The verdict is in: Telenor, Norway’s largest ISP, will not be legally obligated to block The Pirate Bay as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) had been hoping to compel via legal action.

A Norwegian district court ruled yesterday that Telenor is not facilitating copyright infringement when its users access The Pirate Bay; the court could find no legal grounds on which it could order the torrent website blocked on Telenor’s lines as a result.

The IFPI’s threat of legal action in March was dismissed by Telenor CEO Ragnar Kårhus saying, “[it] would be the same as demanding that the postal service should open all letters, and decide which ones should be delivered.”

“Obviously we are pleased that the District Court has arrived at this conclusion. At the same time it is important for us to emphasize that this case is not about being in favor of or opposed to copyright, but about whether or not it is reasonable to saddle Internet service providers with a censorship role in respect of content on the Internet,” Kårhus said yesterday in the wake of the ruling.

With legal precedent established, the recording industry can no longer rely on the blacklist as a viable strategy in Norway. Though it is not yet clear if the IFPI will appeal the decision, it does seem likely.

Ed note: Sites like Slashdot are pitching this FCC filing as fresh news, but it is not. Comcast transitioned to the following mechanism by December 31, 2008. We are covering it today for the sake of discussion, and to offer facts–not FUD–to the public about what the US’ largest ISPs are doing to manage their networks.

A 2008 filing by Comcast (PDF) with the US Federal Communications Commission sheds light on the company’s throttling practices. The filing came as a result of the FCC’s 2008 Internet Policy Statement (PDF) which obligates ISPs to be transparent about their network management practices.

The entire throttling mechanism is centered around the Cable Modem Termination System, or CMTS. Comcast’s network contains 3300 CMTS units in the US, each serving approximately 4400 customers.

The throttling process begins when a CMTS approaches a congested state described as greater than 15 minutes of  >70% upstream utilization or >80% downstream utilization. Comcast calls this a Near Congested State, or NCS.

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday filed an antitrust suit (PDF) against Intel in the US District Court for the District of Delaware.

The suit alleges that Intel Corporation willingly compelled or participated in several market actions design to block or impede market actions from rival firm AMD.

“Intel has engaged in a systematic worldwide campaign of illegal, exclusionary conduct to maintain its monopoly power and prices in the market for x86 microprocessors, the ‘brains’ of Personal Computers (’PCs’),” the filing reads.

“By exacting exclusive or near-exclusive agreements from large computer makers (’Original Equipment Manufacturers’ or ‘OEMs’) in exchange for payments totaling billions of dollars, and threatening retaliation against any company that did not heed its wishes, Intel robbed its competitors of the opportunity to challenge Intel’s dominance in key segments of the market. This illegal behavior was highly detrimental to consumers, competition, and innovation.”

The Delaware filing is very similar to that of the European Commission’s which ruled against Intel in May with a penalty of €1.07 billion.

The ongoing EC case alleges that Intel leveraged its significant financial capabilities to persuade customers into delaying or aborting AMD-powered plans in favor of products with Intel chips. The charges include paying at least one retailer to stock only Intel parts, and offering several secret rebates to make Intel processors the only economical choice.

The New York suit has requested a trial by jury, and asks for compensatory damages on five claims both civil and criminal.

Yahoo! has told the US Securities and Exchange Commission that it needs more time to hammer out its search deal with one-time rival Microsoft.

The SEC filing reads:

The Letter Agreement specified that the parties would execute Definitive Agreements by October 27, 2009, but given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some details to be finalized. The parties are working diligently on finalizing the agreements, have made good progress to date, and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible.

No details are given as to the cause of the delay, but it is a feasible assumption that the two parties are working overtime to avoid possible regulatory scrutiny.

Having just paid a €1.06 billion fine to European regulators, Intel may now be facing action from the United States Federal Trade Commission.

