Like clockwork, the FCC has released the statements from AT&T, Apple, and Google which respond to the Commission's inquiries into why the Google Voice app was rejected from the iTunes App store.

Since AT&T denied any involvement early on, we have been eagerly awaiting Apple's take on the situation. Cupertino replied with a six-page letter.

We already knew that AT&T claimed it had no involvement in the rejection of the Google Voice app for the iPhone that triggered an FCC investigation. Today, AT&T released a more complete and loquacious denial.

"We appreciate the opportunity to clear up misconceptions related to an application Google submitted to Apple for inclusion in the Apple App Store. We fully support the FCC's goal of getting the facts and data necessary to inform its policymaking," said Jim Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President of external and legislative affairs for AT&T.

In a summary judgment this morning, a three-judge panel of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Yahoo's Launchcast music service does not have to pay performance royalties in addition to licensing fees, on account of the fact that like terrestrial radio, the service is not interactive.

Today's finding may set precedent for both online and broadcast radio, for having affirmed the legal notion that in order for a presentation of music to count as a performance, it must be directly requested by the listener. While Congress remains split over whether conventional broadcast stations should be responsible for performance royalties to the same degree as Internet providers such as Last.fm and Pandora, US law presently states that the distinction between the two classes deals specifically with interactivity -- the degree to which the listener has explicit control over what she's hearing. If no such control exists, the judges affirmed today, then there's no "performance," thus no royalties for performance apply.

Swedish stock market regulators have suspended the trading of Global Gaming Factory X's stock in the Aktietorget marketplace today on the suspicion that the company's reported assets and actual assets may differ.

In June, Global Gaming Factory X made a $7.7 million bid for The Pirate Bay, but authorities today would like assurance that GGF has enough money to complete the transaction.

This morning a USA Today article discussed the FCC's investigation into why the Google Voice App was banned from the iPhone. The article goes on to say that Google could "soon find itself in the hot seat" because Android cannot use Skype, proposing that Google itself blocks VoIP to force users into traditional voice calls.

Andy Rubin, Google's Vice President of Mobile Platforms, had to step forward and call USA Today out.

An attorney who was at the heart of the US Dept. of Justice's original 1994 antitrust case against Microsoft, arising from its proposed takeover of Quicken manufacturer Intuit, will find himself spearheading a coalition against Google's book scanning policies that includes both Microsoft and Yahoo, spokespersons from both companies confirmed to Betanews this morning.

It was attorney Gary Reback who first called Microsoft to task for using its "embrace and extend" policy in an abusive fashion against competitors, often representing those competitors in legal action, as was the case with Borland International and Sybase in the mid '90s. Currently, he is the author of a book called Free the Market! Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive. His latest confrontation is against Google, whose proposed settlement with book authors and publishers would give Google "non-exclusive" rights to scan their books contents and reproduce them online in the Google Books service. Already, Google has been scanning books that are available in public libraries, and making excerpts of those books available to users -- excerpts, as opposed to the books in their entirety.

Similar to the inquiry it launched into the iPhone Google Voice rejection, the Federal Communications Commission today announced its intention to scrutinize the wireless telecommunications industry as a whole, to see if it encourages competition, innovation and investment, and if it is fair and open to consumers.

The Commission will take a vote on August 27 to decide whether it will proceed with the investigation, which seeks to "understand better the factors that encourage innovation and investment in wireless;" to determine "the status of competition in the mobile wireless market, including commercial mobile services;" and to "comment on whether there are opportunities to protect and empower American consumers by ensuring sufficient access to relevant information about communications services."

In the Internet equivalent of the old "whack-a-mole" game, Trend Micro researcher Rik Ferguson -- who helped call attention to the Conficker worm early on -- has this week been calling attention to rogue Facebook applications whose main purpose appears to be to collect users' passwords. Using the usual attention-grabbing headings to grab users (repeating the word "sex" is apparently still effective), these apps redirect users to what looks like a legitimate login page, making users believe they need to log into Facebook again.

