atmaspheric | endeavors

We’ve officially lost ABC on Cablevision today.  Thanks Disney.  Aside from the Oscar blackout tonight, which upsets my wife more than anything, we’ll lose access to Lost as well the only other show we care about on ABC.
The question I have for ABC is this … If it’s really about the money, how are you [...]

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It was only a matter of time for carriers to make stink about the inclusion of Skype on the N97.  I had first read about the issue via Simon Judge and was surprised it had even take this long to be a public complaint.
Carriers will always hate things that compete with their bread and butter [...]

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NO NO NO! So both the consumer and content provider pay … yeah – no thanks.
The BBC would have to pay ISPs to deliver iPlayer traffic under the government’s new internet policy recommendations. Say bye bye to HD BBC iPlayer.
Lord Carter, the Communications Minister, released his Digital Britain report yesterday, outlining the Governement’s plans [...]

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To be officially confirmed later today, but apparently the Mayor’s office will be passing on lighting up the city. The plan is to instead focus on providing affordable access to everyone which is certainly an admirable goal.
According to a piece in Computerworld, the consultants have decided not to focus on a particular access technology, [...]

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Walt Mossberg has a great piece (Free My Phone!) up on All Things D, which is a must read for anyone even remotely interested in the mobile industry.

While he’s not saying anything that we (you gentle reader) have not heard or discussed, to hear it from someone with as much consumer clout as Walt Mossberg [...]

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T-Mobile used to be cool. They were one of the first carriers in the US to offer the opportunity to use unlocked phones and they also were very early in WiFi deployments, tested Dual-Mode Services and even invested in VOIP company JahJah — Amazingly this coolness has been lost and while the left hand [...]

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UPDATE– Resolved!
I am not sure how this in any way this falls under DMCA legal jurisdiction, but blog buddy ThoughtFix had a video removed from YouTube. Apparently, Nokia did not like how he PURCHASED an N800 and the proceeded to take it apart and put it back together again. I thought it was [...]

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I just clicked through all the networks and they are all showing an SD broadcast … seems like a missed opportunity to me.

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A classic double standard… whatever they need to work for them. The MPAA is the worst of the worst.
MPAA: it’s OK to copy movies if you keep them in a vault
During the Q&A at last night’s screening of Kirby Dick’s “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” Dick recounted the story of how his film was [...]

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Net Neutrality: This is serious | Decentralized Information Group (DIG) Breadcrumbs

technorati tags:politics, policy, freedom, bs

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Gotta love Apple’s attitude toward the ridiculous lawsuit from Apple Corps, The Beatles record label.
Giving opening arguments on Thursday, lawyers for Apple Computer asserted the company’s right to distribute music through its iTunes music store, rejecting claims by The Beatles’ Apple Corps Ltd. that doing so violated a 1991 trademark agreement.
According to the Associated [...]

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Walt Mossberg on DRM. Amen brother!
For some activists, the very idea of Digital Rights Management is anathema. They believe that once a consumer legally buys a song or a video clip, the companies that sold them have no right to limit how the consumer uses them, any more than a car company should be [...]

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CommonBits.org Content tagged with daily-show

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via Jaffe Juice… The Drugs I Need an all too real parody of Prescription Drug Advertising. The movie was paid for by the Consumers Union and is designed to get letters written to congress if you choose.

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I just read a pretty fascinating NYT Cover Story on how our current administration is utilizing video news releases and and fairly extensive distribution network to assist networks and local affiliates, not too mention the American public in understanding current events. It’s actually pretty sickening and makes me think we live in a socialist [...]

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Mark Cuban makes some excellent points in his latest post…
So if one of the networks threatens to pull their HD signal because of the broadcast flag… call their bluff.
The same applies to the Movie Industry. MPAA has been quoted as saying that “without the flag, high value content would migrate to [...]

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Still to be determined whether this will stick and change the Flag countdown for July, but good news for consumers for the moment….
“You crossed the line,” Judge Harry Edwards told a lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission during arguments before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
“Selling televisions is [...]

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Recommended reading from Cory Doctorow at Boing Boing who ignites the DRM strawmen, based on arguments that have been making the rounds from previous posts to BB as well as Chris Anderson’s post on his new blog, The Long Tail.

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They want your machine to go down down down…
BoingBoing reports on a hole in some Windows DRM that is being fully exploited by record industry pal Overpeer to infect user machines. Lovely.

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Mark Cuban has an interesting post on the legalities of collecting movies and how perhaps Hollywood might consider some changes in release schedules.
So Hollywood has a choice. They can change their businessmodel of windowed distribution of movies and significantly impede any potential impact of camcordering and internet downloads. How ?
They can release DVDs day [...]

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