As Internet gossip and news site (I have a reason for applying those two descriptors in that order) Valleywag reports, State Representative Tim Couch has put forth a bill requiring "anyone "contributing" to a website to register their real name, address and email address with that site -- the website would be fined $500 for each anonymous post.

Couch hopes that such a measure, if enacted, would cut down on "online bullying" by forcing bullies to come out with their real name and not post at all.

Yes, but one has to ask- if, by some odd chance this bill becomes law, wouldn't it be the state that's the bully?

And one other small matter. Would such a statute apply only to websites with HQ or servers based in Kentucky? If yes, what would that do to that state's Internet companies?

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The amount of the claim had been based on a statutory penalty of $750 to $30,000 for copyright infringement violation,  with an option for a $150,000 claim for a "willful violation."

No word yet from Viacom on whether or not they plan an appeal.

My prediction: an out-of-court settlement for much, much less, followed by some sort of licensing agreement.

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The U.S. Defense Department has banned Google's digital-mapping vehicles from all its military installations.

The move, which was announced yesterday, was precipitated after detailed photographs of Fort Sam Houston appeared on Google Maps.

The Los Angeles Times' Jessica Guynn reports that A message sent to all Defense Department bases and installations late last week warned officials not to allow Google vehicles access. Gary Ross, spokesman for the U.S. Northern Command, said sensitive imagery posted on the Web could pose a security threat.

"We don't have any issues regarding Google and their products, which are very useful tools," Guynn notes Ross as saying. "But the Street View provides clear imagery of control points, barriers, headquarters and security facilities that pose a risk to our force-protection efforts."

Google, apologized for an error in collecting the data, and has taken down the images.from Google Maps.

But you know what? Maybe I am the first to realize this, but as I show you in the grab at the top of this post, Fort Sam Houston is still pretty clear on Google Earth.

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The ruling had considered whether or not Nokia infringed on two Qualcomm patents related to power saving and control technology.

Left unaddresed were other patent related legal issues between the two companies, such as Qualcomm-patented W-CDMA technology, which Nokia had been using under a license up until April, 2007.

Nokia has viewed these licensing fees as excessive.

Qualcomm has filed a total of 11 lawsuits against Nolia in the last two years, without success thus far.

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In his letter, Commissioner Copps suggested this procedure be done by means of test markets, where real world conditions would serve as a realistic template for any additional changes needed for the new standards.

The letter from Commissioner Copps to Chair Martin is below.

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"I was being sent everything from banal chat and jokes, to videos up to 15mb in size," Gary Sinnott, owner of mildenhall.com, told website EDP 24. "Some were classified, some were personal. A lot had some really sensitive information in them."

Although no one is saying, the mix-up and resulting problem problem might have been sparked by something in the Bush-flight path emails that cited the term Mildenhall.

As owner of mildenhall.com, Sinnott received every email that had that domain name included in the address field. The site was set up to provide information about the town of Mildenhall, which is about a half-hour's drive north east of Cambridge.

Sinnott notified the problem to U.S. Air Force officials. At first, they didn't take him seriously but then they started to realize the huge security risk.

When that happened, USAF commanders then advised Sinnott to take the site down, which he has just done.

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Jeremy Jaynes had been appealing an earlier spamming conviction, on the grounds that the junk e-mail he had facilitated the distribution of in 2003 was free, protected speech covered by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

A divided Virginia Supreme Court affirmed the nation’s first felony conviction for illegal spamming on Friday, ruling that Virginia’s anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights. Jeremy Jaynes of Raleigh, N.C., considered among the world’s top 10 spammers in 2003, was convicted of massive distribution of junk e-mail and sentenced to nine years in prison. “Jaynes allegedly used aliases and false Internet addresses to bombard Web users with junk e-mails peddling sham products and services," said the court's majority, adding  misleading commercial speech is not entitled to First Amendment protection.

The full text of the opinion is here.

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(via Fierce Wireless)

A total of 132 rounds of bids, counting for 1,089 licenses,  have now been conducted in the Federal Communiations Commission's 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction.

Approximately $19.6 billion has been raised so far. That amount includes 25 new bids Friday morning, for a rather modest total of $644,000.

Fierce Wireless reports several of these new bids were for E Block slices in Maryland, Delaware, Louisiana, Virginia, Georgia and A Block slices in Georgia, Kentucky, North Dakota and South Carolina.

Bidding will continue until a round is completed with no bids at all.

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Here's the EFF's account of what it wants to know and why:

Jane C. Horvath was named the DOJ's first Chief Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer in February of 2006. At that time, Google was fighting a massive DOJ subpoena asking for the text of every query entered into the search engine over a one-week period. The DOJ request -- part of a court battle over the constitutionality of a law regulating adult materials on the Internet -- ignited a national debate about Internet privacy.

The DOJ later scaled back its request, and a judge eventually allowed access to only 5000 random Google search queries. In a subsequent news article, Horvath was publicly critical of the DOJ's initial subpoena, saying she had privacy concerns about the massive request for information. Horvath's new job as Google's Senior Privacy Counsel was announced in August of 2007.

EFF asked the DOJ for information about communications between Horvath and Google with a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request as Horvath prepared to leave the agency, but the DOJ has not responded to the request more than six months after it was submitted.

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Regulators for theEuropea Union have fined Microsoft the equivalent of $1.35 billion for not following sanctions in a previous ruling that Microsoft had held back information from competitors about how to interoperate with software produced by rivals.

The EU had ordered Microsoft to do this.

Microsoft had complied on the face of it, but yesterday the EU said this cost of complaince was too high until October 22, 2007, when Microsoft had lowered their licensing fees to do so.

Specifically he Commission said that Microsoft had charged "unreasonable prices for access to interface documentation for work group servers."

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That's according to a research note emailed this morning by Mike Jude, a senior analyst with Nemertes Research.

Citing addtitional installations at the University of Miami, Concordia University, and hotel management company Lodgian, Jude writes these developments "signal (s) the end to any remaining doubts about 802.11n viability.

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Referring to the practice often decried as "packet discrimination,"  Martin said, They must be conducted in an open and transparent way. “While networks may have reasonable practices, they obviously cannot operate without taking some reasonable steps but that does not mean they can arbitrarily block access to certain services.”

Commonly viewed as more pro-regulatory than Martin, fellow FCC Commissioner Michael Copps came down even harder today on the practice- which Comcast has admitted to and defended today as necessary tools to avoid network chokepoints.

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First, a brief introduction to the players.

The White Spaces Coalition is a coaltion of leading technology companies that want the vacant white space of the television spectrum to be opened up in 2009 for more wireless options, including long-range signals. Members include Microsoft, Google, Dell and Philips.

The latest dust-up between the two powerful bodies involves recent testing of a wireless broadband device intended to facilitate white space use.

Last week the NAB put out a press release claiming that in a test overseen by the FCC, the device had failed due to power utilization problems.

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An example of traffic shaping is the recent controversies between Comcast and BitTorrent, in which Comcast has admitted that it shunts high-bandwidth Torrent packets to provide its broadband networks with more equilibrium for a greater number of users.

The meeting will be held at HarvardLaw School: specifically, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, 1515 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA -- 10AM-4PM- and will feature a wide variety of commenters with different beliefs on traffic shaping.

Here's the program:

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