Archives for April 2006

Jagger Refuses To Give Bush Hotel Room

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“Sir Mick Jagger has refused to give up his room in an Austrian hotel after US President George W. Bush attempted to book it for himself. The Rolling Stones frontman is paying $6,300 a night for the luxury Royal suite at the Imperial Hotel in Vienna, which he reserved just days before Bush’s assistants tried to book it for a summit meeting. The president’s aides have tried to persuade Jagger, who has spoken out against the war in Iraq, to give the room up–without success. A source tells British newspaper The Sun, ‘White House officials had wanted to reserve the suite and all the other rooms on the first floor. But Mick and the Stones had already booked every one of them. Bush’s people seemed to be under the impression that they would just hand over the suites but there was no way Mick was going to do that.’ The Royal suite is ranked among the top 100 best hotel rooms in the world.”

Reminds me of the story David Boaz tells of arriving early for a movie at the Uptown so he could get a good front-row balcony seat and later being approached by Secret Service agents who asked him to move because he was in Al Gore’s favorite seat. Of course, he refused. (Hat tip Jacinda!)

Apr 25, 2006 | Comments Off

Norquist seeks trademark on ‘K Street Project’ name

Conservative activist and Jack Abramoff best buddy Grover Norquist has applied for a trademark on the term “K Street Project,” which is actually the name of project he started at ATR. While the term has “come to encompass a nefarious practice of Republican lawmakers pressuring groups to hire right-leaning employees,” Norquist plans to use IP protection to defend his brand: “Some people say Kleenex when they mean tissue,” Norquist said. “We will jealously guard the real phrasing the way Kleenex and Coca-Cola do. We will sue anyone who says it wrong and make lots of money.”

Apr 21, 2006 | Comments Off

You’re a philistine if you don’t read it

Lawrence Lessig plugs Yochai Benkler’s new book on his blog. Apparently it’s not enough to say that “This is — by far — the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years.” Lessig also takes a novel approach to book promotion, namely shaming his audience into picking up the book: “Read it. Understand it. You are not serious about these issues — on either side of these debates — unless you have read this book.”

Apr 21, 2006 | Comments Off

Alcohol Liberation Front

As you might know, I’m a contributor over at the Tech Liberation Front (a.k.a. Tim Lee’s blog). Well, the TLF gang will be getting together next week and we’d love to meet our readers, so stop on by. I’ll be there for a while around 5 before I head on over to the AFF happy hour (another very worthy event you might consider attending). Here’re the deets: “Would you like to meet the men and women behind the Technology Liberation Front? If you live in the DC area, here’s your chance! Several of your favorite TLF contributors will be getting together for a happy hour on Thursday April 27 from 5-7 PM at the Gordon Biersch Brewery in Chinatown, just across the street from the MCI Center.”

Apr 21, 2006 | Comments Off

High Noon for the Communications Bar?

The WSJ Law blog writes today that consolidation in the telco industry might mean a decline for the telecom law business in D.C. and cites the declining membership of the Federal Communications Bar Association as evidence. However, I place my bet with Justice Scalia who spoke to a telecom seminar I recently participated in and told us that if we never wanted to be out of a job, communications law was the field to go into. With spectrum allocation being the mess it is, intermodal competition growing, and generally everybody getting into everybody else’s business, I don’t see any serious decline for this field any time soon.

Apr 11, 2006 | Comments Off

The Gospel according to Jack Bauer

My friend Dave Warrington wrote to me today with a business proposition: “I had an idea for a new business. You know how people wear bracelets with W.W.J.D. (What Would Jesus Do)? Well, what about a bracelet with W.W.J.B.D (What Would Jack Bauer Do). It would be made of steel, not some namby pamby rubber or leather. Jack Bauer would only wear something really tough!

“Just think of a nation of people who asked W.W.J.B.D.? before contemplating any action. You go to a fast food joint and they screw up your order–WWJBD? Answer: Kill all but one person in the room and torture that person until they get your order right!

“You could create a whole religion around this guy–remember in season two he rose from the dead. The Book of Almeida, The Gospel According to Chloe, Curtis’ First Letter to the Hostages (Don’t worry, have faith, Jack Bauer will deliver ye), and you could create new parables around events such as Kim and the Whale (being eaten by a whale is about the only thing that has not happened to Kim), or The Book of Edgar Stiles (a sadder tale of woe one cannot find).

