There’s a new story developing. I’ve touched on it now and then, but the pieces are coming together. The FCC temporarily blocked the AT&T/Qualcomm deal to let AT&T buy spectrum using the excuse that they wanted to evaluate it together with the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Well, the latter deal has been withdrawn from the FCC, so now what’s the hold up?

It turns out that the Obama FCC under Julius Genachowski is looking to change the rules of the game. Genachowski wants to make it harder to for firms to pick up the spectrum they need to serve an ever-growing demand for wireless Internet. He and the FCC are calling it a change to the “spectrum screen.”

Why the timing? Well, it turns out that Democrat commissioner Michael Copps, despite being an ardent supporter of the radical George Soros-driven Media Reform agenda, has spoken out against changing the rules midstream. but it may not matter, as he’s quitting, and his replacement is going through the confirmation process right now in the Senate. Though that replacement may be delayed as Chuck Grassley fights for transparency in the FCC, there are no other obstacles to confirmation foreseen.

So while Copps has made a due process argument against what Genachowski is doing, Genachowski may be counting on Copps’s departure to prevent that from being an issue. With him gone, the Chairman will apparently be free to do what he wants, declaring what the rules will be anytime he wants, picking one set of rules for one company, and another set of rules for another, with nothing to stop him.

Chuck Grassley is fighting for transparency with respect to the FCC and LightSquared. The House Energy and Commerce committee is looking into FCC’s Spectrum Screen treatment. Even FCC Democrats are having to speak up. The FCC is completely out of control, and it’s taking all we’ve got in the Congress just to try to keep up, and to force the Obama administration to submit to oversight and respect the rule of law.

SOPA continues. The selective Internet kill switch bill, promoted by the administration’s allies in Hollywood to favor them over Internet-driven industries, now faces a bipartisan, bicameral alternative. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, has been filibustering PROTECT IP in the Senate, and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, has been speaking out against SOPA in the House. Together they propose the OPEN Act to keep the Internet open.

OPEN can actually work. Unlike SOPA and PROTECT IP, OPEN avoids regulating the Internet in America, and instead calls for us to use the International Trade Commission to target foreign “e-parasites” who infringe on the property rights of Americans. That’s a key. SOPA and PROTECT IP target American firms, harming us without actually reaching out to foreign firms. OPEN goes after the source of the problem.

It’s also important that OPEN doesn’t mess with the DNS system in America, a core Internet service. If we tried to censor DNS, we’d simply cut ourselves out of the loop, and become a laggard corner of the Internet like China, not at the thriving core. Darrell Issa says Don’t Break the Internet in promoting OPEN over SOPA. It’s a simple slogan but it’s right, and it’s not exaggerating.

Naturally the MPAA is angry, because OPEN calls for government to be neutral, not picking sides with one American industry or another. MPAA wants SOPA, that plays favorites.

Secretary Clinton has even spoken out against SOPA and for Internet Freedom. Oh wait, no, she’s going abroad and telling the rest of the world not to censor the Internet, even as Democrats and some Republicans attempt to do it at home.

The Government already has a poor track record on this. Censorship inherently defies oversight by the Congress and by the People. Don’t give the government a selective kill switch. Defeat SOPA. Pass OPEN Act if you want to target infringers, but defeat SOPA.

Can I get a big, whopping boo for the American Invents Act? That’s the insane bill Obama signed that favors lawyers over inventors, by changing our patent system to no longer give patents to the first person to make an invention. Dana Rohrabacher and I seemed to be the only ones who even cared.

Remember: Even well-intentioned regulation doesn’t always work.

PATENT WARS: Apple fends of Samsung attempt to ban the iPhone 4S in France, while Samsung holds off an Apple attempt to ban the Galaxy Tab in Australia. Worldwide, courts seem reluctant to completely ban the imports of popular electronics. This patent system is a wreck, and AIA’s pro-lawyer stance cannot help. We need real patent reform to fight cartels, and protect the interests of the public and not the American Bar Association

AT&T withdrew its T-Mobile merger application from the FCC in order to focus on the DoJ and Sprint lawsuits. Well now Eric Holder and Barack Obama Justice department are trying to stall that lawsuit until after AT&T re-files. If this were criminal court then it’d sound like an attempt at double jeopardy, wouldn’t it? But, the government gives itself broader latitude in civil court, it seems.

After playing California like a fiddle, in hindsight, Amazon gets ready for a national Internet Sales Tax fight. Conservatives need to watch out here. You’re going to here a lot of arguments about “fairness” and “paying your fair share.” But let me remind you that once the federal government starts collecting sales taxes, then the infrastructure will be in place for a national sales tax. For The Children. Think about the coming Presidential election. Are you confident our next President, Republican or Democrat, won’t get talked into a national sales tax? Nine percent, one percent, even just half a percent. To be “responsible.” To avoid “burdening our grandchildren.”

