News From Around The Industry:

•Verizon reacts to AT&T and telco censorship:
Disclosures over the weekend that AT&T and Verizon reserve the right to suspend or terminate the service of customers who are critical of their conduct have prompted a call for congressional hearings on the censorship practices of the nation's leading carriers. According to AT&T's and Verizon's nearly identical service agreements, the companies can cancel the subscription of anyone who damages "the name or reputation" of AT&T or Verizon, "its parents, affiliates and subsidiaries." AT&T did not respond to e-mail and telephone requests for comment on the latest censorship controversy. Verizon, however, responded on its public policy blog. According John Czwartacki, Verizon's executive director of external communications, the company's policy calling for the possible cutoff of service from critical customers has been in place for nearly decade but has never been invoked. "The provision is meant to cover clearly illegal acts that would include things such as impersonating Verizon to conduct phishing scams or to sell services using our name, or the intentional spreading [of] inaccurate information that significantly harms Verizon," Czwartacki wrote. Never been invoked? Gee, as if that is any more comforting. Is he saying that Verizon has never used the clause to go after "clearly illegal acts", etc.? Or is he saying that Verizon would invoke it against critical customers? After all, Sprint has already booted customers who called their customer service too much. Josh Silver, Free Press' executive director, said without congressional action, the telecoms' would continue to impose policies limiting the ability of their customers to speak out. "The censorship policies of AT&T and Verizon are what we can expect to see time and again with these corporations as gatekeepers," Silver said. "Verizon's text message ban is the same as Comcast blocking our e-mail or AT&T preventing us from making phone calls. We need to put in place laws that protect our right to speak out on the Internet, on cell phones—everywhere."

•EU goes after Qualcomm over unfair licensing terms for 3G phones and chip sets:
The European Commission is opening a formal antitrust proceeding against Qualcomm, the embattled San Diego-based chip maker. The EU said it is investigating whether Qualcomm abused its dominant position in the market. Qualcomm holds key patent rights in the CDMA and WCDMA standards for mobile telephones that form part of Europe's mobile 3G technologies. Ericsson, Nokia, Texas Instruments, Broadcom, NEC and Panasonic have all filed complaints with the EU claiming Qualcomm's licensing terms and conditions for the technology are unfair and unreasonable. In a statement, the EU stressed that the initial investigation does not imply Qualcomm is guilty of the charges, only that the EU will investigate the accusations.

•Review: 6 New 802.11n Wi-Fi Routers -- Is It Time To Switch From 802.11g?:
For the past few years, the IEEE Standards Association -- the wireless spec governing body -- has issued a number of upgrades to the N spec, from pre-N to Draft-N to its current stage of development: Draft 2.0. Generally speaking, newer routers work on this new spec, which is the result of thousands of minute improvements to previous iterations. It's also worth noting that 802.11n has not been approved by the IEEE and should still be considered a work in progress. Currently, there are two key questions to ask before purchasing any specific 802.11n router: Is it worth buying? And does it perform well enough to justify junking your 802.11g router and spending money on the new device? In order to answer these questions, Don Reisinger of InformationWeek tested six 802.11n routers (also known as N routers) from Apple, Belkin, Buffalo Wireless, D-Link, Linksys, and Netgear. While you might expect N routers to perform much better than a G router, the results may surprise you.

•Demoniod p2p site returns from dead, no Canadians allowed now though:
Popular P2P site Demonoid is up and running after shutting itself down following a threat the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) to club it to death in the courts. It is still being hosted by a Canadian ISP, but is blocking all Canadian traffic to avoid trouble with the CRIA. The Demonoid homepage said it had received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and it need to start blocking Canadian traffic. The site is already a refugee from Sweden and is using the same self preservation technique developed by Isohunt and TorrentSpy which blocked access to US users to avoid complaints from the RIAA.

•Sky confirms Picnic pick 'n' mix:
Sky today made a cunningly-timed announcement 'fessing up to its new "Picnic" offering that will let non-satellite customers join its broadband network and terrestrial TV viewers receive its pay TV channels. Subject to clearing regulatory hurdles, the new venture will launch in the new year as a separate business with its own management and customer services. It'll take on BT, TalkTalk, Virgin Media and the rest in markets that Sky had left unfought. Punters will be able to pick and choose from up to 16Mbit/s broadband (available to the 70 per cent of homes covered by Sky's LLU network), fixed line phone, and a new range of terrestrial set-top boxes. Pricing details haven't been released. The timing of the announcement is triply significant. The first wave of households tempted by TalkTalk's game-changing "free" broadband offer will be released from their 18-month contracts from 11 October. The littany of delays and technical problems many have endured has contrasted with Sky's own smooth rollout of broadband for its TV customers. It's also a good spoiler for O2's twice-delayed ADSL2+ launch, which will finally happen this week under the name "Fourplay". On the TV side side of battle, news that terrestrial TV viewers can pay for access to some of the satellite broadcasters' premium channels steals thunder from Virgin Media's noise making over its new channel, Virgin 1. The cable firm created the channel after Sky withdrew Sky One in a fees dispute earlier this year, and begins broadcasting it on Freeview today.

•Hackers post tips on how to unbrick your iPhone... sort of:
Owners of hacked iPhones have begun posting instructions on how to roll back a recent Apple firmware upgrade that rendered their mobile phones unusable. The instructions were available Monday on the iPhone Dev Wiki, a Web site devoted to iPhone software hacks and tools. These latest instructions allow users to roll back their firmware upgrades and use some functions such as the phone's iPod and Wi-Fi capabilities, but they do not necessarily restore the phone's ability to make calls, according to the iPhone Dev Wiki. That's because hackers have not yet found a way to roll back the firmware used by the iPhone's baseband chip, which is used to make calls. Since the iPhone's launch, enthusiasts have been developing ways to allow the devices to run unauthorized software and to unlock them so that they can be run on any mobile network. Late last week, however, Apple cracked down on these efforts by releasing a software upgrade that made hacked iPhones unusable. Research is going on to crack the latest 1.1.1 firmware.

•FTC triumphantly slaps spyware distributing company on wrist:
A Nevada company will pay US$330,000 to settle a complaint from the FTC that it hid spyware in other software consumers could download for free. The FTC accused ERG Ventures LLC of distributing spyware that infected 15 million computers. The company tricked consumers into downloading spyware by hiding the Media Motor program in other downloads for other software, including screensavers and video files, the FTC said in an October 2006 complaint. Media Motor, once downloaded, added software that changed consumers' home pages, tracked their Internet activity, altered browser settings, degraded computer performance and disabled antispyware and antivirus software, the FTC said. Much of the malware installed by the Media Motor program was extremely difficult or impossible for consumers to remove from their computers, the agency said. Microsoft filed a lawsuit against the company last November, seeking monetary damages for distributing spyware.

•San Dimas, eBay's desktop app, enters public beta testing:
EBay will significantly widen the beta test for San Dimas, its PC application designed to let buyers interact both offline and online with the company's marketplace. Until now San Dimas has been available to testers selected by eBay, but it can now be downloaded by eBay buyers for use with the U.S. marketplace. The application, which has been rebaptized eBay Desktop and was built on Adobe Systems Inc.'s AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) platform, will be shown this week at Adobe's Max 2007 show in Chicago. With eBay Desktop, the online auction giant hopes to give its buyers a tool that will enhance and simplify their purchasing activities on the marketplace.