Tag: FCC

The Criminal N.S.A.

By JENNIFER STISA GRANICK and CHRISTOPHER JON SPRIGMAN
June 27, 2013
Jennifer Stisa Granick is the director of civil liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Christopher Jon Sprigman is a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/28/opinion/the-criminal-nsa.html
THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.”
It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s claims of legality. The leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Saxby Chambliss, Republican of Georgia, have called the surveillance legal. So have liberal-leaning commentators like Hendrik Hertzberg and David Ignatius.
This view is wrong — and not only, or even mainly, because of the privacy issues raised by the American Civil Liberties Union and other critics. The two programs violate both the letter and the spirit of federal law. No statute explicitly authorizes mass surveillance. Through a series of legal contortions, the Obama administration has argued that Congress, since 9/11, intended to implicitly authorize mass surveillance. But this strategy mostly consists of wordplay, fear-mongering and a highly selective reading of the law. Americans deserve better from the White House — and from President Obama, who has seemingly forgotten the constitutional law he once taught.
The administration has defended each of the two secret programs. Let’s examine them in turn. <snip>

Sascha Meinrath should be New FCC Chairman @saschameinrath

“You can’t have an objective chairman of the FCC that’s got 20 years of their life invested in being the head lobbyist for industry,” Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation said in an interview.

Sascha Meinrath

“You can’t have an objective chairman of the FCC that’s got 20 years of their life invested in being the head lobbyist for industry,” Sascha Meinrath of the New America Foundation said in an interview.

Vice President and Director, Open Technology Institute

Sascha Meinrath is vice president of the New America Foundation and director of the Open Technology Institute. In 2012 he was named one of the top 100 in Newsweek’s Digital Power Index and he has been described as a “community Internet pioneer” and an “entrepreneurial visionary.” He is a well-known expert on community wireless networks, municipal broadband, and telecommunications policy. In 2009 he was named one of Ars Technica’s Tech Policy “People to Watch” and is also the 2009 recipient of the Public Knowledge IP3 Award for excellence in public interest advocacy.
Sascha founded the Commotion Wireless Project (a.k.a., the “Internet-in-a-Suitcase”) and, along with Vint Cerf, is the co-founder of Measurement Lab (M-Lab), a distributed server platform for researchers around the world to deploy Internet measurement tools, advance network research, and empower the public with useful information about their broadband connections. He coordinates the Open Source Wireless Coalition, a global partnership of wireless integrators, researchers, implementors and companies dedicated to the development of open source, interoperable, low-cost wireless technologies. Sascha has worked with Free Press, the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA), the Acorn Active Media Foundation, the Ethos Group, and the CUWiN Foundation.

 
BEST GOVERNMENT PRACTICES
December 18, 2006 By Sascha Meinrath
The problem of emergency communications and disaster recovery is often not the lack of resources, but lack of coordination. After Katrina, Sascha Meinrath coordinated the Community Wireless Emergency Response Initiative. The following offers some of what he and others learned about emergency communications.
Contrary to popular perception, the problem of disaster recovery is often not the lack of resources, but lack of coordination.
One key component to successful emergency response is a dynamic, direct and robust communications network — a structure the United States had been missing. Key decision-makers turned a deaf ear to the problem until Hurricane Katrina made such an ostrich-stance untenable, and the United States had to learn the lesson the hard way. Yet a year later, improvements have been incredibly modest. During the next major disaster, experts say we should expect more of the same — a lack of coherent, rapidly deployable, interoperable communications networks for first responders and the communities they serve.

Six Strikes is not a lawonly a 4 year private agreement.

Six 6 Strikes is Phoney it is only a MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING not a law.
Administering “six strikes” is a new entity called the Center for Copyright Information (CCI), which was established by the entertainment industry and the ISP industry. (Internet users were not part of the negotiations.) In other words, Internet users can be punished because of accusations by the copyright industry, but no one is necessarily verifying the claims.
First, this plan is not a law at all. It is a voluntary agreement between copyright holders and ISPs. Second, this plan does not mandate that ISPs completely cut subscribers’ Internet access. The burden of proof on the Internet subscriber, who must prove that he did not illegally download copyrighted content.

FINAL 7/6/2011 Agreed as of July 6, 2011
As of the Effective Date of this Agreement, the following entities are MPAA member company affiliates:

It is  a 4 year private agreement among the following:

  • The Recording Industry Association of America, Inc.
  • The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc.
  • EMI Music North America
  • Sony Music Entertainment
  • Warner Music Group
  • UMG Recordings, Inc.
  • Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc.
  • Universal City Studios LLC
  • Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation Fox Entertainment Group, Inc.,
  • Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc.
  • Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Disney Enterprises, Inc.,
  • NBC Universal Media LLC,
  • Turner Entertainment Networks, Inc.
  • Viacom, Inc.

