The US Democratic party has adopted net-neutrality as a party-political issue following the rejection of a second pro-neutrality amendment in a vote late last week.
Previously we reported on the demise of the first pro-neutrality amendment as part of the ongoing review of US telecommunications law.
The Senate Commerce Committee were tied at 11 for and 11 against, with Republican members voting against the amendment and Democrats for it. A majority vote is necessary for a bill to pass. Afterwards, Republican Senator for Alaska, Ted Stevens, gave his reasons for voting against the bill as well as displaying his obviously comprehensive grasp of the technicalities of the Web, “It’s a series of tubes. And if you don’t understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and its going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material.”
The Democratic party subsequently took up the issue with the slogan “Republicans: They sold the environment to Exxon, and sold the war to Halliburton. Now they want to sell the Internet to at&t.”
Former presidential candidate Senator John Kerry commented, “This vote was a gift to cable and telephone companies, and a slap in the face of every Internet user and consumer.” Another Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, placed a ‘hold’ on the bill which temporarily stops further progress but a decision is inevitable and both sides are marshaling forces behind their cause.
Lawrence Lessig greeted news of Democratic support with caution, “Good for the Dems that they got it. Bad that the issue is now within the grips of party politics.” He acknowledged that, give the amount of money involved, political involvement was inevitable.
Many fear that the loss of net-neutrality will signal virtual civil war on the Internet and that commercial interests are having too much effect on the US Legislature. Jeannine Kenney, Senior Policy Analyst, Consumers Union offered a concise summary, “The network neutrality nondiscrimination principle, which protects competition, maximizes consumer choice, and guarantees fair market practices, is one step closer to being abandoned with the Senate Commerce Committee’s vote. This endangers the most important engine for economic growth and democratic communication in modern society. Nondiscrimination made possible the grand successes of the Internet. Its removal can take them away.”
The news that ITN’s shareholders have agreed to shore up the embattled UK commercial news provider to the tune of £1 million, might be thought to inspire confidence in the organisation’s long term future.
ITN News the TV news broadcast division servicing ITV, ITV London and Channel 4
OK, you’re used to us breaking news here, but here’s one that slipped through without us noticing. We think it’s sufficiently important for us to swallow our pride and report it anyway.
We’re getting very excited by what we’ve seen of mobiBLU’s new ultra, ultra-slim US2 media player.
Similarly, we’ve no details about the specifics of the advertised “Audio, Video, Photo support,” but we can guess that it plays back MPEG4 files and can display JPEGs.
Samsung has released the details of their new digital camera range, Samsung NV – New Vision.
The NV3 is the one that we think will get you most excited dear reader. It’s not only a camera, but an mp3 player and PMP, so it can play films too. It’s equipped with stereo speakers, so you can share you tunes too.
Last week the French legislature approved a new law which could radically change the landscape of digital audio. The so-called ‘iTunes Law’ is designed to break the control hardware manufacturers exert over the type of content that can be played by their digital music players and software. The result would be that companies such as Apple, Microsoft and Napster would have to make their data formats interoperable, thereby opening their systems to music from rivals. A regulatory body could be set up to police the sector.
The iTunes Law does, however, leave a get-out for the tech companies. A newly-added clause permits artists to exercise control over additional DRM. In short, artists could object to their music being transferred into other formats, thereby ensuring that current practices could continue unaffected. This loophole would require renegotiation of existing contracts, something Apple et al may wish to avoid given record companies’ desire to recoup perceived losses due to piracy. Lawyers observed that the new law is complex and its impact will be difficult to judge until it is tested in court.
We always thought that computer gaming was the near-exclusive domain of incommunicado male teenagers, but a new study by Parks Associates has found that 59% of all U.S. consumers who play games on a mobile phone are of the lady persuasion.
Predictably, the study found that it’s still the men who want to blast aliens, blow up things and take part in role-playing games, while women prefer less frenetic mobile gaming activities, like online trivia and card games.
John Barrett, director of research at Parks Associates reckoned that women are the foundation of the gaming market, adding that, “as an industry, we need to cater to their preferences.”
UK British music recording industry trade association, the BPi, has today issued a statement that they have “successfully jumped the first hurdle in its battle to have unauthorised Russian download site AllofMP3.com declared illegal.”
The argument of the BPI is that AllofMP3 has no right to be selling the music, as they aren’t licensed to do so. AllofMP3 counter that they are “authorized by the license # LS-3М-05-03 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society (ROMS) and license # 006/3M-05 of the Rightholders Federation for Collective Copyright Management of Works Used Interactively (FAIR).”
Some of the most compelling games are often the simplest, and games don’t get much more basic than the age-old game of Battleships.
If you miss, you get a splashy sound (and quite possibly the derision of your chum across the room) and if you hit the target you get a gratifying kaboom (with the option to shout and jeer at your opponent’s misery).
Our opinion
Yo! Boom Boom! AOL’s produced a book* new ‘Action Sports On Demand’ website designed for skateboarders, snowboarders and other action sports athletes.
Taking a sniff around the suitably “yoot” style website, we clicked on the ‘About Us’ section, only to be greeted with one of those really annoying, pretentious dictionary-style definitions:
Spots! Yeah! Rad!