With the 2006 election 6 months away, polarized political camps may exploit new Federal Election Commission (FEC) rules to file complaints against one other for online activities, a blog activist said Thurs. at the Computer, Freedom & Privacy Conference. A ban on using the FEC to file politically-based nuisance complaints was a goal RedState.com founder Mike Krempasky and DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas pursued unsuccessfully in a 2005 blog assault on expanding the FEC’s hands-off Internet rules. At the conference, a campaign consultant said he had heard of only one such online campaign fight at the Commission, years before the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA) was enacted. However, a campaign finance lawyer warned that abuse of the federal complaint process may be less common than enforcement of state laws for online activists.
Qualcomm Wed. hiked its Q3 earnings forecast based on more demand for low-end cell chips and high-end wireless technology. The manufacturer upped its revenue estimate to 38-40 cents per share, up 2 cents from earlier projections. Most of the company’s growth is coming from China and India, it said. Investment firm Lazard Capital Markets ranked the company a “BUY,” saying the raised earnings projections are a “hard act to follow.” It noted concern about 6 competitors in Europe and the U.S. suing Qualcomm for unfair business practices.
A 13-year-old Russian orphan pleaded with lawmakers Wed. to enact legislation to crack down on those seeking online to exploit children for sex. Masha Allen was molested and raped for more than 5 years, and her nude photos were circulated on the Internet by her adoptive father. She urged a House Commerce panel on oversight and investigations to take action.
The publicity surrounding lawsuits against parodists is distracting from fair-use legal issues that educational institutions such as libraries face, an academician told the Computers, Freedom & Privacy Conference Wed. Georgetown U. Law School Prof. Rebecca Tushnet said libraries in particular are treated the same as the original Napster under copyright law. An intellectual property advocate at the event defended the need to clearly delineate fair-use exceptions to let markets develop for other uses.
The House Commerce, Trade & Consumer Protection Subcommittee on Wed. replayed concerns raised a week earlier at a Senate hearing on digital radio content (CD April 27 p8). The debate centered again on XM’s new portable gadgets, which can record and store digital copies of songs from XM’s live satellite radio stream. Billed as a broad look at digital rights management, the discussion narrowed to whether XM’s new toys overstep copyright boundaries.
The House Commerce, Trade & Consumer Protection Subcommittee on Wed. replayed concerns raised a week earlier at a Senate hearing on digital radio content (CD April 27 p8). The debate centered again on XM’s new portable gadgets, which can record and store digital copies of songs from XM’s live satellite radio stream. Billed as a broad look at digital rights management, the discussion narrowed to whether XM’s new toys overstep copyright boundaries.
Sirius deems the PERFORM Act introduced in the Senate (S-2644) “not very consumer-friendly,” and though it would be “presumptuous” to predict the bill’s fate, “we would be very surprised if there was any movement” on it, CEO Mel Karmazin told analysts Tues. in a Q1 earnings call.
Sirius deems the PERFORM Act introduced in the Senate (S-2644) (CED April 28 p6) “not very consumer-friendly,” and though it would be “presumptuous” to predict the bill’s fate, “we would be very surprised if there was any movement” on it, CEO Mel Karmazin told analysts Tues. in a Q1 earnings call.
Prospects are good for passage of a telecom bill the President can sign this Congress, House Telecom Subcommittee Chmn. Upton (R-Mich.) told a Tues. National Journal breakfast. “Their bill is not all that far away from ours,” Upton said, referring to a Senate telecom bill introduced Mon. (CD May 2 p1). That bill, especially its franchise provision, offers a “hook” to get something into conference where the 2 can be reconciled, Upton said.
The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has issued a final rule which amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) to implement the Wassenaar Arrangement's December 2005 agreement to revise the formula for calculating computer performance from Composite Theoretical Performance (CTP) measured in Millions of Theoretical Operations Per Second (MTOPS) to Adjusted Peak Performance (APP) measured in Weighted TeraFLOPS (Trillion Floating point Operations Per Second) (WT).