Policy Blog

As PK legal eagle John Bergmayer noted in his blog post on attempts to "harmonize" copyright across national boundaries, the European Parliament decidedly rebuked the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) in a decisive 663 to 13 vote yesterday. The approved joint resolution calls for the immediate release of ACTA texts and public access to the negotiations and prohibits the EU from continuing to engage in secret talks with the other ACTA parties. Moreover, the resolution forbids EU member states from implementing so-called "three strikes" regimes, which some have reported or interpreted ACTA as prescribing. Finally, the resolution, "stresses that, unless Parliament is immediately and fully informed at all stages of the negotiations, it reserves its right to take suitable action, including bringing a case before the Court of Justice in order to safeguard its prerogatives." Needless to say, this resolution holds the potential to deal a massive blow to the secretive ACTA treaty and to finally shine a light on a purposefully opaque process. Unfortunately, here in the United States, policymakers are singing a very different tune.

We are an unusual “nuclear” family. Unusual in the sense that I worked at FCC for almost 25 years and my wife’s career was mostly in the nuclear power area and included 13 years at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Thus in our household we have experience at 2 different regulatory commissions - probably a rare occurrence even in Washington.

This week was NRC’s annual Regulatory Information Conference (RIC) and we dropped by together to register her Monday afternoon and I was there yesterday for a bit to catch the flavor and go to some private company receptions in conjunction with the conference since I know many people in that industry.

BitStalker is a good way to get around some of the obfuscatory methods employed by some BitTorrent trackers that are primarily used for infringing content, like the Pirate Bay. It uses some clever data-gathering techniques to avoid falling for some kinds of spoofing (like listing phony IP addresses as peers). I’m glad that some of the people at my old school, the University of Colorado, are seriously addressing the fact that current anti-piracy technology used on the Internet is inadequate.

One thing needs to be clear, though: when the paper claims that “false positives are rare with our active approach,” it’s referring to false positives as to whether a particular IP address is part of a BitTorrent swarm. That is, if a particular file is known to be infringing, this method is better at identifying the IP addresses that are downloading it.

Can we ever get international consensus on what the proper scope of “intellectual property” should be? ACTA and the Special 301 process are an attempt to “harmonize” international IP law—to use American trade muscle to get other countries to adopt IP regimes similar to ours. But it can be difficult to agree on the scope of intellectual property rights, as a recent court decisions in Singapore and Britain, and the European Parliament’s ACTA resolution, attest.

As reported by Christopher Mitchel from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Qwest has scored quite the little victory in its efforts to keep itself (and the good people it serves in Minnesota) from the evil socialist menace known as “local government providing broadband when the incumbent does a lousy job.”

Apparently,MN State Senator Bakk and MN State Rep Dill introduced a bill that would have made it easier to for local governments to build municipal networks. Right now, it takes a local referendum vote with 65% to authorize a locality to build a network that offers commercial telephone service (and therefore any “triple play” broadband access service — or so they read it in MN).

On Tuesday, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will unveil its National Broadband Plan, which the agency describes as "a roadmap to connect all Americans to affordable, high-speed internet". Public Knowledge and other stakeholders will have plenty of questions and recommendations for the FCC once the Plan is unveiled and the agency will be tasked with accommodating these comments. Additionally, the FCC is seeking input from the general public via their Broadband.gov portal. As part of this ongoing public outreach initiative, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski will participate in a YouTube interview on Tuesday, where he will be asked questions submitted by members of the general public about broadband and the National Broadband Plan. Head over to CitizenTube to submit your questions (text or video) and vote on the submissions made by others.

It’s springtime in Washington, finally, after the snowpocalypse of last winter. Pretty soon all sorts of summer foods will be available. Let’s take a stroll into the grove to see how some really big companies pick cherries.

Over the last couple of weeks, a fierce little debate has started to rage about how the United States should treat high-speed Internet access. As we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the whole ecosystem surrounding the big telecom carriers got together to warn the Federal Communications Commission about really and truly regulating this crucial service.

While the whole letter was outrageous, there was one little part that particularly stood out for special mention, because it demonstrates the rhetorical trickery and intellectual dishonesty that unfortunately inhabits our little telecom world.

The FCC has started to dig through its backlog of indecency complaints. This predictably triggers some cheap shots at the FCC with the non-sequitor that somehow this is the fate of the Internet if the FCC does Net Neutrality. While it is no doubt laboring in vain to point out the unfairness of this for the FCC, here goes.

I’m no fan of the broadcast indecency rules. I do, however, believe very strongly in the rule of law and the idea that an administrative agency has a duty to uphold the law and process complaints. That is what makes and keeps federal agencies accountable to Congress, the democratic process, and the rule of law generally. This means enforcing laws you don’t particularly like and defending them in court.

Event Video: Part 2 (video provided by NextGenWeb through UStream)

Event Video: Part 1 (video provided by NextGenWeb through UStream)