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The news isn’t much of a surprise, given that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has publicly criticized Comcast for the practice and recommended to the rest of the commissioners that they vote in favor of the decision.

The five FCC commissioners grill Comcast representatives at a public hearing held in Cambridge, Mass., earlier this year.

Comcast hasn’t denied slowing traffic to file-sharing sites. At a public hearing in February, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen said, “Comcast may on a limited basis temporarily delay certain P2P traffic when that traffic has or is projected to have an adverse effect on other customers’ use of the service.”

However, Cohen did deny blocking such sites outright, saying, “Comcast does not block any Web site, application, or Web protocol, including peer-to-peer services, period. What we are doing is a limited form of network management objectively based upon an excessive bandwidth-consumptive protocol during limited periods of network congestion,” he explained.

If the punishment comes through, which is all but assured now, Comcast wouldn’t be fined. But it would be ordered to stop blocking or slowing traffic to peer-to-peer sites like BitTorrent, explain to consumers and the commission how it has blocked such traffic in the past, and publicly disclose how it plans to manage its network in the future.

The Federal Communications Commission appears poised to take steps to punish Comcast for allegedly blocking access to file-sharing traffic.

Three of the five FCC commissioners have voted in favor of an item saying Comcast violated federal policy by dialing down peer-to-peer traffic over its network, according to FCC officials cited in The Wall Street Journal.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumers’ access to the Internet,” the Associated Press quoted Martin saying earlier this month. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

A final ruling on the issue is expected to come at a commission meeting scheduled for August 1.

(Credit:
Anne Broache/CNET News)

The 2008 Webware 100 Awards program is under way right now. At this point we’re collecting nominations for your favorite Web 2.0 services. We’ve got a database of several thousand, but we want to make sure we’re not missing any cool site or service. So nominate your favorite Web 2.0 site to make sure it’s included.

Make sure your picks are in the running. Nominate now.

Once the nominations close (this Friday), Josh and I will pore over all the entries and select 300 finalists. We’re looking for the most interesting, most important, coolest, and basically most electable candidates. It will take a while, and it’s a tough job. Once we’re done, we open up voting.

In other words, we choose the candidates, but you choose the winners. Here are last years’ winners.

With the Microhoo drama back in overdrive Monday, investors may be scrambling to figure out what buying a “minority, passive stake” means.

Reuters is quoting a source saying Microsoft is considering buying Yahoo’s search business and taking a “minority, passive stake” in Yahoo once Yahoo has spun off its Asian assets. That’s not a direct quote from the source, that’s how the Reuters reporter described it.

This is a new wrinkle in the barrage of coverage for two reasons: It’s likely the first time anyone has reported Microsoft would be interested in taking what sounds like a backseat at Yahoo (in addition to buying the search business). And it adds to earlier rumors that the Chinese search site Alibaba wanted Yahoo to sell its stake in Alibaba to keep it from Microsoft. Some speculate Softbank could be interested in buying that stake.

Like many other Microhoo rumor reports, take this one for what it’s worth: Reuters reports the proposal is “little more than an outline of Microsoft’s thinking,” and does not yet include a value for Yahoo’s search business. Of course, Yahoo is still believed to be in partnership talks with Google on the search business, as well.

Does Yahoo suddenly find itself, despite threats from corporate raider Carl Icahn, with two search suitors it can play off one another?

And here I thought Microsoft had a cross-license pact with nearly every tech company other than Red Hat.

Apparently there are still a few more names to cross of the to-do list Microsoft set-up a few years back. On Thursday, Microsoft announced a deal with Tokyo-based Onkyo, which will pay Microsoft an undisclosed amount of compensation to Redmond.

Onkyo also signed a deal to use Microsoft’s Windows Rally technology which aims to offer a better connection between PCs and other consumer electronics, such as Onkyo’s home theater and audio/video gear.

The Crave video podcast is back! This week we learn about Transformer phones, Brian Tong’s creepy dating habits, and Jessica Dolcourt’s skill at the mobile version of Guitar Hero.

Holler if you’re glad to see the Crave vodcast back in action. We’ll have more Crave goodness for you coming next week.

