Info and News

FCC Fines Importer of Non-Compliant Electronic Organs

The Enforcement Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fined a Dutch company for importing and marketing in the United States electronic organs which radiated emissions in excess of U.S. limits.

The company, Johannus Orgelbouw b.v. of the Netherlands, was fined $7000 and ordered to submit to the FCC for the next two years verification records of compliance for each model of organ which it imports into the U.S.

The matter of the emitting digital electronic organs was brought to the attention of the Enforcement Bureau in early 2003 by a competitor who claimed that other organ companies were suffering competitive harm because the company, by not complying with FCC regulations, was able to produce products less expensively.  In a subsequent investigation by FCC agents, the company acknowledged that it had imported and marketed at least one model of organ that did not comply with FCC emissions limits, resulting in the Commission’s action.   

 EU Warns Member States to Open Telecom Networks

The Commission of the European Union (EU) has reportedly moved closer to taking a number of EU member states to the European Court of Justice over the failure of those countries to open their former national telecommunications networks to competition. 

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the Commission has warned seven member states (Germany, France, Belgium, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal) that having missed a 2003 mid-year deadline to amend national regulations permitting connections to the dominant telecommunications networks may subject them to fines and further sanctions. 

The Commission was scheduled to issue a “reasoned opinion” in late December 2003, which would provide the member states with two more months to implement interconnection regulations.  Failing that, the Commission says that it is prepared to bring the matter to the European Court of Justice for resolution. 

 From the “You Couldn’t Make This Up” Department

After prolonged protests from fire safety officials and the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), the Zippo Manufacturing Company has shut down a company sponsored web site that presented more than 500 “tricks” involving Zippo cigarette lighters.  The “Zippo tricks” compilation included such dangerous activities as “Hogan’s Leg Drop,” in which a lighter is tossed on someone’s leg and ignited, and “Twilight Sky,” in which a large flame is created from two lit lighters in motion.  Zippo’s general counsel initially defended the web site, arguing that “there is no statistical support that the Zippo lighter is a dangerous tool.”  But the company ultimately relented when it learned that children as young as age 13 were experimenting with the tricks posted on the web site.

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