And once it’s passed, what stops it from growing?

There’s a new story developing. I’ve touched on it now and then, but the pieces are coming together. The FCC temporarily blocked the AT&T/Qualcomm deal to let AT&T buy spectrum using the excuse that they wanted to evaluate it together with the AT&T/T-Mobile deal. Well, the latter deal has been withdrawn from the FCC, so now what’s the hold up?

It turns out that the Obama FCC under Julius Genachowski is looking to change the rules of the game. Genachowski wants to make it harder to for firms to pick up the spectrum they need to serve an ever-growing demand for wireless Internet. He and the FCC are calling it a change to the “spectrum screen.”

Why the timing? Well, it turns out that Democrat commissioner Michael Copps, despite being an ardent supporter of the radical George Soros-driven Media Reform agenda, has spoken out against changing the rules midstream. but it may not matter, as he’s quitting, and his replacement is going through the confirmation process right now in the Senate. Though that replacement may be delayed as Chuck Grassley fights for transparency in the FCC, there are no other obstacles to confirmation foreseen.

So while Copps has made a due process argument against what Genachowski is doing, Genachowski may be counting on Copps’s departure to prevent that from being an issue. With him gone, the Chairman will apparently be free to do what he wants, declaring what the rules will be anytime he wants, picking one set of rules for one company, and another set of rules for another, with nothing to stop him.

Chuck Grassley is fighting for transparency with respect to the FCC and LightSquared. The House Energy and Commerce committee is looking into FCC’s Spectrum Screen treatment. Even FCC Democrats are having to speak up. The FCC is completely out of control, and it’s taking all we’ve got in the Congress just to try to keep up, and to force the Obama administration to submit to oversight and respect the rule of law.

SOPA continues. The selective Internet kill switch bill, promoted by the administration’s allies in Hollywood to favor them over Internet-driven industries, now faces a bipartisan, bicameral alternative. Senator Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, has been filibustering PROTECT IP in the Senate, and Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, has been speaking out against SOPA in the House. Together they propose the OPEN Act to keep the Internet open.

OPEN can actually work. Unlike SOPA and PROTECT IP, OPEN avoids regulating the Internet in America, and instead calls for us to use the International Trade Commission to target foreign “e-parasites” who infringe on the property rights of Americans. That’s a key. SOPA and PROTECT IP target American firms, harming us without actually reaching out to foreign firms. OPEN goes after the source of the problem.

It’s also important that OPEN doesn’t mess with the DNS system in America, a core Internet service. If we tried to censor DNS, we’d simply cut ourselves out of the loop, and become a laggard corner of the Internet like China, not at the thriving core. Darrell Issa says Don’t Break the Internet in promoting OPEN over SOPA. It’s a simple slogan but it’s right, and it’s not exaggerating.

Naturally the MPAA is angry, because OPEN calls for government to be neutral, not picking sides with one American industry or another. MPAA wants SOPA, that plays favorites.

Secretary Clinton has even spoken out against SOPA and for Internet Freedom. Oh wait, no, she’s going abroad and telling the rest of the world not to censor the Internet, even as Democrats and some Republicans attempt to do it at home.

The Government already has a poor track record on this. Censorship inherently defies oversight by the Congress and by the People. Don’t give the government a selective kill switch. Defeat SOPA. Pass OPEN Act if you want to target infringers, but defeat SOPA.

Can I get a big, whopping boo for the American Invents Act? That’s the insane bill Obama signed that favors lawyers over inventors, by changing our patent system to no longer give patents to the first person to make an invention. Dana Rohrabacher and I seemed to be the only ones who even cared.

Remember: Even well-intentioned regulation doesn’t always work.

PATENT WARS: Apple fends of Samsung attempt to ban the iPhone 4S in France, while Samsung holds off an Apple attempt to ban the Galaxy Tab in Australia. Worldwide, courts seem reluctant to completely ban the imports of popular electronics. This patent system is a wreck, and AIA’s pro-lawyer stance cannot help. We need real patent reform to fight cartels, and protect the interests of the public and not the American Bar Association

AT&T withdrew its T-Mobile merger application from the FCC in order to focus on the DoJ and Sprint lawsuits. Well now Eric Holder and Barack Obama Justice department are trying to stall that lawsuit until after AT&T re-files. If this were criminal court then it’d sound like an attempt at double jeopardy, wouldn’t it? But, the government gives itself broader latitude in civil court, it seems.

