The FCC has announced that it will hold a second hearing on "net neutrality" — the debate over whether broadband providers can favor some kinds of Internet traffic — at Stanford University on April 17 (PDF). We wrote back in February that FCC chairman Kevin Martin was considering a "do-over"; the FCC's first hearing at Harvard was deemed botched after Comcast was caught packing the room with seatwarmers hired off the street. Now, Comcast has to deal with a hostile crowd and Professor Lawrence Lessig, a strong proponent of net neutrality. Lessig v. Comcast at Stanford? Sign me up!

Federal Communications Commission chair Kevin Martin reiterated the FCC's position on Comcast's file-sharing misdeeds. Giving a speech at Stanford Law School, Martin said the commission is "ready, willing and able" to take action against the company. But this is the exact same wording he used at the first net neutrality hearing at Harvard several weeks ago. The FCC remains "ready" — but it isn't doing anything. Mr. Martin, sir, as my grandmother would say: "Shit or get off the pot."

Freakishly boyish FCC chairman Kevin Martin isn't exactly denying our earlier report that his commission was considering a "do-over" hearing on net neutrality. The first hearing, held at Harvard, dealt with regulations on what Internet service providers can do to privilege some kinds of Net traffic over others. It was marred by a seat-packing scandal: Comcast paid people to hold spots in line for Comcast employees who never showed up. A FCC representative gave News.com this unhelpful quote on the subject of a new hearing, which we've heard could be held at Stanford:

The FCC is considering holding a fresh hearing on net neutrality, with Comcast and Verizon again in attendance — and this time it may be at Stanford. The do-over comes after a mini-scandal erupted over the first hearing, held at Harvard; Comcast flacks confessed they'd paid people off the street to act as seatwarmers. Let this be a lesson to you all: If you're going to meddle in politics, do it skillfully enough not to get caught.

New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has issued subpoenas to Comcast over its blocking of file sharing. For Cuomo's long arm, this case is quite a stretch: Less than 0.5 percent of its 24 million subscribers are in New York. (Photo by AP/Mike Groll)

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury admitted that the cable giant paid some people to arrive early for an FCC hearing on network neutrality. The purpose? Supposedly to hold places for Comcast employees who wanted to attend the hearing. Some of those lineholders didn't just wait in line — they attended the meeting, taking spots which would otherwise have gone to members of the public. Some even fell asleep. Comcast says it didn't intend to block anyone from the hearing, but it doesn't really matter. What Comcast did wasn't illegal, just bad PR, done on the cheap. Next time, ply the seatwarmers with extra-shot Starbucks so they don't get caught napping. That seems easier. (Photo by AP/Stephan Savoia)

At a Congressional hearing, Comcast executives said the company needs to filter some traffic to keep the flow of data constant on its networks — like blocking BitTorrent file-sharing, as it was caught doing last fall. Federal Communications Commission head Kevin Martin is having none of it. "I think it's important to understand that the commission is ready, willing and able to step in if necessary to correct any (unreasonable) practices that are ongoing today," he said today. Martin wants Internet service providers to be more "transparent." Network operators have the right to manage data traffic, but that "does not mean they can arbitrarily block access to particular applications or services," he added. Translation? If you're going to block file sharing, stop lying about it.

Comcast COO Steve Burke told analyst during yesterday's earning call that the company would invest between $50 million and $70 million on its interactive advertising platform. [paidContent]

Comcast reported a 54 percent jump in fourth quarter profits due primarily to increased customer spending and added revenues from acquired companies. Comcast also announced a dividend of 6.25 cents per share for the quarter and said it plans to spend $6.9 billion on share buybacks before 2010.
"We are not spending any time on any of the large transformative acquisitions that have been speculated about, like Yahoo! or Sprint," said CEO Brian Roberts. No official word about small ones like Plaxo. [AP]

We keep hearing Plaxo has signed a deal to sell the company. But is the buyer Google — where engineer Brad Fitzpatrick is buddy-buddy with Plaxo's Joseph Smarr? Or is it Comcast? The latter. Comcast, we're told, has bought Plaxo for $175 million in cash. While Plaxo has tried to reinvent itself as a social network, its still primarily used as an online address book. And that's the appeal to Comcast.

