Earlier this week, Google, long one of the most vocal proponents of Net neutrality, and Verizon, one of Net neutrality’s most active opponents, announced that they had come to a broad mutual understanding about how they believe the rules and regulations governing web traffic ought to be structured. In a joint statement, the companies outlined seven key elements, which you can read here
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No More Net Neutrality?
A burst of sense from the Copyright Office: Federal regulators lifted a cloud of uncertainty when they announced it was lawful to hack or “jailbreak” an iPhone, declaring Monday there was “no basis for copyright law to assist Apple in protecting its restrictive business model.” Jailbreaking is hacking the phone’s OS to allow consumers to run any app on the phone they choose, including applications not authorized by Apple. The Electronic Frontier Foundation asked regulators 19 months ago to add jailbreaking to a list of explicit exemptions to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s anti-circumvention provisions…
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They’re Takin’ Me Down to Huntsville, But I’m Not Gonna Stay
As expected , yesterday’s FCC report on the state of wireless competition declined to label the industry competitive. It does not go so far as to explicitly label the industry uncompetitive; instead it avoids making an explicit call. Some reports are calling this a “neutral stance.” But given the contrast with the industry’s 2008 report, which explicitly labeled the industry “effectively competitive,” the agency’s decision to avoid labeling the industry competitive constitutes a strong suggestion—and probably an implicit judgment—that it’s not.
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FCC Paves the Way For More Wireless Regulation
If the FCC is to pursue “jurisdiction over everything,” what’s next on its list? How about the wireless industry?
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Because the Key to Wireless Competition is More Bureaucracy
From our June issue, Senior Editor Radley Balko reports on a troubling case from Oregon where a SWAT team was called in to arrest a man and seize his legally purchased guns, all for a crime that no one committed. View this article.
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New at Reason: Radley Balko on Pre-Crime Policing
Back in the day and before he escaped earthly radio’s gravitational pull and began broadcasting off-planet, Howard Stern was never more exercised than when he was railing against the Federal Communications Commission, that august body of idjit galoots who did so much to make him popular by fining him for every poop joke, burp, fart, and steaming pile of excrement he referenced on air. Indeed, radio listeners from the good ol’ days of the Depression may get weak in the knees when thinking about fireside chats and Fiorello LaGuardia reading the comics over the wireless, but I’ll always remember Stern’s great Fuck The FCC rally circa 1987, held in the shadow of the U.N
Mayor and former wannabe governor now downgraded to wannabe lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom wants his people to know …. the truth! about those awful little walkie-talkies they are constantly yammering into. Newsom has proposed an ordinance that all cell phones sold in his city be given a warning label similar to those placed on cigarettes
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Cell Phone Warning Labels in San Francisco?
It would be difficult deny that since Apple’s entry into the mobile phone market in 2006, the world of wireless networks and gadgetry has become more innovative, more competitive, and way, way cooler. Naturally, that means the FCC is worried. Why? Because, writes Peter Suderman, the Federal Communications Commission thinks Apple might not be running its business fairly. Read all about it here.
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New at Reason: Peter Suderman on the FCC’s Investigation into Apple’s App Store
