Brielle Bruns writes “Yesterday, Judge James B. Zagel dismissed claims against Comcast by e360. In the decision, the judge says: ‘Plaintiff e360Insight, LLC is a marketer. It refers to itself as an World wide web marketing company. Some, perhaps even a majority of people in this country, would call it a spammer.’ This clears the path for Comcast’s counter-suit.” e360 is the spammer that got a default judgement against Spamhaus, as we have discussed on numerous occasions.

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Filed under: Products and services, Law, Consumer experience, Competitive strategy, Marketing and advertising, Verizon Communications (VZ), Time Warner Cable (TWC)

Verizon (NYSE:VZ) states that Time Warner Cable (NYSE:TWC) is lying in its advertising. According to The Wall Street Journal, “Verizon states that Time Warner Cable’s ad implies FiOS requires a satellite dish for TV service and that it isn’t able to bundle together high-speed Internet, video and phone calls.”

The problem, of course, is much deeper than one ad. Verizon has spent $23 billion to put fiber in front of its 18 million customer homes. In the process it hopes it can take TV and high-speed World wide web customers away from cable companies and satellite TV firms. If the product does not do well, there will be hell to pay in the Verizon executive suite.

Cable company stocks have fallen over the last three quarters, to a huge extent due to the fear that they now have real competition for packages for voice, Television, and broadband, known fondly as the “triple play”. Verizon does not have to get a large number of cable customers to switch to do some real P&L damage. Early indications are that consumers like the fiber service. Because it can deliver more bandwidth it can offer larger numbers of HD channels.

The court fight over the ad makes for nice newspaper copy, but the real fight ends up being one for shareholder value. Time Warner Cable’s stock is down 30% in the last year.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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Filed under: Web services

A while back, the EFF caught cable provider Comcast using basic hacking techniques to restrict the use of Bittorrent on their connection. This irritated a lot of people, not only illegal file sharers, but also the growing number of consumers who use the bittorrent technology for legitimate purposes, such as downloading Open Source software or getting quality, legal media from one of Bittorrent’s many partners.

The EFF, ever vigilant, has created an excellent guide to “packet shaping”, the technique that ISPs use to futz with your data. In a nutshell:

• You the consumer have the ability to monitor your connection for suspicious packets using a tool called Wireshark.
• People who catch their ISPs in the act can send evidence to the EFF, which will in turn help their case to take legal action against sneaky ISPs.

Check out the white paper at their site, complete with cute illustrations and explanations that just about anyone ought to be able to comprehend.

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EreIamJH brings news about a commercial geostationary satellite that was launched last month. Due to a launch failure, the satellite did not reach the orbit required to perform its function. The satellite’s owner, SES Americom, looked for a way to salvage the satellite, but ran into an unexpected hurdle; a Boeing patent on the lunar flyby process that would be used to correct the satellite’s orbit. If another company doesn’t buy the satellite, it is apt to become another piece of space junk. The European Space Bureau has posted a gallery of the maps they have put together for man-made debris in orbit around the earth.

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I Don’t Believe in Imaginary Property writes “In Universal Music Group v. Augusto, UMG is attacking the first sale doctrine. The issue concerns some promotional CDs that were mailed out, and later found their way to eBay. According to UMG, the stickers on the discs claiming that they still own the CD give them a legal right to control what the recipients do with them, and thus, UMG should be able to dictate terms. The EFF has filed an amicus brief countering that claim, saying that because they were sent by US mail, unrequested by the recipient, they’re in fact gifts, no matter what the sticker claims. If UMG somehow wins this, I plan to send them CD of copyrighted expletives with a sticker informing them of the contractually required storage location. We discussed a similar issue with e-books a couple weeks ago.”

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ahess247 brings us a lengthy BusinessWeek story on the increasing amount of attacks against the US government’s on the web presence as well as its contacts in the private sector. Hackers are gaining a greater awareness of where valuable data might reside, and that awareness is leading to more precise, more sophisticated attacks. Quoting: “The U.S. government, and its sprawl of defense contractors, have been the victims of an unprecedented rash of similar cyber attacks over the last two years, state current and former U.S. government officials. ‘It’s espionage on a massive scale,’ states Paul B. Kurtz, a former high-ranking national security official. Government agencies reported 12,986 cyber security incidents to the U.S. Homeland Security Dept. last fiscal year, triple the number from two years earlier. Incursions on the military’s networks were up 55% last year, says Lieutenant General Charles E. Croom, head of the Pentagon’s Joint Task Force for Global Network Operations. Private targets like Booz Allen are just as vulnerable and pose just as much potential security risk. ‘They have our information on their networks. They’re building our weapon systems. You wouldn’t want that in enemy hands,’ Croom says. Cyber attackers ‘are not denying, disrupting, or destroying operations–yet. But that doesn’t mean they don’t have the ability.’”

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