Okay, though he used a little more nuance, that’s the essence of what Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon’s CEO, said loud and clear in recent comments at Goldman Sachs.

The issue there is perhaps it is like the dog chasing the bus a little bit. So what I need to do is get ourselves focused around the following idea, that video is going to be the core product in the fixed line business. … I shed myself of the burden of chasing the inflection point in access lines and say I don’t care about that anymore.”

Translation: voice is dead to me. POTS (plain old telephone service) is no longer the bread and butter of Verizon.

A decade ago, this wasn’t the case. Verizon (and before them NYNEX) fought desperately to keep customers from migrating to DSL and optical services, by making sure that T1-lines (which are based on POTS service) were the only built-out infrastructure in their system.

From 1999 to 2002, I helped put several million dollars of investment into building out non-POTS services on the Verizon network. This was the Massachusetts Community Network, which Verizon resisted as if their business model depended on it. Their staff and VARs frequently said “the investment in POTS wasn’t fully capitalized, and that it couldn’t be abandoned for new products without returning on its investment.”

Perhaps competition, time and diversification of the wireless unit have brought Verizon to make this shift. Increasingly, they speak of themselves as a media company.  As Comcast pursues the purchase of NBC, can a Verizon broadcast play be far behind?

Continued

This is your invitation to attend a free webinar on the recent Tiffany v. eBay ruling and its impact on brands of all sizes, and those of us who support and promote them. (Since this event has already happened, please follow this link to listen and view the recorded event in its entirety, or hear other events.)

On Thursday, October 2nd, I’ll be in New York moderating a discussion between two of the most expert and engaging voices in online law. Since this will be live, we’ll be taking questions from attendees, so I hope you can join us.

You can look forward to hearing the perspectives of Martin Schwimmer, the host of The Trademark Blog. Last year I enjoyed hearing his presentation on Trademarks and the Internet.  My employer, Thomson CompuMark, is delighted that he’s able to join us again.

You can also look forward to the expert views of Oren J. Warshavsky, who will join us from the firm Baker Hostetler. If you enjoy this blog, you’ll likely want to read his thoughts on the expanding right of publicity.

While you may pose questions during the event, you can also email me on what you’d like to hear about, and I’ll gladly share your requests with the speakers. I hope you can attend, and will post an update closer to the webinar.

FCC Prepares to Punish Comcast
A majority of members of the Federal Communications Commission have cast votes in favor of punishing Comcast Corp. for blocking subscribers’ Internet traffic, an agency official said Friday.

ISP Ad Networking Scheme May Violate Wiretap Laws
The Center for Democracy & Technology has advanced a legal theory that the practice of ISPs sharing records of individual website visits may constitute illegal wiretapping.

Last Week Google Wanted to Be Second Life, This Week They’re Wikipedia
This creates a substantial new conflict of interest between Google and Wikipedia, which currently receives extremely high search authority in Google searches.

Permanent Injunction Against COPA Enforcement Upheld
This is the third time the Third Circuit has held that COPA violates the First Amendment, after nearly ten years of litigation over the law’s constitutionality. As with those previous decisions, the DOJ is expected to seek review by the Supreme Court.

Taco Bell Accused of Stealing Rapper 50 Cent’s Endorsement
In a public relations letter, the chain, owned by Yum! Brands, encourages the rapper to change his name to “79 Cent,” “89 Cent” or “99 Cent” to match their promotion. Instead the rapper slapped a lawsuit on the punk chain for leveraging his name to get their taco sale visibility.

The Sanfrancisco Chronicle reports that after a secret visit by the mayor of San Francisco, the network administrator who locked the cities technology staff out of the network surrendered his password.
See earlier coverage of this story.

Terry Child’s defense attorney, Erin Crane, claimed that Mr. Childs was merely protecting the network from incompetent staff, and there was no clear policy who he was authorized to release the systems master password to in such a situation.

Continued

Last week, the whistle-blower site Wikileaks published a confidential 2006 contract in which Venezuelan and Cuban firms agreed to lay an undersea fiberoptic cable connecting the countries. The cable is to be completed by 2010.

