at&t's top lobbyist, jim cicconi, sent a letter to all of the telecom giant's 300,000 employees on sunday, urging them to express their concerns over a net neutrality proposal under consideration by the federal communications commission. check out his letter and comments on the actuarian outpost web site.

You are killing our creative industries. "Downloading costs billions," said the Sun. "MORE than 7 million Brits use illegal downloading sites that cost the economy billions of pounds, government advisers said today. Researchers found more than a million people using a download site in ONE day and estimated that in a year they would use £120bn worth of material." [...]

Now I am always suspicious of this industry, because they have produced a lot of dodgy figures over the years. I also doubt that every download is lost revenue since, for example, people who download more also buy more music. I'd like more details. [...]

Imagine doing your democratic duty by e-mailing your member of parliament your opinions of a given issue. Now imagine that e-mail being shown to you by your boss right before you get fired from your day job. Apparently, one mans political opinion is causing a huge stir over in France right now - all over the French Three Strikes law which is currently being debated on again.

Even before it’s officially adopted, France’s controversial anti-piracy law has already claimed its first victim. Jérôme Bourreau-Guggenheim, head of web innovation at one of the largest TV-networks in France was fired recently because he criticized the law in a letter to his MP. [...]

Ohne Möglichkeit zur Abänderung oder Diskussion soll Anfang März über einen Bericht zur "Harmonisierung des Urheberrechts" abgestimmt werden. Der "Medina-Report" empfiehlt dem EU-Ministerrat verpflichtende "Kooperation" für Provider und enthält eine Passage, die die Filterung des Internet-Verkehrs voraussetzt. Auch die Publikation wissenschaftlicher Forschungsergebnisse soll diesem Bericht zufolge zuerst privaten Verwertern überlassen werden.

Die "Harmonisierung" [...]

Following complaints that its child-porn blacklist has led multiple British ISPs to censor innocuous content on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, the Internet Watch Foundation has confirmed the blacklist contains images housed by the 85-billion-page web history database.

The Recording Industry Association of America is clearing the air over its comments that it has not initiated litigation in months against alleged copyright scofflaws.

On Friday, the RIAA announced it was abandoning its legal strategy of suing individuals for copyright infringement, and said it had not sued anybody for months.

Ray Beckerman, an attorney the RIAA has declared as "vexatious," posted Friday on his blog — Recording Industry vs. The People — that dozens of RIAA lawsuits have been filed within the past couple of weeks.