Intel has told Reuters that it believes its business practices in the US to be legal and of benefit to its customers, however three out of four FTC commissioners currently favor pursuing action on a formal inquiry opened in 2008.

“They said it could be a matter of weeks or a matter of months when the vote happens,” one source said.

FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, Commissioner Thomas Rosch and Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour currently favor pursuing legal action against Intel, according to sources.

Intel has already had to pay fines to regulators in South Korea, Japan, and Europe. A fine from the FTC would be another black mark on Intel’s anti-trust record.

Fresh off the voting block, the FCC has decided to move forward (PDF) with plans to pursue net neutrality in the United States.

The Commission has published a series of draft rules, which it is now petitioning the public to comment on. The rules apply to all providers of broadband Internet service, but wireless carriers are not yet included under that definition.

“To that end, the Notice seeks comment on how, in what time frames or phases, and to what extent the principles should apply to non-wireline forms of broadband Internet access, including mobile wireless,” the FCC said.

For now, providers which do fit the FCC’s definition of broadband service providers:

• Would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from sending or receiving the lawful content of the user’s choice over the Internet;
• Would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from running the lawful applications or using the lawful services of the user’s choice;
• Would not be allowed to prevent any of its users from connecting to and using on its network the user’s choice of lawful devices that do not harm the network;
• Would not be allowed to deprive any of its users of the user’s entitlement to competition among network providers, application providers, service providers, and content providers;
• Would be required to treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner; and
• Would be required to disclose such information concerning network management and other practices as is reasonably required for users and content, application, and service providers to enjoy the protections specified in this rulemaking.

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Motion Picture Association of America chairman and CEO Dan Glickman says he plans to leave when his contract expires.

Glickman intends to pursue other avenues, saying, “My guess is that I’ll end up in the nonprofit or academic world. People who know me know I’ve had these great extracurricular interests that have been very significant in driving me.”

Meanwhile, some believe he will not make it until September 2010 as there are many who are dissatisfied with the MPAA’s current anti-piracy efforts.

As a sign of the unrest, an overhaul has already begun which includes the dismissal of three of Glickman’s top anti-piracy execs and a rebranding of “anti-piracy” to “content protection.” The content protection group is also being merged with the association’s legal department, undoubtedly to accelerate the process of carpet bombing John Doe lawsuits.

According to Swedish paper TheLocal, the appeal hearing for The Pirate Bay’s band administrators has been pushed back into the summer of 2010.

The delay comes as a result of the numerous allegations of bias that have been leveled at judges during every step of the process. Targets of the accusations include Judges Tomas Norström, who oversaw the original hearing; Ulrika Ihrfelt, who was sent to investigate Norström’s affiliations; and Fredrik Nimela, one of three magistrates that had been tapped to oversee the case beginning this month.

Though Ihrfelt and Nimela received statutory ejections, their removals were later overturned when a court threw out the bias charges. The rejection was challenged The Pirate Bay, and that appeal may be taken by the Supreme Court.

In the interim, the appeals court which had been scheduled to oversee the appeal for The Bay’s April guilty verdict has voluntarily postponed proceedings to give the high court time to consider the bias case. The Supreme Court is not expected to rule until February, which pushes the appeal case into the next available time slot in the summer of 2010.

Executives from Intel and IBM were amongst six individuals arrested today amidst allegations that they were involved in a hedge fund’s insider trading scam.

According to the report from the Associated Press, the arrested parties include IBM SVP and GM Bob Moffat, Intel Capital Director of Strategic Investments Rajiv Goel, as well as Raj Rajaratnam, partner in the $7 billion Galleon Investment Group.

The US SEC has alleged that Moffat, Goel, and four additional parties passed insider information on Google, Polycom and Hilton Hotels to Rajaratnam who turned a $20 million profit on the information over a six month period in 2007. Reuters reports that the trades also occurred at Intel Capital, and that the insider information was also used to trade IBM, Sun Micro and AMD stocks.

