January 18th marks a day that huge sites like Reddit, Wikipedia and many others – just noticed that OSNews.com is also protesting as well as a black bar over Google’s logo at Google.com – plan to shut down their sites in protest of the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act. Why should you care?

(SOPA) would authorize the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders against websites outside U.S. jurisdiction accused of infringing on copyrights, or of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. After delivering a court order, the U.S. Attorney General could require US-directed Internet service providers, ad networks, and payment processors to suspend doing business with sites found to infringe on federal criminal intellectual property laws. The Attorney General could also bar search engines from displaying links to the sites.

Effectively, all it would take would be a complaint from somebody in the MPAA and RIAA, or some intellectual property (proven or not) holder will be able to complain that your website is an agent of some form of piracy. This is an oversimplified look at what these bills provide and attempt to do; however it’s an attempt to stop foreign websites from pirating American software, movies and music. And to do so, it grants these rights holders the ability to influence your ISP to block sites as well as disallow search engines to display results that they deem are infringing on their rights.

To date, DNS/ISP blocking has been removed from these controversial bills. But there’s still a lot of “teeth” in the bills that allow intellectual property and copyright holders the ability to point their finger and have a website deemed a website that’s committing piracy.

You don’t have to imagine where this is going. Go to YouTube now and you will not being able to hear some more music since the Universal Music Group (UMG) has disallowed uploading any of their catalog. Now imagine that power Internet wide. That’s just the start. And there are no provisions against false accusations. The burden of proof is on the site to prove their innocence.

So what is piracy? We all know websites that allow wholesale downloading of movies, music and software *cough*PirateBay*cough* but with highly visible sites like YouTube being monitored already, imagine the entire Internet under that type of scrutiny. Love a song, link to a YouTube video that’s not yet censored, you might be considered contributing to piracy. That’s a bit extreme, but who’s saying that it will not end there. Sure, some sites do nothing but link to pirated material. There’s no use for those sites other than assisting piracy. Fine, go after those sites.

But SOPA and PIPA are structured mainly to restrict access to the Internet based on rules, accusations and the lawyers that they employ that are always shifting to support their agendas. And that agenda is simply to make money from what they consider lost sales to piracy. In many cases, historically, it’s been proven that those that will pirate were not going to buy the software/music/movie anyway. And in the end, those that are paying customers walk away with the feeling that they are being treated like criminals.

Bills like this have existed in one form or another for the last decade. Ten years ago, SSSCA was another attempt at such a law that empowered the film and music industry and regulate all digital media via restricting and downright crippling copy restriction preventative measures. Think DRM on a much more invasive level – but not as invasive as Sony Music putting a rootkit on your PC.

Learn more about PIPA and SOPA. Write your representatives, even the ones that do not support PIPA/SOPA. Boycott the companies that support SOPA and PIPA. Make your voice and opinion known. And find out why Lamar Smith (Republican – Texas) is so damn hung up on this bill.

[ Links: SOPA, SOPA and PIPA: Just the Facts ]

Samsung and Google have announced the newest version of Android, Ice Cream Sandwich aka 4.0 and Samsung has popped up with the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy Nexus, probably the worst kept secret in history.

4.65-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED HD screen
1.2GHz dual-core processor
Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich
5-megapixel rear-facing camera with LED flash
1.3-megpaixel front-facing camera
1080p HD video capture and playback
1GB of RAM
16GB or 32GB internal memory versions
1750mAh battery
Bluetooth 3.0
NFC support
Barometer
8.94mm thick
135g (weight)
Pentaband HSPA+
LTE available by region

There’s USB 2.0, WiFi a/b/g/n, a compass, a barometer!?, and perhaps one of the best looking, high resolution screens on any phone out there. Google Face Unlock also comes with the phone to provide for a cool and secure unlock system.

Rumored prices start at $299 on-contract, no word about the unlocked price yet.

On September 4th, AT&T unveiled its first 4G LTE/HSPA+ tablet, the HTC Jetstream. It’s also the first 4G tablet to run on the Android 3.1 Honeycomb operating system (which is specifically designed for mobile devices and tablets).

The JetStream comes pre-loaded with AT&T Family Map, HTC Hub, HTC Watch, Friendstream, AT&T Navigator and Android Market. Thanks to the Honeycomb OS, the JetStream also includes easy access to Google Talk (including video chat), Chrome browser and the new Google Maps 5.0.

