Communications Law Commons^™

A Comprehensive Approach To Bridging The Gap Between Cyberbullying Rules And Regulations And The Protections Offered By The First Amendment For Off-Campus Student Speech, Vahagn Amirian

Vahagn Amirian

No abstract provided.

Sponsorship Implications Of The Lance Armstrong V. Usps Lawsuit, John A. Fortunato

John A Fortunato

Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France seven consecutive times from 1999 through 2005. At the height of his success and popularity Armstrong’s cycling team was sponsored by the United States Postal Service (USPS). Armstrong’s Tour de France victories were marred by speculation that he and his cycling teammates were using performance enhancing drugs. After years of denial, in January, 2013, Armstrong finally admitted in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that he had in fact used performance enhancing drugs. On February 22, 2013, the United States Justice Department announced that it had joined a lawsuit filed by former cycling teammate …

Internet Policy’S Next Frontier: Data Caps, Tiered Service Plans, And Usage-Based Broadband Pricing, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

Usage-based pricing has rapidly become one of the most controversial topics in Internet policy. Both wired and wireless broadband providers are migrating from flat-rate pricing to a variety of consumption-based pricing models. Some consumer groups have viewed the change to usage-based pricing with skepticism, fearing it will usher in an era of higher prices, deteriorating service, and increasingly anticompetitive conduct. This article evaluates the merits of data caps, tiered-service plans, and other usage-based pricing strategies. It finds that usage-based broadband pricing is not inherently anti-consumer or anti-competitive. Rather, it reflects a cluster of pricing strategies through which a broadband company …

The Challenge Of Voip To Legacy Federal And State Regulatory Regimes, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

The Spectrum Handbook 2013, J. Armand Musey Cfa

J. Armand Musey, CFA

This Handbook has three objectives: 1) to serve as a primer for explaining the complex issues around the use of electromagnetic spectrum; 2) to analyze, from both an economic and a legal perspective, the regulatory processes being considered or underway to reallocate or change the use of spectrum bands and; 3) to be a reference source for industry professionals. Part I of the Handbook provides an overview of the spectrum and the regulatory process. Part II of the Handbook explains the various available spectrum bands, discussing their range, location, and physical properties and how these impact their ability to be …

"Merchants Of Discontent": An Exploration Of The Psychology Of Advertising, Addiction, And The Implications For Commercial Speech, Tamara R. Piety

Tamara R. Piety

In this paper, I attempt to draw parallels between the psychology of commercial advertising and marketing and the psychology of addiction. Both appear to be characterized by denial, escapism, narcissism, isolation, insatiability, impatience, and diminished sensitivity. Advertising appeals to these impulses and addiction is marked by them. In what follows, I explore these parallels in general and then explore the potential consequences or side effects in three specific contexts: the advertising of addictive products, advertising and children, and advertising and women. In these three areas, there is some evidence that advertising may be contributing to negative social phenomena in a …

Margin Squeeze In The Telecommunication Market. Transitional Period Between Dial-Up And Broadband Internet. Teliasonera Case, Emanuela Matei

Emanuela A. Matei

No abstract provided.

We Should Promote Broadband Price Innovation, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

Fifteen Minutes Of Infamy: Privileged Reporting And The Problem Of Perpetual Reputational Harm, Richard J. Peltz-Steele

Richard J. Peltz-Steele

This Article provides an overview of the labyrinth of media tort defenses, specifically the four privileges – fair comment, fair report, neutral reportage, and wire service – that come into play when the media republish defamatory content about criminal suspects and defendants without specific intent to injure. The Article then discusses these privileges in light of a hypothetical case involving a highly publicized crime and an indicted suspect, against whom charges are later dropped, but who suffers perpetual reputational harm from the out-of-context republication online of news related to his indictment. The Article demonstrates how the four privileges would operate …

Technology Convergence And Federalism: The Case Of Voip Regulation, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

From the introduction The Vermont Supreme Court may soon consider whether federal law permits the Public Service Board to regulate certain voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP ) services. Across the Hudson, Governor Andrew Cuomo recently sought to bar the New York Public Service Commission from adopting similar regulations. And these states are not alone: from Maine to Florida, several states are considering whether their jurisdiction over traditional telephone service encompasses this new technology, through which nearly one third of American landline households receive telephone service. If so, nationwide VoIP providers could face up to fifty new legal regimes with which they must comply …

Has Skinner Killed The Katz? Are Society's Expectations Of Privacy Reasonable In Today's Techological World?, Jason Forcier

Jason Forcier

The right to privacy has and will remain a hotly contested debate about American liberties. In 2012, a 3-0 decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, in United States v. Melvin Skinner, the court held that there is no “reasonable expectation of privacy in the data given off by. . . cellphone[s].” Given today’s explosion of cellular technology and use of smart phones, is it unreasonable to believe a person should remain secure in their "person" and “effects," as guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment, from unreasonable searches and seizures? Furthermore, with police requiring only a subpoena to a obtain …

Why Usage-Based Broadband Plans May Be Good For You, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

This article was also published on the Providence Journal's This New England Blog at http://blogs.providencejournal.com/ri-talks/this-new-england/2013/03/daniel-a-lyons-usage-based-broadband-plans-may-good-for-you.html

Internet Pricing: The Next Policy Frontier, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

In the past few years, broadband providers have begun shifting toward tiered service plans (sometimes known as usage-based pricing) that offer customers a fixed amount of data each month for a fee. On average, less than 2 percent of users exceed the most commonly-used tier of 300 GB; nearly 80 percent of consumers never exceed even 50 GB per month. Nevertheless, some critics such as Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation are concerned that this trend may bring higher prices and reduced service. Most recently, NAF analyst Benjamin Lennett asked whether tiered service plans are a plot by cable …

