Obama’s plan would in essence allow the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the Internet much as it does landline phones. This would mean that the FCC would have far greater control and oversight of Internet Service Providers, or ISPs--a move that some say would help ensure an open Internet. Others claim would impair its growth and innovation.

“Obama’s plan to reclassify broadband as a utility is something he’s supported for a very long time,” says Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT. “In essence, for over a decade the FCC has considered broadband an ‘information service’ rather than a telecommunications, or utility, service. Under federal law, the FCC has far less oversight or ability to regulate the former than the latter.”

And if Internet services are reclassified under Title II of the Telecommunications Act? “Broadband players will be classified as ‘common carriers’ like phone services--meaning that they must provide equal access to all customers, be regulated more closely by the FCC and be subject to punishment/fines for breaking the rules,” King adds.

Obama didn’t actually suggest he would act by issuing an executive order; his statement was only a (highly public) proposal. Still, there could be some implications that such a reclassification could bring.

Can’t block it

In his statement, Obama suggested that there would be no blocking of content. So long as that content is legal, an ISP would not be permitted to block it. ISPs cannot block religious, political or other socially motivated content.

It also means that an ISP, such as a cable provider, would not be able to block content that is provided by a competitor. Obama laid out that “every player--not just those commercially affiliated with an ISP--gets a fair shot at your business.”

Can’t slow it down

There would also be no “throttling”--the deliberate slow-down of Internet data transfer speeds--based on an ISP’s preference.

“In practical terms today broadband companies have been free to create Internet ‘fast lanes’--’toll roads’ is a more accurate description--and to throttle the accounts of users they feel are consuming too much bandwidth,” King says.

This is important to note because earlier this year Comcast essentially throttled the content streamed by Netflix NFLX , resulting in poor quality video for many of the streaming service’s subscribers. Under Obama’s proposal such throttling wouldn’t be allowed. Still, it remains unclear who would pay for the extra bandwidth that heavy content, such as video, demands.

Can’t hide behind it

Obama further called for increased transparency--and not just for the “last mile,” the term used to describe the part of the connection between the ISP and the consumer. His proposal also calls for net neutrality rules to be enforced at points of interconnection between the ISP and the rest of the Internet. This means that one ISP would not be allowed to slow down content from another provider. Again, the issue of who will pay for content that has a heavy bandwidth burden remains unresolved.

Can’t charge extra for it

The proposal levels the playing field for content creators by explicitly banning so-called paid prioritization by ISPs. Any type of gate-keeping activity that would require users to pay more for better service is not allowed. Opponents say this would merely lead to everyone paying for premium Internet service.

The FCC becomes more powerful

Open Internet advocacy groups have called for full Title II reclassification. Some opponents of the measure say that such a move could give the FCC greater power over who can and cannot provide a service and even define how ISPs provide broadband. Opponents also say the FCC could influence the price (in an escalating direction, naturally) of Internet service by driving up prices for consumers.

On the other hand, a full reclassification could provide consumers with a more formal complaint system and, in turn, subject ISPs to increased scrutiny.

“Comcast and Verizon want to scare the public and Congress by calling Title II ‘regulation of the Internet,'” says Evan Greer, campaign director of the advocacy group Fight for the Future. “Title II is about preventing a select few companies from regulating what people can and can see and do on the Internet.”

The fight gets political

Without question Obama’s proposal will reignite the net neutrality debate. His timing comes just a week after his Democratic Party faced its biggest election setback in more than a decade. A showdown could loom as Congress, now controlled by the Republican Party, faces off against the White House.

“There’s a political angle to the president’s proposal,” King says. “In general, Republicans have sided with broadband carriers in resisting reclassification but continuing that course is likely to put them squarely at odds with consumers at a time the party is hoping to tune itself up for the 2016 presidential elections. It’ll be interesting to see which side of this argument the various politicians angling for a spot on the ticket support.”

A bruising political battle will also rekindle general concerns about the government’s ability and willingness to regulate technology.

“This move by President Obama would be a complete reverse-course from the path the industry has been on since the 1990’s,” says Jeff Kagan, a telecommunications industry analyst. “The Internet is a brand new and rapidly changing technology. The government cannot expect to play a role simply because it does not move fast enough.”

Kagan added: “If we want to see the Internet continue to grow and change, we must not completely destroy and reinvent the policy. This is a matter of companies and their investments into bringing this amazing technology to reality. We have been doing a pretty darn good job of that so far.”

