Ellen Goodman | Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (original) (raw)

Papers by Ellen Goodman

Following the FCC’s decision to liberalize net neutrality rules in the US, Ellen Goodman from the... more Following the FCC’s decision to liberalize net neutrality rules in the US, Ellen Goodman from the Rutgers University School of Law explains that the impact of the decision hinges on the definition of “commercially reasonable” and argues that the US is on the opposite path from Europe in terms of internet regulation.

Sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Online registration i... more Sponsored by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration Online registration is now closed. We will be accepting on-site registration on a space-available basis.

Regular Internet users have become accustomed to freely circulating content, but is it really fre... more Regular Internet users have become accustomed to freely circulating content, but is it really free? Rutgers University Law Professor and LSE Visiting Fellow Ellen Goodman urges consideration of the “discourse costs” of freely distributed content, highlighting examples from the US that she finds particularly concerning.

Rutgers Professor Ellen Goodman explains why 80 scholars from around the world have released an o... more Rutgers Professor Ellen Goodman explains why 80 scholars from around the world have released an open letter to Google asking for more transparency on how it responds to user requests to delist search results, following the so-called right to be forgotten ruling last year.

This week, the Supreme Court unanimously concluded that warrants would be necessary for police to... more This week, the Supreme Court unanimously concluded that warrants would be necessary for police to search mobile phones. Ellen Goodman argues that the decision could impact the NSA’s gathering of communications metadata and have implications for privacy and freedom of speech.

Professor Ellen P. Goodman is a Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Co-Director of the Rut... more Professor Ellen P. Goodman is a Professor of Law at Rutgers University and Co-Director of the Rutgers Institute for Information Policy & Law. Her research interests include media policy, spectrum policy, free speech, and the use of information as a policy tool. Here she argues that existing media and plurality policies need to evolve to account for new complexities in the converged media ecology. An emerging policy of informational justice would, for starters, focus on digital intermediary transparency and accountability in the exercise of algorithmic authority.

SSRN Electronic Journal

As a society, we are now at a crucial juncture in determining how to deploy A-based technologies ... more As a society, we are now at a crucial juncture in determining how to deploy A-based technologies in ways that promote, not hinder, democratic values such as freedom, equality, and transparency. ,-As artificial intelligence and big data analytics increasingly replace human decision making, questions about algorithmic ethics become more pressing. Many are concerned that an algorithmic society is too opaque to be accountable for its behavior. An individual can be denied parole or credit, fired, or not hired for reasons that she will never know and which cannot be articulated. In the public sector, the opacity of algorithmic decision making is particularly problematic, both because governmental decisions may be especially weighty and because democratically elected governments have special duties of accountability. We set out to test the limits of transparency around governmental deployment of big data analytics, contributing to the literature on algorithmic accountability with a thorough study of the opacity of governmental predictive algorithms. Using open records processes, we focused our investigation on local and state government deployment of predictive algorithms. It is here, in local government, that algorithmically-determined decisions can be most directly impactful. And it is here that stretched agencies are most likely to hand over data analytics to private vendors, which may make design and policy choices unseen by client agencies, the public, or both. To test how impenetrable the resulting "black box" algorithms are, we filed forty-two open

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Federal Communications Law Journal, 1997

is an attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling, which represents broadcaste... more is an attorney in the Washington, D.C. office of Covington & Burling, which represents broadcasters in digital television proceedings. The views expressed in this article are solely the views of the author. 1. Telecommunications Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-104, 110 Stat. 56 (to be codified in scattered sections of 47 U.S.C.). to use their assigned channels flexibly so long as they do not interfere with advanced television services, including high definition television; (c) DTV licensees should pay fees for certain uses of the DTV channel; and (d) broadcasters should surrender one of their two licenses at some point in the future. 47 U.S.C.A. § 336 (West Supp. 1996). 3. The radio spectrum is a conceptual tool used to organize the physical phenomena of waves produced by electric and magnetic fields. These waves move through space at different frequencies. The group of frequencies from 3000 cycles per second (3 kilohertz (KHz)) to 300 billion cycles per second (300 gigahertz (GHz)) comprises what is known as the radio spectrum. Television broadcasting operates at the low end of this spectrum, between 54 megahertz (MHz) and 806 MHz, on channels 2-69 (each consisting of 6 MHz). 4. The FCC did conclude the DTV rulemaking on April 3, 1997 by adopting the Fifth and Sixth Reports and Orders in the DTV proceeding. As of this writing, the texts of those orders had not been released.

On Tuesday, a U.S. appeals court ruled on a landmark net neutrality case against the Federal Comm... more On Tuesday, a U.S. appeals court ruled on a landmark net neutrality case against the Federal Communications Commission. Ellen Goodman explains the decision and its implications, and warns of the potential risks to the public internet, such as some content now being able to receive priority service at the expense of others.

Law-Camden. I am very grateful to Aaron Wredberg and to Professors Bob Brauneis, Thomas Dienes, a... more Law-Camden. I am very grateful to Aaron Wredberg and to Professors Bob Brauneis, Thomas Dienes, and Dawn Nunziato for the opportunity to participate in this symposium. Like so many others, I thank Professor Jerome Barron for his scholarship and moral leadership on media policy, which has inspired so much good work in this area, including Professor Magarian's.

