January 2017

Five Years Later, SOPA and PIPA Serve as a Warning to the Trump Administration

Five years ago today, millions of people came together to shock Washington into action on behalf of the public. Jan 18, 2012 was a day of mass protests against legislation that would have undermined the free and open exchange of information online. The lobbyist-fueled SOPA and PIPA bills were designed to shut down massive tracts of internet content without due process or accountability. The Washington consensus was that this legislation’s passage was a foregone conclusion.

But on Jan 18, we stopped the inevitable. Fifty thousand websites — including Google, Wikipedia and Reddit — symbolically “blacked out” their webpages to protest the legislation. Nearly 10 million people took action online or by phone, urging Congress to ditch the bill. By the end of the day, dozens of senators had come forward to oppose PIPA. The House version, SOPA, had already been put on hold after then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi bent to public pressure and tweeted that they “need[ed] to find a better solution.” A Senate staffer at the time said that “phones were melting” across Capitol Hill. However important the SOPA/PIPA victory was in 2012, its lasting significance depends on how well the internet-freedom coalition holds together in the fights that lie ahead. Whatever form these new threats take, millions of people must remain united and ready to act.

Potential intellectual-property priorities for the Trump Administration

[Commentary] In many areas of law and policy, the priorities of President-elect Donald Trump seem difficult to predict. But the context of intellectual property (IP) law and policy is different. Simply put, President-elect Trump will soon become – by far – the most experienced user of domestic and international IP rights ever to serve as the President of the United States. During his long business career, Trump pursued sophisticated, usually unified, branding strategies based upon his last name, had great success in the copyright industries, and has used the IP-like rights granted by state laws that protect reputational, privacy, and publicity rights.

The President-elect’s broad familiarity with US IP rights thus suggests a businessman’s approach to IP issues – one that focuses on practical issues, like cost-effective enforceability. Such an enforcement focus could also help strengthen middle-class America by ensuring that federal IP rights can be enforced by ordinary, local businesses, not just by coastal conglomerates. It could be implemented as follows:
Domestically, focus on improving private enforcement of US IP rights – particularly on the internet.
Internationally, focus on enforcing IP-related provisions of existing US trade agreements.

[Tom Sydnor previously served as Director of the Center for the Study of Digital Property at the Progress & Freedom Foundation.]

Trump transition team asks CNN to retract story about Tom Price

President-elect Donald Trump's transition is formally asking CNN to retract an article about Rep Tom Price (R-GA), Trump's nominee for Health and Human Services secretary. In the story, CNN Senior Political Reporter Manu Raju reports that in 2016 Rep Price purchased shares in a medical device manufacturer days before introducing legislation that would delay regulations that would have directly benefited the company. After being published on Jan 16, the story quickly became another piece of ammunition for Democrats who have questioned Rep Price's financial transactions while in office, with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) calling for an ethics investigation into rep Price.

In a statement, the Presidential Transition Team said the story "omitted facts and drew conclusions in an effort to attack" Rep Price, before laying out a series of what it says are facts that "were available to CNN." "The Presidential Transition Team requests that CNN retract this blatantly false story," the statement concludes.

Dangers I didn’t see coming: “tyranny of the minority” and an irrelevant press

[Commentary] One of the great surprises of [the 2016] election is that one does not need to repress the free news media when it has simply become irrelevant — because factuality has become irrelevant to how so many people choose to vote. With a flood of false news (not just spin, but disinformation about, for example, Hillary Clinton’s health), science denial, the capacity to isolate oneself in the comforting and confirming news cocoon of one’s own choosing, and a winning candidate who prefers consulting conspiracy websites to intelligence briefings, there is no agreed-upon standard of accuracy, facts, and recorded statements by which most people can measure or decide anything.

Sadly, our democracy is challenged not just by the fraying of a democratic political culture through ever-intensifying polarization and demise of traditional norms. It is also challenged by a basic collapse of two vital institutions: rule through electoral majorities and a free media.

[Christopher R. Browning is the Frank Porter Graham Professor of History Emeritus at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.]

We Cannot Tolerate Legal and Personal Attacks on Journalists For Doing Their Jobs

[Commentary] The right of working journalists to do their jobs should not be up for debate when a new administration takes office (or at any other time). But it disturbingly seems to be. It wasn't just President-elect Donald Trump's collision with a CNN journalist at a news conference. The day before, the president-elect's choice for attorney general wouldn't commit to the outgoing Justice Department's promise not to prosecute journalists for reporting on intelligence cases when a source gives them classified information.

Citizens depend on independent journalists to give them information needed to hold our leaders to account. Those journalists should be free to do their work without fear of personal or legal attacks.