After playing California like a fiddle, in hindsight, Amazon gets ready for a national Internet Sales Tax fight. Conservatives need to watch out here. You’re going to here a lot of arguments about “fairness” and “paying your fair share.” But let me remind you that once the federal government starts collecting sales taxes, then the infrastructure will be in place for a national sales tax. For The Children. Think about the coming Presidential election. Are you confident our next President, Republican or Democrat, won’t get talked into a national sales tax? Nine percent, one percent, even just half a percent. To be “responsible.” To avoid “burdening our grandchildren.”

And once it’s passed, what stops it from growing?

Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 8.9, whose retail debut has been rumored since March, is finally hitting stores.

Best Buy began taking pre-orders on the device Thursday. The tablet sports an 8.9-inch screen, runs the Android 3.1 Honeycomb OS, has 16 GB of onboard memory and costs $469.99. The device is not the LTE version that was announced in August. Best Buy offers no release date, however, just saying it’s “coming soon.”

The device is Samsung’s third crack at the tablet market. The company introduced the Galaxy Tab 7.7 with a 7.7-inch screen in September 2010. After Galaxy Tab 7.7′s lukewarm reception, Samsung introduced the Galaxy Tab 10.1 with a 10.1-inch screen to U.S. stores in June.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy Tab Challenges iPad With New Ads [VIDEOS]

Though Steve Jobs has famously dismissed 7-inch tablets as “tweeners,” because they’re bigger than a smartphone and smaller than a full-functioning tablet, the jury is out on how a somewhat smaller tablet might perform in the market.

[via MobileBurn ]

More About: galaxy tab, Mobile, samsung

No really, Governor Haslam, you do not want to bring California taxation to Tennessee. Have you seen our unemployment? That’s why we just might defeat it at referendum.

PETA people are hijacking phones, sending malicious messages without consent, and running up text message bills. People need to be careful about what they install, but this sort of thing needs to send people to jail, as well. We don’t need more laws and regulations, we need more enforcement against the bad guys.

How badly do we not need more laws and regulations? Even the Progressive Policy Institute’s Michael Mandel thinks so, calling on the President to lead in the direction of less regulation and pro-growth change.

I’ve come out strongly against the proposed PROTECT IP law, that would create a national Internet censorship blacklist, like they have in unfree countries. Tech Liberation Front has gone further in studying the bill and finding just what’s wrong with it, proposing a list of fixes:

1. Drop provisions that tamper with the DNS system in an effort to block U.S. access to banned sites.
2. Drop provisions that tamper with search engines, indices, and any other linkage to banned sites.
3. Remove a private right of action that would allow copyright and trademark holders to obtain court orders banning ad networks and financial transaction processors from doing business with banned sites.
4. Scale back current enforcement abuses by the Department of Homeland Security under the existing PRO-IP Act of 2008.
5. Focus the vague and overinclusive definition of the kind of websites that can be banned, limiting it to truly criminal enterprises.

Copyright and Trademark are, in theory, good things to have, but mass censorship of the Internet in the support of a good thing is not in itself good.

Though sometimes trademark expansions annoy me. See the US Olympic Committee picking on the “Redneck Olympics”. Of course, I don’t like the IOC and its affiliated bodies anyway, so maybe I’m biased.

Google has drawn some criticism for its restrictive Google+ policies, where they try to lock you down onto one and only one account, preventing you from juggling multiple identities for different communities, and blocking the use of aliases to that effect. Facebook may adopt the same policy. Me? I’ll never join Google+ and I might just delete my Facebook account one of these days. These firms are greedy for personal information, and control of it.

The chickens continue to come home to roost at Google, as the FTC might try to implement Phone Neutrality for Android in response to Google’s plans to acquire Motorola’s phone business. When will Google learn that they blew it on Net Neutrality?

It turns out Germany overstepped its bounds legally in the EU, and most injunctions against Samsung importing the Galaxy Tab have been lifted, due to German courts having no legal right to impose them. Samsung’s not out of hot water for copying Apple designs, though.

Big surprise: the President foolishly handed over total control of the Internet to international bodies, and now we run the risk of totalitarian nations trying to wreck it through the UN. Sigh.

Another shocker: The Obama FCC found a great, market-based way to get us more wireless spectrum, incentive auctions, so that we can have nigh universal access to multiple carriers of wireless, high speed Internet, and John Dingell is having a temper tantrum. Only a totalitarian socialist would be “disturbed” by free market allocation of resources. Freedom threatens dictators, not small-d democrats.

Oh, and be prepared for more surprise: Obama’s cybersecurity plans won’t actually improve security. They’re just power grabs. You could knock me over with a feather.

Democrats are just serving up failure after failure after failure on tech policy. A combination of incompetence and ideological socialism will do that, I guess.

