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As I mentioned in a post last month, dozens of comments were filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as part of the agency’s “Child Safe Viewing Act” Notice of Inquiry.  Again, this proceeding was required under the “Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007,” which Congress passed last year and President Bush signed last December. [...]

Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) announced the members of the new Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG).  I am honored to be among those chosen to participate in this new task force and I look forward to continuing the work started last year with the Harvard Berkman [...]

Boxee vs. the DMCA

by on January 18, 2009 · 10 comments

I was very interested to read Berin’s post about the Boxee, a device I had not heard about until today. I’ve been asking for years why there are no good video jukebox products on the market, so I’m always interested to see new entrants in the market. If Wikipedia is to be believed, Boxee is [...]

Yesterday, the Senate passed S. 602, “The Child Safe Viewing Act of 2007,” which was introduced by Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR) in February 2007. The bill requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to study the market for “advance blocking technologies” (i.e., parental controls and rating systems) that parents can use to protect their kids from [...]

There’s been a lot of FUD floating around about the MPAA’s plan to offer new release films for cable subscribers to watch at home on pay-per-view channels. Currently, movies come out on DVD about four months after their theatrical release, and are typically available on pay-per-view a month or two thereafter. As box office receipts [...]

I have just released a new PFF white paper on “The Perils of Mandatory Parental Controls and Restrictive Defaults.” It points out the dangers of government mandating that parental controls be defaulted to their most restrictive position. I’ve gone ahead and just pasted the entire text below (but without the footnotes): During ongoing debates about [...]