ARTS & FARCES internet

Business

Brad Stone, writing for the New York Times, cites the usual unnamed sources in reporting that Apple is under a US federal antitrust inquiry about the company’s “tactics in the market for digital music.” Justice Department investigators are apparently particularly interested in allegations that Apple coerced music labels into refusing Amazon exclusives on new releases. Apple has 69 percent of the online music market in the United States according to the NPD Group; Amazon’s second-place share is a paltry 8 percent. On another front, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues its separate investigation of Apple’s parameters for iPhone developers, initiated by a complaint from Adobe.

This week Apple became the technology company with the largest market capitalization in the world. On Wednesday, 26 May 2010, Apple’s stock rose 1.8 percent to give the company a valuation of more than US$227 billion.

Internet

Early this week 74 Democrats in the US House of Representatives joined 37 Republicans in the US Senate in signing a letter concocted by the telecommunications and cable industries. The letter to Julius Genachowski, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), asks that the FCC abandon its efforts to protect network neutrality. Most of the politicians eat heavily from the AT&T and Comcast gravy train. President Obama campaigned heavily on network neutrality and continues to support an open internet. This move by cynical politicians also threatens the FCC’s National Broadband Plan, that would extend broadband service to rural and low-income communities. A 2007 Brookings Institution and MIT study (.pdf; 228KB) estimates that a one percent increase in US broadband penetration equals 300,000 additional jobs. Telecommunications and cable executives publicly acknowledge that the FCC’s proposal would have no impact on their broadband investments. But in the letter they write, “The uncertainty this proposal creates will jeopardize jobs and deter needed investment for years to come. We urge you not to move forward with a proposal that undermines critically important investment in broadband and the jobs that come with it.” Sign the Free Press letter telling Genachowski and Congress that these sellouts don’t speak for you.

Last week, Google announced it would release the VP8 video codec under an open source license as the WebM project. This means that video can be embedded in HTML5 web pages without the need for users to have plug-ins. Mozilla, Google, and Opera have all committed to supporting it in their browsers. Even Microsoft has announced it will support it in Internet Explorer 9. That leaves Apple’s Safari as the only major browser that has not announced support. Apple’s competing technology, H.264, is patented and requires a license (and associated license fees) for its use. Apple has begun to make noises about patent violation complaints against open video codecs. Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product management told Michael Calore, writing for Wired, that Google had done “‘a thorough legal analysis of VP8’ since acquiring it, and remains confident it can release the technology under an open source license without infringing on any patents.”