The FCC lost the case because the Court said they lacked "statutory authority" only. It had nothing to do with "rights" as was alluded to in the article summary.
That means Congress can pass a law giving the FCC that statutory authority; the FCC's statement about looking at various aspects of their "Broadband Plan" to discern where they have "authority" and where they do not, is a bit on the disingenuous side, no? It's as if they're saying, "We'd like an open/fair internet access situation, but we just can't do it." Whether bought-off Senators and Congress-people can muster a little "independence" and simply enact a law giving them that authority is another issue.
My g-friend is an attorney who deals with legal/regulatory affairs for the Cable/Telecom industry, and her position (which was shared by Comcast, AT&T, Time/Warners, etc), before the ruling, was that the FCC lacked statutory authority. Whaddya know?
This was a simple, easily-ascertained fact, not an opinion, or "interpretation", and therefor, it seems obvious (to me) that the FCC was well aware of that same fact, and was just playing a "game" in order to get some jurisdictional precedent. Why would they do that? My guess: To appear "concerned' about net neutrality, on the surface, but to ratify the business-as-usual abdication of industry/utility oversight, the interests of the "Public" (and society, as a whole) be damned.
If you just want to stop feeling awkward, get some videos of the Grateful Dead in concert, and look for closeups up Jerry Garcia's guitar playing. He was missing a finger and managed to not look awkward.
Jerry was missing a joint on his middle finger (okay, the "bird" finger) on his right hand, and had a deep background in both banjo and the pedal steel guitar. He had a very spare, ergonomic (in the sense of 'no wasted motions') style of playing that was fun to watch. (and pretty much unparalleled if you liked his sound, too).
But, things that involve 'muscle memory' can be relearned, believe me. Back in '69, or '70, I was doing a handful of benefits with an impromptu R 'n' B outfit, in the Santa Cruz area, and I met a rather brilliant blues guitar player (a young white guy), who had an unusual style: He played left-handed, and, on closer inspection, it was revealed that he was holding his guitar pick in his left hand (normal for a "leftie"), but he was holding it between his thumb and pinky finger!
He was missing the other three fingers on his left hand, entirely. They'd been 'lost' (at the knuckle!) in a nasty woodshop accident. That's bad enough, but it turned out the accident had only happened within the two years previous to the time I met the guy, and he was originally a right-handed guitarist! In other words, he'd played since early childhood, with all the fingers of his left hand being used to make the notes on the neck, while his right hand was the one doing the picking. I was astonished, no shit, and boy could he play.
This typing topic is interesting, sure, but let's not get carried away with switching keyboard layouts, or marginally faster typing, as being some sort of huge feat, eh?
...and therefore used the word "convicted" in the laymen's sense of the word. Actually, I don't even know what the correct legal term is.
"liable"
Then how dare you tell me how I can use it. I wish more people would choose to not buy those things. Fuck Apple.
Right, and their business model/policy differs from Motorola, Samsung, LG et. al., and Verizon, MetroPCS, Sprint et. al., exactly how? So when Verizon cripples, or "meters," the built-in "features" of Android will that be Google's fault, or Verizon's or Motorola's, or, in the minds of you retarded Apple-haters, will that be more Apple shit? Fuck your logic pal.
So I'm applying some affirmative action
Ah yes, and so much for neural net neutrality as well.
Jobs (meaning Apple, Inc) did not wait for an investigation, or the results of one, before alerting the SEC and the Press to the presence of irregularities in their stock option pricing methods. You want to be an Apple/Jobs hater? Fine with me, but focus on the facts in pursuit of that noble quest; there's enough of them.
I proofread and edited the Apple press release that went to the SEC through EDGAR, and I also considered a little insider trading when I realized I had market-moving information, and 30 minutes in which to act. I decided it wasn't worth risking the reputation/incarceration of a friend or two out in the "real" world, and demurred. I'm no saint, though. I just wasn't interested in taking anyone else down with me, and it was against company policy (to say the least) where I worked.
