From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Wed Jun 17 03:45:57 2009 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:45:57 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Senators question cellphone providers' legal monopolies Message-ID: <960B0464-29C4-4157-8B15-404C1AD89EDA@countercorp.org> Will the Feds Force Apple to Break Up With AT&T? Senators ask FCC to look into exclusivity arrangements between cellphone carriers and handset manufacturers Ian Paul (PC World, June 16) -- Are you fed up with exclusivity arrangements between cell phone carriers and handset makers? If so, you may have allies on Capitol Hill. Four U.S. Senators from the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation have sent a letter to Michael J. Copps, the acting chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, urging the FCC to examine the issue of exclusivity arrangements between handset carriers and manufacturers. The letter, which is signed by Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), expresses concern that handset exclusivity arrangements may be anti- competitive and reducing consumer choice in the marketplace. The letter identifies five major issues the senators want the FCC to examine: ? The increasing prevalence of exclusivity arrangements between cellphone manufacturers and service providers ? How exclusivity agreements may be restricting consumer choice, particularly for consumers living in rural areas ? How exclusivity agreements may place limitations on a consumer's ability to take full advantage of handset technologies, such as the ability to send multimedia messages (MMS) or the ability to "tether" a device to a computer for Internet use ? How exclusivity agreements may be inhibiting the ability of smaller, regional carriers to compete ? How exclusivity agreements may play a role in encouraging or discouraging innovation within the handset marketplace The senators' letter follows a petition filed last month by the Rural Cellular Association, asking the FCC to study how exclusivity arrangements affect consumers. On Wednesday, the Commerce Committee will hold its own hearing on these issues to determine if legislative action is necessary. It's interesting to note that some concerns spelled out by the senators sound like they're a direct reaction to recent complaints over AT&T's status as the exclusive U.S. provider for Apple's iPhone. When last week Apple announced launch details for iPhone OS 3.0, AT&T was the target of scorn over delays to supporting the iPhone's new MMS and tethering capabilities. In the past, AT&T has also been accused of having spotty 3G coverage in rural areas. Since the iPhone's introduction in 2007, several handset makers have tried to emulate the popularity of Apple's device by offering exclusivity deals of their own. Two recent examples include the Palm Pre, currently on Sprint's Now Network, and T-Mobile's G1, the first Android-powered handset. From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Fri Jun 19 19:58:59 2009 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Fri, 19 Jun 2009 16:58:59 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Taken for a ride: Saving transportation - and the economy - by killing GM References: <538F36DECF3B4646A6F5EAE85BE42C13@user45b43bb129> Message-ID: <16CE963C-E6C6-41C6-9720-EE428CC8C699@countercorp.org> We Don't Need the General Motors Corporation by Mike Ferner (Project on Corporations, Law, and Democracy, June 8) -- Times are understandably fearful in car country right now, but staring us in the face is a rare opportunity -- to replace a terminally ill transportation system with something we can literally live with. To take advantage of this uncommon opportunity, we will have to do something far more profound (yet less costly) than a government bail- out or an act of Congress. As Paul Newman said in 'Cool Hand Luke', we have to "get our minds right" on one simple fact: We need reliable, sustainable transportation -- but not General Motors (GM). Contemplate the freedom implied in that statement for just a moment: we do not need GM. In fact, we're better off without it. The kingpin of the highway lobby, GM has been by far the biggest roadblock to reliable, sustainable transportation for one basic reason we seem to forget: It was never in the business of providing transportation. It was in the business of making money. That means that 90 years ago, when GM officials realized their marketshare had stalled out with less than 20 percent of the population owning automobiles, they had to do something. They had to get the other 80 percent of the population out of streetcars and trains, and into cars. Had the company been in the business of providing transportation, it could have started manufacturing and maintaining streetcars and rail- related equipment, but that was never going to be as profitable for GM as selling a car to every family in the nation (or at least coming as close to it as Henry Ford would allow). So GM put shareholders ahead of citizens, and decided the trains and streetcars had to go. The whole, sad story is told in painstaking detail in the documentary, 'Taken for a Ride,' a lively, engaging film released in 1996 that has never been more timely than now. I'm not going to tell you how GM did it. You can read about it, or get a copy of the film from your public library (and if they don't have it, put your tax dollars to work and ask them to order it). The point is, we have an abundance of everything it takes to provide reliable, sustainable transportation -- raw materials, skilled labor, and if we decide to exercise our 60% ownership of GM (courtesy of a $50 billion taxpayer bail-out), the capital. The entity known as General Motors Corporation is a legal creation most adept at concentrating economic and political power, buying off elected officials, and opposing seatbelts, pollution controls, and higher mileage, while maintaining executive lifestyles to make a pharaoh blush. But it is by no means needed to provide transportation. There are other, more humane models available for organizing finance and production. For example, the U.S. has a rich history of cooperative enterprises, but most Americans view them as arcane, and in modern times we have not provided optimal conditions for their growth, giving preferential treatment to corporations instead. But let's consider an example of a cooperative from a country that takes them seriously. The Mondragon Corporacion Cooperativa (MCC), a finance, manufacturing, and distribution cooperative based in the Basque region of Spain, has 85,000 employees and operations on five continents. It is not failing, or in need of a bail-out to prop it up. Can you say, "Goodbye, GM?" Michael Moore, internationally acclaimed documentary filmmaker and native of Flint, Michigan -- one of the communities most devastated by the de-industrialization campaign that the U.S. government allowed GM to conduct -- puts it a little more bluntly. "Please, please, please don't save GM, simply so that a