April 2018

FCC Chairman Pai, Rep Scalise talk net neutrality, lighter rules in New Orleans visit

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai swung through New Orleans on to brief local technology sector leaders on how the city and Louisiana stand to benefit from what he called the "light-touch regulatory approach" in the era of President Donald Trump. Chairman Pai was joined by US Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA), who reiterated that he's a "strong supporter" of Pai's push to end rules governing net neutrality. Few specifics were given about what was discussed during the closed-door meeting with Chairman Pai and Rep Scalise.

Google Privacy Settlement Gets Scrutiny From US Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court will use a privacy case involving Google to consider making it harder for companies to settle class-action lawsuits without providing direct compensation to those affected. The justices agreed to hear arguments from two people who object to the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $8.5 million settlement of claims that it improperly disclosed users’ internet search terms to the owners of outside websites. The case centers on what critics say is an increasingly common litigation tactic, used by Facebook as well as Google.

T-Mobile, Sprint say merger is Trump's kind of deal (Politico)

Submitted by Robbie McBeath on Mon, 04/30/2018 - 17:26

An obscure 2017 telecom deal explains why T-Mobile and Sprint agreed to merge

An obscure wireless industry deal from 2017 can help explain why T-Mobile and Sprint finally agreed to merge after years of flirting with a deal.

25 years ago, the web opened up and the world changed

On April 30, 1993, CERN—the European Organization for Nuclear Research—announced that it was putting a piece of software developed by one of its researchers, Tim Berners-Lee, into the public domain. That software was a “global computer networked information system” called the World Wide Web, and CERN’s decision meant that anyone, anywhere, could run a website and do anything with it. In an era when online services were still dominated by proprietary, for-profit walled gardens such as AOL and CompuServe, that was a radical idea.