Tag: Information Policy

Last week, while we were all busy with Network Neutrality and other things, the Department of Justice quietly told the Wall St. Journal that it was ending its investigation into text message rates that it had begun after a Letter from Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chair Herb Kohl pointedly asked why text messaging prices did not come down the way we would expect in a competitive market. Folks who wonder how the industry can charge what amounts to $1,300/MB do not see how the DOJ could come to this conclusion. But under the existing law, DOJ came to the right conclusion.

The FCC can preserve the Open Internet with the tools already at its disposal. With a coalition of other public interest groups, Public Knowledge filed comments with the FCC yesterday emphasizing the importance of the Internet, and what can be done to protect it.

Along with the Center for Media Justice, Consumers Union, Media Access Project, and New America Foundation, we dealt with the bulk of the issues raised in the FCC’s Notice. We filed them in addition to comments that concern the relationship of copyright enforcement to the principles of an open Internet.

Here’s what we had to say.

By many accounts, World’s Fair Use Day was a great success. We had a capacity crowd, with hundreds more joining in on the webcast. Members of the audience included staff from the White House, the State Department, the US Copyright Office and Congress. Since one of the main missions of the event was to demonstrate to policymakers the importance of fair use to our culture, our discourse and our economy, having a strong turnout from government is key.

I’ve now had a few days to reflect on the day’s events.

Ya know, if my state got a grant for $24.5 million to build out broadband networks in underserved areas, I would jump for joy. But I’m not in the Maine legislature, so what do I know?

Last month, NTIA gave Great Works internet in Maine $24.5 million toward a fiber optic network. The grant is a classic public/private partnership for a middle mile project that includes, among others the University of Maine.

Fairpoint, Maine’s primary rural LEC, has objected to this “undue competition with the private sector.” This would be funny, given how Fairpoint has become the poster child for the failure of the private sector to deliver on its big promises to rural communities. But Fairpoint’s talking points have ended up in legislation filed by Maine State Senator Lisa Marrache (D-Waterville) and Maine State Rep.

It’s not a surprise that the Motion Picture Association of America is a supporter of the so-called Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a proposed international copyright and trademark agreement that the public isn’t allowed to see. What is surprising is how willing the MPAA is to dismiss calls for an open and democratic process as a “distraction.”

In a letter addressed yesterday to Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the MPAA endorsed ACTA and then went on to say this:

Outcries on the lack of transparency in the ACTA negotiations are a distraction. They distract from the substance and the ambition of the ACTA

This is a pathetic excuse for logic.

Late on Friday, a federal court in New York received a new version of the Google Book Search settlement. As with the old version, the new one was drafted jointly by Google and its erstwhile litigation opponents: the publishers and authors who sued Google for scanning their books without permission.

Substantively, the new settlement bears a great resemblance to the old one.

Sometimes, the Network Neutrality debate makes me feel like a grumpy old policy wonk. Well, I suppose I am a grumpy old policy wonk, but its rather unfair of the folks in the NN debate to make me feel that way — especially when they know better.

The most recent reminder of my age and wisdom/oncoming decrepitude is the rather silly argument that we are somehow “rushing” into network neutrality — because nearly ten years of study and debate cannot possibly be enough to justify this being the first major policy initiative for the Genachowski FCC.

Yes, it was 9 years ago last month when the FCC launched its first inquiry asking how to classify “high speed access to the Internet over cable and other facilities.

One of the longstanding problems noted but not generally addressed before in FCC policy has been “how to get the word out to folks not already plugged in as insiders to file comments.” Traditionally, the FCC (like most federal agencies) has taken a very passive attitude. (Indeed, the FCC has traditionally been ahead of the curve. Many federal agencies have made it downright difficult for members of the public to find out what has been going on, or to file comments.)

In the last few weeks, the FCC has taken a number of steps forward on this. It started modestly with Twitter. Then came the the blog, including a video blog of Chairman Genachowski.

This Tuesday, Public Knowledge filed a brief asking the court not to approve the proposed Google Book Search settlement as it is currently constructed. The proposed settlement raises significant antitrust and class action procedural concerns. In plain English, these concerns are that the settlement represents an attempt to license a lot of books belonging to people who are unable to protest, set up a system to pay other people for the use of those books, and give a single party the exclusive right to use many of those books indefinitely. Read on for some more detail about our concerns.

But first, let’s be clear: We want online access to all books for everyone. We want a world without orphan works, where one can either find a copyright’s owner and seek to license use of their work, or else that work is available for use by all. We want all books to be made accessible so that the blind can read everything the sighted can. We are happy with Google’s current lawful scanning, indexing, and excerpting of all books, and the ability it provides to locate works which would otherwise lay dormant. We would like to find a way that anyone who wants to can offer the public even more complete access. And we have no doubt that whatever happens, Google will continue to offer searches of all books, offer full, accessible access to the books it has licensed, and find ways to locate as many rightsholders as possible to obtain more licenses.

But access through a single party is not true access: What we do not want is for books to be made available only through a single company that has, through judicial gymnastics, obtained the only possible license to those works. What we don’t want is a system where the books of absent authors are being sold and the unclaimed proceeds are going to those who should be finding those authors in the first place.

PK President Gigi Sohn will participate on a panel titled “Electronic Media Regulation” at the Practising Law Institute’s “Communications Law in the Digital Age 2009” seminar. The seminar program, long recognized as the most comprehensive in its field, has been updated to encompass the latest issues and case law in media, digital communications, intellectual property and privacy law.

PLI New York Center
810 Seventh Avenue at 53rd Street (21st floor)
New York, NY

For more information please visit the seminar website.