MuleCon 2008

(Credit: MuleCon)
The fine folks at InfoWorld Events and MuleSource are offering Negative Approach readers discounts for their upcoming events.

OSBC-March 25-26, 2008, San Francisco
Reg code for $200 discount: mulesource
Registration https://webreg.events.infoworld.com/osbc

MuleCon-April 1-2, 2008, San Francisco
http://www.mulecon.com

Mention this blog and get $50 off the MuleCon registration - just email mulecon2008@mulesource.com or call 1-415-229-2065 to register.

Disclosure: I am an employee of MuleSource and speaker at OSBC.

Making a professional-sounding recording can be expensive, particularly for ensembles (like rock bands) who want to capture at least some semblance of a live performance.

Sure, you can get an decent recording with a portable stereo recorder, or a couple of inexpensive mics panned left and right and plugged directly into the mixer, but most artists want their music to sound as good as it possibly can–as good as any other artist played on the radio. That takes an array of microphones and other audio gear and somebody who knows what they’re doing. In other words, money.

Slicethepie offers an online trading market that lets you speculate on the number of singles and albums a band on the service will sell over two years.

(Credit: Slicethepie)

In the post-label world, who funds these recordings? Peter Spellman, director of career development at the Berklee School of Music, explores three fan-funded (or “crowdfunding”) options in a blog posting on KnowTheMusicBiz.com.

ArtistShare, which has been around since 2002, allows fans to contribute to particular artists and receive exclusive tidbits, such as in-progress recordings.

SellaBand works more like a small-scale venture capitalist for bands: fans can “invest” $10 apiece, and when an artist reaches $50,000, Sellaband will hook them up with industry professionals, including producers and studios, to record and market an album. Revenue comes from advertisements shown next to free downloads, as well as sales of the finished album, and are split three ways between SellaBand, the “investors,” and the artist.

U.K.-based Slicethepie not only allows fans to invest, but essentially asks them to do artist discovery. Fans are compensated a few cents for listening to acts and writing reviews, and bands who score the best end up in a showcase, where labels might find them and offer them a deal.

Fans can also earn money by betting on the success of artists in a stock market. The winner of the showcase gets 15,000 pounds from the organization to fund a recording, while Slicethepie receives some royalties from sales of the album. (I’m always a bit wary of showcase-type models–often bands must pay up front to participate, labels and radio stations ignore them completely, and the only party who benefits is the organizer. In this case, the entry fee for each song appears to be around 20 pounds, although the FAQ isn’t entirely clear on this, and entry fees are currently being waived. Still, proceed with caution.)

Whether or not any of these particular organizations actually ends up funding the next Radiohead, it’s interesting to see all this business innovation occurring outside the bounds of the traditional label system.

Sony’s latest crop of photo printers, the DPP-FP95 and DPP-FP75, have a 3.6- and 3.2-inch LCD display and a new icon-ridden graphic interface for PC-free image editing. They reportedly print a 4×6-inch photo at 300×300 DPI resolution in 45 seconds using dye-sublimation.

Finally, if LCD just isn’t doing it for you, you can also hook it up to your TV via its HDMI output.

Wait, what? Yes, this will appeal to the following consumer:

1.) Has an HD TV

2.) Doesn’t have a camera with HDMI-out

3.) Would rather not buy a camera with HDMI-out

4.) Has a $299.99 desperation to look at HD photo slide shows on a TV

I’m sure at least one person out there will pay to get this functionality, but I’m already scared. Wait, does this mean I’ll have to start actually watching people’s slide shows? My old excuse is about to be obsolete…

“I don’t watch TV unless it’s in HD.”

Thanks, Sony.

Sprint Nextel upped the ante in the $99.99 all-you-can-eat rate plan battle Thursday by introducing a service that includes unlimited voice as well as unlimited data and slew of premium services.

Called “Simply Everything,” the plan will give customers unlimited voice as well as unlimited data, text, e-mail, Web-surfing, Sprint TV, Sprint Music, GPS Navigation, and push-to-talk service for $99.99 a month. The company made the announcement during its fourth-quarter earnings call, in which the company also announced heavy financial and customer losses.