In addition, the HTC Jetstream uses the HTC Sense UX for a high quality graphical interface. The front facing 1.3 mexapixel camera (and 8 megapixel rear facing), in conjunction with the 10.1″ WXGA HD screen makes photography and online printing a breeze.

In fact, the only real drawback to the JetStream is price. Unlike other tablets such as the 32GB 3G iPad, the JetStream retails for $699.99 with a two year contract. Consumers aren’t happy with the on contract price, and with AT&T’s proposed purchase of T-Mobile, fear more price hikes in the future.

Contract Details:
The JetStream is $699.99 with a new two-year contract. AT&T offers two payment plans: prepaid and postpaid.

• Postpaid: $14.99 for 250 MB or $25 for 2 GB. Fee for going over their allotment: $10 per 1 GB of overage. Charges appear on monthly statements.
• Prepaid: $14.99 for 250 MB or $25 for 2 GB. Fee for going over their allotment: $25 an additional 2 GB of overage. Charges appear on monthly statements.

You can see full pricing details on the HTC JetStream here.

Adam Costa, our guest blogger. He is the co-author of Business In A Backpack, which explains how to market your business while on the road and a business consultant who helps small and midsize firms create high quality marketing materials, like booklet printing.

Our long, dark, and frequently-ridiculous Verizon iPhone rumor nightmare is over. Verizon this morning at a press event here in New York City confirmed longstanding rumors that AT&T has lost their exclusive arrangement with Apple, and that Verizon will be getting the iPhone. According to Verizon, the device will appear next month and will be CDMA/EVDO only not LTE. According to Verizon, this is the culmination of two years of discussion between the two companies. “We have enormous respect for the company this team has built and the hard-won loyalty they’ve won from their customers,” Verizon COO Tim Cook proclaimed on stage. “This is just the beginning of a great relationship between Apple and Verizon.”

Link to the original article…

France was one of the first countries to impose laws that require ISP’s terminate the service of users who repeatedly engage in copyright infringement. Under the rules, the entertainment industry tracks offenders and submits infringement claims to a specifically-created government agency named Hadopi. Hadopi then works with ISPs to obtain personal information and send out warning letters or kick people off the Internet. By October, the industry was already making 25,000 requests per day, a daily total they’d like to see at around 50,000. However, according to the Record Labels, Hadopi isn’t sending out warnings fast enough for their liking, only sending out about 2,000 per day.

Techdirt correctly wonders about any kind of accuracy in the claims process when you’re working at that speed:

Think about how many mistakes are being made when you’re sending 50,000 notices per day. Over the course of about five years, the RIAA apparently sued less than 20,000 people and still made a lot of mistakes. US Copyright Group got a lot of attention for accusing a few thousand people of file sharing particular movies and also appears to have made a lot of mistakes. Yet, here, with Hadopi, the labels are accusing 50,000 people per day, and are upset that Hadopi isn’t just rubber stamping all the notices? It appears that the record labels don’t care at all about what happens if they accuse totally innocent people.

Of course the goal of the record labels with any of these campaigns has never been accuracy or fairness. The goal has long been to generate media coverage and create fear, something that’s easier to do with the government’s help. Of course this is all a rather expensive taxpayer and ISP funded game of whack-a-mole, where non-infringing users can easily get caught up in the wash. Meanwhile, France piracy rates remain stable or growing as people simply move to less-watched alternatives like direct downloads.

Link to the original article…

Last week it was discussed at length how the investment community would like the public to believe that the shift to low cap and high overage broadband pricing is “inevitable.” We also discussed how cable industry lobbyists would like the public to believe that such a shift isn’t about making more money, it’s about helping the poor. Not only is the metered billing push absolutely about making money, it’s about artificially constricting the pipe to protect uncompetitive carriers and TV revenues from Internet video. But instead, there’s a very concerted effort afoot to portray this shift as necessary, inevitable, and even altruistic.

Most consumers prefer the simplicity of flat rate pricing, and understand that ISPs are perfectly profitable under the flat-rate pricing model. They also understand that this is a pipe dream forged by never-satisfied investors, and once implemented ends with ever soaring per gig fees and ever shrinking usage caps.

