Public Knowledge-Policy Blog

Consumers should be wary of pitches by telecommunications companies for their newer, faster “4G” wireless service, according to a new report from Public Knowledge.

The report, “4G + Data Caps = Magic Beans,” finds that consumers will find their experiences with the faster services severely hampered by the rationing techniques the carriers impose on customers who use lots data — such as watching video.

The report found: “These data caps actively discourage the types of activities that 4G enables. Activities that are made possible by 4G, such as watching movies or uploading video to the internet, are made impossible by the data caps. As a result most users will avoid taking advantage of these new services out of fear of incurring large overage fees. That makes capped 4G little more than a bait and switch, like being sold a handful of magic beans.”

This week, the US government responded to a Spanish Internet company’s petition to have its seized domain name returned. Earlier this year, customs officials seized the domains rojadirecta.com and rojadirecta.org under suspicion of copyright infringement. The domains’ owner, Puerto 80, has argued that, by seizing the domain names and preventing their use, the government has not just taken down a legitimate site, but also is suppressing speech—not just the speech of the site’s operators, but of the users on the discussion boards hosted at the site.

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UPDATE: Added mention of the $35 appeal fee in the “Appeals” section below.

Today, major ISPs joined the RIAA and MPAA in announcing a joint program to deal with file-sharing. The document governing this agreement, a “Copyright Alert System,” is hosted here. Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy and Technology issued a joint statement on the CAS, available here.

Today Public Knowledge Legal Director Harold Feld testified on behalf of the Public Interest Spectrum Coalition (PISC) before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Subcommittee on Communications and Technology.  The Subcommittee was discussing how to accommodate television broadcasters and demand for wireless data.  Harold opened his testimony with this defense of the value of the White Spaces and the importance of unlicensed spectrum in fostering innovation.

Harold’s full written testimony can be found here.

The Senate is gearing up for another go-round on rogue websites legislation, and this time, they've jettisoned the "COICA" label in favor of calling it the "PROTECT IP Act." Like a summer blockbuster sequel, it tightens up some things, adds a few new villains, but in the end reprises the same general plot.

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Yesterday, IMSLP, a website dedicated to archiving public domain sheet music lost its domain name due to a complaint sent by the UK’s Music Publishers Association to the site’s registrar, GoDaddy. The notice incorrectly claimed that IMSLP’s copy of Rachmaninoff’s The Bells infringed copyright. (Coverage by TorrentFreak, Michael Geist, and BoingBoing.)

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.

Late on Friday, a federal court in New York received a new version of the Google Book Search settlement. As with the old version, the new one was drafted jointly by Google and its erstwhile litigation opponents: the publishers and authors who sued Google for scanning their books without permission.

Substantively, the new settlement bears a great resemblance to the old one.

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A new PKTV series, “Oh Hollywood!” focusses on … well, it’s kind of self explanatory.

A number of movie studios, record labels, and other copyright-holding companies (and their related trade associations) have also written a pro-ACTA letter to Congress, which I first saw posted on Ben Sheffner’s blog. Minus the bizarre “distraction” claim, it follows the same basic pattern—that ACTA will benefit IP businesses and do nothing harmful.

The evidence for this? Still absent. Instead, the letter reiterates that changes in technology require online copyright enforcement, and thus a section of ACTA covering the Internet.