“Another thought, there could be a Book of Nina Myers, previously unknown and not part of the Jack Bauer New Testament. Recently found on a microchip buried by the Tomb of Palmer. The lost testimony of the apostle Nina who for centuries was thought to be a traitor–a Judas–but who really was acting as part of a brilliant plan conceived by Jack Bauer to cleanse the world of evil.”

We have only 8 hours left this season (just barely a work day), so enjoy it before it’s gone!

Apr 10, 2006 | Comment

The end of broadcasting?

More buzz today comes from Disney’s announcement that it will offer free, ad-supported access to their top ABC and Disney Channel shows online. No doubt this is great news for consumers because it represents more choice. You can now get ABC hit Lost for free live on TV with ads, on the web free with ads, or free on TiVo with blurry ads. You can also pay iTunes $1.99 for an episode without ads, or you can buy the season DVD, which also doesn’t have ads. It’s probably distributed in other ways that I don’t even know about.

However, I’m not sure this announcement represents the sea change some are making it out to be. I think Mark Cuban’s thinking on this issue has been the most lucid. Broadcast TV will not be destroyed–at least not yet–for a few simple reasons. For one thing, online video on demand overlooks live TV. It’s not very feasible today to stream live events that draw large audiences, such as the World Series for example. (I’m curious about the sort of numbers CBS got for the NCAA tournament. They only streamed the early rounds, right?) Second, VOD is a terrific new channel for content that has established its popularity on traditional media, but how do you establish an online-only hit show? It might work for niche shows, but the TV network model is still best suited for lowest common denominator production and distribution.

So, I don’t think VOD will ever completely supplant pre-scheduled feeds. What might change is how these feeds are distributed. The networks could move online–both feeds and VOD. This would give them a much larger audience than cable systems provide, as well as new revenue opportunities. The only thing that might get in the way is that doing so would undercut the fees that networks get paid by cable operators to carry them on their systems. Eventually, a broadband connection and a video AirPort Express could supplant your need for a cable subscription. If that’s the case, the telcos are engaging in one expensive boondoggle by investing so much to get into the video market.

Apr 10, 2006 | Comments Off

A Laptop Comes Preloaded With the Web, Abridged

There has been a lot of buzz today about startup Webaroo, which has announced a deal with Acer. The company’s technology basically puts a copy of what it judges to be the juiciest bits of the Web on your laptop so that the Web is (mostly) still available to you even when an internet connection is not. I like the premise behind this, “that the price of storage will drop faster than broadband will spread.” However, is leisurely web surfing what people do on the road with laptops? It seems to me that the net app on laptops is e-mail, and you still need a connection for that. What I think its overlooked is that you don’t need a broadband connection to download e-mail, which is generally mostly text. Maybe what we need to see is a low-speed, little-spectrum service that’s only fast enough for laptops to grab e-mail and IMs. Couldn’t this be done using a little bit of FM radio spectrum (like SPOT watches) or just a subset of wireless broadband spectrum?

Apr 10, 2006 | Comments Off

Obituary of the week: Red Hickey

Aside from having a terrific name, Red Hickey, “introduced the spread offense known as the shotgun to the National Football League while coaching the San Francisco 49ers in the early 1960’s.” He died last week at the age of 89. See the NYT obit for the story of the shotgun’s creation.

Honorable mention: Richard McCarthy, a retired Palm Springs, California, developer who launched a crusade against local government building fees. He died last week at the age of 80. He instigated several court cases that targeted fees. “In January, the state Supreme Court ruled in a case against Rancho Cucamonga that governments could not charge developers for building inspection and permit fees above the ‘reasonable cost’ of providing the service. … ‘Taking on this kind of fight really is trench warfare, and there was nobody better at that than Dick McCarthy,’ [Attonery Walter P.] McNeill said. ‘He was sort of a legend in his pursuit of honest government.’”

