Tag: Information Policy

Remember how we filed a petition to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking them to make sure that carriers are nondiscriminatory when it comes to text messages? While we haven’t posted about it much lately, work on the issue has been chugging quietly along behind the scenes. Today, all of the parties of the original petition filed a follow-up letter at the Commission dealing with some of the arguments which have been raised, primarily by Verizon Wireless and CTIA (the industry group for wireless carriers). The short version is that carriers claim they won’t be able to stop spam if they can’t also pick and choose who is allowed to text with you. Needless to say, we disagree.

NYU School of Law
Greenberg Lounge
40 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012-1066

The Information Law Institute at New York University School of Law presents A Roundtable Discussion on the Impact of Digital Distribution Platforms on the Entertainment Industry and Proposed Policy Strategies with Mike Fricklas, General Counsel, Viacom, Gideon Parchomovsky, University of Pennsylvania Law School, and Gigi Sohn, President and Founder of Public Knowledge.

For more information please visit:
http://www1.law.nyu.edu/ili/colloquia/index.html

Back on August 20, the FCC released its Order resolving the complaint against Comcast for blocking P2P protocols. As part of the remedy, the FCC ordered Comcast to provide a full report on its current “network management practices” within 30 days, along with a transition plan for how it intended to manage traffic after it discontinued its current practices. The FCC then invited Free Press and anyone else interested to “keep a sharp eye on Comcast” and on the FCC’s enforcement.

Comcast has sworn up and down that it will comply with the FCC’s Order and it is only appealing in the D.C. Circuit as a matter of principle. I, having a nasty and suspicious mind, so doubt this noble intention that I have filed a law suit of my own to get the FCC to clamp down on Comcast now and not wait for future compliance. So, here we are at last on September 19, 30 days after the release and effective date of the Order.

As folks may recall, the primary opponents of opening the broadcast white spaces for use, the broadcasters and the wireless microphone manufacturers — notably our good friend and radio pirate Shure, Inc. (official slogan:”We get to break the law ‘cause we sound so good”) — insisted that the FCC conduct field tests on the white spaces prototypes. Of course, because these are concept prototypes and not functioning devices certified to some actual standard, everyone knew this would leave lots of leeway for the broadcasters and the wireless microphone folks to declare the tests a “failure” regardless of the actual results. Which, of course, they did.

I’m a Sprint customer, but thanks to something called “automatic roaming,” I can be reached in the DC Metro subway system, where only Verizon has service. Unfortunately, because of a recent FCC order, wireless customers like me might soon be harder to reach when on the move.

Wireless roaming agreements allow customers of one carrier to get service in areas where that carrier does not have its own network. Unfortunately, a gaping hole in some recent regulation means that an order meant to ensure that wireless customers get the best possible service might actually mean that some customers don’t get any service at all, even in their home region – especially if they’re customers of one of the smaller competitive carriers. This past week, we filed a letter urging the FCC to fix the problem and ensure continued customer access to wireless networks.

Today’s NYT has this op ed on Obama’s use of text messaging to announce his VP pick. It provides a nice reminder about the importance of the pending Petition by PK and others on text messaging. Not that Verizon or any other provider would be so foolish as to deny the Obama or McCain campaigns short codes or block their messages. I’m not even worried about independent candidates like Barr and Nader. No, I’m worried about us ordinary schlubs or unpopular folks who can’t count on getting a front page story on the NYT if something happens.

To quickly review the NARAL flap that prompted the filing of the Petition.

When should a court defer to an agency’s interpretation of its governing statute and/or its own regulatory actions?

I got interested in this question because deference by a flummoxed Supreme Court gave us Brand X, with its ahistorical “this looks really tricky so we’ll let the FCC categorize highspeed internet access” approach.

In this week’s Third Circuit opinion about the Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident, the court doesn’t defer much.

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.

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.

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.