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  2. July 2020

July 2020

Section 230 and the Twitter Presidency

In response to Twitter’s decision to label one of the President’s tweets misleading, the Trump White House issued an executive order to limit Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act via agency rulemaking. In the Order, President Donald Trump calls for the Federal Communications Commission to “interpret” Section 230 in a manner that curtails websites’ ability to remove and restrict user speech. This article analyzes the Order and concludes that this effort will fail. First, the FCC does not have rulemaking authority to issue the proposed rules.

Sponsor 

Public Utility Research Center

Date 
Thu, 07/23/2020 - 15:00

A lot of countries are interested in having telecom operators share infrastructure. Some are concerned that capital costs are a barrier to competition. Others believe that sharing might result in lower prices. What are the real effects of sharing? Why is it that some operators willingly share infrastructure, but others do not?


Sponsor 

Americans for Tax Reform

Date 
Fri, 07/24/2020 - 17:20

Municipal Broadband has been a major failure as far as costs to taxpayers without increasing the number of homes that have access or increase internet adoption in non-users. Our panel will go over the evidence and then talk about strategies that might actually work to connect the unconnected.


Sponsor 

Public Knowledge

Date 
Wed, 07/29/2020 - 17:30 to 19:00

While everyone agrees that we need federal privacy legislation, how it should work is another story. Oftentimes legislation relies on companies getting consent before collecting, using, or selling data. Consent mechanisms place the burden on consumers to figure out what uses of data are beneficial or harmful.

In this webinar, we’ll discuss why consent doesn’t protect consumers and propose other frameworks that could be used in federal privacy legislation.

Keynote:

Senator Sherrod Brown

Speakers:


America’s Broadband Moment: Facilitating Competition in Apartment Buildings

Thirty percent of all Americans live in multi-tenant environments (“MTEs”) like apartment buildings. Their annual income tends to be only about 54% of median homeowner income, so they are at greater risk of not being able to afford broadband. When apartment owners can profit by restricting tenants’ broadband options and reducing competition, it adds to our nation’s broadband affordability challenges.

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