Corporate and legal

FCC statement: 'Third way' legal framework

Editors' note: Earlier Thurday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski issued a statement outlining the agency's thinking behind its new approach to oversight of the Internet. Below is a related statement from the general counsel of the FCC.

A THIRD-WAY LEGAL FRAMEWORK FOR ADDRESSING THE COMCAST DILEMMA

Austin Schlick General Counsel Federal Communications Commission May 6, 2010

Chairman Genachowski has asked me to describe the legal thinking behind the narrow and tailored approach to broadband communications services that he introduced for public discussion today. It springs from a longstanding consensus about how the FCC should approach Internet access services; from a … Read more

FCC statement on 'third way' for broadband

Editors' note: The Federal Communications Commission on Thursday announced its new plan for broadband. Below is the FCC's full statement outlining that plan. See also the related news story, " FCC details plan to reassert authority over Internet."

THE THIRD WAY: A NARROWLY TAILORED BROADBAND FRAMEWORK

Chairman Julius Genachowski Federal Communications Commission May 6, 2010

Many have asked about the FCC's next steps in view of the recent decision in the Comcast case. I'll describe here a path forward, which will begin with seeking public comment on a post-Comcast legal foundation for the FCC's approach … Read more

Capellas to lead Cisco-EMC cloud venture

Michael Capellas, former CEO of Compaq, MCI, and First Data, has a new gig: front man for the Virtual Computing Environment coalition.

Capellas, who is 55, has also been appointed to the "complementary role" of CEO of Acadia, a joint venture of Cisco Systems and EMC with investment from Intel and VMware, the companies said Wednesday. Acadia has been created to support the coalition.

In a nutshell, Acadia is aimed at next-generation data centers designed to deliver private cloud infrastructure. The goal is to give customers the advantages of one throat to choke in terms of support without … Read more

Former MySpace security chief starts company

After four years as chief security officer at MySpace, Hemanshu Nigam is leaving his full-time job to start a new firm that advises companies on how to handle safety, security, and privacy. Nigam, who will continue to advise MySpace and its parent company News Corp., hopes to bring his expertise to start-ups, existing Internet companies, and even governments seeking to better understand how to avoid Internet-related problems.

A former sex-crimes prosecutor with the U.S. Justice Department, Nigam also served as director of consumer security outreach at Microsoft and was as an enforcement officer at the Motion Picture Association of … Read more

FCC plans Net neutrality regulations for broadband

Update May 6, 7:51 a.m. PT: The FCC has released its statement. More coverage to follow.

Net neutrality regulations are likely to be imposed on broadband providers after all.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski plans to announce details of the plan on Thursday, a senior agency official said. The purpose is to circumvent a recent federal appeals court ruling saying the FCC had no legal authority to punish Comcast for throttling some BitTorrent transfers.

Stung by the recent unanimous ruling, Genachowski will outline a "third way" to implement Net neutrality regulations, the official said in … Read more

Clearwire adds subscribers as losses mount

Clearwire is adding new customers to its 4G wireless service, as the company announces a 72 percent growth in quarterly revenue.

The company reported a loss or $94.1 million, or 47 cents per basic share. In the same quarter last year, it reported a loss of $71 million, or 37 cents per share. But the loss still managed to beat Wall Street expectations, which was expecting the company to lose 51 cents per share.

Revenues were also up to $106.7 million, compared with $62.1 million during the same quarter the year earlier. And the company beat revenue … Read more

Court fight brews over unsealing iPhone records

An attorney for the 21-year-old Silicon Valley resident who found what appears to be Apple's prototype iPhone in a bar is expected to oppose a request by CNET and other media organizations to unseal court records relating to the investigation.

A coalition also including the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, the Los Angeles Times, and Wired.com has prepared a 7-page legal brief that will ask a court to unseal the detective's affidavit used to obtain a search warrant nearly two weeks ago. A hearing has been tentatively scheduled in the San Mateo County courthouse for 2 p.m. … Read more

Google spends over $250 million on start-ups in quarter

Google spent more than $250 million on a total of 10 acquisitions during the first quarter of the year, putting it on quite a pace for 2010.

Most of the individual companies that Google buys are pretty small, and sell for prices low enough that Google doesn't have to disclose how much it paid because the price isn't material to its business. However, Google revealed the total amount spent in the first quarter as $268 million in its quarterly filing with the SEC Wednesday.

Of those 10 companies purchased by Google over the last three months, specific details … Read more

Former Microsoft exec Veghte headed to HP

Former Microsoft executive Bill Veghte is expected to be named on Wednesday as the new head for HP's software unit, CNET has learned.

Veghte, who earlier this year ended a 19-year career with Microsoft, was most recently the business head of Microsoft's Windows unit.

Last July, though, Microsoft named Steven Sinofsky to head both the business and engineering sides of Windows. At that time, Microsoft said Veghte would move to some new, unspecified role at the company.

However, in a January interview, Veghte said that he wanted to run a business "end-to-end" and said that there … Read more