[This message was sent by NPR's Senior Vice President of News and Editorial Director Michael Oreskes to the NPR News staff on Jan 17.]

Trump’s changes to the White House press access may have a silver lining

[Commentary] During the campaign Donald Trump banned certain reporters or media outlets from covering him. Since the election his Chief of Staff has hinted that they might do away with the daily White House press briefing or, at a minimum, change the make-up of who gets briefed and how. Although there is a lot of anxiety among journalists at the prospect that the Trump Administration will make good on its promise to upend the normal course of president-media relations—it could also present an opportunity to journalists.

The freedom from the briefing room to get the information they need in other ways could be an opportunity not only to fulfill their role to hold leaders accountable but also for investigative reporting that informs and enlightens, and that helps sustain the lifeblood of a democracy: an informed citizenry.

[She is currently Founding Director Andrews Institute for Civic Leadership, Lipscomb University in Nashville (TN).]

President-elect Trump: 'I haven't seen any of the facts' on AT&T-Time Warner merger

President-elect Donald Trump signaled a willingness to change his stance against the proposed AT&T-Time Warner merger, saying in an interview that he has not “seen any of the facts.” "I have been on the record in the past of saying it's too big and we have to keep competition,” he said. “So, but other than that, I haven't, you know, I haven't seen any of the facts, yet. I'm sure that will be presented to me and to the people within government."

In a campaign speech in October, Trump said unequivocally that he would oppose the $85.4 billion deal because it would give more power to the mainstream media. "As an example of the power structure I'm fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN, a deal we will not approve in my administration because it's too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," he said, adding later, "Deals like this destroy democracy." But now that Trump is set to take office, many in Washington whether he is open to softening his position on the merger.

From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece

It was early fall 2016, and Donald J Trump, behind in the polls, seemed to be preparing a rationale in case a winner like him somehow managed to lose. A few weeks later, Cameron Harris, a new college graduate with a fervent interest in Maryland Republican politics and a need for cash, sat down at the kitchen table in his apartment to fill in the details Trump had left out. In a dubious cyberart just coming into its prime, this bogus story would be his masterpiece.

Harris started by crafting the headline: “BREAKING: ‘Tens of thousands’ of fraudulent Clinton votes found in Ohio warehouse.” It made sense, he figured, to locate this shocking discovery in the very city and state where Trump had highlighted his “rigged” meme. Within a few days, the story, which had taken him 15 minutes to concoct, had earned him about $5,000. That was a sizable share of the $22,000 an accounting statement shows he made during the presidential campaign from ads for shoes, hair gel and web design that Google had placed on his site. The money, not the politics, was the point, he insisted.

FCC White Paper on Cybersecurity Risk Reduction

The White Paper describes the risk reduction portfolio of the current Federal Communications Comission and suggests actions to affirmatively reduce cyberrisk in a manner that incents competition, protects consumers, and reduces significant national security risks.

Looking forward, the continued convergence of packet-based communication technology in wireless, wireline, cable, broadcast and satellite coupled with network functional virtualization and software defined radios will lead to hybrid (co-mingled) control elements for many service providers. These interdependencies will be inviting targets for threat actors from nation-states, to criminals, to hacktivists wishing to exploit or disrupt critical infrastructure. The holistic nature of the interdependent services and exposed attack surface suggest that an “all hands on deck” approach for residual risk, utilizing the full range of government expertise and authorities working with commercial providers, is appropriate. This document presents a strategy to promote an acceptable balance between corporate and consumer interests in cyber risk management when elements of market failure are at work. It acknowledges that the Commission’s preference is to work collaboratively with industry using private/public partnerships. However, if market forces do not result in a tolerable risk outcome, the Commission has tools available to make adjustments to restore the balance.

Who Is Killing the Towns of Western Massachusetts?

[Commentary] This is the story of a dramatic failure of imagination and vision at the state level: Gov Charlie Baker’s (R-MA) apparent insistence that Massachusetts relegate small towns to second-rate, high-priced, monopoly-controlled (and unregulated) communications capacity. It’s a slow-rolling tragedy that will blight Western MA for generations. The likely outcome: Only those plucky, scrappy towns that elect to build on their own will escape the grip of unconstrained pricing for awful service. The rest will fade into irrelevance. What new American generations will stay in a place that is essentially unconnected to the world? What new businesses and ways of making a living will emerge there? None and none.

There’s an alternative vision that would allow Western MA communities to control their own destinies: subsidize towns that want to own their own infrastructure.

[Susan Crawford is the John A. Reilly Clinical Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and a co-director of the Berkman Center.]

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