Whats New:

• Orphan Works: Wait Until Next Year!
• Public Knowledge to Senate: DPI Raises Grave Privacy
  Concerns
• Action Alert: Thank You For Saying ‘No’ to
  PRO-IP
• Public Knowledge, EFF and Congress Turn up the Heat on
  ACTA
• NYMusicCopyright.org Helps Musicians Navigate
  Copyright Law

What's New:

• FCC Approves XM/Sirius Merger
• FCC Decision on Comcast Due This Friday

What's New:

• Action Alert: Save Orphan Works!
• Two Bills Lead Net Neutrality Push
• The New Clearwire: How Open Will America's First WiMAX Network Be?
• Blizzard Entertainment: The Company Who Cried Copyright Infringement
• Nominations Now Open For the 2008 IP3 Awards

What's New:

• Protect Text Messaging from Discrimination
• 700 Mhz Auction: And the Winner is...
• Comcast Cozies Up to BitTorrent
• FCC Chairman Calls for Dismissal of Skype Petition

You may remember that in March 2006, when the FCC had only four commissioners, a Verizon petition to have all common-carriage-type requirements lifted from its relationships with businesses was “deemed granted” by the Commission’s silence — split 2-2, the Commission said nothing by the deadline for action on that petition. This non-action was part of a steady, incremental removal of rules from highspeed access in the U.S. that is still going on.

There were a couple of news items recently that relate to this subject. First, the D.C. Circuit today heard argument on a challenge to the notion that “deemed granted” could be the end of the story. According to Blair Levin and his team (sorry, no link), the panel seemed skeptical that silence meant denial of the petition. But the judges also weren’t sure how to review a record of silence, and may send the thing back to the Commission for something a little noisier.

Also, AT&T’s petition for “forbearance” from common carriage obligations for many of its business relationships (excusing AT&T from having to state what its fees will be for internet access services provided to businesses, and avoiding rate of return regulation generally for these relationships), was largely granted by the Commission last week. This forbearance applies to most of the services AT&T offers to businesses, including its very-high-capacity “OCn” (optical carrier lines, involving thousands of voice grade equivalents) fiber-optic interoffice transport connections, packetized broadband, Frame Relay services, ATM services, LAN services, Ethernet-based services, video transmission services, and wave-based services, but not traditional DS1 and DS3 special-access circuits.

Just a few moments ago, YouTube introduced the beta version of its "video identification" system, the purpose of which is to control the amount of infringing material that appears on the site. Under enormous pressure from movie studios and record labels and their friends on Capitol Hill to filter out copyrighted material, and with the Viacom lawsuit looming, You Tube's parent Google has developed a tool that will likely restrict the flow of legal content over the Internet, and absolutely raises the bar for each and every entity that serves as a conduit for copyrighted works.

Here is how the system works: A copyright holder uploads its works into a reference database, which then generates identification files by which uploaded videos are matched. When a user uploads a video onto YouTube, that video is matched with the identification file. If there is a "match" (more on that later), then the video is subject to whatever action the rights holder has decided to apply to it; for example, it could be blocked, "tracked" or "monetized." If the video is blocked, the user will be notified, and can immediately contest the claim by clicking onto a link. Once YouTube receives the user contest, it will put the video back on the site. At that point, notice and takedown provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) would kick in. If the copyright holder continues to want the video removed, it would have to send a takedown notice required by the DMCA. The user can send a counter-notice, whereupon the video would be reinstated, etc.

As Fox News and the rest of the conservative media/blog machine have happily crowed unto the skies, Google Ads dropped a set of ads from Senator Susan Collins (R-Me) critical of Moveon.org Collins is rnning for reelection, and apparently Moveon has now become the favorite bloody shirt to rouse the otherwise dispirited base. Apparently, Google informed Collins that because her ad used the trademark of someone else (here, Moveon.org, because these days everyone trademarks everything out of sheer self-defense), which Google bans under its advertising policy.

Brian Dudley, a columnist at the Seattle Times, has noted that just because Amazon's mp3 downloads are DRM-free doesn't mean they aren't restricted. They're just restricted legally, by contract.

The terms of service allow for some types of fair use. (Um, yay. You're letting me do what the law already says I can. Though that's above par for the course, so far.):

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blockquote> 2.1 License. Upon your payment of our fees for Digital Content, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable license to use the Digital Content for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use, subject to and in accordance with the terms of this Agreement. You may copy, store, transfer and burn the Digital Content only for your personal, non-commercial, entertainment use.