commissions

Mozilla Foundation's Mitchell Baker describes Firefox, the open-source Web browser, as "an anomaly."

While most Microsoft competitors lay down and die when Microsoft claims 90 percent or more of a market, Mozilla has fought back to earn more than 20 percent of the browser market.

Despite this success, Baker believes that government, and in the European Commission in particular, has a role to play in further leveling the playing field. As she notes in a recent blog post, government entities would perhaps have less relevance but for the antitrust activity that resulted in Microsoft's dominant market … Read more

Facing a federal complaint from a leading privacy advocacy organization and a revolt of tens of thousands of its users, Facebook on Tuesday night backed down from what many have seen as an onerous privacy policy.

The policy had seemed to grant Facebook perpetual rights to users' uploaded content, and the threatened complaint from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had demanded, essentially, that the social-networking service return to its previous terms.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a blog post late Tuesday that the company had decided to do just that:

A leading privacy advocacy group is preparing to file a federal complaint against Facebook's new privacy policies, a published report said Tuesday.

According to PC World, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) is getting ready to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, demanding that the massively popular social networking service return to its previous policies.

It appears that the major thrust of EPIC's--and many others' anger--at Facebook stems from new language in the privacy policy that grants the company seemingly perpetual control over content users post there:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has levied fines against Research In Motion executives for their actions in a stock-option backdating scheme, two weeks after Canadian regulators took similar action.

The fines imposed by the SEC on RIM co-CEOs Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazardis won't be quite as steep as the ones ordered by the Ontario Securities Commission. Balsille will have to pay the SEC a total of $684,250 in fines and penalties, while Lazardis will have to cough up $478,300. Earlier this month, the OSC ordered the co-CEOs and RIM executives Dennis Kavelman and Angelo Loberto to … Read more

As reported by CNET, Mozilla has been granted "third-party status" in the European Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft. This gives Mozilla a bird's-eye view of the proceedings, with the ability to raise objections.

Mozilla, however, will be unlikely to raise its objections any louder than Mozilla chair Mitchell Baker already did on her blog:

I've been involved in building and shipping Web browsers continuously since before Microsoft started developing (Internet Explorer), and the damage Microsoft has done to competition, innovation, and the pace of the Web development itself is both glaring and ongoing.

There are … Read more

Despite a regulator-approved delay to the nationwide digital TV switchover, more than a third of the nation's TV stations plan to begin broadcasting completely in digital next week.

The Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday released a list of 681 of the nation's 1,800 or so TV stations that plan to make the switch by February 17. TV stations were required to notify the FCC by Monday if they planned to turn off their analog TV signal on February 17.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives passed a bill that moves the deadline for transitioning TV broadcast … Read more

Over a quarter of all full-power broadcast TV stations could cut off their analog TV service on or before February 17 even though the official deadline has been extended another four months, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Already 143 full-power TV stations have terminated broadcasting their analog signal. And another 60 stations have already informed the FCC that they would like to terminate broadcasting in analog before February 17. As of February 2, when acting FCC Chairman Michael Copps sent a letter to Congress urging them to delay the transition, another 276 broadcasters had told the FCC they intended … Read more

Gavin Newsom knows a thing or two about grease, and we're not just talking about his hair.

Drawing from his experience as a restaurateur, the San Francisco mayor announced at a press conference on Wednesday plans for the city to build the country's first brown grease-to-biodiesel plan.

… Read more

Google is teaming up with other technology companies to develop specifications that the Federal Communications Commission can use in developing its "white space" database.

Google said earlier this week that it is joining several technology companies, including Comsearch, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Motorola and Neustar, to form a new coalition called the White Spaces Database Group, which will provide and compile into a database technical specifications for devices that will use white space spectrum.

White spaces are unused slivers of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that sit between broadcast TV channels. Google and others successfully lobbied the FCC … Read more