Next, read: “Is municipal broadband more important than net neutrality?” by Andrew Zaleski.

And these two issues are inextricably linked, as programs like Social Security can help lessen income inequality by raising the incomes of the least fortunate in society. But these wealth-transferring social insurance programs aren’t the only means the government has at its disposal to help the poor and stem the tide of rising inequality. The legal system can also play its part, and there is no greater example of this than in the bankruptcy code.

In a working paper released Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, economists Will Dobbie and Jae Song examine 500,000 bankruptcy filings in the United States to measure the effect of bankruptcy laws on consumers. They found that the bankruptcy code is an incredibly effective social insurance policy. According to their findings, getting approved for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection “increases annual earnings by $5,562, decreases five-year mortality by 1.2 percentage points, and decreases five-year foreclosure rates by 19.1 percentage points.”

The paper’s authors argue that bankruptcy protection helps workers earn more by removing the disincentive to work resulting from creditors garnishing worker’s paychecks. If a person’s wages are garnished to the point that it didn’t pay to continue working, they often decide to stop working altogether.

The study also found that bankruptcy also helps people live longer, due likely to the fact that dealing with debt problems, rather then letting them fester, significantly reduces stress. Chapter 13 bankruptcy also allows people to stay in their homes because it is designed specifically to allow borrowers to avoid foreclosure.

Since the vast majority of Americans will never have to file for bankruptcy, the bankruptcy code can be described as a social insurance program. We hope to never have to use it, but many of us are glad it is there just in case. Of course, all insurance comes at a cost, and the conventional wisdom is that the easier it is for people to file for bankruptcy, and get away with not paying back all they owe, the higher borrowing costs will be for the general public. That was the logic that lawmakers in Washington used in 2005 when they passed the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act (BAPCPA), with the goal of making it more difficult to file for bankruptcy.

While the bill made it more difficult to file for bankruptcy, it hasn’t brought down costs for the rest of us. A 2009 study from the American Bankruptcy Law Journal found that while the reforms did indeed bring down the number of bankruptcies in the U.S., the benefits were captured solely by the financial services industry. “The data suggests that although bankruptcies and credit card company losses decreased, and credit card companies achieved record profits, the cost to consumers of credit card debt actually increased,” the study’s authors wrote. “In other words the 2005 bankruptcy reforms profited credit card companies at consumers’ expense.”

Since tightening standards for declaring bankruptcy hasn’t lowered borrowing costs for the rest of us, loosening standards--especially for student loan debt--could help relieve financial pressure for the lower and middle classes. Dobbie and Song’s findings also provide further evidence that helping underwater borrowers modify their mortgages could provide huge benefits for those people, and the economy overall.

Weissman is criticizing U.S. attorney general Eric Holder for his "utter failure to prosecute any [major] institution or person for the events that led to the financial crisis and all the ensuing social devastation."

Holder announced yesterday that he'll step down from the post he's held since 2009 as soon as the president appoints a successor,

The popular vein of criticism being voiced by Weissman, and encapsulated in the phrase "too big to jail," is the albatross that threatens to weigh down Holder's legacy in the business realm.

It's more than just a cheap shot leveled by people that don't really understand the fine points and technicalities of the criminal justice system. U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff, a former chief of the business fraud unit of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office, published a powerful article in the New York Review of Books last January that, while tempered with judicial disclaimers and caveats, unmistakably conveys his slack-jawed disbelief that the "colossal frauds" the government has alleged in so many civil cases could not also have engendered at least one successful criminal prosecution.

To be sure, Holder's legacy as attorney general will be determined by a much broader record of accomplishment and failure than just his stance on corporate crime. Historians will likely focus far more on the impact he had on civil rights, including gay and voting rights; his preference for prosecuting terrorism in criminal courts rather than military tribunals; his attempt to bring more equity in sentencing and drug crime prosecutions; his apparent tolerance of vast domestic surveillance in the name of fighting terrorism; and his surprising persistence in bringing leak prosecutions, even when it meant subpoenaing journalists, including New York Times reporter James Risen.

But in the business realm, will Holder's champions have a case for counteracting criticism like Weissman's?

