Protect the Open Internet from Incursion by Trade Agency, Advocates Tell Administration

Public Knowledge and 11 other organizations submitted comments to the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator Danny Marti, urging the Obama Administration’s chief intellectual property official to protect the Open Internet from a federal trade agency’s overreaching attempts to block data transmissions.

Signatories include R Street Institute, EFF, The Harry Potter Alliance, Engine Advocacy and others representing a broad spectrum of consumer, business and public interests. The comments responded to last year's decision by the U.S. International Trade Commission to block Internet data transmissions on the theory that those transmissions were acts of "importation" regulable by the Tariff Act of 1930. Concerned with the potential widespread effects on Internet freedom if the ITC maintained power to block information, the comments ask Marti to intervene appropriately in the ITC's future decisions.