The new pricing plan is available to existing and new customers on both Sprint’s CDMA network as well as its Nextel iDEN network starting on Friday. Current customers will not have to renew or extend their contract to switch to the service.

Sprint is also offering discounts for families subscribing to the high-end rate plan. Families will get a discount of $5 per month on every “Simply Everything” service that is added to the same bill for up to five additional lines. This means that two lines would cost $194.98 (or $99.99 plus $94.99). A third line would cost an additional $89.99.

Sprint is facing stiff competition. Last week, Verizon Wireless was the first to announce a $99.99 unlimited voice plan followed by AT&T and T-Mobile. Until Sprint’s plan was announced, T-Mobile seemed to offer the most comprehensive offering–a $99.99 plan that includes voice, unlimited text messaging and picture messaging.

AT&T’s plan is only for unlimited voice calls. AT&T customers can get additional messaging plans starting at $5 more a month with an unlimited messaging plan costing an additional $35 a month on standard phones.

Verizon’s $99.99 plan includes unlimited voice and Internet access, and Web-based email. Customers can tack on additional services for a fee. For example, for $119.99-per-month, Verizon Wireless customers can get unlimited messaging. And for $139.99-per-month, they can get VCast video, VZ Navigator, and Mobile E-mail functions.

Clearly Sprint’s offering offers customers the most bang for the buck. But some analysts have warned that if Sprint significantly undercut or added more services to the bundle for the same price that they could start a price war in wireless.

Dan Hesse, the company’s CEO who took over the top spot at Sprint just before the end of 2007, said the new rate plan is not about matching competitors on price. Instead, he said, it’s about making it simpler for customers to buy and use data services. And he hopes it will help differentiate Sprint from its competitors.

“The new battleground will be around data,” he said during the earnings call on Thursday. “We want to put a flag in the ground that we are about data.”

He also went on to say that the company has a long road ahead of it as it tries to put its failing business back on track.

” I want to emphasize that this is not a silver bullet,” he said. “This ($99.99 pricing offer) is one of many actions we will take to turn things around for the company.”

Indeed, Sprint has been suffering from massive customer defections as dissatisfied customers flee due to poor network performance and unhappiness with customer service. In the fourth quarter of 2007, Sprint lost 683,000 customers. And it expects more losses in 2008. It forecast that it would lose an additional 1.2 million customers who pay monthly bills in the first quarter of 2008. And the losses will continue in the second quarter, Hesse said.

“The major objective for us is to reduce churn by improving the customer experience across all touch points,” he said. “That is the No. 1, 2, and 3 things we need to focus on.”

Representatives from Microsoft and Yahoo have filed paperwork for regulatory clearance in the U.S. for their proposed search deal but it remains unclear how to proceed in Europe, a Microsoft spokesman said on Wednesday.

The issue that remains in Europe is “determining whether or not the deal requires formal notice before the (European) Commission and if not, do we need to file notice” in individual countries that might have an interest in reviewing the deal, said Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans.

These jurisdictional issues are being discussed in ongoing talks Microsoft and Yahoo have been having with EC officials that were the subject of a Reuters report, according to Evans.

“We have had informal discussions in Europe about the agreement just as we indicated we would when the deal was announced,” he said.

Yahoo representatives familiar with the matter did not immediately respond to an e-mail seeking comment.

Last week, the companies said the U.S. Department of Justice had asked for more information about their deal under which Microsoft would provide search for Yahoo’s Web pages, thus bringing to a close Yahoo’s tenure as a search provider.

The antitrust scrutiny is likely to be more intense in the U.S., where Google has about three quarters of the search market and Microsoft and Yahoo combined have about one fifth, than in Europe where Google’s market share exceeds 90 percent.

Update 3:25 p.m. PDT: In a statement, a Yahoo spokesperson said “As we indicated at the time of announcement, the agreement is subject to regulatory approval and Yahoo and Microsoft are engaging in discussions with the regulators in Europe about the agreement. Yahoo and Microsoft are committed to engaging positively with the Commission about the agreement and firmly believe that the information we will be providing will confirm that this deal is not only good for both companies, but it is also good for advertisers, good for publishers, and good for consumers. As we have indicated previously, we’re hopeful the agreement will close in early 2010.”