Let’s just hope they stumble into the right idea and stay out of the way enough that AT&T can do its 4G rollout using T-Mobile spectrum.

No really, Governor Haslam, you do not want to bring California taxation to Tennessee. Have you seen our unemployment? That’s why we just might defeat it at referendum.

PETA people are hijacking phones, sending malicious messages without consent, and running up text message bills. People need to be careful about what they install, but this sort of thing needs to send people to jail, as well. We don’t need more laws and regulations, we need more enforcement against the bad guys.

How badly do we not need more laws and regulations? Even the Progressive Policy Institute’s Michael Mandel thinks so, calling on the President to lead in the direction of less regulation and pro-growth change.

I’ve come out strongly against the proposed PROTECT IP law, that would create a national Internet censorship blacklist, like they have in unfree countries. Tech Liberation Front has gone further in studying the bill and finding just what’s wrong with it, proposing a list of fixes:

1. Drop provisions that tamper with the DNS system in an effort to block U.S. access to banned sites.
2. Drop provisions that tamper with search engines, indices, and any other linkage to banned sites.
3. Remove a private right of action that would allow copyright and trademark holders to obtain court orders banning ad networks and financial transaction processors from doing business with banned sites.
4. Scale back current enforcement abuses by the Department of Homeland Security under the existing PRO-IP Act of 2008.
5. Focus the vague and overinclusive definition of the kind of websites that can be banned, limiting it to truly criminal enterprises.

Copyright and Trademark are, in theory, good things to have, but mass censorship of the Internet in the support of a good thing is not in itself good.

Though sometimes trademark expansions annoy me. See the US Olympic Committee picking on the “Redneck Olympics”. Of course, I don’t like the IOC and its affiliated bodies anyway, so maybe I’m biased.

Google has drawn some criticism for its restrictive Google+ policies, where they try to lock you down onto one and only one account, preventing you from juggling multiple identities for different communities, and blocking the use of aliases to that effect. Facebook may adopt the same policy. Me? I’ll never join Google+ and I might just delete my Facebook account one of these days. These firms are greedy for personal information, and control of it.

The chickens continue to come home to roost at Google, as the FTC might try to implement Phone Neutrality for Android in response to Google’s plans to acquire Motorola’s phone business. When will Google learn that they blew it on Net Neutrality?

It turns out Germany overstepped its bounds legally in the EU, and most injunctions against Samsung importing the Galaxy Tab have been lifted, due to German courts having no legal right to impose them. Samsung’s not out of hot water for copying Apple designs, though.

Big surprise: the President foolishly handed over total control of the Internet to international bodies, and now we run the risk of totalitarian nations trying to wreck it through the UN. Sigh.

Another shocker: The Obama FCC found a great, market-based way to get us more wireless spectrum, incentive auctions, so that we can have nigh universal access to multiple carriers of wireless, high speed Internet, and John Dingell is having a temper tantrum. Only a totalitarian socialist would be “disturbed” by free market allocation of resources. Freedom threatens dictators, not small-d democrats.

Oh, and be prepared for more surprise: Obama’s cybersecurity plans won’t actually improve security. They’re just power grabs. You could knock me over with a feather.

Democrats are just serving up failure after failure after failure on tech policy. A combination of incompetence and ideological socialism will do that, I guess.

Let’s just hope they stumble into the right idea and stay out of the way enough that AT&T can do its 4G rollout using T-Mobile spectrum.

Samsung posted positive fourth quarter results Friday morning. The company attributed its success partly to “outstanding sales” of smartphones and its Android-based tablet, the Galaxy Tab.

A report from Korean site Yonhap News claims that Samsung actually sold more than 2 million Galaxy Tabs in its first three months on the market, although we were unable to independently confirm the fact.

In December, Samsung announced it had sold 1 million Galaxy Tabs. If the sales indeed picked up during December and the 2-million-sold figure is true, it’s a surprisingly positive result, although it’s still nowhere near the 7.3 million iPads Apple sold last quarter.

The Galaxy Tab runs on Android 2.2, which is not entirely appropriate for tablets even by Google’s standards. It’s probably best described as a product for early adopters, a forerunner for more advanced Android 2.4-based tablets that are coming this year. When viewed in that light, Samsung’s results paint a bright picture for the future of Android tablets.

Overall, Samsung’s quarterly results were solid, with revenue of $37.6 billion, net income of $3.1 billion, and 80.7 mobile devices sold. Samsung’s revenue in 2010 was a record-high at $139 billion, up 13% from 2009, and the company’s net income ($14.5 billion) and operating profit ($15.5 billion) also marked all-time highs for the company.

Check out Samsung’s quarterly report here [PDF].

[Yonhap News via Electronista]

More About: android, galaxy tab, samsung, Tablet, trending

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