The company ended up firing me without cause, months later, on the exact day when my corporate medical plan was going into effect; they'd gotten wind that I was very ill. Corruption and lack of ethics come in all sorts of colors, don't they? When Steve Jobs's illness was over-reacted to in the Market, Apple stock plunged. I encouraged several friends with serious cash to double-down and pile into Apple. AAPL was at $80
My point is that there are many ways to cash in legitimately. It takes patience, finesse, logic, realism and work. Painting all company-men with the same brush is not exactly indicative of the presence of any of those traits.
"To0day" should have read: 15 October, not 14. Oops.
Didn't Standard Oil lower their prices below wholesale cost (i.e. selling their product at a loss) so that they could drive other oil companies out of business?
Actually, they might have done that, but their main , most effective tactic was to sign agreements with the transporters of oil in those days-the trains-to triple the cost of shipment by train, and to have the railroads radically increase prices between certain points-that were used mainly by Standard's competitors-with destination points that were also served by Standard, thereby driving their competitors into near-extinction.
They had other tactics that were concerned with raising the costs of their competitors.
The Sherman Act is rather complex, and has been messed with over the years, but the original Section One of the Act seems tailor-made to criminalize Standard's primary business model. It boiled down to an agreement that restrained competition and had a negative impact on interstate commerce.
As far removed from what appears to be happening with the uploading and "sharing" of copyrighted entertainment material as the Standard Oil "business model" might seem to be, there are some unusual similarities. In a "free" market Price is supposedly set by a combination of supply and demand and a (de facto) mutually agreed-upon price point where the spread between the bid and asking price of an item or service reach a given point. As well, the existence of competitors is theoretically an additional advantage on the "buy" side for numerous reasons. But all of this idealized market theory falls apart in the entertainment business. Why?
The short answer, from me, is: "I don't know, exactly." But when I look at the market for a new CD by (for the sake of argument) Bruce Springsteen, here's what I see: A cheaply-produced replica (the actual CD) of a work, done by an artist under an exclusive contract with a single company (record label), available, remarkably, at a price point that varies only marginally from the price for the exact same item, everywhere in the country, AND, is also priced at the same point(s) as other works by numerous artists all over the country, not only from the same record Label, but all "competing" labels.
Bruce's work is exclusively available from one "label" so I can't go to Warners or MCA (etc) to see if they can deliver the "same" product at a lower cost. There's no tiered pricing mechanism in the so-called "legitimate" marketplace, so, for all intents and purposes the price of the item is "posted" (in the same way that Standard "posted" their arbitrarily-set pricing of oil back in the pre-anti trust days).
Wow, okay, let's ignore the obvious price-fixing (for brevity, ha ha) and look at the alternatives to the "posted" price. There's only one. And it isn't iTunes. It's free. What has gone so wrong here? Lots of things: Markets aren't free, prices are fixed, there's no de facto "competition" in terms of a specific work's availability, the supply/demand ratio is horribly skewed by the labels's insistence on enforcing the myth of "scarcity" despite the de facto existence of truly unlimited copies of the same item, etc.
So many people download "copies" of equal or lesser quality/value. That is a classic "free market" response,under the current, enforced business model. When the band, Radiohead, made a new work available on an honor system they were incredibly successful. The argument against that method being viable for any and all other groups was that Radiohead had "clout" in the market-place, and other less-known/talented/savvy/etc bands wouldn't be as successful. But isn't that the nature of free-market price-point agreement?
My view is that the labels are doomed to anachronistic existence if they fail to grasp the realities of the modern age/market. C'est la vie. As a parting shot, I chose Bruce Springsteen on purpose, of course, as an example. Back in the mid-Seventies, when Bruce decided to unilaterally renegotiate his then recently-signed contract with Columbia Records, he had a habit (which I have a record of, here, on a number of "bootlegs" of his live shows from that era) of coming back for the second half of his long performances with the exhortation: "All right, all you bootleggers, roll them tapes!" Why? Because he needed the distribution that came from being "out there" to further his agenda. Plain and simple. And Bruce was also one of the first guys to chime in, years later (when he had far less of a financial motive for doing so) with the Industry mantra that "downloading is piracy/theft." Bad Brucie, no biscuit! mmhmm, and roll dem (mega) bytes, too.
If I paid for a website and I got crap like this, I'd be mighty angry. The New York Times is now officially a malware vector.
"Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love." -- Albert Einstein