Well, in recent years Holder has certainly been punishing banks with unprecedented civil fines and penalties. Laast month he won a $16.65 billion settlement from Bank of America Corp. BAC the department's largest with a single entity in history, for misrepresentations it made (or that its teetering acquisitions, Countrywide and Merrill Lynch made) about residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) during the runup to the crisis. Last November, he grabbed $13 billion more from JPMorgan Chase JPM for its similar conduct (and that of the companies it acquired, Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual). He picked up another $7 billion in a deal with Citigroup C in July, also stemming from alleged RMBS-related fraud.

And once we get past the financial crisis, Holder's record looks tougher. His department came down hard on BP for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster. In November 2012, BP pleaded guilty to 11 felony manslaughter charges, environmental crimes, and obstruction of Congress, and agreed to pay $4 billion in criminal fines, even as the Justice Department continues to seek additional relief from BP in civil proceedings. (That's all over and above, of course, the many billions BP has paid, and has yet to pay, in ongoing private litigation.)

Holder has also won unprecedented victories in fighting offshore tax evasion, obtaining guilty pleas from Credit Suisse AG CS (which paid $2 billion in fines and restitution) and from Wegelin & Co., Switzerland's oldest private bank.

Finally, this past July his department obtained a guilty plea from Paris-based bank BNP Paribas BNP , for processing illegal transactions with Sudanese, Iranian, and Cuban entities, in violation of the Trading With the Enemy Act. BNP coughed up about $9 billion in forfeitures and fines.

"During attorney general Holder's tenure, the sanctions on business have increased hugely," Jamie Gorelick told me in an interview. Gorelick was deputy attorney general during the Clinton Administration, and is now a partner at the law firm of WilmerHale. "It used to be that a billion-dollar resolution was extraordinary. Now we have resolutions at levels many, many times that number."

So, yes, Holder's champions will have some basis to commend his record on business crime.

But in the end, the die is cast. With each new multi-billion-dollar recovery the government wins from Bank of America, JP Morgan, Citigroup, or some other company accused of civil fraud in connection with the conduct that launched the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the more inconceivable it seems that there wasn't also some prosecutable criminal wrongdoing going on at the time.

"Too big to jail" will be Holder's sad legacy.

http://fortune.com/video/2014/06/20/bank-of-america-asks-to-meet-with-holder/

Peter Taylor, 57, filed a lawsuit against the microblogging service last week in San Francisco Superior Court, alleging discrimination based on his age and disability.

A month prior to being fired, Taylor underwent surgery for kidney stones. When he asked for additional help due to the disability, the suit states that Twitter “refused to accommodate” and, in fact, assigned him more work.

Eventually, he was “terminated without warning,” according to the lawsuit, for failing to compete those extra assignments. The suit went on to say that Twitter replaced him with several employees in their 20s or 30s, and that his supervisor had made a “critical remark” about his age.

Taylor’s attorney argued that his client had “saved over 10 million dollars in the expansions of data centers” for Twitter.

The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune. But in response to SF Weekly, a Twitter TWTR spokesperson said that “the case is without merit” and the company will “vigorously defend ourselves against it.”

Plaintiffs’ representative Steve Berman said in a letter to Denise Cote, the presiding judge at the Southern District court of New York, that the two sides had reached “a binding agreement in principle” to settle the case.

The terms of the settlement are under seal, pending the court’s approval. Apple, which has denied breaking antitrust law, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The plaintiffs, which include over 30 states and territories, had originally sought up to $840 million in damages from Apple. That figure was based on an estimate that Apple had actually overcharged buyers of e-books by $280 million.The court has the power to impose damages up to triple the actual amount.

Apple is currently appealing a ruling last year by Judge Cote that it conspired with five big publishing houses to fix prices for e-books, and the settlement is contingent on the result of that appeal, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The publishers involved–Hachette Book Group, HarperCollins, Penguin Group (USA) Inc, MacMillan and Simon & Schuster Inc–agreed last year to pay some $166 million to settle related antitrust charges.

The ruling Tuesday called the subpoena overly broad and targeted at information irrelevant to the state’s investigation.

Schneiderman is trying to uncover the identity of Airbnb hosts who are renting their apartments as hotel rooms in New York. It is illegal to rent a room for fewer than 30 days in the state if the owner or permanent tenant is not present. There is also the issue of taxes. Hotels typically pay a 15% occupancy tax while Airbnb hosts usually don’t pay the fee.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Airbnb announced, “This decision is good news for New Yorkers who simply want to share their home and the city they love. Now, it's time for us to work together. Airbnb hosts and the attorney general share a common goal: we all want to make New York a better place to live, work and visit. We look forward to continuing to work with the attorney general’s office to make New York stronger for everyone.”