How access to radio frequencies should be controlled and what different control structures might ... more How access to radio frequencies should be controlled and what different control structures might mean for the development of wireless communications has been the subject of intense debate. Legal scholars and economists have proposed radical reformation of the current regime of spectrum regulation, and such reform is being considered at both the FCC and in Congress. The next few years will be critical in shaping the wireless world to come. Despite the importance and timeliness of the debate over spectrum rights, the theoretical literature has not advanced beyond first principles. Many have written, in the tradition of Coase, in favor of exclusive property rights in spectrum. More recently, several scholars have countered that spectrum should be managed as a commons in which transmission rights are broadly shared, subject only to compliance with certain technical protocols. What has received little attention is the question of how spectrum disputes should be resolved the day after the...

The Communications Act requires the FCC to auction rights to use the electromagnetic spectrum so ... more The Communications Act requires the FCC to auction rights to use the electromagnetic spectrum so as to recover, for the public, a portion of the value of the public spectrum resource and avoid the unjust enrichment of licensees. This use of the venerable common law doctrine of unjust enrichment is unique in the U.S. Code. Its inclusion in the alien medium of communications law raises intriguing questions about how spectrum access should be valued and how fairness in the distribution of access rights can be achieved. Complaints that there has been unjust enrichment or a spectrum giveaway are common at the FCC. These claims about spectrum equity slow the FCC's efforts to give parties the rights to use old licenses for new purposes. If unlicensed spectrum users come to gain protection from interference, or the right to cause interference, claims about equity will crop up here too. It is both desirable and necessary for policymakers to address these claims with a clearer understandi...

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission held its largest ever spectrum auction, selling ... more Last year, the Federal Communications Commission held its largest ever spectrum auction, selling exclusive rights to use coveted wireless frequencies for approximately $20 billion. This turned out to be the largest ever single auction of public property in U.S. history. Aside from its sheer magnitude, the auction of frequencies in the 700 MHz band was notable for the federal government's attempt to use the auction process as a mechanism to value various conflicting public policy goals. For the first time, the FCC set out to ascertain just how much a contested policy goal would cost in foregone auction revenue and vowed to give up the goal if it cost too much. This use of auctions as a heuristic for valuing public interest goals raises interesting questions about the relationship between markets and policy, and between government as a proprietor of public resources and as a regulator of those resources. I argue that it is possible to use auction results to inform the policy proce...

Two principal pillars of media policy are communications and copyright law. In each discipline, t... more Two principal pillars of media policy are communications and copyright law. In each discipline, there are pluralists who seek greater public access to the means of communications (communications policy pluralists) and communicative content (copyright pluralists). Historically, communications policy pluralists have sought government interventions in the marketplace in order to increase access to mass communications. Copyright pluralists, by contrast, have fought against regulatory interventions they argue unduly strengthen the rights of copyright holders to deny access to content. In pursuing these strategies, the pluralists have used First Amendment arguments that are in tension with each other and ultimately unavailing in the courts. These arguments, drawing on the rhetoric of free speech rights and values, shortchange the complexity of free speech interests at stake when the government reallocates speech opportunities. This article argues that only by abandoning traditional First ...

Routledge Handbook of Media Law, 2012

ABSTRACT The emergence of public service media in the mid-twentieth century on both sides of the ... more ABSTRACT The emergence of public service media in the mid-twentieth century on both sides of the Atlantic was a response to particular technological realities and market structures. Public media systems manifested theories about the function of media in a democracy, the sources of cultural authority and innovation, the limitations of the market, and the values of social cohesion and inclusion.In the early twenty-first century, the underlying theories and justifications for public service media are now in flux. Those who defend continued public funding of legacy and new non-commercial media services, and work to reform their operations, have struggled to untangle the contingencies of twentieth-century organizational structures from the enduring values that spawned their creation. In other words, policymakers and commentators have recognized that legacy public broadcasting systems must be updated for a post-broadcasting world, or wither away. But the values and purposes of a new, multi-platform, multi-actor public media system are not yet clearly articulated.This chapter argues that the American system of public service media -- long the poor cousin of the world's better-funded systems -- in fact may model new forms of service for the digital age. This evolving model includes diverse funding sources, distributed ownership and citizen engagement. And it is grounded in narratives of community service, innovation and democratic participation, as well as in those of market failure and canonical excellence. The chapter traces these distinct and sometimes conflicting narratives through the history of American public service media, with comparisons to the UK and European contexts. It concludes that a strong version of the innovation narrative is best suited to shape the future functions and structures for public service media in 21st century, media-rich democracies.

Cornell law review, 2014

The ability of government to "nudge" with information mandates, or merely to inform con... more The ability of government to "nudge" with information mandates, or merely to inform consumers of risks, is circumscribed by First Amendment interests that have been poorly articulated. New graphic cigarette warning labels supplied courts with the first opportunity to assess the informational interests attending novel forms of product disclosures. The D.C. Circuit enjoined them as unconstitutional, compelled by a narrative that the graphic labels converted government from objective informer to ideological persuader, shouting its warning to manipulate consumer decisions. This interpretation will leave little room for graphic disclosure and is already being used to challenge textual disclosure requirements (such as county-of-origin labeling) as unconstitutional. Graphic warning and the increasing reliance on regulation-by-disclosure present new free speech quandaries related to consumer autonomy, state normativity, and speaker liberty. This Article examines the distinct goals...

Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 2010

... Ellen P. Goodman* & Anne H. Chen** ... POLICY REFORM FOR PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA .....163 A.... more ... Ellen P. Goodman* & Anne H. Chen** ... POLICY REFORM FOR PUBLIC SERVICE MEDIA .....163 A. Amend the Public Broadcasting Act To Become the Public Service MediaAct.....163 B. Mandate Interconnection Throughout the Network ...