The FCC’s press release (PDF) says,
the Commission intends to commence an auction for Advanced Wireless Services licenses in the 1710-1755 MHz and 2110-2155 MHz bands as early as June 2006. …
To which Brett Glass replied,
Unfortunately, if this auction follows the pattern of previous ones, the sizes of the regions auctioned — and the speculative prices which large existing carriers will be willing to pay to preclude competition — will prevent small, new, or innovative operators from having a shot at buying this spectrum. You’ll see the big names — Verizon, Cingular, Nextel — but not smaller local operators, in keeping with the FCC’s chumminess with large corporations.
Robert Berger also replied,
Selling spectrum for exclusive, permanent ownership to a private or corporate entity should be grounds for racketeering charges against the agency pretending its theirs to sell and the congresspeople who passed laws allowing for this if they received bribes (so called campaign contributions) from the industry that is getting these public commons at a fixed price, non lease based price.
It is a sad day “For all of us who believe in the future of wireless broadband”. All this does is gum up the spectrum more and reward oligopolies who try to control the last mile so they can foist their walled gardens on the citizens who truly own the spectrum and have no real input to this corporate giveaway.
Scenarios closed networks, open networks
From NY Times, Business, Your Money
IBM’s Semantic Analysis Workbench and related software, and a similar proposal from Sony, propose to improve Internet searching by detecting underlying meanings, rather than keyword search, page rank, and the like. They therefore could help people find what they’re looking for in an abundant universe of user-created content, but they are also proprietary solutions rather than on the roadmap of the W3C’s Semantic Web project.
Scenarios closed networks, open content
Cory Doctorow, EFF’s European Outreach Coordinator, is doing a column for Popular Science on technology and policy. His first column is on why DVDs can’t be backed up. He says:
No matter how pretty its picture, what you’re expected to do with a DVD today is the one thing you could do in 1994: watch it on your TV. Why? Because when tech companies created the DVD, they sold you out. They let Hollywood hold its content hostage so that they could control who gets to build players and what those players can do. Tech execs have not only rolled over, they’ve joined the other side, advocating laws and restrictions that serve the entertainment conglomerates first and us second.
If that doesn’t seem like such bad news, think about the way it used to be. When Sony created the VCR in 1976, it enabled anyone to make near-perfect copies of movies. Sony did this without permission, and Hollywood went nuts. The Motion Picture Association of America launched an eight-year battle against the VCR that culminated in a 5-4 Supreme Court decision declaring the device legal and changing copyright law to address these new capabilities. That ruling is the reason you don’t get sued for recording a TV show. (During one Congressional hearing, MPAA spokesman Jack Valenti uttered this infamous hyperbole: “The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman home alone.” Today, pre-recorded media earns the studios more revenue than box-office ticket sales.) …
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Slashdot points to an article in today’s Investor’s Business Daily (Google cache) that says, in part:
Personal computers using Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows XP Media Center Edition operating system remain a high-priced, low-volume niche product two years after entering the market.
Meanwhile, cable and satellite firms are aggressively deploying new set-top boxes with personal video recorders. The ability to make a PC serve as a PVR is widely considered to be the killer application of media center PCs.
… Market researcher International Data Corporation expects about 600,000 Windows media center PCs will have shipped in 2004, up from 300,000 in 2003. But 3.5 million PCs will be sold with TV tuner cards this year, meaning that there are a lot of vendors selling generic media center PCs.
The Slashdot post also links to a few of the alternatives to Microsoft’s Windows Media center.
Scenarios open networks
1-2-3 Music Store provides cheap way for small record companies to sell MP3s online.
Scenarios open content
MPAA sues operators of BitTorrent tracker servers
Scenarios closed content
Court of Appeals rules P2P software legal
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Wiki contributors moving toward Creative Commons licenses
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Despite appeal to EU by independent record companies, Sony Music and BMG records execute merger and combine operations
Scenarios closed content
Both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Disc manufacturers agree to require Microsoft Windows Media 9 in hardware disc players
Scenarios closed networks