False. It includes only licensees, which are things like AT&T uverse and CenturyLink Prism. As they note in the paper, it's basically stuff that to the end-user looks exactly like cable ("[f]rom a customer's perspective, there is likely not much difference between IPTV and other video services, such as cable service") but happens to use the Internet for data transport rather than dedicated cable lines. It's not an extension to generic video streaming a la Netflix, Youtube, hulu, justin.tv, whatever.

Netflix isn't an IPTV service, none of this applies to them (or likely to any of the sites you're talking about). It's to ensure that AT&T uverse, CenturyLink Prism, and the like (which are essentially cable/fios systems that use the internet for transmission rather than purpose-built lines) don't have a regulatory loophole simply because they use a different technology for transport.

No, they haven't. Read the FCC paper. The IPTV services they're discussing are essentially traditional cable services that use the Internet as their transport layer (e.g. AT&T ustream, CenturyLink Prism). They're clarifying that the exact technology used for regulated services doesn't create a loophole, not extending their regulation to Youtube or Hulu or Netflix (or ustream or justin.tv).

If you have a reasonable belief that Netflix has the right to stream it, then you're probably lacking the mens rea (roughly "intent") necessary to commit felony infringement. Note that "reasonable" is an important word here.

What justification in the world would there be for the FCC to regulate and license video transmissions over the Internet?

There's nothing here about regulating Netflix or Hulu or Youtube or anything else that's just video transmissions over the Internet.

IPTV refers to services like AT&T u-verse and CenturyLink PrismTV, that essentially use the internet to gateway traditional television signals. As the FCC analysis says, "[f]rom a customer's perspective, there is likely not much difference between IPTV and other video services, such as cable service".

Their job was to ensure orderly sharing of the public airwaves, nothing else.

This is false. The FCC from the outset was designed to regulate wired networks as well as broadcasts--it superseded the earlier FRC (the radio commission) which only dealt with the airwaves, and from its original charter in the Federal Communications Act of 1934 has been tasked with regulating telegraph, telephone, and other communications independent of the airwaves. From the very first section of the Act: "PURPOSES OF ACT, CREATION OF FEDERAL
COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION for the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio."

This has been interpreted to include internet & broadband communications through court decisions that have since been explicitly affirmed by acts of Congress (including the Telecommunications act of 1996).

Obama is pushing to make streaming copyrighted material a FELONY. Have fun with your "hope and change".

No, he isn't. You're missing some crucial piece of the story here, but there's no way that Obama's trying to outlaw Netflix, Hulu, and OnDemand.

(It's possible that you're referring to the Commerce Department's push to make unlicensed streaming of copyrighted material a felony, but that's a far cry from what you're asserting).

The Jockey Club already prohibits artificial insemination.

That's perfectly allowable if you're simply a registry that says "X is a Horse Association branded Mustang; Y is not". But as soon as your organization goes beyond that and says "X is a Horse Association branded Mustang, and only our branded Mustangs are allowed to enter races A, B, and C" then you're impacting commerce and are subject to monopoly laws. If you're one of many options for the same kind of commerce, you're in the clear. If you exercise monopoly power, you're more limited in what restrictions you can impost.

I'm not sure what the law should be for AQHA, I'm just pointing out that they aren't simply a consumer information company saying "this horse meets our standard for being an Organic Mustang!". They run commercial races, and are saying "this horse is or isn't allowed to make money by doing M and N". As such, they are subject to monopoly law (if they're not a monopoly, that doesn't mean much, but if they are it's limiting on their power).

Anyone can come up with a definition for "Green Growers Organic Certified" food, and define it how they want if it's just informational (presuming it doesn't conflict with legal standards of the same name). If the Smarcher Danielle Interlands company runs 90% of supermarkets in the US and says that only things that meet their definition of Super Enviro Organic Food are allowed to be sold, though, then that definition could come under federal scrutiny. Effect on markets matters.

That's a complicated question. I want to first make it clear that I'm not saying whether I agree with this decision or not. I don't know enough about the market to judge.

