Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic (TLPC)
Public interest technology law and policy advocacy at Colorado Law
cross-posted from Authors Alliance
The following blog post was authored by Becca Lynch, a student clinician with the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at University of Colorado Boulder under the supervision of Professor Blake Reid, as part of an Authors Alliance student clinic project on library e-book licensing legislation.
Continue reading “The Constitutionality of Library E-Book Licensing Legislation”Led by Colorado Law student attorneys John Jang, Victoria Venzor, and Peter Troupe, the TLPC today filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on behalf of a coalition of accessibility, security, and repair individuals and organizations, supporting the lawsuit of security researcher Dr. Matthew Green and others, represented by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, over a controversial copyright law. The brief urged the court to conclude that Section 1201 of Title 17 of the U.S. Code, added by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998, violates the First Amendment by chilling fair uses aimed at making copyrighted works accessible to people with disabilities, researching security vulnerabilities in computer software, and repairing software-enabled vehicles and devices. Section 1201 prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs) on copyrighted works, requiring accessibility, security, and repair organizations to pursue exemptions in a burdensome triennial rulemaking conducted by the U.S. Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. The brief details the substantive and procedural harms of Section 1201 and the rulemaking to the First Amendment rights of people with disabilities, disability services organizations and libraries, security researchers, and ordinary consumers and repair professionals.
In light of the ongoing pandemic, emergency call centers (ECCs) and public safety answering points (PSAPs) are faced with the question of whether to screen callers for COVID-19. The benefits of this screening will protect first responders—but on the other hand, ECC/PSAPs are concerned that screening callers may raise legal issues.
TLPC student attorney Kelsey Fayer drafted a white paper addressing whether ECC/PSAPs need to comply with privacy laws. First, caller screening information, if it is voluntary, likely satisfies relevant compliance requirements. Second, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) likely does not apply to PSAP/ECCs regarding a caller’s COVID-19 status. Finally, PSAP/ECCs should work with local public health authorities to implement privacy best practices. The white paper includes a 50-state chart mapping current PSAP/ECC practices around screening callers and state health privacy laws that may be applicable to PSAP/ECC COVID-19 caller queries.
In consultation with Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI), the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), the American Council of the Blind (ACB), the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), and the Technology Access Program (TAP) at Gallaudet University, the TLPC and our sister Communications and Technology Law Clinic (CTLC) at Georgetown Law developed an overview of critical technology accessibility priorities for a new administration at the Federal Communications Commission. The overview encourages the transition team and the FCC to:
(by Kelsey Fayer, Colorado Law 2L)
Today, the TLPC, in partnership with our sister Samuelson-Glushko Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) at the University of Ottawa, filed comments drafted by Prof. Margot Kaminski (Colorado Law) and Prof. Vivek Krishnamurthy (University of Ottowa) on behalf of a coalition of privacy researchers before the
Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC).
WASHINGTON – On July 31, the TLPC, on behalf of its client Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI) and in partnership with the National Association of the Deaf (NAD), the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA), the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), the Cerebral Palsy and Deaf Organization (CPADO), Deaf Seniors of America (DSA), the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Technology Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (DHH-RERC), the Twenty-First Century Captioning Disability and Rehabilitation Research Project (Captioning DRRP), the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Universal Interface & Information Technology Access (IT-RERC), and the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, supported by the American Association of the DeafBlind (AADB) petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to address long-standing quality problems with captioning for live television programming.
Continue reading “Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Groups and Researchers Call on FCC to Improve the Quality of Live Captions”Today, New America’s Open Technology Institute, the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, and Free Press, with the assistance of the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic at Colorado Law, including Colorado Law 2L student attorneys Nathan Bartell and Zachary DeFelice, filed a complaint at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding the sale and disclosure of customer location information by all four major U.S. wireless carriers: AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint.
Continue reading “TLPC Files Complaint Against Wireless Carriers Over Unauthorized Disclosure and Sale of Customer Location Information”(by Blake Reid, TLPC Director and Kayla Enriquez and Sarah Rippy, Colorado Law 2Ls)
The Federal Trade Commission is conducting a workshop entitled Nixing the Fix, which is aimed at exploring issues around the right to repair. In our submission to the Commission, we have submitted a curated archive of the record developed during the Copyright Office’s various proceedings that have raised repair-related issues, including its 2012, 2015, and 2018 triennial reviews of exemptions from Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, its 1201 Policy Study, and its Software-Enabled Consumer Products Study.