56830787
submission
bostonidealist writes:
The White House has officially responded to a We The People petition created on January 15, 2014, which urged "...the President to direct the FCC to classify ISPs as 'common carriers'" after the D.C. U.S. Court of Appeals "struck down the Federal Communications Commission's open internet rules." The White House statement indicates that "absent net neutrality, the Internet could turn into a high-priced private toll road that would be inaccessible to the next generation of visionaries," but notes that "The FCC is an independent agency. Chairman Wheeler has publicly pledged to use the full authority granted by Congress to maintain a robust, free and open Internet — a principle that this White House vigorously supports."
35860129
submission
bostonidealist writes:
Just after the July 6th 1-year anniversary of the its unlimited music storage promotion (and presumably after early subscribers have all renewed their annual subscriptions), Amazon.com has changed the way its Cloud Player and Cloud Drive services work. Starting today, music uploaded to a Cloud Drive will count against its owner's Cloud Drive quota and will not be accessible through Cloud Player. Further, music files previously uploaded to Cloud Player or Cloud Drive are being automatically converted to 256 Kbps audio whenever Amazon "has the rights to do so" and new audio files uploaded to Cloud Player will automatically be checked against Amazon's music database in iTunes Match-like fashion. One of the appeals of Amazon's Cloud Player service up to this point has been that users could pay a flat fee and store an unlimited number of their own music files (with their own tags, artwork, and audio data intact). Now, Amazon is automatically replacing users' previously uploaded data with its own, without allowing users to opt in/out.
