March 2013

Mexico’s lower house of Congress gave overwhelming general approval to a telecoms bill that seeks to curb the power of some of the country’s most powerful businessmen. The approval, by 414 votes to just 50 against, marks the first big step towards introducing more competition into telecoms and television as part of a wider push to make Latin America’s second-largest economy more competitive and grow faster.

Introduced by centrist President Enrique Peña Nieto, who took office just three months ago, the bill proposes the creation of a tough industry regulator able to label as “dominant” any company with more than 50 per cent of the telecoms or television markets. It could then impose a series of measures – ranging from asymmetric tariff structures all the way to forcing asset sales – to limit those companies’ power and to make it easier for new entrants to compete more effectively. At the same time, the bill proposes to raise the legal maximum shareholding of foreign investors in companies operating in the sectors – to 49 per cent in the case of television and to 100 per cent in the case of telecoms. Analysts say that the two companies most affected would be América Móvil, the pan-American telecoms company controlled by Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, and Televisa, the Mexican broadcaster.

In a speech outlining his communications priorities, Sen Marco Rubio (R-FL) told a Free State Foundation forum audience that he hopes the Federal Communications Commission's network neutrality rules are overturned and warned against classifying Internet access under Title II as a backstop.

He said they were chiefly keeping the Internet free of regulation foreign and domestic, making sure enough spectrum was being freed up, and FCC process reform. All that came under a philosophical umbrella of light-touch regulation that spurs investment in the economy. He criticized legacy regulations unsuited to a digital world, saying the market had moved past brick-sized phones and giant desk-top computers and that it was time Congress moved past the 1996 Telecommunications Act.

[Commentary] Most cellphones sold in the United States have a software "lock" that prevents them from working on other carriers' networks. So when the Library of Congress announced recently that the "unlocking" of cellphones would no longer be legal without the permission of your wireless service provider, its decision prompted widespread criticism. Just what is the Library of Congress doing regulating cellphone service, anyway Good question.

There really isn't a good answer, other than that wireless providers have managed to get the Library of Congress, which oversees the U.S. Copyright Office, to do their bidding. A better answer is to take the Library of Congress out of the business of being the industry's contract enforcer. Congress should also give consumers the right to unlock phones, at least under certain circumstances, such as when they travel overseas and want to tap into local networks, and certainly when they are no longer under contract. Phone locking might well have its purposes. Most people prefer to get phones cheaply in exchange for locking into contracts with a provider. And locking gives providers a convenient way to keep them from skipping out early. But unlocking does not get you out of a signed agreement, or prevent a carrier from going after you for breaching one. When Congress' librarian starts behaving like the new sheriff in town, consumers have good reason to suspect the law is stacked against them.

A company that relays excerpts of Internet news articles to its customers violates copyright laws, a judge said in a decision that gave The Associated Press a victory in its attempts to protect its online news content. U.S. District Judge Denise Cote rejected claims by Meltwater U.S. Holdings and its Meltwater News Service that its use of Web stories plucked from a scan of 162,000 news websites from more than 190 countries is a fair use of copyright-protected material.

"Investigating and writing about newsworthy events occurring around the globe is an expensive undertaking and enforcement of the copyright laws permits AP to earn the revenue that underwrites that work," Judge Cote wrote. "Permitting Meltwater to take the fruit of AP's labor for its own profit, without compensating AP, injures AP's ability to perform this essential function of democracy." The judge noted that commercial Internet news clipping services like Meltwater perform an important function for their customers, but that "does not outweigh the strong public interest in the enforcement of the copyright laws or justify allowing Meltwater to free ride on the costly news gathering and coverage work performed by other organizations. Moreover, permitting Meltwater to avoid paying licensing fees gives it an unwarranted advantage over its competitors who do pay licensing fees."