AND These  Participating ISPs

  • SBC Internet Services, Inc.
  • BellSouthTelecommunications, Inc.
  • Southwestern Bell Telephone Company
  • Pacific BellTelephone Company
  • Illinois Bell Telephone Company
  • Indiana Bell TelephoneCompany
  • Incorporated,
  • Michigan Bell Telephone Company
  • Nevada Bell TelephoneCompany
  • The Ohio Bell Telephone Company
  • Wisconsin Bell, Inc.
  • The Southern NewEngland Telephone Company
  • BellSouth Telecommunications, Inc. (the AT&T Inc.companies
  • Verizon Online LLC, VerizonOnline LLC –Maryland, and Verizon Online Pennsylvania Partnership (the Verizoncompanies)
  • Comcast Cable Communications Management, LLC;
  • CSC Holdings,LLC (solely with respect to its cable systems operating in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut)(the Cablevision systems)
  • Time Warner Cable Inc.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/91987640/CCI-MOU

FAIR USE – KNOW YOUR RIGHTS
P2P networks and applications ARE LEGAL lawful online legitimate sources of content

Center for Copyright Infringement = CCI
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402521,00.asp
Jill Lesser, CCI as executive director.who previously served as a First Amendment advocate for People for the American Way (PFAW), most recently served as a senior vice president for domestic public policy for AOL Time Warner. She now leads the CCI as executive director.
K-12 COPYRIGHT LAWS: PRIMER FOR TEACHERS
CCI Committee:
The executive board of the CCI includes: chairman Thomas Dailey, vice president and deputy general council at Verizon; executive vice president and general counsel Steven M. Marks, currently the executive vice president and general counsel at the RIAA; and members Marianne Grant, senior vice president for the MPAA; Alan Lewine, senior counsel for Comcast; Daniel Mandil, associate general counsel for Verizon; and Brent Olson, vice president of public policy for AT&T.
The advisory board is made up of Gigi Sohn, president and chief executive of Public Knowledge; Jerry Berman, chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee; Marsali Hancock, president of iKeepSafe.org; and Jules Polenetsky, director of the Future of Privacy Forum.
CCI says. “The ISP will determine which of its subscriber accounts was allocated the specified IP address at the applicable date and time and then send an alert to the subscriber whose account has been identified. The alert will notify the subscriber that his/her account may have been misused for potentially illegal file sharing, explain and why the action is illegal and a violation of the ISP’s policies and provide advice about how to avoid receiving further alerts as well as how to locate film, television and music content legally.”
CCI also begins doing business as a number of judicial rulings have blocked copyright holders’ attempts to compel ISPs to divulge the IP addresses of customers without a formal lawsuit. The CCI’s partnership between the content creators and ISPs would sidestep that process.
ACCORDING TO THE CCI Executive Committee THEY GET TO DEFINE YOUR RIGHTS ACCORDING TO SOMEONE THEY PICK.
Chris Dodd Joining MPAA As Top Lobbyist
Breaking Promise Not To Become A Lobbyist Just Weeks After Leaving Senate 2011
2.4.  Fair Use
A Subscriber shall prevail on this defense if the Subscriber adequately and credibly demonstrates fair use of the copyrighted work under prevailing principles of copyright law (which shall be identified as described in section 6).
Page 35 Section 6. Legal Principles to Be Applied in Independent Review.
The Independent Review process will, to the extent relevant, apply prevailing legal principles as determined by United States federal courts. The Administering Organization will commission an accepted, independent expert on copyright law, who is approved by the CCI Executive Committee, to outline prevailing legal principles of fair use for purposes of deciding defenses of fair use, and any other legal principles necessary for resolution of issues within the scope of this Independent Review process. Such outline will be updated from time to time as necessary. If additional material questions of law arise as the Independent Review process is implemented, they may be referred to an accepted, independent expert approved by the CCI Executive Committee as needed. The Administering Organization will advise the Parties to the Agreement of issues referred to, and principles determined by, such an expert, and provide a process for the Parties to the Agreement to provide input concerning the issues, so as to ensure that the expert’s determinations are fully-informed and reflect prevailing law as determined by United States federal courts.
If additional material questions of law arise as the Independent Review process is implemented, they may be referred to an accepted, independent expert approved by the CCI Executive Committee as needed. The Administering Organization will advise the Parties to the Agreement of issues referred to, and principles determined by, such an expert, and provide a process for the Partiesto the Agreement to provide input concerning the issues, so as to ensure that the expert’s determinations are fully-informed and reflect prevailing law as determined by United States federal courts.
Guide to United States Copyright Law as Applied to Multimedia Productions
[scribd id=91987640 key=key-2aha2402d6u8oubh1bg5 mode=scroll]

Free Speech Battle Over Publication of Federal Law

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading organization protecting civil liberties in the digital world.

Free Speech Battle Over Publication of Federal Law
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)
Wrongheaded Copyright Claim Blocks Online Posting of
Important Technical Standards
Continue reading “Free Speech Battle Over Publication of Federal Law”