Public Knowledge

[Commentary] The website TmoNews broke the story that T-Mobile is planning on throttling customers who use bittorrent on their wireless connections. Back in 2007, Comcast decided to start throttling bittorrent as well.

After a formal complaint and investigation, the Federal Communications Commission found that Comcast’s decision to single out bittorrent for blocking violated the open Internet rules that were in place at the time. And yet, strangely, T-Mobile has decided to revive this practice by singling out heavy data users who are making use of peer-to-peer applications.

Which only makes our point that we need strong network neutrality even stronger. This is about what FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler calls the “Network Compact.”

Public Knowledge filed comments with the Department of Justice on the antitrust consent decrees governing the performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI.

The consent decrees, last updated in 2001 and 1994, respectively, require ASCAP and BMI to issue reasonable licenses without discriminating between various companies and services.

Public Knowledge filed letters with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as the first step in the formal open Internet complaint process with the Federal Communications Commission.

The complaint is in relation to AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon’s practice of throttling wireless data subscribers with “unlimited” data plans, as well as T-Mobile’s practice of exempting speed test applications from throttling.

Sprint and Verizon violate the transparency rule by failing to meaningfully disclose which subscribers will be eligible for throttling. AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon violate the transparency rule by failing to disclose which areas of the network are congested, thus subject to throttling. T-Mobile violates the transparency rule by preventing throttled subscribers from determining the actual network speed available to them.

Public Knowledge sent letters to AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as the first step in the process of filing open Internet complaints against each of them at the Federal Communications Commisson.

The letters address violations of the FCC’s transparency requirements, which are the only part of the open Internet rules that survived court challenge.

Specifically, they call on AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon to make information available about which subscribers have their wireless data connections throttled and where that throttling happens.

The letter to T-Mobile calls on it to stop exempting speed test apps from its practice of throttling some users, thus preventing them from understanding actual network speeds available to them.

These letters are the first step in the open Internet rule formal complaint process. Once ten days have passed, PK can file a formal complaint to the FCC. At that point, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon will each have an opportunity to reply to the complaint, and PK will have the opportunity to reply to that reply.

Of course, that process can stop at any time. As soon as AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and or Verizon comply with the transparency rule, PK will drop our complaint.

Public Knowledge filed comments with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration urging the Obama Administration not to support any privacy legislation that would eliminate important legal protections for telecommunications metadata.

Public Knowledge was joined on the comments by Benton Foundation, Center for Digital Democracy, Common Cause, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Free Press, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, US PIRG, and World Privacy Forum.

[Commentary] President Barack Obama signed the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, which finally grants Americans a right that 114,000 people petitioned for, the President argued for, that both the Senate and the House of Representatives unanimously agreed to pass.

So now we have the right to unlock our phones. But what does that really mean?

This is the story of the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act. It is now on its way to the President’s desk to be signed. So, for the first time in history, the US Congress has overturned a ruling of the Library of Congress in regards to granting exemptions to copyright law.

This complicated process took over a year and a half, but is one of the few bills of substance that has made it to the President’s desk in these starkly divided times.

IGF-USA is one of the many regional chapters of the global Internet Governance Forum (IGF), which is the annual international multistakeholder forum on public policy issues related to the Internet and Internet governance.

One of the goals of the 2014 IGF-USA (other than providing an all day dialogue between sectors that rarely meet) was to help clarify the ideas and values of US stakeholders going in to the next IGF to be held in early September 2014 in Istanbul.

[Commentary] Overseeing as the Federal Communications Commission does a vast number of complex and fast-moving technological issues, occasionally a rule that is essential for one service just doesn’t apply to another.

In a case like that, the FCC has the power to forbear from enforcement of the rule. Neither Congress nor the courts nor your local neighborhood watch committee can force the FCC to enforce an inapplicable rule that it doesn’t want to.

The only thing the FCC has to do is find that the rule: 1) isn’t necessary to ensure just and reasonable practices, 2) isn’t needed to protect consumers, or 3) is in the public interest.

Once the FCC makes that determination, it simply doesn’t apply that rule in that case. All of this becomes relevant in the net neutrality debate.

Opponents of effective net neutrality rules like to play up the fears that classifying broadband internet services as telecommunication services will saddle ISPs with all sorts of regulations meant for the phone system. They insist that, despite the FCC’s best efforts, those rules will fall into place automatically and result in a thicket to be hacked through. This simply isn’t true -- precisely because of the FCC’s forbearance power.

The United Nations’ Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will hold its final session to draft the new international development goals for the next fifteen years, and in a discouraging turn, access to information might be excluded. Access to information is a core element for improvements in various types of development.

Access to information, especially online, can facilitate improvement in an economy’s knowledge base, as well as more transparent and accountable governance. In a globalized and competitive world economy, growth is dependent upon the continuing free flow of transparent, inexpensive, and trustworthy information. Further, access to information is a basic right that enables the expression of other important human rights. Thus, a move to shy away from access to information as a development goal by a UN based working group is disappointing, to say the least.

Public Knowledge strongly advocates for the explicit inclusion of access to information and freedom of expression in the new UN Sustainable Development Goals, in order to make digital rights and access to information online an international priority.