“Smut And Nothing But”: The Fcc, Indecency, And Regulatory Transformations In The Shadows, Lili Levi

Lili Levi

For almost a century, American broadcasting has received a lesser degree of constitutional protection than the print medium. Although many of the FCC’s regulations in “the public interest” have been upheld against First Amendment challenge on the ground that broadcasting is exceptional, the traditional reasons given for such exceptionalism – scarcity and pervasiveness – have become increasingly careworn. Fighting that consensus, the FCC has aggressively pursued the regulation of indecency on radio and television since 2003. When the FCC’s enhanced indecency prohibitions swept up U2 front-man Bono’s fleeting expletive on a music awards show, broadcasters finally thought they had found …

The Impact Of Data Caps And Other Forms Of Usage-Based Pricing For Broadband Access, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

In recent years, broadband providers have introduced data caps and other plans that charge customers based on use. While regulators have generally approved of this shift, some consumer groups fear that usage-based pricing will lead to higher prices and deteriorating service. They also fear data caps allow companies like Comcast to protect their cable businesses from upstarts like Netflix.

This article evaluates the merits of data caps and other usage-based pricing strategies. Usagebased pricing shifts more network costs onto heavier Internet users. This can reduce costs for others and make broadband more accessible to low-income consumers. Usage-based pricing can also …

Why Broadband Pricing Freedom Is Good For Consumers, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

From the introduction: Usage-based pricing has rapidly become one of the most high-profile topics in Internet policy. In the past few years, many broadband providers have migrated from all-you-can-eat flat-rate pricing to consumption-based pricing models such as tiered service plans or data caps. This trend has been most prominent in the wireless sector, where monthly limits were an almost inevitable solution to the surge in bandwidth demand unleashed by the smartphone revolution. Some fixed broadband providers have adopted much larger data caps for residential broadband use as well.

The Internet As The World's Biggest Copy Machine, And How Plaintiff's Bar Seeks To Monetize It, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

On February 23, 2013, Professor Lyons presented at the First Circuit Spring Meeting of the American Bar Association Student Division.

The Implausibility Of Secrecy, Mark Fenster

Mark Fenster

Government secrecy frequently fails. Despite the executive branch’s obsessive hoarding of certain kinds of documents and its constitutional authority to do so, recent high-profile events—among them the WikiLeaks episode, the Obama administration’s celebrated leak prosecutions, and the widespread disclosure by high-level officials of flattering confidential information to sympathetic reporters—undercut the image of a state that can classify and control its information. The effort to control government information requires human, bureaucratic, technological, and textual mechanisms that regularly founder or collapse in an administrative state, sometimes immediately and sometimes after an interval. Leaks, mistakes, open sources—each of these constitutes a path out …

Dc Think Tank Tells Americans That Their Broadband Is Really Great, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

In Re Preserving The Open Internet: Reply Comments Of Professor Daniel A. Lyons, Daniel A. Lyons

Daniel Lyons

Reply Comments on FCC Proposed Rulemaking into Net Neutrality

Brief For Cato Institute Et Al. As Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioners, City Of Arlington Texas Et Al. V. Federal Communications Commission Et Al., Daniel A. Lyons, Jonathon H. Adler, Roderick M. Hills

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

Usage-Based Pricing And Net Neutrality, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

The Impact Of Data Caps And Other Forms Of Usage Based Pricing For Broadband Access, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

Reforming The Universal Service Fund For The Digital Age, Daniel Lyons

Daniel Lyons

No abstract provided.

Teaching The Power Of Empathy In Domestic And Transnational Experiential Public Defender Courses, Cary Bricker

cary a bricker

Abstract: This article begins with the premise that empathy benefits lawyers, irrespective of age, sex, years of experience or nationality. Building on a body of literature that analyzes why empathic relationships are so integral to client satisfaction, and drawing lessons from medical literature addressing the analogous role of empathy in physician-patient relationships, the article argues that real connection with clients also results in lawyer satisfaction, improving quality of professional life and client representation, reducing burn-out and fostering a personal commitment to advancing social justice. The article also argues that lawyers share a common goal to acquire tools necessary to engage …

When The Need To Know Outweighs Privacy: Granting Access To Child Welfare Records In The 50 States, Courtney Barclay

Courtney Barclay

In 2013, the Kansas City Star, reported that, despite thirteen years of transparency under a records disclosure law, the Missouri Department of Social Services initially declined to requests for information regarding three tragic cases of child abuse in 2012, including one fatality. The state disclosure law permits the director of DSS to release information in these kinds of cases. Yet, the Department refused to release records, citing the need to avoid “hinder[ing] the criminal justice system.” This refusal to provide information seemed contrary to more than a decade of policy since the passage of the Missouri disclosure law in 2000 …

Emerging Technologies And Dwindling Speech, Jorge R. Roig

Jorge R Roig

Oportunidades Para Las Empresas Dentro De La Omc, Rodolfo C. Rivas Rea Esq.

Rodolfo C. Rivas

The author provides a brief overview of the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) by explaining the context of their interrelationship. Afterwards, the author delves into a brief analysis of Mexico’s role in the International Trade arena and concludes by describing the paths through which the private sector can benefit from the WTO.///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////El autor pone en contexto la interrelación entre la Organización Mundial del Comercio (OMC) el Banco Mundial (BM) y el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI). Posteriormente, el autor describe brevemente el rol de México dentro de las instituciones de Comercio Internacional …