Brynne Henn

Public Knowledge filed comments with the Department of Justice on the antitrust consent decrees governing the performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI.

The consent decrees, last updated in 2001 and 1994, respectively, require ASCAP and BMI to issue reasonable licenses without discriminating between various companies and services.

Public Knowledge filed letters with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon as the first step in the formal open Internet complaint process with the Federal Communications Commission.

The complaint is in relation to AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon’s practice of throttling wireless data subscribers with “unlimited” data plans, as well as T-Mobile’s practice of exempting speed test applications from throttling.

Sprint and Verizon violate the transparency rule by failing to meaningfully disclose which subscribers will be eligible for throttling. AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon violate the transparency rule by failing to disclose which areas of the network are congested, thus subject to throttling. T-Mobile violates the transparency rule by preventing throttled subscribers from determining the actual network speed available to them.

Public Knowledge filed comments with the National Telecommunications and Information Administration urging the Obama Administration not to support any privacy legislation that would eliminate important legal protections for telecommunications metadata.

Public Knowledge was joined on the comments by Benton Foundation, Center for Digital Democracy, Common Cause, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Free Press, New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, US PIRG, and World Privacy Forum.