself handsomely. NBC-owned stations reach about 7.2 million homes served by Comcast, where the cable operator will negotiate payments to its NBC Universal unit for carriage rights. Comcast delivers the NBC-owned stations into more homes than any other operator. NBCU, however, should benefit nicely from dollars coming from satellite operator DirecTV, which would pay for approximately 4.7 million homes, and Time Warner Cable for 3.9 million households, Ryvicker noted. Separately, NBC has indicated it plans to negotiate retransmission payments with operators on behalf of its affiliates. And NBC plans on collecting 50% of the compensation, per Ryvicker. While 50% may be a high cut, NBC could use its leverage with operators to help the stations gather more revenue than they could on their own.
The U.S. government hopes a new interactive project will give federal agencies a template to embrace and thrive in the mobile device movement. Called Making Mobile Gov, the program will establish a community-generated wiki and toolkit on how to implement mobile websites and applications that better serve citizens who need information from Uncle Sam while on-the-go.
Launched in June by the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies (OCSIT), Making Mobile Gov consists of three phases — Discover, Discuss, Design — that will incorporate commentary from the public and private sectors. Once finished, the how-to guide will provide a best practices model for presenting data on smartphones and tablets.
[Commentary] The Energy Department chimed in at just the right time when it announced that it might issue energy conservation requirements for cable boxes, digital recorders and the like.
A voluntary conservation program run by the Environmental Protection Agency may not be enough to generate a commitment to energy efficiency among the companies that provide these power-hungry boxes. A study by the National Resources Defense Council found that in 2010, the 160 million set-top boxes around the country consumed about 27 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, roughly the annual output of nine coal-fired power plants, costing consumers $3 billion. Some boxes can consume more power than a good-size refrigerator. The EPA runs a voluntary program that gives an “Energy Star” certificate to products that meet targets that will be ratcheted up over time. But the program has yet to sign up the big cable companies. Until they commit to energy efficiency, manufacturers are unlikely to throw themselves headlong into the quest for better technology.
Amazon agreed to buy UK-based online book retailer Book Depository International for an undisclosed sum. Amazon's move to buy Book Depository came six months after the U.S. company acquired European movie-rental site Lovefilm International Ltd. Book Depository, which describes itself as the U.K.'s largest dedicated online bookseller, says it can ship more than six million titles to 100 countries from its UK fulfillment center.
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