The judge’s ruling isn’t necessarily the final word, however. The attorney general could return with a revised subpoena that may stand a better chance of withstanding a legal challenge.

But short-term, at least, the news is good for Airbnb, which risked a chilling effect on its nearly 225,000 New York users. Some of them had raised concerns that their personal information would be handed over to the state. In fact, a petition against the subpoena garnered over 230,000 signatures back in December.

“I think it’s a positive development,” Arun Sundararajan, a professor of information, operations, and management sciences at New York University, said about the judge’s ruling. “Through the subpoena, the focus had shifted from the real underlying issue that there's a misfit between the new way of providing accommodation and the old regulations.”

He added, “I think with this ruling, we can return the conversation to what’s a good way to come up with a good vision between the platform and the city government in regulating this space.”

Sundararajan also said that the decision will allow for partnership and dialogue between Airbnb and New York. “Cities like New York are perfect for this type of service,” he said. “I think it's really important that this doesn’t end the conversation.”

In the document, a letter written April 13, 2011, a lawyer at the high-powered litigation firm of Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, which had been evaluating whether to represent Ceglia, explained to Ceglia's other lawyers that his firm's forensic analysis of Ceglia's computer hard-drives showed that Ceglia's contract was "fabricated," that his firm would make its experts available to them, that Kasowitz was dropping all involvement, and warning the lawyers of their ethical obligations, including a possible duty to report "the misconduct that has occurred" to the presiding judge.

The existence of such a document has been known since this past summer, but its unsealing--apparently not previously reported--sheds light on, and gives texture to, the likely basis for the suit Facebook has vowed to bring against at least some of Ceglia's lawyers. That Facebook plans to bring such a suit was reported by Andrew Ross Sorkin in his Dealbook column of the New York Times on October 29, and Facebook's FB intent was reiterated in a document it filed Tuesday in federal court in Buffalo, where Ceglia's lawsuit is still pending, though Facebook has moved to have it dismissed.

"Defendants intend to hold accountable all those who aided in Ceglia's fraud — including his attorneys and former attorneys," wrote Facebook's attorneys at Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, who are led by Orin Snyder, in response to a request by Ceglia lawyer Dean Boland, of Lakewood, Ohio, to withdraw. By Gibson Dunn's tally, Boland's would be the tenth law firm to come and go on Ceglia's behalf since he filed the case in June 2010. Others who have represented Ceglia along the way include former New York State Attorney General Dennis Vacco of Buffalo; Robert Brownlie of 3700-lawyer DLA Piper, one of the largest law firms in the world; and Sanford Dumain, who chairs the executive committee of the well-known class-action firm Milberg.

MORE: Surreal twist in Facebook ownership case

In a letter to Fortune Vacco writes, "Our firm acted, has acted, and always will act with the highest ethical standards." Neither Brownlie nor Dumain had responded to calls or emails as of publication.

Ceglia, of Wellsville, N.Y., southeast of Buffalo, is in custody. At a telephonic bail hearing held on October 31, he argued that his contract's authenticity was supported by expert testimony, and suggested that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg might have hacked into his computers to plant phony documents. "The fact that…the prosecution is attempting to slight [my] world-renowned experts for [Facebook's] benefit I think is wrong." (Facebook declined comment for this story.)

Ceglia's only remaining civil attorney, Paul Argentieri of Hornell, N.Y., did not return an email or phone call, but did email Fortune last week, in response a different inquiry: "We’re very disappointed that our legal arguments and expert reports have not been objectively scrutinized by the fourth estate. Not to be difficult, but until somebody understands our case (which is not complex), there is no point in responding to questions."

In court filings, Ceglia's lawyers have characterized the authenticity of the contract as hinging on a good-faith swearing match between opposing banks of forensic experts and, accordingly, a dispute which can be resolved only by a jury.

Originally represented by Argentieri and a small local firm, Ceglia filed the case in state court in Allegany County in June 2010, appending a copy of what purported to be an April 28, 2003 contract between him and Mark Zuckerberg, who was then a Harvard freshman and is now the founder and CEO of Facebook. The contract's terms gave Ceglia at least a 50% interest in Facebook — and, under certain circumstances, as much as an 84% interest — in exchange for Ceglia's $1,000 investment in the project.

