The Federal Communications Commission has approved the purchase by AT&T of 12MHz of wireless spectrum that covers 60 percent of the U.S.

A few years ago, an honest Virginia man reported a bank error that resulted in an extra $1.8 million dollars in his bank account -- not once, but three times. Where did all of that money come from? Perhaps they have now found the source. This week, a Georgia man was notified that he had a negative balance of $211 trillion at his Wachovia bank account. His debt makes the national debt, which is only slightly over $9 trillion, seem like small potatoes. Luckily for him, Wachovia reports that the balance was caused by an isolated banking error, and that he was not liable for any charges related to the negative balance. In this case, the error was that his account number was entered in place of his balance. Like the $218 trillion phone bill we saw in 2006, why are errors of this magnitude not be caught by some sort of bounds checking algorithm in the bank's software? Furthermore, if an error this size gets through all of the checks and balances, then what other, less noticeable errors are falling through the cracks every day?

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Wired has an interview with Robert Anderson, the guy who hacked into TorrentSpy's servers and handed over a bunch of internal TorrentSpy info to the MPAA. From the interview, it's quite clear that the MPAA knew that it was getting access to content that had not been legally obtained, but it still pushed Anderson for more such info (including asking him if he could obtain similar info about The Pirate Bay). Yet, because they know how to cover themselves legally, they made Anderson sign a contract saying that all of the info he gave them had been obtained legally. But, still, it's quite clear that the MPAA has no qualms spying on people using questionable means. At the same time, however, we've noted that TorrentSpy is so aghast at the idea of spying on its own users, that it shut off US access to its site to protect its users from court-ordered spying. So, which organization comes across as more ethical here? The MPAA, who's actively trying to get confidential information from various torrent tracker sites? Or TorrentSpy, who's actively trying to protect the privacy of its users? Yet, why is it that people act as if the MPAA has the moral high ground here?

It's well known that Jammie Thomas, the woman who lost her case against the RIAA for unauthorized file sharing was planning to appeal her decision -- though, we questioned some of the wisdom behind her pursuing the case. She does have a point in questioning the instructions given to the jury, which say that "making available" is distribution when that's still an open legal question with some rulings on both sides. The problem, though, is that the evidence that Thomas did participate in unauthorized file sharing is rather strong, which makes her appeal a lot less sympathetic. It looks like her lawyers may be realizing that and may be recognizing that the biggest point in Thomas' favor is that nearly everyone seems to feel the $222,000 awarded for 24 songs ($9,250 per song) seems rather excessive. With that in mind, the lawyers have now asked the judge to overrule the fine as being constitutionally excessive. You recall, of course, that the constitution has rules against cruel and unusual punishment. Two years ago there was even a research paper that argued the rates set by the law for infringement were constitutionally excessive. A year ago, that theory was first brought up in court. It's tough to see the court going for this argument, but it definitely would make the appeals process a lot more interesting.

Filed under: Portable Audio

The rumors are rampant this morning about an imminent, cross-the-board iTunes Plus (DRM-free) price cut. Previously, all Plus tracks had been listed at $1.29, not the usual $0.99 for DRM "protected" media. That premium delivers 256kbps quality tracks for you to play on any device supporting AAC playback. Of these tracks, nearly all were from EMI or just a handful of Indies. Now, presumably in response to launch of Amazon's MP3 store which prices DRM-free tracks at $0.89 or $0.99, Apple appears ready to cut the price of all Plus tracks to $0.99. As the rumor goes, we should see more Indie's shed their DRM sometime this week, if not today.

[Via MacRumors]

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