The innocuous names lead users to think they point to real Facebook functions like "inbox," rather than third-party apps. When a user clicks on one of them thinking he's using a part of Facebook, the malicious app takes the user to a Facebook login screen, while in the meantime collecting the user's password.

It's not a nationwide ban like the one now in place in the Netherlands, but it may be a step in that direction. Starting September 1, Irish ISP Eircom will block its customers from accessing torrent indexing site The Pirate Bay.

Eircom started working with the Irish Recorded Music Association (IRMA) last February to crack down on P2P music sharing, the result of an out-of-court agreement between the ISP and the "big four" major labels, in order to avoid litigation.

A recent Digitimes report told us what we already sort of knew, but phrased it in such a way that the tech media did a huge double take.

It said that Microsoft will launch Windows Mobile 6.5 in October, and then Windows Mobile 7 in the fourth quarter of next year...pretty much a verbatim repeat of what Steve Ballmer said about the platform last March. However, the report goes on to say that Microsoft will be running what it calls
"a dual-platform strategy to allow Microsoft to compete with the Android-based platform using Windows Mobile 6.5 and also compete with iPhones leveraging Windows Mobile 7."

In the first comprehensive statement representing Mozilla's viewpoint on the issue of Microsoft's compliance with the European Commission's recent Statement of Objections, Mozilla Foundation CEO Mitchell Baker wrote earlier this week that a "ballot screen" giving Windows 7 installers the option of setting up Firefox or another browser instead, is not enough to level the playing field. Internet Explorer, Baker fears, will continue to received favored placement elsewhere in the system, including on the desktop and the taskbar.

"Choosing another browser as a 'default' does not mean that the other browser takes the place of IE," Baker writes. "For example, the IE logo ('shortcut') still remains unchanged on the desktop. The shortcut / logo of the browser the user has selected does not replace this, it is added elsewhere. As a result, the familiar location remains IE, not the user's choice."

In order to move ahead with the National Broadband Plan, the FCC has to first say exactly what qualifies as "broadband." Today, the Commission has issued a public notice seeking a tailored public comment on exactly what the definition of broadband should be.

Already, the FCC has what it believes to be a definition for the term, presented on its Broadband.gov site inaugurated earlier this week: "The term broadband commonly refers to high-speed Internet access that is always on and faster than the traditional dial-up access." But here's the thing: What, exactly, is "high?"

I'll begin by saying that Carmi Levy is my very good friend, and I do admit that most of the time, he and I think along the very same wavelength. I met him through our mutual friend Wolfgang Gruener at TG Daily, and we've carried on a very fruitful dialogue about the IT industry ever since. That, and he has this way of making Winnie-the-Pooh berets look really cool.

We do disagree on one point today, and I think the nature of that disagreement would be beneficial to folks who are wrestling with the question Carmi brought up this morning: "To upgrade or not to upgrade." His article is worth reading, so rather than summarize it here, I'll let Carmi speak for himself.

AT&T's first Android handset, a touchscreen slider from HTC code-named "Lancaster" could face an indefinite delay, according to a DigiTimes report today.

Lancaster was originally slated for a third quarter release, but now could be either delayed or cancelled entirely, according to Digitimes' reliable sources in its native Taiwan, because the phone "has not yet passed AT&T validation."

By far the strongest feature of any operating system or applications suite -- when its architects bother to include it -- is the ability for its own users to program new and unique features into it. It's also the least appreciated feature on the marketing list; but businesses that have invested heavily in Microsoft Office over the years typically have an extensive library of Excel macros, a war chest of VBA functions built into their Word templates, and a spaghetti tangle of Outlook rules.

Today, Google premiered its approach to user-designed extensibility for its online Apps suite, and so far it's exactly what you might expect from Google: Its Apps Script language doesn't reinvent the wheel, leveraging its grammar completely from JavaScript, which many developers already know. It uses a basic set of terms for representing the graphical objects in the system, and a simple array of methods for making things happen and applying functions to menus. And as for how it can actually improve your work, Google pretty much leaves that up to you.