Is AT&T targeting Google Voice to stop “traffic pumping”?

Telephony Online
By Matthew Lasar

Google is not a happy camper about a recent Federal Communications Commission (FCC) request for details about its Google Voice feature, sent to the company on Friday. But the search engine giant isn’t directing its ire at the FCC; it’s going after the telco that raised a ruckus about the voicemail application’s call restrictions.

“AT&T apparently now wants web applications—from Skype to Google Voice—to be treated the same way as traditional phone services,” Google attorney Richard Whitt wrote on his policy blog on Friday. “Their approach is what a former FCC chairman has called ‘regulatory capitalism,’ the practice of using regulation to block or slow down innovation.”

<http://telephonyonline.com/external.html?q=http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/att-accused-of-regulatory-capitalism-as-fcc-probes-google-voice.ars>

Comcast-NBCU Merger Spells Big-Time Change Everywhere

Comcast’s bid to co-own NBC Universal is a grab for digital content dominance that will trigger influential paid models, force a revamp of broadcast television and spawn a new wave of media deals. Despite the favorable deal terms discussed, Comcast would have to justify the bold move by creating pay walls for content, reducing its reliance on advertising and revamping broadcast TV and cable delivery, which will be increasingly marginalized by streaming video online. Radical changes to existing business models are inevitable in the creation of a new media giant that defies the industry’s dismal track record with such unions. A potential merger poses new doubts about whether content can be profitably managed by a media behemoth mired in slower-growing distribution assets. It may be irrelevant that the potential NBCU-Comcast deal already is getting mixed reviews from industry analysts and shareholders. The time has come for major change.

<http://www.benton.org/outgoingframe/28536>

Courtesy of the Benton Foundation <http://www.benton.org>

Are Life Sentences For 13-Yr Olds Cruel And Unusual Punishment?

6:45 pm October 5, 2009
By Frank James
<http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/10/are_life_sentences_for_13yr_ol.html?ft=1&f=103943429>

Is it constitutional to sentence a juvenile offender who commits an offense at age 13 to life in prison without the possibility of parole?

That’s the question facing the U.S. Supreme Court this term and it’s a riveting one. On one hand, a heinous crime is still a terrible crime, regardless of the age of the offender.

But a 13-year old is still a child. And it is arguably a cruel and unusual punishment to subject someone to life in prison without parole for a crime committed when he was a child.

The Equal Justice Initiative has a compelling way to frame these cases. It says 13- and 14-year olds are being sentenced to death in prison.

It’s point: the U.S. Supreme Court may have said executing people for crimes they committed as juveniles is unconstitutional. But these sentences are in their own way death sentences, according to EJI which says there are 73 individuals in the U.S. who are serving “death in prison” sentences.

[snip]