Yesterday, the Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) jointly announced the terms and conditions of the Broadband Technology Opportunities Program (BTOP). As you’ll recall, BTOP is a $7.2 billion program, authorized by Congress under the Stimulus Act, which aims to increase the speed, affordability and adoption of broadband Internet services in America. In the latest episode of “5 Minutes With Harold Feld,” Harold celebrates RUS and NTIA’s announcement, while noting that the terms and conditions of the program bring both good and bad news for proponents of progressive broadband policy.
Have you ever wondered why the Apple iPhone is only available on the AT&T network? Or why you can’t buy a Palm Pre and use it on Verizon’s network? In the latest installment of “5 Minutes with Harold Feld,” Harold explains the common industry practice known as “handset exclusivity” and discusses ongoing efforts to outlaw the practice.
Word came through the grapevine today that France's "three strikes" HADOPI law has been struck down by the French Constitutional Council. While this is fantastic news, it's not exactly surprising--until this point, the constitutionality of the law had remained an open question. What's more, even if the law had survived the French Constitutional Council's scrutiny, it most certainly would have attracted the attention of the European Union, who in October of last year, passed an amendment prohibiting member states from implementing three strikes regimes. Luckily, the French Constitutional Council sided with the EU Parliament, going so far as to cite the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, a founding document of the French Revolution. "…[W]hereas under section nine of the Declaration of 1789, every man is presumed innocent until he has been proven guilty, it follows that in principle the legislature does not establish a presumption of guilt in criminal matters," the Council wrote in its ruling.
Today, I'm happy to announce that we're launching a new video series here at Public Knowledge: "5 Minutes With Harold Feld". As you may recall, Harold joined our staff back in March and has since taken the helm as our Legal Director. Harold brings with him years of experience in the media reform space, not to mention a wealth of knowledge about the inner workings of Congress, the FCC and the courts. In this series, he'll be explaining complicated topics concisely, in layperson's terms.
In our first episode, Harold tackles the National Broadband Plan. As part of the Stimulus Act, Congress authorized the FCC to develop a plan for bringing fast, affordable broadband Internet access to all Americans. Harold explains the significance of the plan and details Public Knowledge's suggestions to the FCC regarding the National Broadband Plan (a full-text PDF of our comments, as filed with the FCC, can be found here). Take it away, Harold:
If you were following the DMCA Section 1201 anticircumvention rulemaking proceedings last week, you likely saw Tim Vollmer's video of the MPAA's demonstration on how to create a film clip by pointing a camcorder at a TV set (embedded above). This demonstration was the MPAA's response to an exemption request filed by educators, who are seeking to exercise their fair use rights by breaking the CSS encryption on DVDs in order to make short clips for classroom use.
As you'll recall, a group of media studies professors led by Peter DeCherney successfully filed for just such an exemption in 2006 (for more on that, see our video interview with DeCherney, embedded after the break). Three years later, the educators have returned, in an attempt to renew the exemption and to expand it to include students in media studies classes as well as educators outside of the media studies field. Despite having three years to regroup, the studios returned with the same tired, apocryphal argument: despite the fact that DVD-ripping is already widespread, if educators are allowed to legally rip, demand for DVDs will plummet and the industry will collapse. As an alternative, they suggest camcording, a cumbersome process that produces low-quality clips while requiring a significant investment in video recording equipment. Practical matters aside, the MPAA's argument for camcording also happens to contradict a number of the organization's other arguments against fair use--a fact that was not lost on many of the witnesses at last Wednesday's hearing.
Earlier today, the New York Times' Bits Blog reported that starting next month, New York-based cable provider Cablevision will offer 101Mbps (downstream) service to the 5 million people in its service area at a cost of $99.99 per month. While $100 per month for Internet service is not quite what most of us would consider a deal, Cablevision's latest service offering--which will be the fastest Internet service available to consumers in the United States--looks a lot more affordable when juxtaposed with comparable services. Both Verizon and Comcast currently charge $140/month for 50Mbps downstream service (Verizon charges less in a few highly competitive markets), which means that with Cablevision, you're getting more than double the downstream bandwidth for around 70% of the price. Sure, a cost to speed ratio of $0.99 per megabit might not seem like a great value when compared to speeds and prices overseas but for the U.S., Cablevision's announcement represents a big step forward for the affordability of high-speed broadband. How can Cablevision afford to offer such fast service at such a relatively low price?
Hot on the heels of my previous post, it looks like Time Warner has decided to back off of its metered billing initiative nationwide, at least for the time being. From the press release:
Time Warner Cable Chief Executive Officer Glenn Britt said, “It is clear from the public response over the last two weeks that there is a great deal of misunderstanding about our plans to roll out additional tests on consumption based billing. As a result, we will not proceed with implementation of additional tests until further consultation with our customers and other interested parties, ensuring that community needs are being met. While we continue to believe that consumption based billing may be the best pricing plan for consumers, we want to do everything we can to inform our customers of our plans and have the benefit of their views as part of our testing process.”
As Robb and Harold both noted last week, Time Warner Cable's users are less than thrilled when it comes to the company's broadband usage caps, which are set to significantly expand their footprint this fall. Despite the company's claims that its customers don't mind paying by the byte for their "excess" bandwidth, users have been very vocal in expressing their displeasure, even going so far as to organize protests in both Rochester, NYand Greensboro, NC. As a result of the public backlash, Time Warner has delayed the rollout of its caps in at least one location, with more delays, presumably, to come. This is a very encouraging development and echoes the successful netroots resistance to three strikes that we saw in Franceand New Zealand earlier this year, whereby ordinary folks used the web to organize and object to policies that would have restricted their access to the Internet. Given the recent success of these netroots campaigns, as well as the volume of negative press generated by its own capping initiative, you would think that Time Warner would be playing defense. But you would be wrong. Defying common logic, the company has gone on the offensive, in an attempt to gut the Net Neutrality provisions in the Stimulus Act.
