Communications Law Commons^™

Voice Over Internet Protocol: An International Approach To Regulation, Jimar Sanders

Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law

No abstract provided.

An Overlooked Basis Of Jurisdiction Of Net Neutrality: The World Trade Organization Agreement On Basic Telecommunications Services, Jennifer A. Manner, Alejandro Hernandez

CommLaw Conspectus: Journal of Communications Law and Technology Policy (1993-2015)

No abstract provided.

Procedural Architecture Matters: Innovation Policy At The Federal Communications Commission, J. Brad Bernthal

Publications

This Article examines the puzzle of whether today's Federal Communications Commission ("FCC" or the "Agency") is institutionally suited to craft telecommunications innovation policy and, if not, what changes are needed to better equip the Agency to respond to twenty-first century realities. Evaluation of FCC innovation policy performance is stubbornly difficult. Some criticize the FCC as a brake on innovation yet, under the FCC's oversight, the United States' communications industry has become an innovative engine propelling the overall economy more than ever before. It is difficult to untangle whether the FCC deserves credit for helping usher in today's communications age, whether …

Hanging Up Too Early: Remedies To Reduce Robocalls, Maria G. Hibbard

Journal of Law, Technology, & the Internet

No abstract provided.

Introductory Note To The Final Acts Of The World Conference On International Telecommunications, David P. Fidler

Articles by Maurer Faculty

On December 14, 2012, member states of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) approved the Final Acts of the World Conference on International Telecommunications. The ITU is the specialized agency of the United Nations fostering cooperation on information and communication technologies, and, through world conferences, it periodically revises the International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs), a treaty the ITU adopted in 1988.2 However, in December 2012, the Final Acts, the manner in which they were approved, and the World Conference proved controversial, and these controversies will adversely affect the impact of the Final Acts and the revised ITRs on international telecommunications law.

Fcc Ancillary Jurisdiction Over Internet And Broadband, Michael Botein

Articles & Chapters

No abstract provided.

Telecommunications: Communications Law Reform, Jonathan Baker, Robert Mcdowell, Ajit Pai, Daniel Crane, Maureen Ohlhausen, Jennifer Elrod

Presentations

The transcript was published on 2013 Journal of Law, Technology & Policy University of Illinois Issue 1.

Satmed: Legal Aspects Of The Physical Layer Of Satellite Telemedicine, Stephen Rooke

Michigan Journal of International Law

In 2003, Paul Hunt, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights' Special Rapporteur on the Right to Health, presented a report on the global availability of health care. Special Rapporteur Hunt argued that states are obligated to implement a right to health. Included in this right is the obligation "to ensure that no international agreement or policy adversely impacts upon the right to health, and that .. . international organizations take due account of the right to health, as well as the obligation of international assistance and cooperation, in all policy-making matters." One area Hunt left unexplored in his report was …

Communications Disruption And Censorship Under International Law: History Lessons, Jonathon Penney

Articles, Book Chapters, & Popular Press

With Internet censorship on the rise around the world, a variety of tools have proliferated to assist Internet users to circumvent such censorship. However, there are few studies examining the implications of censorship circumvention under international law, and its related politics. This paper aims to help fill some of that void, with an examination of case studies wherein global communications technologies have been disrupted or censored — telegram cable cutting and censorship, high frequency radio jamming, and direct broadcast satellite blocking — and how the world community responded to that disruption or censorship through international law and law making. In …

Unfit For Prime Time: Why Cable Television Regulations Cannot Perform Trinko's 'Antitrust Function', Keith Klovers

Michigan Law Review

Until recently, regulation and antitrust law operated in tandem to safeguard competition in regulated industries. In three recent decisions-Trinko, Credit Suisse, and Linkline-the Supreme Court limited the operation of the antitrust laws when regulation "performs the antitrust function." This Note argues that cable programming regulations-which are in some respects factually similar to the telecommunications regulations at issue in Trinko and Linkline-do not perform the antitrust function because they cannot deter anticompetitive conduct. As a result, Trinko and its siblings should not foreclose antitrust claims for damages that arise out of certain cable programming disputes.

