Policy Blog

Girl Talk a.k.a. Pittsburgh-based mashup artist Greg Gillis, has been making waves in both the electronic/dance and indie rock communities for a few years now. Specializing in sample-based DJ mixes, Gillis creates music that is dense, tirelessly referential and thoroughly postmodern. His breakthrough album, 2006's Night Ripper, proved that a well-executed mashup can have a life beyond the Internet and his latest release, the pay-what-you-want, Creative Commons licensed Feed the Animals, seems poised to push even further into the mainstream. Gillis has become quite the hot topic as of late and his name often pops up in the virtual pages of publications like Pitchfork and Stereogum, as DJs in clubs around the country shamelessly try to imitate his style. One place where you might not expect to hear Gillis mentioned, however, is in the corridors of power on Capitol Hill. Despite this fact, not only did Gillis' name pop up twice this week during Congressional and FCC hearings but on both occasions he was held up as exemplifying a new breed of creative professional. Welcome to yet another week in the increasingly scattershot world of D.C. tech policy.

As the Comcast/BitTorrent Complaint appears to wind down to its final conclusion, the critical questions revolve around whether the FCC has authority to resolve the complaint at all. Comcast argues that the FCC never gave any warning it would “enforce the policy statement,” that it has no basis for doing so anyway, and that even if the FCC had any authority, it would need to have a rulemaking to make rules first before it could resolve any complaints. At the same time, in a last ditch effort to avoid what looks like a total win for Free Press and the other parties to the complaint, Comcast has quietly floated the idea of a settlement decree. As bait for a settlement, Comcast holds out the risk of going to court and having the D.C. Circuit — famed for its open hostility to FCC ancillary jurisdiction and industry regulation generally — find that the FCC has no authority whatsoever to regulate broadband practices.

It sounds paradoxical, but that’s the argument made by Universal in its defense of an overzealous DMCA takedown notice sent to Stephanie Lenz. That notice was sent to Lenz after she posted a YouTube video of her then-13 month-old son dancing in her kitchen to the barely-intelligible strains of Prince. Give me a minute to walk through the background of what caused Universal to make this twisted argument.

Lenz, represented by EFF, has sued Universal for violating 17 USC 512(f), which penalizes abuses of the DMCA’s notice-and-takedown procedures.

If you’ve never seen the intro (original/new) to the TV show “The Outer Limits” then perhaps now is the time. Be sure to have the sound up:

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission…

Perhaps if the intro was written today, it would say, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. But do not attempt to view our movies. The MPAA is controlling transmission.”

As folks may have heard, the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition filed a complaint against wireless microphone manufacturers and a Petition for Rulemaking last week. As I explain on my Wetmachine blog here, the filing has the dual purpose of cleaning up a potentially nasty mess in the broadcast UHF bands before the public safety and new commercial services start operating on Channels 52-69, and finally have an honest conversation about wireless microphones in the context of the FCC’s ongoing proceeding to open the white spaces to productive use. (FCC Docket No.

The carefully evasive behavior of NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes bugs me. He tends to remind me of that one uncle at the reunion who acts too strangely to be allowed alone with the children. That said, if the ISPs will sell everything we do online to any creep on the street, why can’t Bob Dykes be that creep?

It was Charter Communication’s suggestion that it might sell the data to Dykes that creeped out enough people to get Congressional attention. Fortunately, Charter “pressed ‘Pause’” when asked to.

While NebuAd and Charter became the public piñatas, the ISPs that betrayed (and many probably are still betraying) their customers have escaped scrutiny so far.

I've been a Comcast cable television and Internet customer for almost two years now. And to be quite honest, during those two years, I've had relatively few complaints. Sure, I'm not crazy about my upstream BitTorrent traffic getting throttled. But that aside, I feel as if I've always enjoyed a fairly high level of service. I'm more or less pleased with the speeds that I get with my Internet connection, the picture and sound quality of my cable television service is high enough to pass muster and I can't remember ever experiencing any downtime (which initially came as a shock, after having been a DSL customer for a number of years). And all those horror stories about Comcast technicians? Mine arrived right on time for my installation appointment and was both courteous and helpful--even if he did try to sell me a cable descrambler box. In fact, during the last few years, I've only had one complaint regarding Comcast's Internet service: the price tag that comes attached to it has always seemed a bit high. As of yesterday, however, that's no longer an issue for me.

George Ou, the former Technical Director of ZDNet, has found a new job where he continues to lead the technology sector by publishing innovative thoughts and ideas – sometimes not necessarily his own.

About 16 months ago, I heard Ed Richards of Ofcom speak at a CITI conference at Columbia, and blogged about it here. I remember thinking that Richards didn’t seem to think that highspeed access to the internet was all that important. The market had to demand it, and the market wasn’t being demanding. Also, he wasn’t interested in government intervention to support highspeed access.

Over the next couple of days, thousands of online activists will gather in Austin for the Netroots Nation conference. This is the former Yearly Kos meeting, an extension of the Daily Kos progressive blog.

There are scheduled caucuses for Open Left Readers and Geeks and Texans and Moms, and sessions on how to use social networking tools in campaigns. There are panels on how the Internet could be used for transparency in government, how the Internet has affected campaigns and lobbying, to discussions of science, space and food policy. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) will be there, as will Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD) and retired Gen. Wesley Clark.

All of the speeches and 99.99% of the panels and discussions will be about how to the Internet is being used, and should be used. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fabulous that activists want to make the most out of the online medium.