But because the AQHA isn't just an informational list (it actually controls whether you're allowed to engage in certain commercial endeavors or not), it is subject to monopoly regulations. Monopolies are complex. If F1 were the only car-racing company of real size that existed, they would certainly be much more limited in what they could allow. If Indy and CART didn't exist, but NASCAR did, it'd be an interesting question whether the market is "car racing" and so NASCAR provides real competition, or whether it's "open wheel racing" and F1 exercises monopoly control.

Courts decide those kinds of questions, and they change with the realities of the marketplace--Ma Bell got busted up, but if Skype and other things had existed they might not have even if they were the only real telephone company in the US. It'd depend on whether the telephone market is distinct from other communications, or whether they form a single competitive market.

In the case of AQHA, like I said I don't know. I know that you can't go race your quarter horse at the Kentucky Derby, even if it's faster than the horses there--the Jockey Club limits those kinds of races to registered thoroughbreds only. So long as you're part of a competitive market, that's fine. But if you have enough power to essentially limit the market, then you lose your right to do a lot of kinds of regulations.

One issue is that AQHA runs large commercial races that are open only to its members. They're excercising market control by excluding certain animals based on arbitrary criteria; whether that's a monopoly power or not depends on your view of what constitutes the market in this case (the courts ruled that it is).

For instance:
In 1993, AQHA launched Quarter Horse horse racing's first series of races with a championship-ending day, called The Bank of America Racing Challenge. It is a series of 60 races run throughout North and South America with the winners of each race earning a starting berth into a season-ending Championship Day. The Bank of America Racing Challenge currently offers nearly $6 million in purse and bonus awards.

I was all ready to come out guns blazing, because on my work Mac if I store something in Chrome it's available in Firefox. But it turns out we have the keychain firefox extension installed there. Pretty much everything I said about firefox should be disregarded. That's a big problem on my end, apologies for the misinformation.

Still, Chrome uses keychain/gnome-keyring/etc, and the problem this article purports to uncover only exists on the one (albeit very widely deployed) platform that doesn't have a useful key/password management system. On the ones that do, Chrome happily uses them. Still a big problem on my end, but the article is wildly misleading.

Sorry, you're right--Chrome uses kwallet natively but Firefox needs the add-on for it.

If chrome uses the same code for password storage as Thunderbird does then they have even less of an excuse for not allowing a separate Master password like Thunderbird does by default.

They do offer that, though. Except on Windows, where as I pointed out there is not decent built-in password/key management system and everything breaks down (forcing browsers to roll their own systems).

Thunderbird's master password system has nothing to do with the OS so I'm not really sure what you are talking about. I have to type my separate master password into Thunderbird in order to access those passwords in plaintext, regardless of how I'm otherwise logged in.

Again this isn't true on systems that have OS-supported password/key management.

For instance, on gnome-keyring systems by default the keyring is encrypted with your login password, and it's automatically unlocked when you log in and locked when you log out (or unlock/lock the screen). If you want to you can change the keyring password to be something different, then you have to manually enter it (a GUI password prompt pops up when Thunderbird or Chrome or whatever tries to ask for a key) to access things.

Thunderbird has nothing to do with that implementation, it just happily uses it. So do Chrome and Firefox. They all behave the same way. You can, in fact, store a password in Chrome and then retrieve it in Firefox or Thunderbird (or vice-versa) without having to do a re-import from one to the other, because it's the OS that's handling it all rather than everyone reinventing the wheel.

kwallet and keychain systems (for KDE and OS X) work similarly from what I understand.

So does Chrome. It uses keychain on OS X, kwallet on KDE, and gnome-keychain on Gnome (as does Firefox, at least the latter two--haven't tested on a Mac). The real issue here is that Windows doesn't offer a secure password/key storage solution so browsers are forced to roll their own.

Fundamentally you have to store the passwords in a way that the user can access their plaintext in order to be able to send them to the remote web site.

In Firefox if you want to see the clear text:
Edit->Preferences->Security->Saved Passwords->Show Passwords

But having Firefox not show my encrypted passwords if I happen to forgot to lock up the desktop?

Huh?

Edit->Preferences->Security->Saved Passwords->Show Passwords

(Chrome uses the OS's password manager by default. If you're using gnome-keyring or kwallet (Linux and others), or keychain (Mac) then you can lock/unlock the password access independently of locking the screen or logging in. Even on Windows you can change the login password to be different from the Chrome keyring password).