smaller version of it can build more Chevys or Cadillacs," Moore said. "Let's be clear about this: The only way to save [our transportation industry] is to kill GM." "But If we allow the tearing down of our auto plants" in the process, he continued, "we will sorely wish we still had them when we finally realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail, bullet trains, and cleaner buses. How will we [convert to that vision] if we allow our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?" Equally important, Moore offers better insight into this problem than 90% of the "expert" talking heads when he describes hybrid cars as merely a temporary fix -- a so-called "bridge" technology. If that sounds like heresy, remember that we have been subjected to generations of advertising designed to make us feel beautiful, sexy, independent, and uncommonly smart if we bought the right kind of car. Add to that the not-so-delicate head bashing in recent years geared to make us believe that our very lives depend on letting the auto industry govern our work and our economy. It is indeed true that times of crisis are times of enormous opportunity. We just have to listen to Cool Hand Luke. From corporation-watch at countercorp.org Sun Jun 21 07:02:23 2009 From: corporation-watch at countercorp.org (Corporation Watch) Date: Sun, 21 Jun 2009 04:02:23 -0700 Subject: [Corp. Watch] Corporate-driven copyright law fines woman $1.9 million for sharing $24 worth of music Message-ID: Big Fine Could Be Big Trouble in Downloading Case By Chris Williams (Associated Press, June 19) -- A $1.92 million verdict against a Minnesota woman accused of sharing 24 songs over the Internet could ratchet up the pressure on other defendants to settle with the recording industry -- if the big fine can withstand an appeal. "Normally in our American legal system, we say the punishment should fit the crime," said Ken Port, director of the Intellectual Property Institute at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. "Now she's being ordered to pay, in some ways, an incomprehensible amount of damages." Port has closely watched the recording industry's case against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, 32, and wrote a brief that helped persuade the judge in her first trial in 2007 to grant her the retrial that ended Thursday. In the latest trial, a federal jury in Minneapolis ruled that she must pay $1.92 million for willful infringement of the recording industry's copyrights by posting the music on the file-sharing site Kazaa. Under federal law, music companies are entitled to $750 to $30,000 per infringement, but the law allows the jury to raise that to as much as $150,000 per track if it finds the infringements were willful. The jury decided on $80,000 per song. "They now have a verdict they can use in other cases around America," Port said of the recording industry. "The prices that they will charge for settling is going to go up." Thomas-Rasset was the first -- and so far only -- music file-sharing defendant to go to trial. The music industry has threatened about 35,000 people with charges of copyright infringement over the past five years, typically offering to settle the cases for $3,000 to $5,000. The recording industry estimates that a few hundred of those cases remain unresolved, with fewer than 10 defendants actively fighting them. In December, the industry said it dropped its strategy of going after individuals to instead focus on Internet service providers. Cara Duckworth, a spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, said Friday the verdict should remind those who share music illegally about the penalties in copyright law. "For the few existing cases, this verdict is a reminder of the clarity of the law," she said. She noted that the $1.92 million was not a figure requested by the industry. "That was not our number, that was what 12 regular folks rendered," she said of the jury, adding that the industry remains open to settling the case with Thomas-Rasset. Kiwi Camara, one of Thomas-Rasset's attorneys, said his client planned to appeal the ruling, but the legal team would take a few days to settle on its legal arguments. The damage award will probably be part of it. "There really is a problem with the statute, because she's been fined $1.9 million for stealing 24 songs that went for about $.99 on iTunes," he said. "There's no way that can be the correct result." Even the presiding judge in the case might find the $1.9 million excessive. When Judge Michael Davis ordered the retrial, he also implored Congress to change copyright laws, after Thomas-Rasset was ordered to pay a mere $222,000 in the first trial, an amount he called "wholly disproportionate." The new fine is more than eight times the first amount. Camara and co-counsel Joe Sibley represent two other people being sued by the recording industry -- Brittany English, a student at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio, and Joel Tenenbaum, a student at Boston University. He said the Thomas-Rasset verdict wouldn't change how he approaches those cases. "Every jury is different," he said. "So the conclusions of this jury really has no precedent on the conclusions of the next jury." Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the nearly $2 million verdict may even hurt the recording industry, by making it more vulnerable on appeal and bolstering the argument that the copyright system is broken if it can impose such huge penalties for non-commercial activity. "A $2 million verdict for sharing 24 songs?" he said. Unlike Port, von Lohmann didn't believe the verdict would raise settlement costs for file-sharing defendants, because the industry doesn't want more trials like Thomas-Rasset's. "It's not about getting a big number," he said. "It's about getting a number that people will pay without a fight." And the verdict will do nothing at all, he said, for the millions of people who share music, but haven't been targeted by the recording industry. "The word on the street is that they are no longer going after people to sue," he said. However, the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank, defended the verdict and said $1.92 million was reasonable. "Legally acquiring a license to give copies of a song to potentially millions of Kazaa users might well have cost $80,000 per song," said Tom Sydnor, director of the foundation's Center for the Study of Digital Property. "Moreover, if the jury concluded that the defendant falsified her testimony, it could fairly seek to punish and deter such flagrant wrongdoing." The companies that sued Thomas-Rasset are subsidiaries of all four major recording companies -- Warner Music Group Corp., Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group, EMI Group PLC and Sony Corp.'s Sony Music Entertainment. The recording industry has blamed online piracy for declines in music sales, although other factors include the rise of legal music sales online, which emphasize buying individual tracks rather than full albums.