Tag: Government Mandates

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and the panel’s senior Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have asked trade negotiators not to make the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) too specific.

In an Oct. 2 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Leahy and Specter said they were concerned that the agreement was being drafted in such detail that it could limit congressional flexibility to deal with intellectual property and related issues in the future. The senators also said their concerns were compounded by the “lack of transparency” that goes along with trade agreements and by the speed of the negotiating process.

They also specifically asked Schwab to steer clear in the trade agreement of issues surrounding liability of Internet Service Providers and of technological protection measures.

Congress is still trying to figure out how to handle the Internet. All too often, PK is in the position of defending online innovators from higher legal standards of secondary liability—holding a service provider or product manufacturer liable for the misdeeds of the users. Now, we’re starting to see more of this kind of secondary liability applied to online sales of physical goods. Recently, bills in both the House and Senate are trying to deputize online retail markets (like eBay) and turn them into police.

If you’ve never seen the intro (original/new) to the TV show “The Outer Limits” then perhaps now is the time. Be sure to have the sound up:

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission…

Perhaps if the intro was written today, it would say, “There is nothing wrong with your television set. But do not attempt to view our movies. The MPAA is controlling transmission.”

In its “Declaration on the World Economy”, the G-8 included an endorsement of ACTA and ongoing efforts to “standardize” IP enforcement through customs organizations. “We encourage the acceleration of negotiations to establish a new international legal framework, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), and seek to complete the negotiation by the end of this year,” the statement says.

So we have a major endorsement of ACTA from the leadership of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. And pressure to have this international legal agreement ready to roll at the end of the year. So what’s going to be in this critically important, possibly binding international agreement, to be completed in less than six months?

We have no idea.

There are several types of hearings. Some bring together various thinkers with various points of view to raise issues and begin hashing out solutions. Others start with a predetermined conclusion and present “witnesses” for the sole purpose of validating that predetermined conclusion. This hearing was of the latter variety. If you weren’t reading Alex’s play by play tweets, here’s a full rundown.

The Opening Statements

Video sharing sites hit mainstream a long time ago—by the time a technology is feted as part of a presidential debate, it's no longer got that same early-adopter cachet. That doesn't keep it from being useful, though.

Right now, for instance, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is asking for your input on a key meeting this month.

NOTE: My original blog post on this topic stated that the Tennessee state legislature was on the verge of passing SB 3974, a copyright industry-supported higher ed filtering bill. As discussed below, SB 3974 has been replaced with a different (and weaker) version. I regret the error.

I couldn’t say for certain, but I’d be willing to take a good guess that there are cordless phones somewhere in the homes of FCC Chairman Kevin Martin and Commissioners Robert McDowell and Deborah Tate.

The next time one of the commissioners picks up that phone, he or she should give some thought to how it came to be there. Chances are someone in the family bought that phone in a big-box electronics store, picking it out from shelf after shelf of phones. Or they could have ordered it online from dozens of more choices.

Cordless phones have gone through a significant metamorphosis in recent years. They started out at 900 MHz, went to 2.4 GHz, to 5.8 GHz. They went from having a big antenna to no visible antenna. Consumers once bought one phone. Now they can buy a set of three phones – a base and two others. The speakerphone, long a staple of the business desktop telephone, is now part of the cordless revolution.

OK. Hopefully you all realized that S. 4108, the APRIL Act of 2008, was a joke. After all, there were a few excesses in there that would indicate how ludicrous the bill is.

On March 19, I was invited to a symposium at Penn Law entitled “Copyright and the Internet: Solutions for a Digital World.” The panel before mine was dedicated to reconciling copyright and the first amendment in the areas of filtering, takedown notices, and fair use.

The panel discussion was fascinating, and covered more ground than I can do justice to here. What I want to focus on was a particular point addressed by Jannifer Pariser, Senior Vice President of Sony BMG’s Litigation and Anti-Piracy department.