понеділок, 2 червня 2014 р.
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In spite of the fact that the current debate over net neutrality is one of the most important issues facing America right now, it’s not easy to get people to give a damn about the topic because it involves incredibly dull, complicated regulatory minutiae. Perhaps this calls for a rebranding.
In the above clip from Sunday’s Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver makes an impassioned — and occasionally profane — case for why Americans should care about neutrality… and why they don’t.
It starts with the phrase “net neutrality” itself.
“The only two words that promise more boredom in the English language are ‘featuring Sting,’” says Oliver. “I would rather listen to a pair of Dockers tell me about the weird dream it had last night.”
The problem, he explains, is that both those who want true neutrality — in which Internet service providers treat all data equally, without regard to its source or destination — and those who support the pending changes that would allow ISPs to charge content companies for better access to end-users, employ language that is so incredibly dull that people tune out.
“The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America,” says Oliver. “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.”
Oliver suggests that advocates stop using terms like “protecting net neutrality” and go with something a little more to-the-point.
“They should be calling it ‘preventing cable company f*ckery,’ because that is what it is,” he offers, “And it might compel people to actually want to do something.”
Click here for information on how to contact the FCC to let your voice be heard on net neutrality the proposed cable company f*ckery.
Some other observations from last night’s neutrality piece…
• On Internet Fast Lanes:
“If we let cable companies offer two speeds of service, they won’t be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motorbike. They’ll be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolted-to-an-anchor.”
• On the Rare Cooperation Between Consumer Advocates & Major Tech Companies:
“What’s being proposed is so egregious, activists and corporations have been forced onto the same side. That’s basically Lex Luthor knocking on Superman’s apartment door and going, ‘Listen, I know we have our differences but we have got to get rid of that asshole in apartment 3-B.”
•On the Appointment of Former Cable/Wireless Industry Front Man Tom Wheeler As FCC Chair:
“The guy who used to run the cable industry’s lobbying arm is now running the agency tasked with regulating it. That is the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.”
• On the Notion that the Comcast/TWC Merger is Okay Because the Companies Don’t Overlap:
“You can’t reduce competition when nobody is competing. You could not be describing a monopoly more clearly if you were wearing a metal while driving a metal car after winning second prize in a beauty contest.”
And finally, we really just want to get our names in for the Beta test of Oliver’s streaming video startup, Nutflix:
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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For the last several years, current and former college athletes have been suing EA for using the players’ likenesses without permission or payment in the company’s NCAA Football, Basketball, and March Madness video games.
On Friday, the law firm of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro announced the plaintiffs had reached a preliminary settlement with EA that would result in a few bucks being thrown in the general direction of the athletes who bring in billions for their schools, the NCAA, broadcasters, apparel makers, ticket brokers, and others, but who aren’t allowed to be paid because that would somehow violate the sanctity of collegiate sports.
The settlement, which still needs approval of the court, would pay affected athletes up to $951 for each year in which their likeness was used in an EA game. For players who were featured in multiple EA games in recent years, that could mean several thousands of dollars. For the superstars who moved onto the pros after only a year or two in college, it’s not as much money, but hopefully they are saving their NFL and NBA salaries.
And a player’s particular payout could actually be significantly lower than the $951 figure, depending on a number of factors, including the total number of claims made and when that player’s likeness was used. Individual claims could be as low as around $50.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, in order to stake any claim to the estimated $40 million settlement pool, you would have to have been an NCAA football and/or basketball player listed on the roster of a school whose team was included in an NCAA-branded EA game published or distributed after May 4, 2003. Additionally, your assigned jersey number — or a photograph that looks like you — would have to have been part of the game.
“We’re incredibly pleased with the results of this settlement and the opportunity to right a huge wrong enacted by the NCAA and EA against these players and their rights of publicity,” said attorney Steve Berman in a statement. “We’ve fought against intense legal hurdles since filing this case in 2009 and to see this case come to fruition is a certain victory.”
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist
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One of the dozen d-Con products
that will be phased out in the coming year.
The company will still continue to
make rodenticides that meet
EPA safety standards.
For years, makers of mouse and rat poisons in the U.S. have been phasing out in-home rodenticides that use toxic pellets without a so-called “bait station” to contain them, allowing to pellets to scatter around a house, making their way into the mouths of curious kids. In fact, only one company has balked at pulling these potentially dangerous products from shelves; unfortunately, that company is the nation’s largest maker of rat poison.
The Environmental Protection Agency has acknowledged for decades that rodenticide pellets pose a poisoning risk when used in the home, and that around 10,000 children a year were accidentally exposed to these poisons.
Ten years ago the Natural Resources Defense Council and West Harlem Environmental Action successfully sued to get the EPA to develop safety standards for the rodent-control industry. Since then, only Reckitt Benckiser — maker of d-Con (and Lysol, and Clearasil, and Woolite, and Frank’s RedHot sauce, among many others) — has continued to put out products that don’t conform to the EPA standards.
The EPA maintains this list of products that meet its standards, some of which are from d-Con, but there are currently 12 d-Con in-home rodenticides that don’t pass muster.
The agency says that after attempting to negotiate the removal of these remaining products — including d-CON Ready Mixed Kills Rats & Mice and d-CON Mouse Prufe — it began to take action to cancel these products and force Reckitt to remove them from the market.
But on Friday, the EPA and Reckitt announced that a deal had been made that would phase out the production and distribution of these rodenticides over the next 10 months.
Reckitt will begin to phase out production of the 12 d-CON poison products immediately, with the goal to stop all production by Dec. 31. The d-Con products in question will no longer be distributed by the company after March 31, 2015.
The company is not allowed to stockpile or ramp-up production of these products in anticipation of the phase-out. Instead, Reckitt is only allowed to produce enough to meet existing orders.
Stores will be allowed to continue selling the products until their inventories are exhausted, which the EPA predicts would be during the summer of 2015.
“Today, we can celebrate a major victory for children’s health across the nation and for common sense,” writes Mae Wu, an attorney for the NRDC. “Now we can protect our kids and communities, and deal with rodent problems in our neighborhoods at the same time.”
morez срочный автовыкуп by Chris Morran via Consumerist