goals – Techdirt (original) (raw)

GAO Would Like The FCC To Explain Why It Still Maintains A Pathetic, Dated Definition Of ‘Broadband’

from the setting-the-bar-at-ankle-height dept

The US has always had a fairly pathetic definition of “broadband.”

Originally defined as anything over 200 kbps in either direction, the definition was updated in 2010 to a pathetic 4 Mbps down, 1 Mbps up. It was updated again in 2015 by the FCC to a better, but still arguably pathetic 25 Mbps downstream, 3 Mbps upstream. As we noted then, the broadband industry whined incessantly about having any higher standards, as it would only further highlight industry failure, the harm of monopolization, and a lack of competition.

Unfortunately for them, public pressure has only grown to push the US definition of broadband even higher. Especially as the government prepares to spend an historic $42 billion in broadband subsidies as part of the recently passed infrastructure bill.

In 2021, a small coalition of Senators wrote the Biden administration to recommend that 100 Mbps in both directions become the new baseline. After some lobbying by cable and wireless companies (whose upstream speeds couldn’t match that standard), FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel conceded the agency should probably adopt a new standard: 100 Mbps downstream 20 Mbps up.

Not much has happened since.

Enter the General Accountability Office (GAO), which last week once again issued a report pointing out how the FCC has done a terrible job keeping the definition of broadband updated in modern era. The report also (too politely) notes the FCC hasn’t really bothered to explain to the public why it clings so desperately to the dated 25/3 standard:

“Our analysis of notices of inquiry and deployment reports shows that FCC has not consistently communicated from year to year how it reviews the broadband speed benchmark and determines whether to update it.”

That reason, of course, is regulatory capture. During the Trump era, the FCC was little more than a rubber stamp to the nation’s biggest telecom monopolies, which have fought against higher standards knowing full well it will only highlight limited competition, patchy availability, and slow speeds.

During the Biden era, FCC boss Jessica Rosenworcel has talked a good game about “bridging the digital divide,” but has also been generally averse to meaningfully criticizing those same monopolies. Efforts to appoint a popular reformer to the agency (Gigi Sohn), were demolished by a bipartisan coalition of corrupt Senators, who (surprise!) also pandered to giants like AT&T, Comcast, Charter, and Verizon.

That’s left the FCC (quite intentionally) without the voting majority needed to overcome the agency’s Republican commissioners, who consistently vote in lockstep with the interests of the telecom lobby.

As a result, the FCC has become increasingly irrelevant in the consumer protection arena or when it comes to defining meaningful competitive and deployment standards. That’s shifted the onus to state and local regulators, who may also be incompetent and corrupt depending on where you live.

This is, as they say, why we can’t have nice things. And why the U.S. consistently ranks somewhere in the middle of the pack when it comes to next-generation broadband. We not only lack consistent competition in the U.S. telecom sector, we lack regulators with anything even vaguely resembling a backbone, even on the most rudimentary of issues deemed controversial by industry.

Filed Under: broadband, digital divide, fcc, fiber optic broadband, gao, goals, high speed internet, Mbps, telecom

ESPN And Univision Say Screw Fair Use: Your 6 Second Vine Videos Of World Cup Goals Must Be Taken Down

from the permission-society dept

Last year, we wrote about the ridiculousness of Prince sending DMCA takedowns over 6 second videos on Vine. Those seemed like a pretty clear fair use case. The very nature of Vine, in that it limits videos to 6 seconds seems tailor made for fair use, even if there is no magical time period that guarantees fair use. Either way, it should be no surprise that when it comes to a major sporting event, the powers that be don’t believe in any fair use at all. Similar to the Olympics, nearly every time we write about the World Cup, it involves an aggressive abuse of claimed intellectual property rights to stifle perfectly legitimate communications and content.

The latest, according to the Wall Street Journal, is that ESPN and Univision are rushing around taking down Vine clips of World Cup goals, even to the point that some major media properties have had their Vine accounts killed for being accused of infringement too often:

Since the start of the tournament Vox Media-owned sports site SB Nation, one of the chief purveyors of quick World Cup content, has had two accounts suspended on Vine, according to its managing editor Brian Floyd.

SB Nation received suspension notices from Twitter, Mr. Floyd said, after a complaint from media-protection company Irdeto, which works on behalf of Univision.

?They don?t seem to mind people Vine-ing funny stuff like fans,? explained Clay Wendler, who quickly crafts Vines for SB Nation. But when it comes to goals ? breathtaking moments of glory seemingly tailor-made for the six-second looping video format ? rights-holders are more stringent, Mr. Wendler said.

Considering that fair use rules are explicitly designed for news reporting, it seems rather clear that these are fair use. It’s unclear from the report if SB Nation has appealed the takedown notices or not, but it’s rather unfortunate that Twitter just killed those accounts without bothering to recognize that they’re clearly being used for fair use reporting on the World Cup.

Similarly, the article points to a recent Slate post which for a little while had a video showing all 136 goals scored in the group stage of the World Cup, spliced together in quick clips, but that video has since been removed after ESPN contacted Slate to claim it was infringement. Once again, this seems like a fairly clear cut case of fair use, using news reporting in a transformative manner which isn’t going to impact the market for the original. But, of course, ESPN is owned by Disney, and Disney doesn’t exactly have the best of reputations when it comes to understanding fair use in others (even if it’s been getting better on that front lately).

It’s really too bad that it appears that Slate and Vox/SB Nation appear to have more or less given in to these takedown requests rather than standing up for fair use.

Filed Under: 6 seconds, copyright, fair use, goals, takedowns, videos, vine, world cup
Companies: disney, espn, twitter, univision