In the next few months, Congress will debate what should be in the scope of an investment of up to $4 trillion in America’s infrastructure. A host of factors — years of wear and tear with inadequate investment, levels of federal spending that pale in comparison to those of other leading democracies, changing demographics, and […]

The publishing industry is growing increasingly concentrated as publishing house giants continue to merge. This hurts both authors and readers, in more ways than one. In a concentrated industry, prices are higher for readers, and payments are lower for authors as the publishing middleman takes a heftier cut. The book industry has been moving to […]

Data Caps Explained An internet connection can offer consumers nearly unlimited access to perform their daily tasks: online classes, work meetings via Zoom, grocery shopping, news-gathering on social media, and required leisure of streaming video services. As classes and meetings get longer, and common websites and social media applications grow more data-intensive, consumers need higher […]

Fill out the nomination form below! Public Knowledge’s IP3 Awards is a special occasion to honor those who have made significant contributions in the three areas of “IP”—intellectual property, information policy, and internet protocol. This year will be the 18th year Public Knowledge has held the awards, and now it’s time for you to submit […]

This week, eligible Americans can apply for the Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) – a direct payment from the government to subsidize broadband. It will provide a discount of up to $50 per month (or $75 per month for those on Tribal lands) to help struggling families and students to pay for broadband access during the […]

Twenty years ago, we saw the creation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It was intended to modernize copyright law for the digital age. Instead, it made it much worse. Ordinary activities in the physical world — like loaning a copy of something, giving it away, or reselling it — are prohibited in the digital […]

Last week, the Federal Trade Commission released a blog post entitled, “Aiming for Truth, Fairness, and Equity in your company’s use of AI.” It’s making waves. The responsibilities the FTC outlines for companies, like being transparent, non-discriminatory, fair, accurate, and able to explain automated decisions to consumers, were all included in the agency’s blog post […]

A lot of people who live in low-income or marginalized communities — including urban, rural and Tribal communities — can tell you that they have super slow broadband (if they even have it at all). Meanwhile, just a few blocks away, a hamlet over, or just outside the reservation boundaries, their wealthier (and often whiter) […]

This is a lightly edited version of a blog post published on Harold’s personal blog, “Tales from the Sausage Factory,” on WetMachine.com. In any cliche villain scene, there’s a bad guy threatening to hurt someone else — an innocent bystander, perhaps — unless the protagonist does what the bad guy wants. Although no one would […]

I’m happy about the Supreme Court’s 6-2 decision in Google v. Oracle, affirming that Google’s reimplementation of the Java API for Android was a fair use and thus not copyright infringement. Google and Oracle’s competitions can breathe a sigh of relief, since a result that went the other way could have seriously inhibited the ability […]