The Supreme Court has crafted doctrines such as 'fair use,' which permits copying materials for criticism, parody, and transformative uses, and has ruled that abstract ideas are not subject to copyright, because courts will not punish people for merely using an abstract concept in speech.
— Marvin Ammori
In 'Bush v. Gore,' five justices had a partisan outcome in mind and then made up the judicial principle to justify it, while claiming that the decision would not be precedent for any future cases.
Political institutions are fair game in political debates in a democracy. Nothing is more fair game, in fact, than political matters of public concern.
The first-sale doctrine reflects basic common sense - and follows from the logic of treating copyrights and other 'intellectual property' with no more protection than regular property.
The Startup Act should give all Americans, not just immigrants, a better shot at being tomorrow's engineers and entrepreneurs. And that opportunity could begin at a young age with education in computer programming.
The terms of copyright last far too long: either the life of the author plus 70 years after death for a personal work or 95 years for a corporate work. That length doesn't encourage more authorship - it merely limits the speakers who could share powerful speeches, books, and films.
In 2011, mobile data traffic in the United States was eight times the size of the entire global Internet in 2000. That's traffic.
Both Republicans and Democrats can agree that more choices and lower prices in transportation would benefit consumers. Democrats would consider it 'smart government' and Republicans 'limited government.'
The FCC should obviously not propose bad rules that will be struck down; it should propose good rules that will be upheld.
The FCC has made it clear it would punish a cable or phone company for deviating from providing 'neutral' access.
The fights for media justice and racial justice have been intertwined since the 1960s Civil Rights Movement.
The Internet isn't just itself a revolution - it sometimes starts them, too.
The Internet is one of the most revolutionary technologies the world has ever known. It has given us an entire universe of information in our pockets.
Regardless of the industry, antitrust law is meant to benefit consumers - not competitors.
The CEO of AT&T told an interviewer back in 2005 that he wanted to introduce a new business model to the Internet: charging companies like Google and Yahoo! to reliably reach Internet users on the AT&T network.
The FCC can't enforce press-statement principles without adopting official rules, and those rules must be based on the legal theory of reclassification.
Charter hired me - which, to be honest, took some humility on its part, since I have helped lead public campaigns against cable companies like Charter - to advise it in crafting its commitment to network neutrality.
Congress created a safe harbor for defamation in 1996 and for copyright in 1998. Both safe harbors were designed to ensure that the Internet would remain a participatory medium of speech.
'Bush v. Gore' gave us a president who lost the popular vote, eventually appointed two more justices, and led us into a war of choice while failing to regulate a financial system dependent on toxic mortgage-backed derivatives.
Courts are supposed to interpret laws to avoid 'absurd results' and to avoid constitutional problems - such as infringing on the free speech rights of Americans.
If someone has copyright over some piece of your stuff, you can sell it without permission from the copyright holder because the copyright holder can only control the 'first-sale.' The Supreme Court has recognized this doctrine since 1908.
A report released by the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Partnership for New York City predicts that by 2018, there will be 800,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the United States that require a master's degree or higher - and only around 550,000 American-graduates with this training.
Without the ability to criticize unjust laws in powerful symbolic ways, we can't change them. And the point of a democracy is that people should be able to convince other people to change a law.
In the early 1990s, Americans used their home phone lines to connect their desktop computers to the Internet via ISPs like AOL, Earthlink, or Netzero. Back then, the ISPs didn't have cost-effective technology to select particular sites for blocking or privileging.
Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities.
A rule against paid fast lanes would encourage additional capacity; a rule permitting paid fast lanes would simply encourage cable companies to create congested slow lanes on the Internet so they could make money by selling fast lanes to big companies.
Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, WordPress, and Facebook aren't responsible for the copyright infringement of each of their millions of users, so long as they take down specific posts, videos, or images when notified by copyright holders. But copyright holders thought that wasn't good enough.
The FCC sided with the public and adopted extremely strong net neutrality rules that should be a global model for Internet freedom.
Public participation helped create the Internet, and it helps protect it. That's worth celebrating and remembering.
In software and many other online markets, even dominant firms face potential threats because of the low costs for competitors to enter those markets. Threats more easily emerge because of better or newer technologies leapfrogging older ones.
From search and books to online TV and operating systems, antitrust affects our daily digital lives in more ways than we think.
The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive.
In 2007, when I was a lawyer for the public interest group Free Press, I helped draft the complaint to the FCC against Comcast for secretly blocking BitTorrent and other technologies.
As each year and debate passes, more broadband companies will start to see that their future lies not in restricting an open Internet but in betting on it.
Free speech has remained a quintessential American ideal, even as our society has moved from the ink quill to the touch screen.
If the court is a political institution making important political decisions, then the public should debate the politics of Supreme Court decisions.
Ever since the end of Medieval feudalism, and the writings of John Locke, we have understood the importance of being able to buy and sell one's own property, including books and watches, both for reasons of economics and liberty.
In the post-industrial economy, ideas and great minds often provide far greater return on investment than any other resources or capital investments.
Encourage public schools to teach American children how to code just after they learn to multiply.
Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King.
Internet users should be able to choose where to go online and which applications to use. Comcast, say, shouldn't be allowed to block Skype just because it could siphon the communications giant's telephone business.
In 1984, the Federal Trade Commission released a report that explained why taxis could charge customers exorbitant prices for dismal service. The simple reason, according to the 176-page study: lack of competition in the market. The culprit: local governments.
Data can generally travel the speed of light unless networks are congested. When there's congestion, usually the cheapest and best thing is simply to add capacity generally, not to prioritize certain sites over others.
Over the course of a year - from January 2014 to March 2015 - millions of Americans, hundreds of businesses, and dozens of policymakers weighed in at the Federal Communications Commission in favor of net neutrality.
'Politico Magazine' listed me among the top 50 'thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics' for my work in coalitions advancing net neutrality.
Before the Internet, we were in a different sort of dark age. We had to wait to hear news on TV at night or in print the next day. We had to go to record stores to find new music. Cocktail party debates couldn't be settled on the spot.
Being a 'monopoly' is not illegal, nor is trying to best one's competitors through lower prices, better customer service, greater efficiency, or more rapid innovation.
Net neutrality is the principle forbidding huge telecommunications companies from treating users, websites, or apps differently - say, by letting some work better than others over their pipes.
The Open Internet principles were not legal rules adopted by the FCC; they were effectively a press statement posted on the FCC website.
The Internet freedom issue we need to focus on is network neutrality.
