Harold Feld

We Need to Fix the News Media, Not Just Social Media—Part 2

Trained reporters play a critical role in identifying news events through following social media. When reporters have both professional training and experience with the organizers and actors on social media they can not only anticipate important news events, but they can also contextualize them for followers and authenticate the raw footage and real-time reporting. Even when considering the crisis of trust and generalized suspicion, it is important to distinguish the nuances.

Hurricane Michael A Wake Up Call On Why Total Dereg of Telecom A Very Bad Idea.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and Gov Rick Scott (R-FL) have expressed frustration with the slow pace of restoring communications in FL in the wake of Hurricane Michael. What neither Chairman Pai nor Gov Scott mention is their own roll in creating this sorry state of affairs. Their radical deregulation of the telephone industry, despite the lessons of previous natural disasters such as Hurricane Sandy, guaranteed that providers would chose to cut costs and increase profits rather than invest in hardening networks or emergency preparedness.

Hurricane Michael Aftermath ‘Wake Up Call’ On Deregulating Telecommunications Services

Gov Rick Scott (R-FL) and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai have not taken responsibility for how their radical deregulation of telephone service has contributed to the slow pace of repairs for FL's communications services. In 2011, Gov Scott signed the “Regulatory Reform Act of 2011,” which eliminated virtually all oversight of FL’s residential telephone service.

The FCC Decides Rural America Has Too Many Broadband Options, So They Are Taking Away 5G Spectrum To Give To The Big Guys.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to take spectrum away from rural providers.  Public Knowledge sent a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai asking him to change the draft Order altering the rules for the “Citizen’s Broadband Radio Service” (CBRS) to keep several of the old rules in place. Specifically, we want the FCC to keep at least some license areas at census tract size, rather than making them bigger and therefore unaffordable for small providers like wireless ISPs (WISPs).

Verizon California Throttling Mistake Shows How Radical Pai’s Repeal Order Really Was

Congress created the Federal Communications Commission in order to ensure we would have working communications infrastructure for, among other things, handling public safety. So you would think that when Verizon throttled the Santa Clara (CA) Fire Department’s mobile broadband connection for coordinating response to the Mendocino Complex Fire — the largest wildfire in California history — that the FCC would naturally be all over it.

We Need to Fix the News Media, Not Just Social Media

Because the stakes are so high, we need to look with extreme skepticism at proposals primarily designed to prop up the current consolidated and dysfunctional media landscape. If we want to address the very real problems created by a dysfunctional media, we need to separate which of these problems can properly be attributed to dominant platforms and which to structural problems in the traditional news industry.

What Would Real Platform CPNI Look Like?

Customer proprietary network information (usually abbreviated as “CPNI”) refers to a very specific set of privacy regulations governing telecommunications providers (codified at 47 U.S.C. §222) and enforced by the Federal Communications Commission. But while CPNI provides some of the strongest consumer privacy protections in federal law, it also does much more than that.

Stoping the 5G Digital Divide Before It Happens

As predicted 10 years ago, in the absence of anti-redlining provisions, carriers have not invested in upgrading their broadband capacity in communities of color at anything close to the same rate they have upgraded in wealthier, whiter neighborhoods. As a result, the urban digital divide is once again growing. It’s not just that high-speed broadband is ridiculously expensive, although this is also a serious barrier to adoption in urban areas.

Cost of Exclusion as a Proxy for Dominance in Digital Platform Regulation

While many regulations promoting consumer protection and competition apply throughout a sector, some economic regulations apply to “dominant” firms or firms with “market power.” Behavior that is harmless, or potentially even positive when done by smaller companies or in a more competitive marketplace, can be anticompetitive or harmful to consumers when done by dominant firms -- regardless of the firm’s actual intent.

Defining “Digital Platform”

[Analysis] Digital platforms that (a) provide a two-sided or multi-sided market; (b) are accessed via the internet; and (c) have at least one side that is marketed as a “mass market” service, share a set of characteristics and raise a similar set of concerns so that we should consider them as a distinct set of businesses. This does not make laws of general applicability such as antitrust inapposite. Nor are these distinct capabilities and incentives intrinsically bad or good.

Why Platform Regulation Is Both Necessary and Hard

[Analysis] As digital platforms have become increasingly important in our everyday lives, we’ve recognized that the need for some sort of regulatory oversight increases. We have reached the point where we need sector-specific regulation focused on online digital platforms, not just application of existing antitrust or existing consumer protection laws.

So What The Heck Does 5G Actually Do? And Is It Worth What The Carriers Are Demanding?

I have spent the last two weeks or so doing a deep dive on what, exactly does 5G actually do — with a particular emphasis on the recently released 3GPP standard (Release 15) that everyone is celebrating as the first real industry standard for 5G. My conclusion is that while the Emperor is not naked, that is one Hell of a skimpy thong he’s got on. More precisely, the bunch of different things that people talk about when they

Farewell to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn

[Commentary] Many people understand the duty of public service. But for Mignon Clyburn, it is a calling. Too many people who care deeply about social justice dismiss communications law as a wonky specialty. Those with the passion to follow the instruction of the prophet Isaiah to “learn to do good, seek justice, comfort the oppressed, demand justice for the orphan and fight for the widow” often chose to go into fields where this struggle is more obvious such as civil rights or immigration law.

