November 2012

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) said the laws governing Internet radio have fallen behind the times and favor incumbent players in the music industry. "Music is still dominated and controlled by a couple of multinational corporations who, in effect, act like a duopoly to maximize their profits, not maximize the compensation of artists and not maximize musical choice," Sen Wyden said during a keynote at the Future of Music Summit.

Sen Wyden argued that current royalty rules discriminate against Internet radio services because they're placed on a different royalty-setting standard than cable and satellite radio stations. He is the lead Senate sponsor of a bill that proposes to put Internet radio services on the 801(b) standard of the Copyright Act, which is the same standard used by the Copyright Royalty Board to set the royalty fees paid by cable and satellite radio. "It is the job of policymakers to ensure that the law and public policy doesn't favor one business model over another, and particularly, that it doesn't favor incumbents over insurgents," Sen Wyden said. "We've got to make sure that the past doesn't get a leg up on the future."

While massive open online courses, or MOOCs, are still in their early days, the race has begun to integrate them into traditional colleges — by making them eligible for transfer credits, and by putting them to use in introductory and remedial courses.

The American Council on Education, the leading umbrella group for higher education, and Coursera, a Silicon Valley MOOC provider, announced a pilot project to determine whether some free online courses are similar enough to traditional college courses that they should be eligible for credit. The council’s credit evaluation process will begin early next year, using faculty teams to begin to assess how much students who successfully complete Coursera MOOCs have learned.

Disciplinary action is underway today against BBC staff involved in a botched report on its flagship current affairs show, as the corporation struggles to get a grip on one of its worst crises and perhaps the greatest challenge to its prestige in its 90-year history. Amid widespread fallout from the controversy, many fear that Britain’s public broadcaster’s tradition of independence is under threat and that commercial competitors and political critics could use the opportunity to lobby for change. Conservative members of Parliament are already using the crisis to bolster arguments against the license fee, which is levied on television set owners as a means of subsidizing the BBC. However, others are concerned that the public service broadcaster’s world-class investigative journalism could somehow be reined in or compromised.

[Commentary] It was nearly a year ago that the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) was introduced by Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX). Millions would raise their voices to successfully oppose this legislation, which was viewed as one of the greatest threats to a free and open Internet ever to come before Congress. But the defeat of SOPA should be more than cause for pride — it must also prompt action to secure the future of the Internet.

That is why I recently introduced two bills to protect Internet freedom. With just a few weeks left this 112th session of Congress, it’s unlikely the bills will be acted upon this year. I introduced the bills as a starting point for the next session of Congress – to launch a serious discussion about what Congress should do to help ensure a free and open Internet. We need to do more than just halt bad legislation, we also need to improve existing laws and make government work in the interests of innovation and Internet freedom. The two bills I introduced – ECPA 2.0 and the Global Free Internet Act – were designed to do just that. The principles embodied in ECPA 2.0 and the Global Free Internet Act would protect Internet users’ free expression and privacy, preserve user trust in online services, and reaffirm the open and decentralized structure of the Internet. Through policies like these, we can ensure the Internet remains a thriving and vibrant engine for innovation, expression, and economic growth for decades to come.