Multichannel News’ Ted Hearn has flagged for us one of the most overreaching set of comments filed today in the FCC’s net neutrality proceeding. If AT&T hadn’t set off some warning bells earlier this week, I’d almost think that comments submitted by NBC-Universal are some kind of practical joke, a sophisticated, legalistic version of Punk’d that only communications policy wonks could appreciate.
In a proceeding geared toward examining whether new regulations are needed to stop broadband providers from discriminating against unaffiliated content and application providers, NBC-U instead bootstraps the whole piracy issue and asks the FCC to force broadband providers to implement content scanning technologies and send warnings to alleged infringing customers that those technologies identify.
The Commission should make unmistakably clear, as part of its regulations governing broadband industry practices, that broadband service providers have an obligation to use readily available means to prevent the use of their broadband capacity to transfer pirated content, especially when such use represents huge percentages of their capacity and reduces the quality of service to other subscribers.
NBC-U pushes the rhetorical envelope throughout the documents. For example, the studio likens the absence of mandatory content scanning regulations to…allowing Fedex trucks to transport illegal drugs.
It is inconceivable that the U.S. government would stand by mutely and permit any other legitimate U.S. business to be hijacked in this fashion. Would the government permit Federal Express or UPS to knowingly operate delivery services in which 60-70% of the payload consisted of contraband, such as illegal drugs or stolen goods?
My favorite part of the filing is where NBC-U conflates piracy with the financial health of America’s corn-growing farmers and farm equipment manufacturers. Here’s the argument: pirated films reduce the number of theater-goers, which in turn results in lower popcorn sales, which in turn is not good for farmers.
For example, in the absence of movie piracy, video retailers would sell and rent more titles. Movie theaters would sell more tickets and popcorn. Corn growers would earn greater profits and buy more farm equipment.
WTF? Not only is NBC-U advocating a truly horrible idea (force broadband providers to monitor content for copyrighted material and threaten any “suspicious” customers), it does so in a ridiculous way. It could be worse, though. NBC-U could have actually submitted a well-written, well-reasoned legal document that advocated this horrible idea.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:06 PM | Print | Comments (0)
This New Jersey Law Journal article recaps an interesting case that raises the question: should MySpace and Facebook postings be subject to discovery demands in litigation much the way emails are today? A teenager is suing her local school board for emotional distress damages stemming from a sexual assault that she maintains her middle school could have prevented.
At issue in the case is whether and to what degree the teen has been distressed. Long story short, the defendants want access to her MySpace and Facebook postings to confirm suspicions they have that she might not have experienced the degree of distress she claims she did. They argue that communicating via social networking sites is akin to communicating via email, and therefore subject to discovery.
But, attorneys for the girl have argued that privacy rights trump discovery requests; social networking sites aren’t email, they contend. The judge wisely decided that the defendants had not yet done enough investigation to justify that the plaintiff turn over her postings.
When all is said and done, however, this case, and presumably other cases like it, may very well end up making private postings on social networking sites subject to discovery. Teens today rarely use email, opting to communicate via social networking (or IM, which is also subject to discovery), making social networking posts the effective equivalent of email. As Mike Masnick at TechDirt points out, it’s going to be hard for anybody to argue otherwise.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 10:50 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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