The PR campaign continues this week, with Hewlett-Packard’s Joe Weinman claiming at GigaOM that not only is such a pricing shift “inevitable,” but that it’s a shift that actually originates with consumers, not investors or ISP executives. Weinman starts out on the wrong foot immediately, by confusing “pay per use” with low cap and high overage pricing models:

For the record, I like unlimited Internet access just as much as anyone else. However, such plans appear to be on their way out, and here s why. As explored in “The Market for Melons”, pay-per-use is not an evil plot by greedy robber barons, but a natural outcome of independent, rational consumer choice. Consider a town with an all-you-can-eat (flat rate) buffet and an a la carte (pay-per-use) restaurant. Smart shoppers on diets will save money by patronizing the a la carte restaurant, whereas heavy eaters will save money by visiting the buffet…. Bottom line: it is not the proprietors driving this dynamic, but the customers themselves acting out of pure, rational self-interest

Except for the thousandth time, ISP’s are not interested in real pay per use plans because the majority of their users (who simply check e-mail a few times a day) would downgrade to $5 tiers and cost carriers billions. What ISPs are proposing is flat-rate pricing with costly per gigabyte overages (completely detached from any real-world costs, which for ISPs are fixed or dropping) layered on top. Meanwhile, the suggestion this is a consumer driven push is absurd. This is an investor driven push for obvious reasons, and you have to wonder if Weinman saw the consumer reaction when Time Warner Cable proposed charging consumers up to $5 per gigabyte then insisted such pricing was for their own good.

Weinmen offers up a second post in which he hallucinates a laundry list of supposed benefits that will occur from this change in pricing paradigm. Most of them revolve around technology platforms designed to aid this monitoring and metering of usage and billing, which we’ll go out on a crazy limb and guess is precisely what Weinman is selling at HP. Unfortunately, Weinman begins his sales pitch just like the cable industry traditionally has by pretending this is an inevitability consumers want, and that such a pricing shift is financially necessary. Neither are true.

Link to the original article…

Verizon today unveiled more detail about their LTE wireless broadband launch, announcing that they’ll be offering the 5-12 Mbps service in 38 markets and 60 airports starting December 5. Most importantly, Verizon finally unveiled their pricing for the new service, which after a year filled with endless hints by executives about wanting to try something new winds up being somewhat underwhelming, traditional, and expensive.

The base pricing for LTE laptop connectivity via USB modem (there will be no smartphones at launch) is significantly more expensive than the 3G pricing they unveiled in October, though the caps are obviously higher. Verizon’s current EVDO USB modem plans come in two flavors: $40 for 250MB of usage and $60 for 5GB of usage. Verizon’s LTE pricing will now be $50 for 5GB of usage, or $80 for 10 GB of usage, with $10 per each additional GB. Sayeth big red:

Verizon Wireless customers can choose from two 4G LTE Mobile Broadband data plans: $50 monthly access for 5 GB monthly allowance or $80 monthly access for 10 GB monthly allowance, both with $10/GB overage. For laptop connectivity, two 4G LTE USB modems will be initially available: the LG VL600 is available at launch and the Pantech UML290 will be available soon, each $99.99 after $50 rebate with a new two-year agreement. Both USB modems provide backward-compatibility with Verizon Wireless’ 3G network. If laptop users travel outside of a 4G LTE coverage area, they will automatically stay connected on the company’s 3G network.

It’s interesting to note there’s not even really an entry level LTE plan (say $25 for a gig of use) after literally dozens of Verizon executive comments claiming usage-based pricing was going to be the future. We’ll assume this pricing may evolve as the company begins offering LTE smartphones, which Verizon today announced will arrive sometime in “mid-2011″. Verizon also again today confirmed these devices will initially use 3G/CDMA for voice until LTE voice standards are hashed out. As an added aside: the service will only support MS Windows based PC’s at launch.

Link to the original article…

Verizon finally aired their first ever commercial for their upcoming LTE network during last night’s Sunday Night Football. The Stephen Spielberg-esque ad ad features a lightning bolt delivered by snail mail, and confirms rumors that the network is “coming in December.” As previously noted, Verizon’s initial launch next month will be fairly significant, the 5-12 Mbps service covering 38 markets (roughly one third of the population) and 60 airports right out of the gate. We’re still waiting on Verizon to reveal their pricing for the speedier service, which as of last week the company still claimed they weren’t sure of.

Link to the original article…

With Comcast and NBC’s immense lobbying firepower, there’s virtually no chance their merger will be denied by regulators and while there will be some conditions, recent history suggests the conditions may only give a quick nod to substantive consumer protections. According to the Wall Street Journal however, these conditions will be “significant” focused largely on preventing Comcast from withholding, or threatening to withhold, NBC Universal’s programming from competitors. The Journal also claims that the FCC is considering imposing some kind of network neutrality requirements on Comcast’s network:

The FCC is looking at all parts of Comcast and NBC Universal’s combined online-video distribution chain for ways Comcast could promote content over its rivals. The agency is considering imposing a “net neutrality” condition on Comcast’s Internet network, banning it from deliberately slowing or blocking legal traffic. FCC staff members are meeting twice a week with commission Chairman Julius Genachowski about the deal and have set an internal deadline of circulating proposed conditions by mid-December, according to a person familiar with the review.