Apr 7, 2006 | Comments Off

More bias at the NYT

Alex Tabarrok writes in Marginal Revolution today that the NYT has a biased article on school vouchers today. However, the bias is in favor of vouchers and competition. Well, I was pleasantly surprised when I found another biased article in today’s NYT. The paper reports that Verizon has acquired a franchise to offer video service in competition with incumbent Cablevision in Long Island, and the article’s slant is decidedly pro-competition. Some great quotes:

In a preliminary skirmish with Cablevision, Verizon recently won permission to offer cable television in the small Long Island village of Massapequa Park. “I’ve heard nothing but positives about it,” said the local Nassau County legislator, Peter Schmitt. “Competition is good. I think it’s wonderful.” … “This issue, bar none, has elicited the most public interest I’ve ever encountered,” said Hempstead’s supervisor, Kathleen Murray. “Over the years, many residents expressed frustration that cable television was the subject of a monopoly. The public wants cable TV choice, they deserve it and they should get it.” … For decades Cablevision’s virtual monopoly here, and its repeated price increases, have drawn complaints from some customers. Critics say the company ranks just below school taxes and electricity bills as an irritant. Until now, the only alternative for residents has been television satellite dish service.

Has John Tierney so perfectly infected the Old Gray Lady?

Apr 7, 2006 | Comments Off

God save the wig

Good primer on the British custom of lawyers wearing wigs and the modern controversy over this. I had no idea that they cost between £400 and £2000. At least there are some upsides: “The head of the courts’ civil division, known as the Master of the Rolls, allowed that he removed his wig in front of children because it scared them to tears.”

Apr 4, 2006 | Comments Off

Piracy as trade retaliation

The U.S. recently lost a WTO suit brought by Antigua. Basically the U.S. had outlawed overseas internet gambling, but allowed certain types of domestic gambling sites. The WTO sided with Antigua and told the U.S. it had to change its law. Today is the deadline for the U.S. to make that change and it doesn’t seem like it will. For one thing, the U.S. has little incentive. The normal course in this situation is that Antigua would be allowed to place trade sanctions on U.S. imports. But for a country with a population of 70,000, this would hurt them more than it would hurt the U.S. So, the Antiguans are looking for other options. According to the Boston Globe,

Antigua is considering retaliatory moves that could enable the tiny nation to punch above its weight. … the country may refuse to enforce American patents and trademarks. This would make it possible for Antiguan-based companies to produce knock-offs of American intellectual property, like video and music recordings or computer software. Such a tactic would get the attention of major US firms like Microsoft Corp. and entertainment titan Time Warner Inc. It would also put tiny Antigua’s trade war against the United States on front pages around the world.

There’s also an NPR story on the Antiguan affair here. Easier than actually producing physical knock-offs, they could allow online businesses a la Napster, My.MP3.com, or AllOfMP3.com to go up within their borders. I wonder how far this will go. If they just want to get attention and put pressure on the U.S., or if they’ll go further. Also, what will the WTO make of this? Under the Dispute Settlement Understanding, sanctions aren’t the express remedy. The treaty states that if a settlement can’t be reached by the parties, the plaintiff can seek the WTO’s OK “to suspend the application to the Member concerned of concessions or other obligations under the covered agreements.” The TRIPS Accord would be a candidate for suspension. Although it looks like the WTO Dispute Resolution Body has previously demurred on the topic, some have made the case that TRIPS can “serve as an enforcement device for developing countries in the WTO.”

Cross-posted at TLF. You can leave and read comments there. →

Apr 4, 2006 | Comments Off

Canadian WiMAX network launched

Ars: “WiMAX service will be available directly from both Bell Canada and Rogers Communications. Bell Canada is dubbing its WiMAX service ‘Sympatico High Speed Unplugged.’ Subscribers will pay CAN$45 per month for 512Kbps down, but a 3Mbps service will be available for an extra CAN$15 per month. … Earlier this year, the WiMAX Forum certified the first official WiMAX hardware, which operates in the 3.5GHz range. Unfortunately for US residents looking for options when it comes to broadband, that spectrum is already in use.” The closest thing available, the 3650 MHz band, is being squandered as an unlicensed band. The FCC needs to understand that, as is the case in Canada and the rest of the world, WiMAX only happens on exclusive spectrum.

Apr 3, 2006 | Comments Off

Supreme Court TV?

Political Wire: “According to the AP, Supreme Court hearings could soon be televised under a bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill, which was approved 12-6, ‘would require the Supreme Court to permit television coverage of all open sessions unless a majority of the justices decide that coverage in a particular case would violate the due process rights of a party before the court.’”

Apr 3, 2006 | Comments Off

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