Antitrust Review Of The At&T/T-Mobile Transaction, Maurice E. Stucke, Allen Grunes

College of Law Faculty Scholarship

In this Essay, we review AT&T Inc.’s proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA, Inc., under federal merger law, under the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission’s 2010 Horizontal Merger Guidelines, and with a focus on possible remedies. We find, under a rule of law approach, that the proposed acquisition is presumptively anticompetitive, and the merging parties in their public disclosures have failed to overcome this presumption. Next we find that under the Merger Guidelines, there is reason to believe that the transaction may result in higher prices to consumers under several different plausible theories. Finally, we turn …

Technology Convergence And Federalism: Who Should Decide The Future Of Telecommunications Regulation?, Daniel A. Lyons

University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform

This Article critically examines the division of regulatory jurisdiction over telecommunications issues between the federal government and the states. Currently, the line between federal and state jurisdiction varies depending on the service at issue. This compartmentalization might have made sense fifteen years ago, but the advent of technology convergence has largely rendered this model obsolete. Yesterday's telephone and cable companies now compete head-to-head to offer consumers the vaunted "triple play" of voice, video, and internet services. But these telecommunications companies are finding it increasingly difficult to fit new operations into arcane, rigid regulatory compartments. Moreover, services that consumers view as …

Fcc Regulation And Increased Ownership Concentration In The Radio Industry, Peter Dicola

Faculty Working Papers

In 1996, Congress increased the limits on how many radio stations one firm can own within a single "radio market." To enforce these limits, the FCC used an idiosyncratic method of defining radio markets, based on the complex geometry of the signal contour patterns of radio stations' broadcasts. Using a unique geographic data set, this paper provides the first calculations of the pre- and post-1996 limits on local radio ownership as actually implemented by the FCC. The limits are surprisingly permissive and vary considerably from city to city. While the limits were seldom binding on radio firms, I find a …

Ill Telecommunications: How Internet Infrastructure Providers Lose First Amendment Protection, Nicholas Bramble

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently proposed an Internet nondiscrimination rule: "Subject to reasonable network management, a provider of broadband Internet access service must treat lawful content, applications, and services in a nondiscriminatory manner." Among other requests, the FCC sought comment on whether the proposed nondiscrimination rule would "promote free speech, civic participation, and democratic engagement," and whether it would "impose any burdens on access providers' speech that would be cognizable for purposes of the First Amendment." The purpose of this Article is to suggest that a wide range of responses to these First Amendment questions, offered by telecommunications providers …

Internet Governance And Democratic Legitimacy, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Even as the Internet goes pop, federal policymakers continue to surrender their statutory obligation to regulate communications in the first instance to extralegal nongovernmental organizations comprised of technical experts. The Federal Communications Commission’s conclusion that a major broadband service provider's network management practices were unreasonable is a case in point. There, in the absence of any decisive legislative or even regulatory guidance, the FCC turned principally to the engineering principles on which the Internet Engineering Task Force bases transmission standards: to wit, (1) decentralization, (2) interoperability, and (3) user empowerment. This impulse to defer as a matter of course to …

Comments Of 71 Concerned Economists: Using Procurement Auctions To Allocate Broadband Stimulus Grants, Jonathan Baker, William Baumol, Kenneth Arrow, Susan Athey, Coleman Bazelon, Timothy Brennan, Timothy Bresnahan, Jeremy Bulow, Yeon-Koo Che, Peter Cramton, Daniel Ackerberg, James Alleman, Gregory Crawford, Peter Demarzo, Gerald Faulhaber, Jeremy Fox, Ian Gale, Jacob Goeree, Brent Goldfarb, Shane Greenstein, Robert Hahn, Robert Hall, Ward Hanson, Barry Harris, Robert Harris, Janice Hauge, Jerry Hausman, Thomas Hazlett, Kenneth Hendricks, Heather Hudson, Mark Jamison, John Kagel, Alfred Kahn, Ilan Kremer, Vijay Krishna, William Lehr, Thomas Lenard, Jonathan Levin, Yuanchuan Lien, John Mayo, David Mcadams, Paul Milgrom, Roger Noll, Bruce Owen, Charles Plott, Robert Porter, Philip Reny, Michael Riordan, David Salant, Scott Savage, William Samuelson, Richard Schmalensee, Marius Schwartz, Andrzej Skrzypacz, Vernon Smith, Daniel Vincent, Joel Waldfogel, Scott Wallsten, Robert Weber, Bradley Wimmer, Glenn Woroch, Lixin Ye, John Hayes, Gregory Rosston