Given the contentiousness of network neutrality and the FCC’s seeming unwillingness to seriously tackle this issue, any neutrality language will likely be very vague and focused on simple transparency if it even survives the final cut at the FCC. According to the Journal, final DOJ approval could come within weeks, though Comcast is apparently kicking back at any proposed conditions that would cover Internet video.

Link to the original article…

Buoyed by the recent ITU declaration that nobody is technically deploying a 4G network here in the States, T-Mobile recently kicked off a new marketing campaign proclaiming that the carrier has the “largest 4G network.”

One cornerstone of the new campaign is apparently making fun of AT&T’s network, which has seen more than its fair share of criticism the last few years due to performance issues in markets like New York and San Francisco. Recent commercials portray AT&T as a balding, middle aged man weighing down the iPhone 4, and the latest ad in the series airing this week certainly isn’t flattering. AT&T got into a feud with Verizon last year about ads mocking AT&T 3G coverage (they even filed suit), but so far hasn’t had anything to say about T-Mobile’s campaign.

Link to the original article…

As we mentioned in March, Harbinger Capital Partners is building a new nationwide LTE network dubbed “Lightsquared” using spectrum owned a satellite subsidiary by the name of SkyTerra. Leaked launch information indicates that the company should have 20 markets live by 2012. While they may not have built any cell cites yet the company this week announced that they’ve launched their SkyTerra 1 satellite, which will provide the satellite half of their network build equation.

According to the company, the new bird is one of the largest ever built:

The satellite, a Boeing 702HP built by Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems, is designed to provide wireless mobile services to millions of subscribers. LightSquared’s SkyTerra 1 satellite features a 22-meter L-band reflector-based antenna the largest commercial antenna reflector to be put into service. The satellite, among the most powerful commercial satellites ever built, will provide ubiquitous nationwide coverage and enable integrated satellite-terrestrial service using products that are similar to today s typical mobile devices in terms of size, capabilities and build costs.

Lightsquared plans to sell wholesale access to their LTE network, which will use this new satellite for rural coverage and emergency communication services. The LTE portion of the network will cost about $7 billion and will be built by Nokia. On the more terrestrial news front, it was revealed this week that Harbinger is being investigated by the SEC for a $113 million loan taken out by Harbinger founder Philip Falcone to pay personal taxes and potential “preferential treatment” of certain investors.

Link to the original article…

At the tail end of last month, the FTC dropped their inquiry into the Google Wi-Fi Street View kerfuffle, satisfied by Google’s argument that their collection of user Wi-Fi data was a screw up, the data wasn’t particularly useful, and that Google had made changes to prevent this from happening again. That supports studies from earlier this year showing that Google vehicles were moving too quickly, and changing channels too frequently, to really collect much useful information from the unsecured hotspots passed.

The FCC this week confirmed they too have been investigating Google, adding their inquiry to several already underway by numerous state attorneys general. Meanwhile, Joe Barton, most famous recently for apologizing to BP for their “unfair” treatment during the gulf oil spill, is accusing Google of lying:

Key Republicans and Democrats in Congress have indicated that the privacy issues raised by Google’s Street View data collection could be a factor when lawmakers consider new Internet privacy legislation next year. Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, a senior Republican lawmaker, suggested last week on C-SPAN that Google’s data collection wasn’t accidental and that it was “something to look at.”

So why is Barton, a guy who apologized to AT&T for FCC efforts to protect consumers, concerned about Google? Barton’s traditionally a pretty loyal political player for AT&T, Verizon and Comcast, who may be trying to make a little extra policy hay out of Google’s screw up. A new battle looms over privacy laws, and numerous companies (including Microsoft and AT&T) are trying to get privacy laws passed that make disrupting Google’s market power a priority, and consumer protection an afterthought.

The more fear that can be raised concerning Google, the easier it will be for companies who supposedly loathe regulation to get Google heavily regulated. While Google screwed up here, raising very serious questions about how clueless Google is about what they’re doing on a daily basis, there’s no evidence their Wi-Fi collection problem was intentional or malicious. And unlike like some companies that trample privacy laws, Google has at least been very honest about the fact they screwed up.

Link to the original article…