MORE: Google and Facebook’s new tactic in the tech wars

Facebook had the case transferred to federal court. From the outset, Zuckerberg acknowledged having done programming work for Ceglia while he was a student in 2003. But he maintained that the contract appended to Ceglia's complaint was a forgery, and that the real contract made no mention of Facebook, which Zuckerberg had not even conceived of creating until about December 2003. The actual contract pertained solely to a startup Ceglia was trying to launch at the time, called StreetFax, according to Zuckerberg.

While the parties engaged in early skirmishes over whether to send the case back to state court or not, Argentieri drew up a brochure about the case in an attempt to entice big-time litigators into the case. Kasowitz Benson was one of the firms courted. On March 29, it had outside forensic specialists at Capsicum Group examine Ceglia's laptop, hard-drives and floppy disks. The next day the experts reported back that they had retrieved scans of the original Ceglia-Zuckerberg contract, which Ceglia had appended to an email he had sent to outside lawyer on March 3, 2004. Just as Zuckerberg maintained, that contract made no reference to Facebook, and pertained solely to StreetFax. Kasowitz attorney Aaron Marks informed Argentieri of the result that same day and cancelled his firm's involvement (never having entered a formal appearance), according to a letter he wrote two weeks later--the document unsealed last week.

Ten days later, to Marks’ evident surprise, Argentieri filed an amended complaint on Ceglia's behalf, expanding Ceglia's claims and reappending the same contract that Marks had believed to be "fabricated." The amended complaint was also signed by Brownlie of DLA Piper and former attorney general Vacco, of Buffalo's Lippes, Mathias, Wexler Friedman.

On April 12 and, again, on April 13, Marks wrote to Argentieri, Vacco, and the DLA Piper attorneys to express his concerns. In the second letter, he wrote that he would "refrain from reporting to the District Court the misconduct that has occurred" until 3 p.m. the next day "in light of your representation that your firm will undertake an investigation of the concerns set forth in my April 12 letter. ... Upon your firm's reporting to me on the findings of your investigation and the steps your firm will take as a result thereof, we will again assess our firm's professional obligations. Please note your firm's obligations to the District Court under [New York Rules of Professional Conduct] Rule 3.3, should your investigation demonstrate that the amended complaint contains false statements of fact."

MORE: How Facebook really works

In his letter to Fortune, Vacco writes that both DLA Piper and his firm contacted Marks "for the purpose of reviewing issues he raised regarding the available expert opinions. After completing our review, we believed that the continuation of our representation in the suit was proper in all respects." Both Vacco's firm and DLA Piper continued in the case for two months, until June 28, 2011, when they were substituted for by a San Diego law firm, Jeffrey A. Lake, APC. The departure of Vacco's firm "had nothing to do with the concerns raised by Mr. Marks," Vacco says.

According to legal ethics expert Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University School of Law, the rule in New York, as in most states, is that when an attorney representing someone in court learns that a false document has been submitted or false testimony given, his "duty to the tribunal" trumps his "duty of confidentiality to the client," and he must take "reasonable, remedial measures," which "can include, and may have to include, disclosure of the false document or testimony" to the court. However, he adds, the duty applies "only if you 'know' the document is false. Belief, even strong belief, is not enough." The lawyer has to have "a high level of confidence" that the document is false to trigger this duty. Gillers adds that the duty to report would not apply to a firm like Kasowitz Benson, which had not entered an appearance in the case.

The Lake firm, which replaced Vacco's firm and DLA Piper, itself withdrew in October 2011, and was replaced by Dean Boland of Lakewood, Ohio. Neither Lake nor Boland immediately responded to emails seeking comment.

In March 2012, the Milberg firm signed onto Ceglia's team, along with two smaller firms. All three firms withdrew three months later, on May 30, leaving Boland and Argentieri.

Boland asked to withdraw on October 30, four days after Ceglia's arrest. In a memo accompanying the request, he wrote: "Myself and prior counsel all have and had a duty to bring to this court any evidence of fraud, even fraud by our own client, should we have come across it. No prior counsel and current counsel, including the undersigned have done so. The undersigned, at no time, has encountered evidence of fraud by Plaintiff…The undersigned feels it is important to emphasize in the strongest terms possible, that the reasons underlying this request [to withdraw] have
nothing to do with any belief by the undersigned that Plaintiff is engaged in now or has been engaged in during the past, fraud regarding this case
." (Emphasis in the original.)

589-18-Kasowitz letter