Spring started with a bang here at New Media Rights. At the FCC our work set the stage for making consumer complaint data more accessible and ensuring that more students across the United States have high speed internet access then ever before at schools and libraries. We brought the fight against content bullying to South by South West Interactive. All the while helping creators, entrepreneurs and internet users with complicated legal questions. While we catch our breath, here's some details on what we've been up to.
We shaped and passed an FCC Consumer Advisory Committee recommendation on improving broadband access in U.S. schools and libraries
On Friday, March 28, the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee approved an important recommendation to modernize and improve the way we bring high-speed broadband to classrooms and libraries around the county. New Media Rights Executive Director Art Neill, and Legal Interns Marko Radisavljevic and Kyle Welch were directly involved in the research, drafting, and proposal of this recommendation. The other co-chair of the Broadband Working Group is Mia Martinez of the National Asian American Coalition, pictured below with Art Neill and her NAAC colleague Ruriko Sato on March 28 after passage of the E-rate recommendation.
New Media Rights conducted an extensive review of the FCC’s E-rate program, including analyzing a vast amount of input on the program from a variety of stakeholders. Based on this research, New Media Rights’ staff and interns helped lead the efforts to draft a recommendation encouraging the FCC to modernize and improve the 18 year old E-rate program for the 21st century. The recommendations include both general priorities as well as specific process priorities that will improve the E-rate program.
You can learn more about our work on E-rate here.
Consumer Complaint Data and E-rate recommendations receive praise from FCC Chairman Wheeler and Special Counsel Gigi Sohn, and help shape FCC priorities
At the March 28th CAC meeting, Chairman Wheeler and his Special Counsel for External Affairs Gigi Sohn specifically praised the recent Consumer Complaint Data transparency and E-rate recommendations. Wheeler and Sohn specifically identified consumer complaint process modernization and transparency, as well as E-rate reform as top priorities.
In addition U.S. Senators Udall and Nelson sent a letter to the FCC requesting improved transparency of the over 400,000 consumer complaints the FCC handles every year. The letter directly and heavily cited the CAC recommendation that New Media Rights shaped.
NMR joins USA Doing Archives for a conversation on copyright and the laws surrounding digital archives.
Ever wondered how copyright and other laws affect the work that archivists do? Here at NMR we’ve helped our fair share of archivists; so we were happy to participate in Doing Archives first Hang out On Air at New England Archivists Spring 2014 meeting. You can find the full recording and additional information on the services we provide to archivists, academics or scholars here.
NMR at SXSW!
We’re back from our first trip to SXSW! Remix artist Jonathan McIntosh and Attorney/Producer Shaun Spalding (both Advisory Board members of New Media Rights) joined NMR Staff Attorney Teri Karobonik for an insightful panel on content bullying and copyright basics for online creators.
We also had a chance to meet up with our friends from Creative Commons, the Digital Media Law Project, The Electronic Frontier Foundation and many more. And of course no trip to Austin would be complete without some absolutely delicious BBQ.
Special thanks to the Rising Arts Leaders Program of The San Diego Foundation in partnership with The James Irvine Foundation for providing New Media Rights staff attorney, Teri Karobonik, with a grant to help defray the costs of traveling to SXSW.
Events
April 8th AMA with NMR
Ever wanted to ask us about what we do at NMR? Or why Art founded NMR? Or maybe you had a general question about copyright law you wanted to ask. Well now you can, ask us anything! On April 8th from 11am- 12:30PM we’ll be doing an AMA on reddit. Please note that the one thing we can’t answer as part of the AMA are specific requests for legal advice. Those should still be directed to our contact form http://newmediarights.org/about_us/contact_us
NMR goes to Tucson
New Media Rights staff attorney, Teri Karobonik, heads to Tucson Arizona for a number of talks on April 17th. First up at 9:30AM she’ll be talking to the Old Pueblo Knitters Guild about Copyright Law and Creative Commons as it relates to knitting. She’ll also be speaking at Tucson’s new Maker House at 6pm about copyright for makers. If you're in the Old Pueblo stop by and say hi!
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All the best,
The New Media Rights team
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