Is Plaxo going to Google, as some rumors have it? Possibly. We hear Joe Kraus, a Google executive knee-deep in its effort to catch up in social networking, skipped the company trip to Disneyland this week so he could finish a deal. But other insiders say Google's not doing a deal with Plaxo. Another plausible bidder: Comcast.

VC blogger Fred Wilson argues that a Microsoft-Yahoo merger will be bad for users and for the Internet as a whole. "If you think about the Internet, it's a huge distributed network of loosely connected services owned and operated by literally millions. We don't need or want consolidation of services on the Internet," Wilson writes. But you know who the Microsoft-Yahoo deal is even worse news for? The incompetent executives who landed Yahoo in this pickle in the first place. They're ferociously spinning gullible reporters with rescue fantasies. Here are the five most widespread rumors — and why they're unlikely to happen.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a ruling against satellite TV company EchoStar, saying the company infringed on a DVR patent owned by TiVo. The ruling, which included an $94 million damage award and bans EchoStar from selling the product in question, says that EchoStar infringed on the "software" claims of the patent, but not on the "hardware" claims. EchoStar says that no customers will be affected by the ruling and that it already has a fix in place. After the ruling, TiVo's stock rose almost 30 percent to a new 52-week high. Why?

Tru2way, the newly rechristened OpenCable standard that allows cable providers to do all sorts of crazy things with your TV set, was announced during CES. But now that the nerd sweat has dried, branding agency Siegal & Gale decided it was prime time to proclaim its genius to the world — how it managed to convey "true, two-way interactivity" in an "imprimatur" by coming up with "Tru2way" as a name. Of course, it didn't take into consideration the whole other side of the big, bad cable mess. Namely, nothing about cable is two-way. Let's see, AT&T is attempting to filter every piece of Internet traffic for illegal content. Comcast has been caught throttling file-sharing apps on its network. Now Time Warner wants you to pay extra for the bandwidth it promised you in the first place. Cable's direction has been every which way but true.

Remember way back in the olden times when we had to be in front of an actual television at very specific times to see all our dumb shows? That sucked. Now we TiVo it or watch it on DVD or the web or whatever. And now, thanks to the magic power of market competition, even the horrible cable companies who feel entitled to a notable percentage of our monthly income are putting our shows on the internet for free. Well, free beyond the blood money you're already paying.

Today Comcast announced its bid to port its video-on-demand business to the Internet. The plan, audaciously named Project Infinity, can most immediately be seen at Fancast.com, a site for free streaming video. But what the move mostly highlights isn't Comcast's ambitions but the strategy of its partners — CBS and Hulu, the NBC/News Corp. joint venture. CBS has said it would rather distribute its video widely across the Web than labor to lure viewers to CBS.com. Hulu, likewise, is not really a destination site like Google's YouTube; its a video-syndication arm. Nothing illustrates this better than Comcast's Fancast, where every NBC and Fox video is Hulu-branded.

Comcast announced today that it has surpassed Embarq, Sprint's former local-phone business, to become the country's fourth largest residential phone provider. Comcast currently has 4.1 million VOIP customers, all signed up in the past 30 months. [Epicenter]

One-time DVR pioneer ReplayTV has been sold to DirecTV. This follows competitor EchoStar's purchase of Sling Media back in September. The most interesting question is what happens to TiVo now.

Has cable's golden age ended? Cable-TV subscriptions were long seen as recession-proof. But as their price continues to soar, at last, consumers are voting with their pocketbooks. Comcast shares dropped 12.3 percent Wednesday after the company lowered earnings and growth forecasts. Added competition from Verizon, satellite providers and other cable companies took most of the blame as the triple-play price war continues, driving down average revenue per customer across the industry. On top of that, capital spending is up as Comcast rolls out more HD channels and video-on-demand. We would suggest that Comcast stockholders pray for strong growth, but after the cable giant blocked the Bible, it might not be the best idea.

Dan Glickman, head of the MPAA, is calling on Internet service providers to implement filtering to protect movies from piracy. AT&T has already announced plans to develop such a system, but there are few details. It's also not clear if Glickman has any rationale for placing the onus on ISPs, considering the law's not on his side. And yet, the prospect of holding them legally responsible for piracy on their networks is implied in his statements.