When the mobile operator EE started selling the first high-speed LTE wireless broadband service in Britain last autumn, it offered only packages with strict monthly limits on downloading data, effectively tying the volume of Web surfing to the price. But whether EE, a joint venture of Deutsche Telekom and France Télécom, will succeed by marketing fiat alone in killing off access to unlimited wireless data in Britain remains to be seen.
Republicans have targeted a federal phone subsidy, widely referred to as the "Obama phone" program, as a prime example of wasteful government spending. But supporters of the Federal Communications Commission’s Lifeline program are coming to its defense, arguing that it is crucial for ensuring that needy people are able to communicate with their loved-ones and call for help in an emergency.
"Allow me to set the record straight," said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn. "Without this program, 15 million low-income families would literally be choosing between feeding their children or going without a dial tone that potentially could save their lives and put them on a better economic path." Consumer advocacy groups Public Knowledge, Free Press, the Center for Media Justice and the Utility Reform Network issued statements praising Commissioner Clyburn for her full-throated defense of the subsidy.
If dating were like the cellphone industry, you would have to sign a contract when you entered a relationship stating that you would remain monogamous for two years, even if you wanted to break up. That’s what cellular carriers have pulled off by successfully lobbying for a recent government ruling that you cannot take the phone you paid for and switch to another provider.
It’s the latest reminder that owning a cellphone on one of the biggest United States providers can sometimes feel like an unhappy relationship. Time and again, in the minds of many customers, these companies take advantage of us and there isn’t much we can do about it. Srinivasan Keshav, a professor at the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, who studies mobile computing, has found that cell carriers make more than a 4,000 percent profit on text messages. Sending a megabyte of text messages over the cell network costs customers roughly $1,500. What does it cost carriers? Close to nothing, as texts piggyback on other data transfers, including voice calls. The carriers combined make billions of dollars a year in fees on texting alone.
More evidence that opportunities abound for current or ex-employees with malicious intent to wreak havoc or steal data from their employers comes from authentication company OneLogin. In a recent survey, OneLogin found 43% of respondents admitting that employees manage passwords in spreadsheets or on sticky notes, 34% share passwords with their co-workers for applications like FedEx, Twitter, Staples and LinkedIn, and 20% experienced an employee still being able to login after leaving the company.
As the Federal Communications Commission’s Chief FOIA Officer, I am responsible for oversight of the implementation of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) at the FCC. My 2013 Annual Report cited the progress we have made in our handling of FOIA requests.
Since last year, we have fewer backlogged FOIA appeals and all ten of the oldest pending FOIA appeals have been addressed. And, importantly, access to agency records continues to improve in large part because of a greater effort to post materials of interest on the web. This last point is particularly important because the more the Commission posts on its website, the less the public needs to use FOIA to obtain records. The statistics prove the point. The number of initial FOIA requests we received declined by 15% from FY 2011 to FY 2012 and continues to decline during FY 2013.
Thirty years ago, nearly half of 16-year-olds had a driver's license, their passport to independence. By 2010 that figure had dropped to 28%, according to research from the University of Michigan. The cultural shift is largely the result of technology that keeps teens connected to one another and the coolest new stuff without ever getting into a car.
All the adolescent staples — music, movies, clothes, books — are available with a mouse click or smartphone swipe. Driving once allowed teens "to go where you want, do what you want, see who you want and, in some sense, be who you want," said Lindsey Kirchoff, 23, of marketing software company HubSpot and a millennial trend marketing consultant. "The Internet has made the freedom that comes with a license anticlimactic." Getting a driver's license has also gotten a lot tougher. For starters, today's teens are more pressed for time than their parents were. Stiff competition for college admissions means prep courses, SAT tutoring, team sports and other activities to buff up college resumes.
The Mexican Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that iFone, a small IT company in Mexico City, is the rightful owner of the iPhone name in that country.
The company registered the name in 2003, four years before Apple rolled out the smartphone it dubbed the iPhone, according to the Wall Street Journal. The case goes back to 2009, when Apple tried to register the phone brand name in Mexico and the Mexican Industrial Property Institute said it was already taken. Apple tried to take the name by suing, arguing that it had expired for iFone. Now iFone, which says its names is a combination of the word "Internet" and telephone in Spanish, is free to continue pursuing damages from Apple and three Mexican carriers for using the name.
Judge Susan Illston, of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, struck down a controversial set of laws allowing the Federal Bureau of Investigation to seek people's data without a court's approval, saying the strict secrecy orders demanded by the laws are not constitutional.
Judge Illston said the laws, which underlie a tool known as a "national security letter," violate the First Amendment and the separation of powers principles. In her order, Judge Illston ordered the government to stop issuing national security letters or enforcing their gag orders, although she said enforcement of her judgment would be stayed pending appeal. A Department of Justice spokesman said the department was "reviewing the order." If the department does not appeal, the judge's orders will go into effect after 90 days.
[Commentary] If the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) remains unaltered, cultural scholarship will soon be conducted only at the behest of corporations, and public libraries may disappear entirely.
That's because the DMCA attacks one of the of the fundamental pillars of human civilization: the sharing of knowledge and culture between generations. Under the DMCA, manmade mechanisms that prevent the sharing of information are backed with the force of law. And sharing is vital for the survival of information. Take that away, and you have a recipe for disaster. "DMCA is a mess," says Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections at Stanford University Libraries. "It's basically putting cultural repositories in positions where they either have to interpret very murky scenarios or they have to decide that they are going to do something that they realize is forbidden and hope that nobody's going to notice."
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