How Popular Is Net Neutrality? Opponents Have to Hide They Are Campaigning Against It.

What really sets DC apart is our advertisements. The political ads never stop. Particularly when a major vote is about to happen — such as the upcoming vote in the Senate on S. J. Res. 52, aka the “net neutrality CRA,” aka the repeal of the FCC’s net neutrality repeal. On May 9, Senator Markey will file the resolution to force the vote — which is expected to actually happen soon.

Net Neutrality Does Not End Today. We Still Don’t Know When It Will. Which Is Weird When You Think About It.

There is a lot of confusion on the effective date for the 2017 Net Neutrality Repeal Order, aka “Restoring Internet Freedom — Which Is Not In The Least Overdramatic Unlike You Hysterical Hippies.” This is not surprising, given the rather confusing way the Federal Register Notice reads.

Better Privacy Protections Won’t Kill Free Facebook.

Setting aside that some people might actually like the option of paying for services in exchange for enhanced privacy protection, history tells us that advertising can support free content just fine without needing to know every detail of our lives to serve us unique ads tailored to an algorithms best guess about our likes and dislikes based on multi-year, detailed surveillance of our every eye-muscle twitch. Despite the unfortunate tendency of social media to drive toward the most extreme arguments even at the best of times, “privacy regulation” is hardly an all or nothing proposition.

7 Reasons Why The AT&T/TW Trial Matters So Much The Future of Antitrust

[Commentary] Whether the AT&T-Time Warner deal goes through or not is super important for all the usual reasons relating to media concentration, competition in telecommunications, and all that other stuff I usually care about. But the AT&T/TW trial raises a lot of super important questions for the future of antitrust enforcement. Specifically, does antitrust law care about vertical integration or not?

Can The States Really Pass Their Own Net Neutrality Laws? Here’s Why I Think Yes.

We are seeing lots of activity in the states on net neutrality. All of which raises the question — can the states actually do that? The critical question is not, as some people seem to think, whether broadband involves interstate communications or not. Of course it does. So does ye olde plain old telephone service (POTS), and state regulated that up to the eyeballs back in the day (even if they have subsequently deregulated it almost entirely).

Solving the Rural Broadband Equation — Fund Infrastructure, Not Carriers.

When we think about solving the rural broadband problem, nearly everyone tries to answer the question: “How do I find a carrier to serve rural areas.” But that’s not actually the problem we’re trying to solve. The problem we’re actually trying to solve is getting people access to quality broadband so they can participate in the modern digital economy and modern society generally. 

What You Need To Know About Repealing The Repeal of Net Neutrality — How The CRA Works.

There is a great deal of excitement, but also a great deal of misunderstanding, about the effort to “repeal the repeal” of network neutrality using the Congressional Review Act (CRA). On the one hand, we have folks who are confused by the enormous progress made so far and think that we are just one vote shy of repealing the repeal. On the other extreme, we have the folks declaring the effort totally doomed and impossible from the start. I discuss the details of a CRA, and why I think we can win this (and even if we don’t, why it still works in our favor overall), below. 

The History of Net Neutrality In 13 Years -- Part I

I keep being asked by people “Harold, can you please summarize the last 20 years of net neutrality for me while I stand on one foot?” Usually I answer: “do not do unto other packets what you find hateful for your favorite bitstream. The rest is commentary — located at 47 C.F.R. Part 8.” I will now take you on a brief tour of the history of net neutrality at Tales of the Sausage Factory (with a few outside link additions) from my first post on the Brand X case back in 2004 to June 2016, when the DC Circuit affirmed the FCC’s 2015 Reclassification and Net Neutrality Order.

The 5 Weirdest Things About That Ajit Pai Video.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has made one of those “break the ‘net” videos — but not in the usual way. In an apparent effort to either pump up his base or win over undecideds, Pai made a video called “Seven Things You Can Still Do On the Internet After Net Neutrality.” I can say unequivocally as someone doing this for 20 years, this video is truly bizarre in the annals of FCC history for a number of reasons.

No, the Draft Net Neutrality Repeal Does Not “Restore Us To 2014” — And 2014 Wasn’t Exactly Awesome Anyway.

[Commentary] A comparison of the regulatory regime in place on January 17, 2014 (the day after Verizon v. FCC) and the anticipated regulatory regime as it will exist on January 17, 2018, and the Top 3 Ways They Are Totally And Completely Different In Ways That Make Consumers Worse Off. Even if we take the most literal and favorable interpretation of “we are just rolling things back to what they were before 2015” to mean “specifically, we are setting the regulatory way back machine to that magic day of January 17, 2014, the day after the D.C. Circuit in Verizon v.

No, the FTC CANNOT Have A Ban On All ISP Blocking.

Since most folks won’t plow through 5500 words of legal analysis, I’ve gotten some requests to specifically address the claims by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and others that the Federal Trade Commission can address blocking as easily as the FCC and prevent any Internet service provider from blocking any content or application. My short answer is: “No.