The SEC has filed civil charges related to the insider trading in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. However, it is not yet clear what criminal charges are being brought against Rajaratnam, as reports conflict on the number of securities fraud and conspiracy charges being leveled.

While the ongoing antitrust battle being waged in Europe between chip giants Intel and AMD is fresh and memorable, few recall that a similar battle has been unfolding in a US District Court in Delaware since 2005. The case has remained quiet for years as the two parties glacially worked their angles, but the action heated up yesterday when both firms filed to sanction the other.

Both motions accuse the other of faulty data retention practices which have lead to a destruction of evidence.

AMD’s position (PDF)

“Intel could have easily avoided this evidence preservation fiasco, had it and its counsel exercised a modicum of diligence in designing and implementing an effective document preservation program,” their filing reads.

The “fiasco” AMD references is later specified as, “Intel’s much-heralded, high-vaunted, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt at remediation.”

AMD continues: “At the heart of Intel’s preservation problems was its failure to disarm an aggressive auto-delete system, despite uncontroverted authority required it do so…It’s auto-delete shredder continued to run without any safety net.”

“In sum, Intel’s feckless attempts at preservation have left AMD without the benefit of at least hundreds of thousands and probably over a million relevant documents with which to prosecute its case,” they conclude. “How many exactly were permanently lost, AMD will never know.”

AMD has asked the judge to order the jury to assume that the destroyed documents were favorable to AMD. They further request that Intel be on the hook for the fees necessary to confirm and execute their motion.

Intel’s position (PDF)

Intel’s motion alleges that AMD exaggerated its document preservation efforts in bringing a suit against Intel, saying, “AMD misrepresented its efforts and tried to hide its failures from the court and Intel.”

“Ever since Intel disclosed its problems in 2007, AMD claimed to have an ‘exemplary’ scheme to retain documents in this case. It is now clear that AMD did not, and that some AMD executives and employees failed to retain thousands of documents and e-mails,” claims Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy.

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Hanging out on the beaches by day, hitting the clubs by night, Maxi Sopo was living the life in Cancún. He regularly proclaimed on his Facebook that he was happy and having a great time. That would all be well and good for an ordinary American visiting Cancun on vacation, but Maxi Sopo was actually on the run from the law. He made over $200,000 by defrauding US banks before fleeing the country.

Sopo laid low in Mexico for a while before reemerging on Facebook to post multiple photos of himself at events and parties. Investigators could not access his Facebook profile to find out more information about his location, but they could see his friends. Among them was a person who had connections to the Department of Justice, so the Secret Service felt like he would be a discreet person to contact. The friend, who did not know Sopo very well, agreed to help the investigators.

Having effectively traded in his swim trunks for an orange jumpsuit, Sopo now awaits extradition to the United States in a Mexican jail. So, to any future fugitives that might be reading this: Facebook is not the way to go. At least there’s MySpace.

Yesterday we offered word that the open source community was up in arms regarding Netgear’s WNR3500L router. Netgear claimed that the product was open source, but the open source community alleged that the product might be illegal, in addition to being unsafe and unethical. We contacted Netgear to receive their perspective on the issue, and they wrote back to let us know that their Senior Product Line Manager Som Pal Choudhury has written a post which describes Netgear’s stance.

The open source community’s primary point of contention is that the WNR3500L is in violation of the GPL license. While the router’s kernel is open source, Netgear uses proprietary modules in the OEM firmware which hook into the kernel. This represents a GPL violation as anything that hooks into or modifies a GPL-licensed body of code must also have its source published, and this has not yet happened, says the OSS community. Choudhury disagrees, saying that he believes Netgear has complied with applicable GPL stipulations.

“With respect to the default firmware, we have used our best efforts to comply with and believe we have complied with the applicable GPL requirements,” he said. “Nevertheless, we understand that the open source community generally takes exception when factory loaded firmware written in Linux that is placed on routers or other hardware includes binary only kernel.” (more…)