uCourt Will Hear Arguments Against Net Neutrality In Decemberr

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  (djgrafite)

  Though the telecom and cable industry was unable to prevent new net neutrality rules from kicking in earlier this summer, the legal battle over the FCC’s authority to regulate broadband continues. A federal appeals court has agreed to hear arguments in the matter later this year.

  The neutrality rules, spelled out in the 2015 Open Internet Order, prevent Internet service providers from manipulating any content they carry on their lines to consumers. So a company like Comcast, which competes directly with Netflix through both its pay-TV offering and its NBCUniversal broadcasting empire, couldn’t deliberately slow down or block access to the streaming video service. Nor could an ISP boost the speed or quality of access to a particular service that is willing to pay more for it.

  Those rules are effectively unchanged from the original 2010 Open Internet Order. However, that order was gutted in early 2014 after a legal challenge by Verizon, which claimed the FCC lacked legal authority to regulate broadband. At the time, Internet service was not classified as a “Title II” telecommunications service, but as much more lightly regulated information service.

  And so with the 2015 attempt at neutrality, the FCC reclassified broadband to put it under the same regulatory umbrella as telephone service — though FCC Chair Tom Wheeler has repeatedly promised no “utility style regulation” of Internet access.

  Several telecom and broadband companies, along with trade groups like USTelecom, have filed suit to challenge, among other things, the FCC’s ability to reclassify broadband as a Title II service.

  Those parties, along with the FCC, will get their chance to make their case on Dec. 4 before judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uMan Caught On Camera Stuffing Antique Brass Statues Down His Pantsr

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• Here at Consumerist, we aim to bring you the freshest coverage of people stuffing store merchandise down their pants to steal it. While for some reason the most common item that ends up down shoppers’ trousers is packages of meat, other items ranging from a chainsaw to puppies using this method, police are looking for a man who was caught on camera stuffing two brass statues down his pants at an antique store.

  The small statues are more valuable than lobster or steak: the antiques store owner says that they’re worth about $350 each. Until about three years ago, the store didn’t have cameras installed, but the owner says that a series of thefts led her to acquire some.

  The man was able to evade notice while concealing the statues and to leave the store without anyone spotting him, but the owner and police in Riverside, California hope that releasing the footage will help them to identify and arrest the statue-stuffer.

  Caught On Tape: Shoplifter Steals Antique Bronze Sculptures By Stuffing Them Down Pants [KCAL]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uAT&T Rollover Data A Good Idea In Theory, Useless For Some Real Usersr

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  (Mike Mozart)

  Tom is an AT&T customer, and currently has a data plan that includes rollover data. Normally, he and the other person on his plan are very precise: he says that they normally use 2.8 GB of their shared 3 GB plan. Recently, their normal practices didn’t work, and they had to dip into the rollover data. That’s when they learned that rollover data is only useful if your data use fluctuates wildly from month to month.

  Certainly people with wildly fluctuating data use exist. Sometimes you’re on a trip and have to e-mail full-resolution photos or bored at the car repair place and want to watch Instagram videos. For example.

  When you tend to use most of your data for the month, though, there isn’t much to roll over, and this happens.

  

  “Our overage was 275 MB and we had 60 MB in rollover data,” Tom wrote to Consumerist. “In the attached screenshot, you can see that first they take the 60mb we had and applied it to our overage, so they’re now charging us for 143 MB of overage.”

  If users paid by the megabyte, this wouldn’t be an issue, but they don’t. As you can see in the bill screenshot, the smallest quantity you can buy data in with this plan is 1 GB. It doesn’t matter whether you’re over by one megabyte or 999: you’re still going to be charged for the full gigabyte of data whether you consume it or not.

  Of course, if they had stayed under 60 MB, then the rollover data would come in handy. They didn’t, and once a user goes over, it doesn’t make a difference by how much.

  Rollover data is a great thing to advertise, but be sure to think critically about how things like this work in the real world, especially if you tend to run close to your data limit.

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSharp Will Stop Selling TVs In The Americas, Licenses Name To Hisenser

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  (Maurizio Pesce)

  Sharp was an early player in the flat panel screen market, but the Japanese company has decided to leave behind their TV business in the Americas, agreeing to license their name to a Chinese company, Hisense. Sharp sold its factory in Mexico to Hisense, which will presumably supply TVs to customers in North and South America alike.

  Sharp will hand over the keys and the brand name in January of 2016, and they’re the manufacturer of any TVs under that brand that you see in stores now. Well, except for the line of Sharp TVs sold at Best Buy that the retailer licensed the well-known manufacturer’s name for, and which the company said at the time are totally not just Insignia TVs with a Sharp label slapped on them.

  Hisense plans to hold a press conference on this tomorrow, but the basic facts were enough to make our test-pattern-watching colleagues down the hall at Consumer Reports ponder what this change will mean for consumers. Sharp says that it will honor warranty and service commitments made to consumers in the U.S., and they don’t seem to be ending all of their U.S. operations: just TVs.

