After months of waiting, the Senate confirmed two key members of the Obama communications and technology team: new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) director Larry Strickling (his official title is Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information). And not a moment too soon.
Here is what is facing the new leaders right now: NTIA (along with the Rural Utilities Service) is expected to issue its “Notice of Funds Availability” imminently for the $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus money, and that “NOFA” will include the rules for applying for the grants, as well as the conditions (like non-discrimination) with which a grantee much comply.
Time Warner and Comcast have announced a new pilot program for their TV Anywhere initiative. The 5,000 customers in the pilot will get access to cable programming content not otherwise available online — as long as they prove they subscribe to a subscription video service — or “MVPD” — like cable or FIOS. (MVPD stands for “multichannel video programming distributor” and means anything that sells you a whole bunch of cable channels.
The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president and co-founder of Public Knowledge:
“We are disappointed but not surprised at the announcement this morning by Comcast and Time Warner. It is obvious that their ‘TV Everywhere’ is not TV for Everyone.
The following statement is attributed to Gigi B. Sohn, president
and co-founder of Public Knowledge:
“We are very pleased that the Senate Commerce Committee acted so
quickly to approve the nominations of Julius Genachowski to be
the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and Robert
McDowell to serve another term as commissioner.
“We look forward to the full Senate confirming the nominees
quickly. The issues awaiting Commission action are too important
to be delayed any longer.”
As confirmation hearings go, today’s hearing on the nomination of Julius Genachowski to be the new Chair of the FCC and current Commissioner Robert McDowell to be renominated for a second term could only be called a lovefest. And why not? Both are among the most qualified individuals ever to have been nominated to serve the agency. Perhaps the most controversial exchange was the debate over how to pronounce the Chairman-to-be’s last name (for the record, it’s pronounced Gen-a-kow-ski, not chow-ski).
Genachowski sounded all the right notes - telling the story of how his father, an engineer, showed him his plans for turning text into signals so to help blind people to “read” words on paper.
Note, this does not mean put stuff behind a pay wall and charge viewers. It means replicating the cable model and charging the ISP on a per-subscriber basis.
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:
Please join The New America Foundation to officially launch the Open Technology Initiative (OTI) and to learn more about its current projects, including M-Lab, an open platform for researchers to deploy Internet measurement tools; Building the 21st Century Broadband Superhighway, an initiative to deploy middle-mile fiber infrastructure across the country; and other ways OTI promotes affordable, universal, and ubiquitous communications networks through partnerships with communities, researchers, industry, and public interest groups.
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