The statement, co-authored by Victoria Espinel, the IP Enforcement Coordinator, Aneesh Chopra, the Chief Technology Officer, and Howard Schmidt, the Cybersecurity Coordinator, affirms the message that legislation tampering with the DNS poses real risks to the security and stability of the Internet.

For many years, consumers were able to save some money on their cable bills by simply subscribing to a basic tier of programming.  For additional programming, subscribers had to pay for a set-top box provided by the cable company.  This worked fine when cable companies transmitted the programming in an analog format.  But times, and technology, are changing.  Now even the basic tier, like the more expensive ones, is going digital, and that means consumers will have to pay for a box even if they didn't have one before.  In response to these events, the Federal Communications Commission proposed a new rule.  Public Knowledge applauds the FCC for proposing the rule in response to digital cable technology and protecting subscribers from being hit too hard as a result of the digital transition. 

Hey everyone, remember back at the end of last year when the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted the better-than-nothing-but-still-painfully-disappointing Network Neutrality rules? Well, after a long and winding road, which included bouncing back and forth between the FCC and the Office of Management and Budget a few times and a premature challenge by Verizon, the rules were finally published in the Federal Register today. So without getting into the merits, here is what to expect procedurally.

Congressional Review Act

Today, Public Knowledge, joined by a wide variety of consumer, civil rights, and civil liberties groups, urged the FCC to immediately pass rules that would prevent local authorities from ordering a shutdown of wireless services the way that BART did earlier this month. As Harold’s earlier blog post points out, we don’t even need to get to the (extremely pressing and important) First Amendment issues to find that BART’s actions violated the law—the Communications Act, to be precise.

I suppose I am really a telecom lawyer at heart. My reaction to the news that the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police shut down cellphone networks in a number of stations on August 11 had nothing to do with democracy, the First Amendment, Tahrir Square, etc. With all deference to the importance of these concerns, my reaction was WHAT DO YOU MEAN THESE IDIOTS MESSED WITH THE PHONE SYSTEM? From my perspective, and the perspective of traditional telecom law, BART could just as well have turned off the local central office and all this chatter about whether or not BART is a public forum is just a distraction.

Torrentfreak recently ran a fascinating pair of opinion pieces from two lawyers regarding whether or not someone could be liable for copyright infringement if someone else used their open WiFi connection. One attorney, Nicholas Ranallo, walks through the established law of direct and secondary copyright liability, and comes to the conclusion that generally, no, you're not liable for someone else's infringements using your connection. The other attorney, Marc Randazza, doesn't discuss copyright liability, but instead starts drawing out hypotheticals about the law of negligence.

Introduced in May and sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar, bill S. 978 has been the talk of the tech blogs lately. The bill seeks to change the rules regarding criminal copyright enforcement, adjusting which types of infringement constitute a felony with significant jail time. Reactions to the bill have displayed a good deal of alarm. We’re here to sort fact from fiction as best as we can: no, you probably won’t go to jail for watching True Blood on a bootleg website. But yes, this bill does have some prickly bits, and there’s definitely stuff here that warrants some concern.

On Monday, in a 7-2 decision, the Supreme Court in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (formerly known as Schwarzenegger v. EMA) ruled that a California law purportedly banning the sale of violent videogames to minors violated the First Amendment. I have to admit: the majority opinion, written by Justice Scalia, really surprised me. The Court chose some pretty broad language to back up its decision (as I’ll explain, it didn’t actually have to), and it laid out some important new principles. Yes, the California law is no more, but that doesn’t mean everything is back to the status quo – in fact, due to the language it uses, this decision has wider implications that will affect not only games but also how we interpret the First Amendment from here on out. Overall, what are the most surprising takeaways from all this?

In yet another turn in our ongoing coverage of the North Face counterfeiting case, The Public Interest Registry is no longer being held in contempt for resolving domains associated with the counterfeiters' websites. The Judge agreed with the PIR's analysis regarding the court's authority to hold in contempt a nonparty for which there was no in personam jurisdiction:

I recently wrote a post about a string of counterfeit clothing websites, and how a New York District judge held the Public Interest Registry in contempt for failing to remove the counterfeit domains from its database. Just a heads-up: as of June 24th, 2011 at 9:44 AM EST, the counterfeit domain names (such as cheapnorthface.org) no longer resolve. I assume this means that PIR took action to remove the domain names from its registry, as per the judge’s stay order.