uNet Neutrality Is Already Improving Internet Connections And It Hasn’t Even Gone Into Effectr

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  (Steve)

  Though the FCC narrowly voted to approve the new Open Internet Order (AKA net neutrality) several months ago, the rules don’t actually kick in until June 12. Yet with those new guidelines looming, some Internet service providers are already beginning to play nice with the companies that do most of the heavy lifting for the web.

  Earlier today, Verizon announced that it had reached a new interconnection deal with Cogent, a company you may have never heard of, but who plays an important role in carrying data across the Internet. Cogent is one of the major bandwidth providers for online businesses, transporting massive amounts of data from the source to ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner Cable, who only handle much of your data for the so-called “last mile” to your home or office.

  Cogent was caught in the middle of the openly nasty dispute between Netflix and several ISPs, including Verizon. The company was responsible for much of Netflix’s bandwidth, which can sometimes account for around 1/3 of all downstream traffic in the U.S., but when that data got to the peering points — those connections where Cogent actually hands off data to an ISP — it was becoming bottlenecked because the ISPs were refusing to open up additional connections to alleviate the flow.

  Netflix ultimately ended up making deals with Comcast, Verizon, TWC, and AT&T for more direct access to their networks, taking some of the burden off Cogent and similar providers. Meanwhile, the question of whether ISPs could passive-aggressively allow data to bottleneck remained unanswered.

  The new neutrality rules will allow companies like Cogent to file complaints with the FCC because ISPs will officially be reclassified as common carriers that are not allowed to discriminate when it comes to the data flowing to their end users.

  Whether or not those complaints end up being successful, it appears the mere threat of having to deal with them is pushing toward resolutions in advance of the enactment of the neutrality rules.

  For example, while the Verizon/Cogent deal includes provisions for adding capacity and establishing new interconnection locations between their two networks, Cogent says the agreement does not involve the exchange of any money.

  Cogent CEO Dave Schaeffer tells Ars Technica, “We have never paid for peering, and we continue to never pay for peering.”

  Schaeffer also said that Comcast — the first to reach an interconnection agreement with Netflix — has recently been the most reasonable of the large ISPs, opening additional ports as capacity demands. However, AT&T, TWC, and CenturyLink are not playing as nice.

  Ars notes that Verizon recently announced an interconnection deal with Level 3, another major bandwidth provider that could have filed a complaint under the new neutrality rules. It’s not known whether that arrangement involves any money.

  Though the threat of neutrality complaints is apparently helping nudge some ISPs toward agreeable resolutions, Schaeffer says he may end up having to take his concerns before the FCC if companies aren’t willing to work with him.

  “I sincerely hope I don’t have to file any, but I am also prepared,” he tells Ars. “If any of the mass market ISPs violate the consumer protection provisions outlined in the Open Internet Order, we will go to the Enforcement Bureau and file a complaint.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uJet.com Is Either The Future Of Retail Or A Doomed Wacky Schemer

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• This week, a new e-commerce site launched to about 10,000 beta users who signed up for a preview. The easy-to-remember name of this new site is Jet.com, and its goal is to remove some of the inefficiencies of shopping online. Will they succeed?

  This isn’t the team’s first war with Amazon: they founded Quidsi, the company behind Diapers.com, Soap.com, and Wag.com. Amazon waged price war on those sites, and the company eventually admitted defeat by being acquired by Amazon.

  Jet’s founder told the Washington Post that it’s targeting a novel group of consumers: older millennials. That’s a generation of people who are in their late twenties to early thirties and who are not terrified of computers, yet who also don’t see the appeal of using Amazon Prime to order their paper towels. Founder Marc Lore explained to the Washington Post that he wants to compete on price, and that means flipping around the process of shopping. Instead of letting users throw whatever they want in their cart and calculating shipping once they’re ready to check out, how Jet works is that it figures out in real time how much to charge for different items based on the customer’s address. Along the way, users also get incentives to choose items that happen to come from the same vendor or the same warehouse as the items they’ve already chosen, incentivizing customers to make shipping easier on the suppliers.

