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?

Verizon remains one of the most profitable companies in the world, but the wireline business is heading downhill so fast, JPMorgan writes, “Action will likely be necessary to support the dividend beginning in 2012.”

A decade ago the phone company wasn’t ready to change. The questions now: can it change fast enough?

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.

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.

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.

“Mr. Childs had good reason to be protective of the password,” Crane said. “His co-workers and supervisors had in the past maliciously damaged the system themselves, hindered his ability to maintain it … and shown complete indifference to maintaining it themselves.

“He was the only person in that department capable of running that system,” Crane said. “There have been no established policies in place to even dictate who would be the appropriate person to hand over the password to.”

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.

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

InfoWorld notes that in seizing the network, Childs did not disrupt municipal business or destroy network resources. While careful not to condone his actions, they describe this as being more a prank than a criminal action. Network World frames this as a prime example of “Insider Threats.”

This is an extreme embarrassment for the city, which has lost control of its network.

The ruling is what you make it
Though Chairman Martin has found Comcast’s practices outside the the principles established by the Commission, his ruling will not carry any fine or punitive element. Ars Technica declares this as a “Loss for Comcast,” using phrases such as “FCC slams Comcast” and calling it precedent-setting.

Our friends at Circle ID focus on the lack of fines. Their take is that while Comcast wasn’t forthcoming about their network management practice, what they did is standard among ISPs. So a hand slap is the most they deserve, and the FCC, which is over-reaching its legal mandate, probably shouldn’t be even doing that.

Does Comcast Care?
Comcast Spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice noted, “You can’t enforce this because there aren’t any rules. It violates all sorts of due processes in the way you are supposed to create rules.” So, in the end, Comcast’s position seems to be that any ruling will ultimately be chucked in the trash if a court should be required to review or enforce the FCC’s ruling. No, Comcast doesn’t care for this ruling one bit.

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.

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.

This is embarrassing for ICANN. Organizations that control the Internet need to appear to be highly reliable and trustworthy, not slow and technically inept. Losing control of their own website tarnishes that reputation, if even only temporarily.

The copyrighted statement from the hackers read:

# NeTDevilz #

You think that you control the domains but you don’t! Everybody knows wrong. We control the domains including ICANN!

Don’t you believe us?

haha
(Lovable Turkish hackers group)

©2008 NetDevilz Co.
We’re not first,But We’re the BEST!

ICANN plans to raise US$10 million though high registration fees for the new gTLDs. This makes it almost certain that they’ll improve the infrastructure and security of the world’s domain names, which apparently could use some attention.

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

Managing IP quotes Karla Valente, the ICANN’s gTLD program coordinator who says “We are pretty much aware that trademark infringement will be an issue. IP owners need to be very much aware of what is going on.” ICANN plans to designate an external organization to settle the potentially endless disputes arising from opposition.

This new scheme may present technical challenges, such as the increased load on the root name servers which may be forced to resolve these many new top level domains instead of passing the resolution request to a small number of authoritative servers.

ICANN’s plans to start accepting applications in the second quarter of 2009. There are obviously many still unanswered questions to address before they project when such domains would start being activated. 

Details, and news of IP issues to follow.