In a bold bid for an agency under extreme duress, the Justice Department yesterday sent a legislative proposal to Congress, the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, that would expand the scope of what constitutes a punishable criminal offense under the Copyright Act. (Full PDF of the 29-page missive is here.)
The proposed legislation, which revises a similar legislative package that was floated and failed in 2005, would specifically make “attempted” copyright infringement subject to the same criminal penalties as actual copyright infringement. The letter accompany the barebones legislative language states that “It is a general tenet of the criminal law that those who attempt to commit a crime but do not complete it are as morally culpable as those who succeed in doing so.”
I didn’t see anything that defines what constitutes an “attempt,” but let’s hope that people who test P2P networks and try to download a pirated film for strictly professional reasons — say, hypothetically, these people have blogs and are interested in writing about how all this darknet film distribution stuff works — aren’t covered by this proposed statutory change. (I suspect that such P2P network testing failed anyway — hence an “attempted” copyright infringement by the hypothetical people.)
Even more frightening, the proposal authorizes wiretaps for Americans who are merely “attempting” infringement. Calling the proposal an “ill-conceived” attempt, Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said in a statement that “we wish DoJ had devoted more analysis to examining the fair use rights of consumers while presenting a more balanced view of the law.”
The good news: this bill is coming from the Justice Department. In a sly understatement, CNET’s Declan McCullagh noted that Attorney General Albert Gonzales “may not be terribly popular” among Members of Congress, and the draft legislation will surely carry some kind of burden as a consequence. But, as McCullagh also notes, Democratic legislators are favorable to Hollywood and Hollywood likes this bill. Stay tuned.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:55 PM | Print | Comments (1)(Washington, DC) It’s no secret that there is little love lost between the FCC under current Chairman Kevin Martin and the cable industry. Therefore it’s not surprising that the head of the industry’s main trade association, NCTA CEO Kyle McSlarrow, made a call today at a Media Institute luncheon for an overhaul of communications regulation that downgrades the role of the FCC from regulatory to oversight agency.
Using as his template PFF’s Digital Age Communications Act project, McSlarrow said the FCC should assume a role
more like that of the Federal Trade Commission. The FCC would have authority to intervene in the marketplace only if it determines that marketplace competition would not adequately protect consumers against unfair methods of competition or unfair and deceptive practices. There would be a presumption against regulation, and in fact all FCC regulations would sunset in five years.
Although McSlarrow generally argued for sweeping away “much of the accumulated regulatory baggage that burdens the communications industries,” he made clear that this widespread deregulatory approach doesn’t apply to the public switched telephone networks, cable’s biggest competitors. In particular, McSlarrow stressed the need to maintain interconnection regulations that apply to the big (and little) incumbent phone carriers because they are “special.”
And, of course, there is something especially unique about the public switched telephone network, a network built with a government grant of monopoly to the original AT&T and funded through rate of return regulation. There simply is nothing like it in the rest of America’s communications universe. No matter how many facilities-based providers of voice service use fiber, the Internet, coax, or copper, every one of them will need to be able to exchange traffic with the public switched network for the foreseeable future.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 3:28 PM | Print | Comments (0)
U.S. mobile phone carriers are far behind their peers around the globe in terms of delivering full-length video to handsets. Verizon Wireless has full-fledged TV channels, VCast Mobile TV, made available through Qualcomm’s MediaFlo technology, but for the most part cell phone video in this country is limited to short clips of TV programs and hand-picked YouTube offerings.
Sprint, however, is trying a new tack. Starting today, video equipped Sprint phones will offer full-length versions of ABC’s hit shows “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Desperate Houswives” and “Ugly Betty.”
While the shows aren’t free, they’re part of Sprint’s high-speed data package priced at $20/month and will be available on-demand any time. Sprint is hoping that this move will give it a leg up over AT&T, which will launch the much-awaited Apple iPhone next month. The iPhone has a (supposedly) superior screen compared to most other handsets, but users will have to purchase programs from iTunes a la carte.
ABC is clearly pushing the envelope in finding new platforms for its programming. The network was the first to make TV shows available on iTunes, sparking a major shift in broadcast network content distribution.
Let’s hope other broadcast networks cut similar deals with mobile carriers for full-length TV shows. Those stupid short clips typical of the kind of video made available via wireless carriers in the U.S. are just dumb.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:05 AM | Print | Comments (1)The news that the Pentagon is now blocking soldiers’ access to a number of popular social networking and video sites hit the wires yesterday but is front page news today. The Defense Department’s ban on access to MySpace, YouTube and eleven other sites applies to military computers only — soldiers can still access the prohibited sites through their own personal computers or designated Internet cafes.
| Sites Blocked by U.S. Military |
| MySpace |
| YouTube |
| Photobucket |
| Metacafe |
| MTV |
| iFilm |
| Hi5 |
| Pandora |
| Live365 |
| BlackPlanet |
| 1.FM |
| StupidVideos |
| Filecabi |
In all likelihood the Pentagon is also probably a little bit disturbed by the free-flowing complaints, criticisms and unauthorized combat videos that pop up on these sites because “these sites also offer an uncensored venue for airing homesickness, frustration with the war in Iraq and anger at the military.”
The Iraq war is the first large-scale military operation that has been widely documented through MySpace, YouTube and other sites and now, it seems, the window on the war has been, well, virtually slammed shut. Moreover, the soldiers have lost a key means of staying in touch with loved ones back home.
Although traffic congestion is an understandable concern, couldn’t the military have rationed the amount of access to these sites or, even better, beefed up its networking capacity to accomodate the soldiers’ needs?
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:12 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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