How Chairman’s Wheeler’s Video-App Plan Promotes Competition and Protects Private Rights

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission is required by law to promote competition in the TV set-top box market. Yet the fact that cable programming must be available on apps on competitive devices, on nondiscriminatory terms, is being framed as some kind of Federal Communications Commission overreach, or a "compulsory license," or as interfering with contracts or copyright.

But this is absurd -- especially considering that the apps-based approach is exactly what the cable and big content companies have been advocating for a while now. Neither copyright nor contract law work this way. Let's work through some aspects of the Chairman's app proposal.

[Bergmayer is a Senior Staff Attorney at Public Knowledge, specializing in telecommunications, Internet, and intellectual property issues]