Take Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto landed its publisher in court again along with its retail partners and even PlayStation 2 maker Sony. A lawsuit filed Tues. by relatives of 3 policemen killed in June 2003 claims the violence in the videogame caused an Ala. teenager to shoot them. The suit seeks damages from Take Two, Sony Computer Entertainment and retailers Wal-Mart and GameStop, who were accused of selling the M-rated games to the alleged murderer while he was still under age 17. The youth, Devin Thompson, is now 18. When police in Fayette, Ala., stopped him on suspicion of driving a stolen car, he allegedly grabbed a policeman’s gun and shot the 3. The Take Two games, Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, depict police killings and other violence acts.
America will fall behind the developed world in educational productivity without a new federal commitment to e-learning, said academics and govt. leaders at a panel discussion Mon. on Capitol Hill. The New America Foundation and Digital Promise, a nonprofit project to prepare public institutions for the “digital age,” sponsored the event.
Circuit City unveiled a major restructuring Wed. that includes closing 19 stores, 5 regional offices and a warehouse. The move comes one day after a Boston hedge fund made a bid to take the chain private for $3.25 billion (CED Feb 16 p1).
The FCC warned the public Tues. of possible interference to garage door openers from military land- based mobile radar systems at 380-400 MHz. The Commission has faced a rash of complaints in several cases when the military turned on the new systems, which can shut down garage door openers for miles around, said Bruce Romano, assoc. chief, Office of Engineering & Technology. “How heavily you're affected depends on what channels they operate on, how far you are from the base and how heavy the traffic is,” Romano said: “Companies have developed alternative garage door openers and they're available.” OET Chief Ed Thomas highlighted the problem in Oct. remarks at a Dept. of Defense spectrum summit (CD Nov 1 p 4). Thomas observed that in some cases kids would come home from school and couldn’t get in because they suddenly couldn’t open their garage doors. FCC said it was working with the garage door opener industry to craft a solution. “Some consumers near these bases may experience interference to their garage door openers that can reduce operating range or cause the remote control to cease functioning,” the FCC said in its notice. “This interference will not cause the garage doors to open or close on their own. Inside the garage, wall-mounted push buttons will not be affected by any interference that might occur, and will continue to operate normally.” - HB
On February 7, 2005, President Bush transmitted to Congress his fiscal year (FY) 2006 budget. (FY 2006 is from October 1, 2005 through September 30, 2006.)
The FCC at its meeting Thurs. proposed to eliminate unnecessary regulatory restrictions in the 900 MHz spectrum band and allow more flexible use of “white spaces” there. Specifically, the FCC proposed to amend Part 90 of its rules to provide more flexible use of the 199 channels allocated to the business and industrial land transportation (BILT) pools in the 896-901/935-940 MHz. “We believe that these unused spectrum and channels can and should be auctioned to the carriers that can put them to the highest-valued use,” said FCC Wireless Bureau Mobility Div. Attorney Advisor Michael Connelly in presenting the item.
Britain’s switchover from analog to digital TV won’t happen by 2012 unless a “complex series of inter-related milestones” are met this decade, the U.K. Office of Communications (Ofcom) said Wed.
The Tower Siting Policy Alliance (TSPA), representing a group of wireless carriers and tower companies, filed a petition for reconsideration on the FCC’s National Programmatic Agreement (NPA) on tower siting, saying some provisions undermine the intent of streamlining the approval process. The alliance zeroes in on requirements for what it argues are overly burdensome archeological field surveys and overly permissive tribal exemptions from exclusions. The members were active proponents of concluding work on the NPA.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has issued a press release announcing that the U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program is planning to test radio frequency identification (RFID) technology at the U.S. land border.
The FCC will consider 2 high-profile items -- intercarrier compensation for telecom carriers and DTV must-carry for cable -- at the Feb. 10 agenda meeting. As expected, the Commission will open a rulemaking to consider various proposals for reforming the intercarrier compensation regime and will vote on an order dealing with a number of outstanding issues such as Sprint’s rating and routing petition and T-Mobile’s petition on ILEC wireless termination tariffs. On DTV must-carry, the FCC is expected to reject broadcasters’ request that cable carry all their DTV signals. Also on the agenda: (1) The agency will launch a rulemaking on the use of “white spaces” in the 900 MHz business and industrial land transportation pool. The Wireless Broadband Access Task Force will also report on its findings and recommendations relating to the Commission’s wireless broadband policies. (2) Petitions for reconsideration of the national do-not- call registry and related rules. (3) Mandatory exchange of customer account information among local and interexchange carriers. (4) What ILECs charge for changing subscribers’ presubscribed interexchange carriers. (5) An application for review filed by Sinclair Bcst. regarding a decision by the Media Bureau dismissing applications by Sinclair to acquire TV stations from licensee subsidiaries of Cunningham Bcstg. (6) A review of the International Bureau’s 2003 decision to grant Mobile Satellite Ventures authority for an Ancillary Terrestrial Component. Legg Mason analysts don’t expect the Commission to backtrack from IB’s position or loosen the so-called gating factors designed to ensure that the satellite licensees’ terrestrial spectrum use is truly ancillary to a functioning satellite system.