Among the agreement’s stated objectives is to build a relationship of “strategic value,” which will permit Cuba and Venezuela to increase interchange between the two governments. The proposed 1,500-kilometre cable will connect Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and Trinidad to the rest of the world via La Guaira, Venezuela.

The contract adds credence to the opinion that the US economic embargo against Cuba has forced the country to rely on slow and expensive satellite links for Internet connectivity. It is also a prime example of how oil-rich Venezuela is seeking to build its influence. So, instead of AT&T building a 120-kilometer cable from the US, Venezuela’s CVG Telecom (Corporacion Venezolana de Guyana) and ETC (Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba) are making one ten times that length.

Terry Childs was a system administrator for the city of San Francisco’s high-speed network. According to reports, last week the disgruntled employee created a super password for the network and removed his follow administrators, effectively making himself the only person who can maintain the network. Now officials are stuck, since Mr. Childs is locked up in lieu of $5m bail for multiple charges of tampering with computers.

Negotiations are underway to secure Mr. Child’s password.  Meanwhile, the network is functioning without disruption.

Continued

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin says he wants to rule against Comcast for violating federal guidelines when it blocked and degraded Web traffic to peer-to-peer sites. Comcast reluctantly admitted to degrading peer-to-peer service after its efforts were documented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. When the FCC scheduled a hearing to discuss this, Comcast paid people to pack the hearing room, apparently to prevent its critics from testifying.

Continued

TV’s Getting Old: The Christian Science Monitor notes that for the first time, last season’s average viewer was more than fifty years old: “If today’s TV audience were a person, it wouldn’t even be a part of the target demographic anymore.” With games and the Internet, TV simply isn’t the “first screen” for the young set.

Post Messages That Self Destruct: Privnote lets you post your message as a single-read website page, which self-erases after being read once.  Perhaps this is one way to send a message that won’t take on a life of its own.

Electronic Copyright Registration Goes Live: Our friend Jonathan Bailey describes the US Copyright Offices new online filing system as “severely flawed.” Still, it’s a first step, and one hopes for improvement.

The Unexpected Consequences of Rich Media: in the “dot.bomb” days Internet bandwidth far exceeded consumer demand. “If only there was rich media adoption” ISP’s noted, “then we’d have growing businesses.” Now there is high bandwidth demand, but its brought problems of congestion and both a need for new pricing and the need to better use the very torrents and P2P networks that ISPs traditionally have opposed.

Mexican Immigrants as Superheroes: Rebecca Tushnet’s 43(b)log links to this online art exhibit. The Spidy image above is a preview, go take a look.

If you have links of note please send them along for the next link role.

There has been commentary, criticism, and even worry about ICANN’s proposed laissez-faire policy to allow a broad range of top-level domains. Our friends at Circle ID try to calm the waters by reminding us that ICANN’s byzantine committee structure, and its tendency to avoid both conflict and even the clearest paths of action, can make its proceedings downright glacial.

Besides, ICANN has challenges beyond running the world’s domains. Lately, just running their own domain has been a challenge. Shortly after the announcement of the new gTLD’s, Turkish hackers seized control of ICANN’s website by … changing their domain record and redirecting ICANN’s traffic.

Continued

On Thursday the board of The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the biggest ever expansion of the scheme for having Generic Top Level Domains (GTLDs).

So instead of being limited to gTLDs which describe the purpose of traffic on the domain, such as .gov, .edu, end users could apply for their own top level domains. The city of Boston could be .Boston; the Res Sox could claim .RedSox; Steven Colbert and American Airlines could wrestle each other over .American.

So, who gets to have their own gTLD? 
Here’s the criteria so far:

1. Money: ICANN hedges the details by saying they will set a price “based on the volume of applications”.  But to initially expect a minimum $100,000 fee. 
2. Popularity: ICANN will evaluate the applicants business and technical use of the domain. Imagine the process of being voted on to cheer leading squad. (Sorry ”.xxx domain” you’re popular, but in the wrong sort of way.)
3. Opposition Period: just as with intellectual property applications, there will be a public opposition period. There are four stated reasons for opposition:
   1. String Confusion
   2. Existing Legal Rights
   3. Morality and Public Order
   4. Community Objection

Continued