  More importantly, by signing up partners across the country instead of building its own massive warehouses, Jet is able to build a massive inventory without constructing massive warehouses.

  The cost of “free” shipping and returns is built into the prices at all retailers, and the novel thing that Jet offers is the ability to waive free return shipping in exchange for a small discount.

  What’s interesting, though, is how Jet acquired their big user base before launching. While 10,000 beta users were allowed to shop yesterday, they claim to have signed up 350,000 users who are waiting to be allowed behind the virtual velvet rope. Yes, people are always interested in new and exciting ways to shop, especially if it’s something exclusive that not everyone has access to.

  Jet did something a little different, though: they were able to sign up so many people before the site launched by holding a contest. Early adopters would get 6 months of their membership for free (a $25 value) but the top referrer would get 100,000 stock options. The winner of that contest was a 28-year-old Pennsylvania man who spent $18,000 advertising on sites that give users prizes for performing online tasks like registering accounts. He signed up about 8,000 people and won the contest. Jet isn’t a public company, but those 100,000 shares could be worth as much as $20 million.

  This guy used a get-rich-quick scheme and got rich [CNN]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uOwners Of Derby-Pie Trademark Fight To Keep It From Becoming Genericizedr

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  Not a Kerns Kitchen Derby-Pie. (sheesalt)

  First of all, what’s a derby pie? For those not living in or near Louisville, many Kentucky Derby fans say it’s a pie made with bourbon, chocolate chips and pecans. And then there’s one company that says it’s a walnut treat made without bourbon. Thing is, the latter holds the trademark to the phrase Derby-Pie, and it’s not ready to allow others to peddle their own iterations of the traditional dessert with that name.

  While the denizens of Louisville will likely be gulping down what they call derby pies for tomorrow’s event at Churchill Downs,  only one business has the legal right to call its creations Derby-Pie, reports NPR’s Foodways blog.

  That company is Kerns Kitchen, and it hasn’t shied away from suing in its fight to keep the term from becoming genericized, potentially leading to a loss of its legal trademark.

  One worker at an area restaurant remembers when she and her co-workers used to serve what they called derby pie, until the establishment received a cease-and-desist from Kerns.

  “You can say, ‘We have chocolate pecan pie, but we do not have Derby-Pie,’ ” the worker says now if someone orders a derby pie. “You didn’t know if they’d sent a plant in to see if we were doing it or not.”

  Kerns tells NPR its Derby-Pie chocolate nut pie was created by family members in the 1950s as their restaurant’s signature item. The company later ditched the restaurant idea and kept the pie business, registering Derby-Pie as a trademark around that time.

  With a business that produces 800 pies per day, according to the company, Kerns is fierce about protecting its recipe and technique, along with staunchly defending the trademarked name.

  In another bit of legal wrangling, the manager of a local diner has been sued twice by the company, once in 1997 and once in 2007.

  “I actually put up a sign after that conversation [that read]: Have a piece of ‘I Can’t Call It Derby Pie’ pie,” he says of his reaction during the first legal fight, which . Now though, he says he makes a Kentucky Bourbon Pie.

  Though Kern’s doesn’t want its pie to go the way of zipper, laundromat and linoleum — other trademarked names that fell to genericide when people used them to reference any similar product — critics say threatening other people who use the name is robbing Kentuckians of their history, Kentuckians who might think of a different recipe when they hear “derby pie” anyway.

  “If you have people scared to use the words ‘derby pie,’ and yet Grandma used to make it, then you’ve really banished Grandma in a way, haven’t you?” the diner owner says.

  What’s Inside A ‘Derby Pie’? Maybe A Lawsuit Waiting To Happen [NPR Foodways]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uIKEA Expands Crib Mattress Recall To Include Five Additional Stylesr

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  IKEA expanded a recall of crib mattresses to include the SULTANA brand.

  All recalls are important to take note of, but ones related to baby products are often of the greatest concern. And IKEA’s expansion of a six-month old recall to include an additional 150,000 crib mattresses because of the risk of entrapment would fall into that category.

  The Consumer Product Safety Commission announced today that IKEA will add four types of SULTANA mattresses to its January recall, bringing the total number of mattresses recalled to roughly 300,000.

  IKEA initially recalled five styles of VYSSA mattresses after receiving two reports of infants becoming entrapped between the mattress and an end of the crib. Fortunately, the children were removed from the situation without injury.

  The newly recalled mattresses include the BLUNDA, DROMMA, SNARKA and SUSSA models that are 52 inches long and 27 ½ inches wide and were manufactured on May 4, 2014 or earlier.

  

  Mattresses can be identified by a label on the cover. [Click to enlarge]

  Affected mattresses can be identified by a label on the cover that has the manufacturer date in Month-DD-YY format or YY-WW format and the SULTAN or VYSSA model name, the company says in a statement.

  Consumers should inspect the recalled mattress by making sure there is no gap larger than the width of two fingers between the ends of the crib and the mattress. If any gap is larger, customers should immediately stop using the recalled mattress and return it to any IKEA store for an exchange or full refund.

  The mattresses sold for about $20 to $100 at IKEA stores throughout the U.S. and online from October 2000 to May 2014.

  Customers with questions or concerns can call IKEA at (888)966-4532.

  IKEA Expands Recall of Crib Mattresses Due to Risk of Entrapment [Consumer Product Safety Commission]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uJudge Throws Out United’s Lawsuit Against “Hidden City” Airfare Site Skiplagged.comr

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  Example Skiplagged listings for flights that don’t end in Chicago, but go through Chicago. As part of its settlement with Orbitz, Skiplagged will no longer direct people to purchase their hidden city fares through the travel-booking site.

  Last fall, both United Airlines and Orbitz sued travel-booking startup Skiplagged.com, which helped travelers find so-called “hidden city” tickets where you book a multi-stop itinerary with the intention of not flying all the way to the end. Orbitz settled its part of the case in February, but the United suit continued — until yesterday, when a federal judge dismissed the airline’s complaint, but not because the airline didn’t have a case.

  Instead, in his order [PDF] dismissing the complaint, the judge says it’s a matter of jurisdiction, i.e., that United filed its copyright claim in the wrong court.

  The lawsuit was filed in a U.S. District Court in Northern Illinois, but the judge explains that “the record only shows a limited course of dealing between the parties and Defendant’s Illinois contacts were with a third-party. Such contacts, even where relevant, are not meaningful enough to warrant exercising personal jurisdiction over Defendant.”

  In non-legalese, because the defendant, Skiplagged owner Aktarer Zaman, lives in New York and doesn’t operate his business in Illinois, this particular court should not be the one to hear it.

  “This dismissal does not preclude Plaintiff from refiling and litigating its claims in a proper forum,” concludes the order.

  And it looks like United may not give up its fight, with a rep for the airline telling CNN that “the decision was a ruling on procedural grounds and not on the merits of the case.”

  The rep continued, “We remain troubled that Mr. Zaman continues to openly encourage customers to violate our contract of carriage by purchasing hidden-city tickets.”

  For his part, Zaman is calling the dismissal “definitely a victory.”

  Skiplagged lets users search for savings through hidden city fares. For example, rather than book a flight that terminates in Chicago, it might be less expensive to book a flight to Kansas City that stops in Chicago. I can just get off the plane when it lands at that first stop.

  It’s not illegal, but it is against every major airline’s policy. Because Skiplagged didn’t just provide pricing information but actually directed users to airline sites where they could then book their hidden city tickets, it was accused of, among other claims, encouraging customers to violate their terms of service by knowingly booking these fares.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uPlayed With That Viral Age-Guesser This Week? You Just Gave Microsoft A Bunch Of Free Photos To User

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  Time has apparently not been kind at all to those Cheerios… and the baby didn’t need the extra year of aging, either.