  What about Hisense, though? They aren’t new to the U.S. market: they’ve been selling TVs here for a while. Consumer Reports looked back in their ratings and found that the company’s TVs were usually in the bottom half of the rankings. Maybe taking over Sharp’s factory in Mexico will help improve their quality.

  Sharp exits the U.S. TV business—what you need to know [Consumer Reports]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uDOJ Sues Supplement Makers Over Mislabeling, Failure To Follow Good Manufacturing Processesr

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  The supplements pictured aren’t part of this lawsuit that we know of. (HealthGauge)

  When people buy dietary supplements, they do so assuming that the product in the pill, powder, or liquid actually is what it claims to be, and that the amount you’re taking is correct. The U.S. Department of Justice has accused three supplement makers of being careless with what went into their products –– or, in bureaucrat-speak, “misbranding” and “not complying with the FDA’s current good manufacturing practices.”

  In this case, it wasn’t anything as wacky or extreme as claiming that generic Viagra was an “herbal supplement.” The DOJ filed a complaint against three Wisconsin-based companies: Atrium Inc., Aspen Group Inc., and Nutri-Pak of Wisconsin Inc., all three of which have the same owners.

  Natural Products Insider reports that Nutri-Pak has an outgoing voice mail message stating that all three companies have closed.

  Specific charges against the companies come from a July 2014 inspection where a Food and Drug Administration investigator noted that the company failed to document their manufacturing processes according to good practices, did not identify all of the ingredients used in their supplements and their sources, and didn’t differentiate between different parts of the same plant when manufacturing supplements.

  Another problem is the serving size: some products did not set a serving size, and also aren’t labeled with the number of typical servings in a container.

  Products listed in the complaint, in case you want to check your vitamin and supplement cabinet, include Chole-Sterin, Atrium brand Di-Acid Stim, Atrium brand Natto, Atrium brand Oco-Comp, Atrium brand Super- Flex, Aspen brand Flexile-Plus, Nutri-Pak brand Glucobiotic Supreme, and Nutri-Pak brand Ocu-Comp.

  In the complaint, the feds asked that the company cease manufacturing their supplements, and they already have.

  Justice Department Sues Three Dietary Supplement Businesses in Wisconsin [Natural Products Insider]
  United States Files Complaint against Three Wisconsin Dietary Supplement Manufacturers [USDOJ]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uThe Coffee World Mourns Death Of Mr. Coffee Co-Founderr

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  (Robert Martin)

  Nowadays it’s a pretty safe bet that we’d associate the word coffee with Keurig or Starbucks, but not too long ago there was another name synonymous with a hot cup of joe: Mr. Coffee. Sadly, the man who helped revolutionize the way we get our morning cup of java passed away this weekend. Vincent Marotta, 91, co-founded Mr. Coffee along with a friend Samuel Glazer back in 1972, essentially making the percolator obsolete. The two owners sold the company for $182 million just 15 years after its creation. [via The Associated Press]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uDelta Air Lines Bans Shipments Of Wild Animal Trophiesr

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  (Quinn Dombrowski)
  

  Following the recent news about and backlash against a Minnesota man who killed a beloved lion during a paid hunt in Africa, Delta Air Lines says the company is banning shipments of all lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros and buffalo trophies worldwide.

  Reports of a dentist who’s accused of luring a lion named Cecil from a national park in Zimbabwe and killing him has caused uproar worldwide. Hunters like him won’t be able to send trophies of their exploits back home — or to anywhere else, for that matter — on Delta from now on.

  Delta says the shipment ban on those animals will be effective immediately, noting that before this new rule, “the company’s “strict acceptance policy called for absolute compliance with all government regulations regarding protected species.”

  The airline might revise the ban to include other animal trophies, after reviewing acceptance policies “with appropriate government agencies and other organizations supporting legal shipments.”

  Delta is the last major holdout among a group of carriers who announced they’d change their rules about transporting hunting trophies last week, reports the New York Times. Air France, KLM, Iberia, IAG Cargo, Singapore Airlines and Qantas all said last week they’d ban transport of trophy-hunting kills, after a Change.org petition called for them to revise their policies.

  Delta is the only American carrier with direct service between the United States and countries in Africa.

  Elsewhere in animal trophy news, the Huffington Post notes that Cecil’s killing prompted senators to draft a bill called the Conserving Ecosystems by Ceasing the Importation of Large (CECIL) Animal Trophies Act 9 [PDF]that would further restrict the import of hunting trophies: it would include species that have been proposed for listing as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Right now, the law only protects species whose status on the list has already been finalized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That process can take over a year to complete.

  So if the Minnesota dentist wanted to go hunt another lion like Cecil and bring his remains back home, this law would mean he’d need a special permit directly from the U.S. secretary of the interior in order to import an animal trophy.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist