Search
The FCC Stumbles into Internet Filtering - Via Wendy's Blog: Legal Tags:
What could be bad about free wireless Internet access? How about censorship by federally mandated filters that make it no longer “Internet.” That’s the effect of the FCC’s proposed service rules for Advanced Wireless Service spectrum in the 2155-2180 MHz band, as set out in a July 20 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.
Acting on a request of M2Z Networks, which wants to provide “free, family-friendly wireless broadband,” the FCC proposes to require licensees of this spectrum band to offer free two-way wireless broadband Internet service to the public, with least 25% of their network capacity. So far so good, but on the next page, the agency guts the meaning of “broadband Internet” with a content filtering requirement. Licensees must keep their users from accessing porn: read more »
minilinks for 2008-06-18 - Via EFF.org Updates: read more »
- Selectable Output Control (SOC) for Video Content: It's All About Control
Jon Healy explains that the MPAA's petition to the FCC is really about gaining control over the next generation of video technology.- Counter Spy Act -- Pro-Privacy or Anti-Piracy?
A new bill in the Senate is designed to fight spyware -- but Ed Foster says it provides a loophole for software makers who would like the ability to remotely disable software that is suspected of being pirated.
ACLU Commends Net Neutrality Hearing - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
WASHINGTON – The American Civil Liberties Union commends Chairman Edward Markey (D-MA) of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet for holding a hearing today on the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (H.R. 5353), legislation designed to keep the Internet free for open discourse.
Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative office said, "This legislation is a good first step in protecting the Internet from blocking, censorship and discrimination by powerful phone and cable companies." Frederickson said the hearing and the legislation are "important measures to bring net neutrality the attention it needs." She added that the ACLU, which has been fighting for First Amendment freedoms for 87 years, encourages members of Congress and the FCC to take immediate action to safeguard free speech and innovation online. read more »
Companies To Be Liable For Deals With Online Criminals - Via Slashdot: Your Rights Online:
Dionysius, God of Wine and Leaf, sends us to DarkReading for a backgrounder on new rules from the FTC, taking effect in November, that will require any business that handles private consumer data to check its customers and suppliers against databases of known online criminals. Companies that fail to do so may be liable for large fines or jail time. In practice, most companies will contract with specialist services to perform these checks. Yet another list you don't want to get on. read more »
Senate Poised To Tighten Broadcast Ownership Rules - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
Washington, DC – Today, the Senate Commerce Committee is expected to approve a bipartisan resolution, sponsored by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND), which would restore a media ownership rule recently rescinded by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The old rule generally restricted a company from owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same city, unless the FCC granted a waiver.
Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office said, “Senator Dorgan’s resolution aims to protect the airing of a multiplicity of voices, which fuels our democracy. Democracy is not served well by a media oligarchy where five or six corporations decide what Americans see in the news. We urge the Commerce Committee to also take up S. 2332, Senator Dorgan’s bill to reverse the media ownership rules to ensure the FCC does not go down this road again.” read more »
No Corporate Gatekeepers for the Net - Via ACLU Blog - Free Speech:
Yesterday, the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a hearing on the future of the Internet: a topic that should be of utmost importance to everyone congregating here.
Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) spoke of the heightened urgency of creating net neutrality, which government regulation that would prevent telecommunications companies from controlling Americans’ access to content on the Internet. Kerry reminded us that, as predicted, major companies like Comcast, AT&T and Verizon are policing and blocking content already: read more »
FCC Gets an Earful From Open-Net Defenders at Stanford - Via Threat Level:
Stanford professor Larry Lessig brought down the house at a net neutrality hearing Thursday, calling for the Federal Communications Commission to finally move to make sure that the internet's architecture remain open and neutral, with the goal of having the internet become as uncomplicated as the electrical grid.
With his standard flair for stunning PowerPoint presentations, Lessig made the case that an open internet made possible the massive economic gains of the 1990s and that network operators who want to change the internet in order to create fast and slow lanes need to prove that such a 'smart' network would actually be better than an internet where the intelligence lies at the edges.
"We are facing these problems because of a failure of FCC policy," Lessig said, as the FCC's five commissioners sat behind him in a Stanford auditorium. "The FCC failed to make it clear to the network owners that if they are building the internet they need to build it neutrally." read more »
FCC Hearings at Stanford: Towards a Consensus on ISP Transparency? - Via EFF: Deep Links:
Yesterday, the FCC held a second hearing in its investigation of Comcast's use of forged RST packets to interfere with BitTorrent and other P2P applications. Free Press has a page linking to written testimony, statements, and audio and video recordings from the Stanford hearing.
At the previous hearing at Harvard Law School, Comcast attracted criticism for filling the auditorium with paid attendees. This time around, the telcos declined to participate at all. They sent proxies in their place: a conservative think tank called the Phoenix Center, freelance tech pundit George Ou, and one ISP: Lariat.net of Wyoming. It's a pity that ISPs aren't willing to participate in public debate about their own practices. read more »
ISPs Say P4P Negates Need for Net Neutrality Regs - Via Slashdot:
Donut hole hole writes "AT&T and Comcast are using recent successful P2P trials to argue to the FCC that there's no need for strong traffic management or net neutrality rules. 'Comcast's statement, filed with the FCC on April 9th, hails an announcement by P2P developer Pando Networks that its experiments with P4P technology on a wide variety of U.S. broadband networks have boosted delivery speeds by up to 235 percent. This news, Comcast vice president Kathryn A. Zachem wrote to the Commission, "provides further proof that policymakers have been right to rely on marketplace forces, rather than government regulation, to govern the evolution of Internet services."' Looks like Comcast only likes P2P technology when it can be used to serve its political and regulatory agenda."
(Read Original Article - Via Slashdot.)
FCC: Verizon did not breach privacy laws - Via Associated Press Business News - MSN Money :
WASHINGTON (AP) - Federal regulators determined Friday that Verizon Communications Inc. did not violate consumer privacy laws when it tried to keep customers who wanted cancel Verizon and switch to cable providers for voice services.
The Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau reached its determination in response to a complaint filed by Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable Inc. and privately owned Bright House Networks. read more »
FCC to look into firms' use of customer data - Via Privacy : Tech news from CNET :
Staff at the Federal Communications Commission are expected to recommend that it review rules on how phone and cable companies can use customer information as they try to take business from each other, an FCC official said Friday.
The FCC enforcement bureau will recommend that the commission reject a complaint by cable operators charging that Verizon Communications violated the agency's customer privacy rules by using customer information to prevent them from switching their phone service to cable, an agency official said on condition of anonymity.
Beyond that, the enforcement bureau is expected to recommend that the FCC address more broadly the issue of "customer retention activities" by both phone companies and cable operators to make sure the rules apply equally to both, the official said. read more »
ACLU Wants Broadcast Cross-Ownership Rule Reversed - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
Washington, DC -- In a letter to Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Senator Daniel Inouye (D-HI) and Vice Chairman Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK), the American Civil Liberties Union urged support of a resolution (S. J. Res 28) disapproving of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on broadcast media cross-ownership.
The following can be attributed to ACLU Chief Legislative & Policy Counsel Michael Macleod-Ball: read more »
Supreme Court to Decide If FCC Can Regulate 'Fleeting Expletive' of Profanity - Via Center for Democracy and Technology:
The ability of the FCC to punish broadcast stations for airing "fleeting expletives" -- the one-time blurting out of profanity on broadcast programming -- is now in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court announced this week that it will hear a case in which a lower court ruled that the FCC's new policy of penalizing one-time utterances of profanity was illegal under federal administrative law. CDT is concerned that the Supreme Court will reverse the trend of modern free speech precedent by increasing the Commission's power to censor broadcast speech, rather than focus on federal administrative law, as the lower court largely did.
(Read Original Article - Via Center for Democracy and Technology.)
Report: FCC Is a Massive Bureaucracy That Can't Handle Complaints Against Telcos - Via Threat Level:
The Federal Communications Commission does an appalling job of tracking complaints about telecommunications services and resolves only a tiny fraction of them, according to a new report released on Thursday from a congressional auditing agency.
"Limitations in FCC's current approach for collecting and analyzing enforcement data constitute the principal challenge FCC faces in providing complete and accurate information on its enforcement program," write the authors of the Government Accountability Office's progress report on the FCC's enforcement efforts between 2003 and 2006, the latest dates for which data was available. read more »
Congress Must Act to Keep the Internet Free from Censorship - Via American Civil Liberties Union:
Washington, DC – Testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on net neutrality, the director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, Caroline Fredrickson, urged Congress to act to safeguard free speech on the Internet. "Congress should act to protect the rights of all Internet users to send and receive lawful content free of censorship from government or business," Fredrickson said. "Restoring meaningful rules that protect Internet users from corporate censorship is vital to the future of free speech on the Internet."
Fredrickson explained that the ACLU wants rules that keep channels of communications open and free from discrimination. "We do not want to regulate the Internet – we just want to ensure that nondiscrimination rules continue to apply to the ISPs that provide Internet access," she said. Fredrickson added that the committee should consider legislation that will provide meaningful remedies for violations. read more »
FCC's Martin Mum on Net Neutrality - Via Threat Level:
Declaring the internet a "tool for democracy," Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said Friday the "commission is ready, willing and able to take action" on "net neutrality" complaints.
Martin noted that "applications are being singled out" and traffic management has been "arbitrary to specific applications." But he didn't go so far as to say whether ISPs had a right to target BitTorrent or other data. read more »
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Google
Yahoo
Technorati