  If you use Facebook, Twitter, or basically any part of the internet at all, sometime in the last 24 hours you’ve seen Microsoft’s newest tool, the age-guesser. Everyone’s sharing it, using it, and laughing over (or feeling insulted by) the results. But the tool’s rapid spread also accidentally highlights one of the biggest challenges of the digital age: the fine print.

  The tool, How-Old.net, has gone viral very fast because of how hilariously wrong it often is. The world-weary baby at the top of this post, for example, was 9 months old when the picture was taken, which isn’t too far off — but the Cheerios on her tray were neither sixteen, male, nor in fact human at all. Plug in fictional characters or politicians, and the results are jokes that basically write themselves.

  Microsoft isn’t planning to make age guessing a fixture of its Office Suite anytime soon; the tool was put together quickly as a demo for the company’s Azure cloud platform and services. But buried in the fine print of the Azure terms and services, as Fast Company points out, is a clause that might give Microsoft more power than you want them to have:

  [B]y posting, uploading, inputting, providing, or submitting your Submission, you are granting Microsoft, its affiliated companies, and necessary sublicensees permission to use your Submission in connection with the operation of their Internet businesses (including, without limitation, all Microsoft services), including, without limitation, the license rights to: copy, distribute, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform, reproduce, edit, translate, and reformat your Submission; to publish your name in connection with your Submission; and to sublicense such rights to any supplier of the Website Services.

  In other words: Microsoft now maintains the rights to use any image you uploaded in basically any way they want. And that “public performance” bit is basically an out that prevents you from suing on copyright grounds if they do.

  Are your dog, best friend, grandma, U.S. representative, worst nightmare, favorite baseball player, kid, cat, and Cheerios likely to end up being used in demos, ads, or other products? No, not really. Microsoft has gotten tens or hundreds of thousands of pictures submitted, and, frankly, they can afford better promotional images from real photographers when they need a pic or two. And given how quickly the page was thrown together, and how chancy the lightning strike of viral fame can be, it’s unlikely at best that the tech giant actually meant the service to be a giant free photo collection tool.

  But the fine print should be a reminder to all of us: when it comes to data and privacy, the devil is indeed in the details.

  Read the fine print before you use Microsoft’s viral age-guessing tool [Fast Company]

  
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by Kate Cox via Consumerist

uDelta Employees Will Probably Be Dressed Better Than You With Plan For New Designer Uniformsr

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• 

  (quinn.anya)

  Maybe you think of yourself as a snappy dresser. Maybe you prefer to wear housepants on a regular basis. I’m not here to judge, only to report that someday in the nearish future, most Delta Air Lines employees will have an automatic advantage over us less fashion fortunate, with designer Zac Posen on board to pull together new uniforms for all workers.

  Though the kinds of expensive couture pieces seen on one kind of runway at fashion shows won’t likely show up in say, the average tarmac worker’s coveralls, the airline says in a press release that it’s hoping Posen can bring some flair to the friendly skies with “high fashion and function.”

  Nearly all uniformed employees will get an updated look, with Posen designing uniform collections for Delta’s flight attendants and airport customer service agents, and advising on the uniform project for Delta’s ramp and ground support agents, Delta Cargo agents and Delta TechOps employees.

  “I’m thrilled to partner with this classic American brand and look forward to collaborating with Delta employees to understand their wants and needs for the new collection,” Posen said in the press release. “Together, we will bring everyday elegance and style innovation to the ground and air alike, while making employees look and feel their best.”

  He’ll be working with Delta employees over the next few months to get a handle on their needs while on the job, with the new uniform program expected to roll out in early 2018.

  Racked points out that Delta will likely focus on wearability of the uniforms in light of what happened when Virgin Atlantic cabin crew complained that their Vivienne Westwood-designed uniforms left their feet blistered from high heels and their legs restricted in overly slim pencil skirts.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist