May, 14 2009, 10:54am EDT
![Free Press](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012695/origin.jpg)
AT&T's Not-So-Secret Veto over 3G SlingPlayer Mobile
WASHINGTON
Modern TV is digital, and it is everywhere - from the laptop to the
cell phone to the wristwatch. If it has a screen and a radio, you can
probably watch TV on it. Innovations abound in this market. One of
these, the Slingbox, redirects cable television signals over the
Internet for remote viewing. With the right technology, consumers can
watch TV anywhere, any time.
Unless those consumers use iPhones, that is. The version of the
Slingbox remote, SlingPlayer Mobile, released in the Apple application
store comes with access to AT&T's wireless 3G network permanently disabled. As the Apple store is the only
(practical) way to add applications to the iPhone, users are effectively denied access to this innovative new service.
Why did Apple restrict SlingPlayer Mobile? After all, Apple has no
real incentive to forbid 3G access. SlingPlayer Mobile met all of
Apple's app store technical requirements. And, the more useful and valuable the applications for the iPhone, the more iPhones will be sold.
The true source of this prohibition is AT&T, who seems to hold a
(not-so) secret veto over every application released in the app store.
With SlingPlayer Mobile, AT&T has not even attempted to hide its involvement. After the story broke, AT&T released an official statement explaining why SlingPlayer Mobile was not permitted to use the 3G network:
"Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network
capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other
customers from using the network. The application does not run on our
3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal
to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of
service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal
computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes
as PCs...."
Does this sound familiar? It should -- Robb Topolski blogged about AT&T's terms of service in April. Let's recall the history of AT&T's "disappearing, reappearing"
prohibition on mobile video. In late March, AT&T modified
its prohibition on redirecting a TV signal to a "personal computer" to
include "any technology from a fixed location to a mobile device."
After substantial complaints over language that seemed targeted
specifically to Sling Media, AT&T retracted the change, claiming it "was done in error." Shortly thereafter, AT&T re-inserted the original language, prompting some to declare the language a "non-issue."
But, two weeks after the change, SlingPlayer Mobile was released,
with its 3G connectivity disabled. It appears not only plausible, but
likely, that SlingPlayer Mobile was waiting in the Apple store's
approval process while AT&T made these changes to its terms of
service to more clearly prohibit the application's use over 3G. When
that attempt failed, AT&T decided to call the iPhone a "personal
computer" in order to awkwardly fit its prohibition within the original
terms of service.
AT&T's behavior towards SlingPlayer Mobile mirrors its treatment of Skype,
another iPhone application permitted over Wi- Fi but not AT&T's 3G
network. Unlike SlingPlayer Mobile, the use of Skype is not prohibited
by AT&T's terms of service. Instead, AT&T defends its Skype
restriction by saying that Skype isn't being blocked in the network. As
with its convoluted response to SlingPlayer Mobile, AT&T doesn't
seem to get the point.
Consumers have the right to use the applications of their choice on the Internet, as Free Press argued in a recent letter to the FCC,
asking for an investigation into AT&T's Skype blocking.
Circumventing openness by blocking an application, whether in the
network or through secret vetos over the distribution chain, goes
against the consumer rights established by the Federal Communications
Commission in its Internet Policy Statement.
Even AT&T recognizes that the principles of the Internet Policy Statement apply to both wired and wireless networks. The Washington Postquotes AT&T's lead lobbyist Jim Cicconi as saying,
"The same principals [sic] should apply across the board. As people
migrate to the use of wireless devices to access the Internet, they . .
.
certainly expect that we treat these services the same way."
This begs the question: Why does AT&T want to block SlingPlayer
Mobile and Skype? AT&T has essentially admitted that it prohibits
Skype out of anti-competitive motives. Cicconi told USA Today
"We absolutely expect our vendors not to facilitate the services of our
competitors." AT&T's exclusive deal with Apple for the iPhone has
netted the company many, many new customers (most of whom are now
locked into lengthy AT&T contracts). These individuals deserve a
better explanation than they've been getting.
Perhaps AT&T is a victim of its own success. By adding so many
users before adequately building out its network to accommodate them,
AT&T may worry that widespread SlingPlayer Mobile usage will reveal
the limits of its network. However, a comparable application, OrbLive, was approved, and the iPhone comes with a built-in, non- removable YouTube button, so the network can clearly handle some video.
If AT&T's network is indeed limited, the right solution is not
to hide the limitations from consumers and spend money on lobbyists to
fight for the right to block. The right solution is to be up front
about limitations on the network, on the reasons why YouTube is ok but
SlingPlayer Mobile is not. The right solution is to allow applications,
including Skype, over the network in a nondiscriminatory manner. And
the right solution is to build the network out as fast as possible to
accommodate the applications that consumers want (and have the right)
to use. Popular demand is reason to accommodate, not to prohibit.
And if AT&T won't do the right thing, then Congress and the FCC
should step in. The open Internet must be protected on all access
networks, whether wired or wireless. For consumers, there's no "wired
Internet" and "wireless Internet" -- there is only "the Internet."
By Chris Riley, policy counsel, Free Press
Free Press was created to give people a voice in the crucial decisions that shape our media. We believe that positive social change, racial justice and meaningful engagement in public life require equitable access to technology, diverse and independent ownership of media platforms, and journalism that holds leaders accountable and tells people what's actually happening in their communities.
(202) 265-1490LATEST NEWS
US Voter Registrations Surge as Republicans Try to Limit Ballot Access
One group said it has registered over 100,000 new voters since U.S. President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race.
Jul 26, 2024
The group behind a popular get-out-the-vote technology platform said Friday that it's registered more than 100,000 new U.S. voters since President Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, a surge that came amid mounting Republican efforts to make it harder to register and vote.
Vote.org said that 84% of voters registered in the new wave are under age 35. Nearly 1 in 5 new registrees is 18 years old. Andrea Hailey, the group's CEO, said that "since 2020, we have led the largest voter registration drive in U.S. history," with more than 7.8 million people registered.
After dropping out, Biden endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to face former Republican President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) in the November election. The new presumptive Democratic candidate has already earned endorsements from many Democrats in Congress and groups advocating on issues including climate, labor, and reproductive rights.
Vote.org's success comes as Republicans at the federal level are proposing and passing legislation creating obstacles to the ballot box.
Earlier this month, U.S. House Republicans passed Rep. Chip Roy's (R-Texas)
Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act, which would require proof of American citizenship to vote in federal elections. Republicans claim the bill is meant to fix the virtually nonexistent "problem" of noncitizen voter fraud.
However, Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.)
slammed the bill as a "xenophobic attack" meant to silence "Black voices, brown voices, LBGTQIA+ voices, [and] young voices."
Lee said the SAVE Act underscores the need to pass her recently introduced Right to Vote Act, "which would establish the first-ever affirmative federal voting rights guarantee, ensuring every citizen may exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot."
Earlier this year, U.S. Senate Democrats also reintroduced the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, legislation its sponsors say will "update and restore critical safeguards of the original Voting Rights Act."
Meanwhile, Republican-controlled state legislatures and red-state governors are enacting laws imposing tough restrictions on voter registration, with violations punishable by stiff fines that critics say are meant to dissuade people from registration drives and similar efforts.
Again under the guise of preventing fraud, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis last year signed legislation limiting voter registration drives, with fines of up to $250,000 for violators.
"These draconian laws and rules are like taking a sledgehammer to hit a flea," Cecile Scoon, an attorney and president of the Florida chapter of the League of Women Voters,
toldThe New York Times in an article published Friday.
Three years after Kansas passed a law making "false representation" of an election official a crime, campaigners say it's become extremely difficult to sign up new voters.
"In 2020, even with the pandemic, we had registered nearly 10,000 Kansans to vote. Now, we haven't been able to register anyone," Davis Hammet, president of the youth voter mobilization group Loud Light, told the Times.
In Louisiana, Republican state lawmakers quietly passed legislation making it easier for election officials to toss out absentee ballots with missing details, limiting how people can mail in other voters' ballots, and restricting the ability to assist people with disabilities with their ballots.
"What we've found is that these measures have a disproportionate impact on voters with disabilities, both Black and white," NAACP Legal Defense Fund senior policy counsel Jared Evans
toldNola.com earlier this week.
"It's clear that their goal is to make it harder to vote, harder for specific communities to vote especially," Evans added. "What they don't realize is that these laws hurt white voters, too."
In Nebraska, Republican Secretary of State Bob Evnen last week
ordered county election offices to stop registering voters with past felony convictions who have not received official pardons. The move came after the state's unicameral Legislature passed a bill granting voting eligibility to felons immediately after they have completed their sentences instead of waiting two years.
"We refuse to accept thousands of Nebraskans having their voting rights stripped away," ACLU of Nebraska legal and policy fellow Jane Seu said in a statement. "We are confident in the constitutionality of these laws, and we are exploring every option to ensure that Nebraskans who have done their time can vote."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that campaigners linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular