Public Knowledge

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) neighbors have access to significantly faster internet.

Public Knowledge joined Access Humboldt, Benton Institute for Broadband and Society, Consumer Reports, and New America’s Open Technology Institute (collectively PIOs) in filing comments in response to the Federal Communications Commission’s Public Notice on the use of E-Rate funds to enable remote learning.

Early-career opportunities offer people a pathway to build careers in technology policy. Public Knowledge conducted research into the challenges tech policy organizations face in reaching people of color interested in the field. The research explores racial and ethnic diversity in early-career roles in technology policy, offers ideas for increasing diversity in such roles, and outlines the impacts of technology policy on people of color. A survey of technology policy organizations and found that:

Section 230 of the Communications Act has been dubbed the “twenty six words” that created the interactive free expression of the internet: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. This simple piece of legislation provides immunity from liability as a speaker or publisher for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who host and moderate information provid

Public Knowledge filed a petition asking the Federal Communications Commission to reconsider the agency’s determination under Chairman Pai that its deregulatory agenda was more important than public safety, the infrastructure access necessary for broadband competition, or universal service.

How the Federal Communications Commission manages the Emergency Broadband Benefit Program will not only greatly affect the EBB Program’s effectiveness at helping those in need get connected, it will help inform how to best implement potential future broadband subsidies to address broadband affordability, which Congress continues to contemplate.

Public Knowledge Senior Advisor Gene Kimmelman announced his resignation in order to serve as Senior Counselor for President Joe Biden’s Associate Attorney General at the Department of Justice. This will be a limited duration position.

President Trump used social media to encourage his supporters to storm the Capitol to attempt to maintain his power.