Legislative Testimony & Comments

The signatories to this document are economists who have studied telecommunications, auctions, and competition policy. While we may disagree about the stimulus package, we believe that it is important to implement mechanisms that make stimulus spending as efficient as possible. To that end, we have come together to encourage the National Telecommunications Information Agency (NTIA) and Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to adopt auction mechanisms to allocate broadband stimulus grants. The broadband stimulus NOI asks which mechanisms NTIA and RUS should use to distribute grants and how those mechanisms address shortcomings in traditional grant and loan programs. In this note we …

Wireless Net Neutrality Regulation And The Problem With Pricing: An Empirical, Cautionary Tale, Babette E.L. Boliek

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

I present here a unique empirical analysis of the consumer welfare benefits of prior regulation in the mobile telecommunications industry. In particular, I analyze the relative consumer benefits of state rate regulation and federal entry regulation. The institution of filing requirements and FTC review and approval of various consumer pricing regimes is highly analogous to the consumer price controls imposed by various state level public utility commissions in the past. Furthermore, the imposition of a zero-price rule is analogous to past rate regulation; in particular it is similar to past wholesale regulation with its underlying principles of open access and …

Regulating Robocalls: Are Automated Calls The Sound Of, Or A Threat To, Democracy, Jason C. Miller

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

African-American voters receive a phone message implying that they are not registered to vote. Others hear "an almost threatening male voice," a "fake New York accent," factual distortions about legislation, false endorsements from controversial groups, calls promoting one candidate claiming to be from his opponent, and a constant barrage of annoying phone calls designed to make voters think a different candidate was sponsoring them. These messages were delivered through automated political telephone calls, also known as robocalls. Robocalls are cheap and efficient--one can deliver a pre-recorded message through 100,000 automated phone calls in one hour for only $2000. Consequently, robocalls …

Inter-American System, Claudia Martin

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

When Mobile Phones Are Rfid-Equipped - Finding E.U.-U.S. Solutions To Protect Consumer Privacy And Facilitate Mobile Commerce, Nancy J. King

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

New mobile phones have been designed to include delivery of mobile advertising and other useful location-based services, but have they also been designed to protect consumers' privacy? One of the key enabling technologies for these new types of phones and new mobile services is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), a wireless communication technology that enables the unique identification of tagged objects. In the case of RFID-enabled mobile phones, the personal nature of the devices makes it very likely that, by locating a phone, businesses will also be able to locate its owner. Consumers are currently testing new RFID-enabled phones around the …

Reexamining The Legacy Of Dual Regulation: Reforming Dual Merger Review By The Doj And The Fcc, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

Most debates over the structure of merger review in the telecommunications industry focus on the criticism that the role of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is entirely redundant in light of the review conducted by the antitrust agencies. The FCC's lack of a consistently applied standard only reinforces such criticisms. There are, however, cases where the FCC's review of a merger - and imposition of conditions that complement the existing regulatory regime - enable the antitrust agencies to clear mergers that would otherwise pose potential objections.

The central challenge for competition policy merger review is to structure the analysis of …

Justice, And Only Justice, You Shall Pursue: Network Neutrality, The First Amendment And John Rawls's Theory Of Justice, Amit M. Schejter, Moran Yemini

Michigan Telecommunications & Technology Law Review

As broadband becomes the public's technology of choice to access the Internet, it is also emerging as the battlefield upon which the struggle for control of the Internet is being fought. Operators who provide physical access to the service claim the right to discriminate among the content providers who use the infrastructure in which the operators have invested. In contrast, content providers warn that exercising such a policy would "undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success."[...] For academic observers, analysis of this issue has thus far been confined to the areas of property law, innovation, and …

Wireless Carterfone, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Over the next decade, regulators will spend increasing time on conflicts between the private interests of the wireless industry and the public’s interest in the best uses of its spectrum. This report examines the practices of the wireless industry with an eye toward understanding their influence on innovation and consumer welfare.

