Public Knowledge

Public Knowledge, the Consumer Federation of America (CFA), and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) submitted written testimony to the House Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet for the hearing titled, "Music Licensing Under Title 17 Part Two."

The following can be attributed to Jodie Griffin, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge:

"Law that shapes the music licensing system should encourage a competitive and innovative market of music platforms that are accountable to music fans and musicians. This requires a set of well-developed structures that promote efficient licensing practices that minimize costs for everyone while promoting competition between intermediaries like record labels, publishers, collective licensing organizations, and distribution services.”

Public Knowledge senior staff attorney, John Bergmayer, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the hearing titled, "The Proposed Merger of AT&T and DirecTV."

In Bergmayer's testimony he will call on Congress to be vigilant as multiple mergers come before it in the coming months.

"Policymakers and the press are paying a lot of attention to rumored deals like Sprint/T-Mobile, and pending mergers like Comcast/TimeWarner Cable," said Bergmayer. "But during this time of consolidation Congress must pay close attention to the specifics of each new deal as they are announced."

The following can be attributed to John Bergmayer, Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge: "AT&T and DirecTV directly compete in more than 60 local TV markets. This deal runs afoul of the Department of Justice's antitrust guidelines. It's hard to accept AT&T's claims that buying a direct rival can be good for competition.”

[Commentary] T-Mobile’s announcement that they will exempt a handful of music streaming services from their data cap is but the latest example of ISPs using data caps to undermine network neutrality.

T-Mobile now joins Comcast, AT&T, and AT&T again as an ISP that uses data caps as a pretext to manipulate how its users experience the Internet. Unlike other carriers, T-Mobile does not have a data cap with overage penalties. Instead, when users hit their cap they find their connection slowed significantly.

While this type of throttling is probably preferable to huge overage fees, it still exerts a strong influence on what types of services T-Mobile subscribers use online. This influence is strengthened enormously when certain apps or certain content is exempted from the cap -- a practice known as “zero rating.”

This type of gatekeeping interference by ISPs is exactly what net neutrality rules should be designed to prevent. Furthermore, T-Mobile’s announcement once again calls into question the purpose of data caps at all.

Public Knowledge’s Senior Staff Attorney Jodie Griffin recently testified before the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet in Washington.

In a hearing entitled “Preserving Public Safety and Network Reliability in the IP Transition,” Jodie drove home the necessity of the fundamental values of the phone network carrying over to new technologies, as the IP transition moves forwards and underlying technologies continue to evolve in new and exciting directions. 100 million Americans still rely on traditional copper wire landlines; 85 million in said subset also have a mobile phone or other voice product.

This can be interpreted one of two ways: either (a) political theorists have had it wrong all, and humans are fundamentally irrational to the point that they enjoy writing two checks, or (b) traditional phone services offer users in the marketplace a service they value.

And yet, reports have surfaced indicating consumers are being forced off of legacy copper systems by providers, which heightens the need for more hardened protections in IP-based systems to ensure public safety. Ensuring that new technologies protect basic values with similar robustness to historic systems is critical, as is preventing rural and disadvantaged citizens from falling through the gaps during the transition process.

As Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) highlighted in reference to the loss of services on Fire Island (NY) and in Mantoloking (NJ) following Hurricane Sandy, transitions have the potential to quite significantly impact consumers in ways not evident at the outset.

A letter was sent to the Senate supporting the National Telecommunications Information Administration's (NTIA) intent to shift the stewardship of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to an international multi-stakeholder model of Internet governance.

The letter also voices concerns with the House of Representative's approval of the Shimkus (R-KS) Amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which reflects the language of the Domain Openness Through Continues Oversight Matters Act (DOTCOM Act) of 2014.

The DOTCOM Act would effectively stop the NTIA from upholding its commitment to the global Internet governance multi-stakeholder approach.

The following can be attributed to Carolina Rossini, Vice President of International Policy: "The DOTCOM Act stops the United States from upholding it's decades long commitment to the rest of the world that NTIA's stewardship of IANA functions are temporary. A transition would reassure the world of the United States’ commitment to an open, participatory, and decentralized approach to Internet governance.”

She added: "Those who drafted the DOTCOM Act expressed concerns that the multi-stakeholder approach would open the door to Internet governance by authoritarian regimes. However, the DOTCOM Act could have the opposite effect in empowering nations seeing greater governmental control of the Internet."

The signees of the letter are as follows: Public Knowledge, Access, New America Foundation's Open Technology Institute, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, American Civil Liberties Union and Center for Democracy & Technology.

At Public Knowledge we welcomed the debut of the Authors Alliance.

The Authors Alliance is made up of authors who are concerned that many efforts to strengthen copyright have failed them.

We hope the Authors Alliance will help highlight all of those all too easily forgotten aspects of the copyright policy debate. The Alliance is made up of authors -- “creators” in the classic dichotomy -- who don’t necessarily believe that increasing the scope and strength of copyright is the only way to improve it. Of course, that does not mean that members of the Alliance believe that copyright could not benefit from reform.

In fact, the Alliance is debuting four principles to guide copyright reform:

• Further Empower Authors to Disseminate Their Works
• Improve Information Flows About Copyright Ownership
• Affirm the Vitality of Limits on Copyright that Enable Us to Do Our Work and Research
• Ensure that Copyright’s Remedies and Enforcement Mechanisms Protect Our Interests

The Public interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) submitted a letter supporting the Federal Communications Commission's plan to ensure that competitive carriers can bid on spectrum in the upcoming Incentive Auction.

"Specifically, we believe that reserving some reclaimed broadcast spectrum in each local market for competitive carriers will be a significant step forward. This proceeding may represent one of the last chances to clear and auction low-band spectrum for some time, and that low-band spectrum is critical for offering competitive mobile broadband services."

The letter listed three reasons why the FCC should reserve at least 30 MHz for competitors:

• In light of the recent efforts by AT&T and Verizon to confuse the issues, we want to stress the three most important reasons the Commission should reject these last minute efforts to undermine the existing auction proposal.
• If even AT&T and Verizon need 20 MHz each to make participation worthwhile, then how can competitors with even less low-band spectrum hope to compete without a reserve of 30 MHz or more?
• The Commission must nurture the current “green shoots” of reinvigorated competition.

Consumers should have more good choices as a result of the auction, not just an increasingly entrenched duopoly.
The letter was signed by the following organizations: Public Knowledge; Benton Foundation; Center for Media Justice; Center for Rural Strategies; Common Cause; Consumer Federation of America; Free Press; Institute for Local Self-Reliance; National Hispanic Media Coalition; Open Technology Institute; New America Foundation; TURN--The Utility Reform Network; United Church of Christ; Writers Guild of America, West; and X-Lab, New America Foundation.

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission just released its proposed open Internet (net neutrality) rules. Although both Chairman Wheeler and the proposal extensively discuss the problems that occur when ISPs get to choose winners and losers online, the proposed rules still create fast lanes and slow lanes on the Internet.

Everything starts with what the order describes as a “minimum level of access.” This is the slow lane. Once you get outside of this minimum level of access, ISPs have a lot more flexibility to start cutting deals. This is the fast lane. The proposed rules try to define “commercially reasonable” by using a multi-factor test.

These factors include the impact on present and future competition, the impact on consumers, the impact on speech and civic engagement, technical characteristics, “good faith” negotiation, industry practices, and “other factors.” Some kinds of discrimination will qualify as being commercially reasonable. The result of this structure is a two-tier Internet: a minimum level of access that ISPs cannot degrade, and a premium lane with plenty of flexibility for deal making.

It is encouraging to see the [Federal Communications] Commission acknowledge that everyday people rely on its leadership to make sure everyone is made better off by changes to the phone network's infrastructure.

While fiber is undoubtedly a more advanced technology than copper, the Commission must ensure that consumers will still have access to an affordable, reliable network during and after the transition.

We applaud the Commission for ensuring the voices of the actual people using the network are heard before carriers are permitted to move to new technologies.

The Commission's structure for receiving comments on network changes, complaint process, and 214(a) application comment process are all important tools to ensure the phone network continues to serve its users first and foremost--before, during, and after the transition.

As Public Knowledge reflects upon the recent NETmundial multi-stakeholder meeting in Brazil, it is clear that for all its faults, the meeting in Sao Paulo was a turning point for Internet governance and human rights in the digital environment.

For the first time in such a meeting, all the stakeholders were not only “at the table” but, to some extent, drivers of the agenda, drafting, and outcomes. The process itself was open to the Internet, whether it was for scathing criticism or simply curious engagement via video streaming.