On today's podcast we discuss arbitrary wireless internet limits, the potential marriage of DirectTV and Hulu, and the new British report on using evidence to make copyright policy.  We also solicit questions from our listeners for future shows.

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On today's podcast we update the status of the proposed AT&T/T-Mobile merger, walk through the intricacies of politicians licensing music for their campaigns, talk about IP protection surrounding attempts to 3D print a cube from the movie Super 8, and mark the death and life of social networks.  We also discuss the decision of civil society organizations to pull out of international open internet discussions at OECD and consider the ramifications of this week's Supreme Court ruling on minors' access to violent video games.

You can download the audio directly by clicking here (MP3) or stream it using the player below:

Want to subscribe to our podcast? Click here for the MP3 feed.

Last night I stayed up late, working on a grad school recommendation for one of my PK colleagues.  As usual, I had my Twitter feed open, and right around midnight, I heard an unusual amount of chirping for that hour.  Why? Tech reporters were writing that the FCC had just announced that its December 21st meeting agenda would propose rules for an open Internet, or network neutrality. The Chairman would circulate draft rules and an accompanying explanation, or order, to his colleagues, which would then be voted on in the December meeting.

Last week we released a video (embedded above) illustrating how the potentially awesome Skype app for the Droid is actually an epic fail of a shell game. For those of you that missed it, the Verizon Wireless mobile version of Skype, the program that lets you make free and low cost calls over the Internet, actually uses Verizon’s voice network to make calls. Furthermore, it prevents you from connecting to a WiFi hotspot in order to use the Internet to connect.

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.

Public Knowledge just filed comments urging the FCC to pay close attention to a study (PDF) it commissioned on broadband unbundling. The study, written by Yochai Benkler and his team at Harvard’s Berkman Center, examined international broadband regulatory practices.

This was not just another study chronicling the United States’ decline in Internet prowess. Instead, the Berkman Center team examined broadband markets in a number of different countries. They then tried to figure out what types of regulatory policies were the most effective at increasing broadband penetration and access.

On the eve of the FCC's upcoming Network Neutrality rulemaking, Canada has now settled its definition of "reasonable network management" and set rules for traffic throttling. Amazingly, the rules the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) settled on for "reasonable network management" look a lot like the standard our own FCC settled on in the Comcast/BitTorrent Order, but even stronger on the notice and transparency side. Hopefully, the FCC is paying attention here as it considers its own rulemaking on the definition of "reasonable network management."

You can read the CRTC press release here and the detailed order here.

Gigi is out in San Diego today making a whirlwind appearance on spectrum. In addition to stopping by the FCC's workshop on mobile broadband and mobile applications (and delivering this amazing testimony here), Gigi is stopping by the International CTIA Wireless Conference to do a panel. As is often the case with these panels, they had some discussion questions to focus the group on the key issues and guide the conversation. While I expect Gigi will blog later about what actually happened, the discussion questions I saw looked pretty good to me. So I thought "hey, why not give my answers and show everyone why CTIA never invites me to speak at their conferences."

So here goes.

Last Thursday, PK President Gigi Sohn delivered a statement at an FCC broadband workshop titled "The Role of Content in the Broadband Ecosystem". If you find yourself questioning what relevance a discussion of content protection has in the context of the National Broadband Plan, you're not alone. In her statement (oral | written), Gigi questioned the FCC's jurisdiction over copyright issues and asserted that the Commission certainly does not have the authority to combat online copyright infringement by using the sort of blunt instrument--solutions like copyright filtering and three strikes--that the industry is calling for. So, why even convene a workshop on content protection as part of the National Broadband Plan? The point of the workshop, it seems, was to appease the big entertainment companies that are clamoring for the Federal government to take a more active role in protecting the intellectual property of private companies. This fact could not have been made more clear by the FCC, given the manner in which the workshop was conducted. Embedded above, you'll find a video of Frederick D. Huntsberry's presentation from the workshop. While the time limit for oral statements was supposedly five minutes, Huntsberry, the COO of Paramount Pictures, was inexplicably allowed to give a 10 minute presentation. In a move reminiscent of the MPAA's how-to-camcord video, Huntsberry demonstrated how to unlawfully download and/or distribute a film online (using a torrent tracker, Drop.io and a streaming site), spoke at length about camcording and insinuated that a number of legitimate companies--including Google, eBay, Apple, Twitter, Facebook and Boxee--are enabling the unlawful trade of copyrighted content online.