In many respects, the mobile wireless market is and remains a wonder. Thanks to both policy and technological innovations, devices that were science fiction 30 years ago are now widely available. Over the last decade, wireless mobile has been an “infant industry,” attempting to achieve economies of scale. That …

A Brief History Of American Telecommunications Regulation, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

While the history of governmental regulation of communication is at least as long as the history of censorship, the modern regulation of long-distance, or "tele," communications is relatively short and can be dated to the rise of the telegraph in the mid-19th century. The United States left the telegraph in private hands, unlike countries and as opposed to the U.S. postal system, and has done the same with most of the significant telecommunications facilities that have been developed since. The decision to allow private ownership of telecommunications infrastructure has led to a rather particularized regulation of these private owners of …

21st Century Pillow-Talk: Applicability Of The Marital Communications Privilege To Electronic Mail, Mikah K. Story

ExpressO

This article is the first to explore whether the marital communications privilege, which protects from disclosure private communications between spouses, should attach to communication sent via Web-based email. Traditionally, the privilege does not attach where a third party learns, either intentionally or inadvertently, the content of an otherwise private communication. In the world of Web-based email, disclosure to a third party is necessary in order for successful communication to occur. Writers of Web-based email draft a message and store it on a third-party Internet Service Provider’s (ISP) server until the recipient reads the message. Even after the email has been …

Unwarranted Fears Mask The Benefits Of Network Diversity: An Argument Against Mandating Network Neutrality, Elvis Stumbergs

ExpressO

The rapid development of the Internet has necessitated an update to Federal telecommunications laws. Recent Congressional efforts to enact such an update, however, have spawned a fiery debate over a somewhat nebulous concept: network neutrality. The debate concerns the way that Internet access providers handle the data traffic being sent over their networks. These providers would like the option to offer some of their customers, web site hosting companies and similar entities, additional services that would essentially result in these customers’ content loading faster, more reliably, or more securely than others not receiving such priority treatment. Yet, this proposed “diversity” …

What’S The Hang Up? The Future Of Voip Regulation And Taxation In New Hampshire, Kate Winstanley

The University of New Hampshire Law Review

Alice in Austria wishes to call her friend Bob in Boston, using a Boston area code to avoid charges for an international call. Using VoIP, Alice may initiate her call from any location in Austria where she may find Internet access. Once Alice connects to the Internet, she can transmit her call with the aid of a VoIP service provider, such as Skype. In order to hear and communicate with Bob, Alice can rely on a microphone and a headset that she can plug into her computer. Through VoIP, not only may Alice carry on a telephone conversation, but most …

Regulatory Status Of Voip In The Post-Brand X World, Jerry Ellig

ExpressO

During the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has engaged in a series of rulemakings to determine the regulatory status of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The Supreme Court’s Brand X decision clarifies that even if the FCC’s determination conflicts with that of a court, the FCC’s judgment holds sway as long as the decision is reasonable. We believe that VoIP should be classified as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service, for several reasons. First, the Internet Protocol nature of VoIP technology means that it functions like an information service, rather than a telecommunications service. Second, in …

Anticipating Regulation Of New Telecommunications Technologies: An Argument For The European Model, Jessica Finley

Northwestern Journal of International Law & Business

This paper argues that the United States should look to the European Community in order to rework its telecommunications regulatory structure. More specifically, the United States should reconsider its current system of regulating various telecommunications sectors separately and follow the European Commission by developing a "single regulatory framework." By regulating the telecommunications transmission separately from telecommunications content, the United States can better anticipate emerging technologies rather than struggling to catch up with new technologies as they exceed the reach of the current regulatory framework. Part II will discuss the U.S. and European telecommunications regulatory frameworks. Part III will discuss the …

Regulation Of Municipal Wi-Fi, Michael Botein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.