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TLPC Publishes White Paper on the 911 Accessibility Regulatory Framework- An Update of 2015 TLPC 911 Accessibility Whitepaper

(by Jake Stephens, Colorado Law 2L)

Student attorney Jake Stephens wrote a white paper updating federal and Colorado regulatory frameworks governing 911 accessibility, updating a white paper on the same topic published by the TLPC in 2015. This update covers recent developments in 911 access regulatory dockets at the FCC, a summary of a withdrawal of proposed updates to 911 accessibility regulations under the Americans with Disabilities Act by the Department of Justice, and a glimpse into state 911 accessibility regulations with Colorado as the case study.

TLPC 911 and Accessibility White Paper (PDF)Download

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TLPC and CIPPIC Samuelson-Glushko Clinics File OPC Comments for Privacy Researchers on the Regulation of Artificial Intelligence

(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).

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TLPC Partners with Network Security Researchers and Public Interest Organizations to Call for Greater Cell Network Security

(by TLPC student attorneys Parker Nagle, Andrew Leddy, and Kennedy Smith)

On behalf of a coalition of independent network security researchers and public interest organizations, the Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law and Policy Clinic at Colorado Law filed reply comments on the FCC’s 2019 National Security Supply Chain Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking calling for greater cell network security. The TLPC worked with the coalition to draw attention to the many vulnerabilities plaguing cell networks that the Order did not address and to outline the broad but underutilized, authority the FCC has to advance meaningful solutions. The coalition included CU-Boulder researchers Dr. Eric Wustrow, Dr. Dirk Grunwald, and Dr. Sangtae Ha, mobile security researchers Joseph Hall, Yomna Nasser, Marcus Prem, and Ashley Wilson, and public interest organizations Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Public Knowledge, and Eye on Surveillance.

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TLPC Partners with CU Engineering to Comment on New Satellite Regulations

The TLPC, partnering with Dr. Scott E. Palo and CU Engineering, worked in close collaboration to influence important national policy for small satellites at the Federal Communications Commission. The Samuelson-Glushko Tech Law and Policy Clinic at Colorado Law, led by Colorado student attorneys (now alums) Galen Pospisil and Megan Chavez, and Jake Stephens, accompanied by Stefan Tschimben a PhD candidate in the Technology, Cybersecurity, and Policy Program (TCP), worked under the supervision of Colorado Law Associate Clinical Professor Blake E. Reid to represent Dr. Palo, Professor in the Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Program to comment on the FCC’s rulemaking process.

The CU-led comment was the result of collaboration with distinguished small satellite researchers at universities across the U.S, including the University of Florida, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, and others. The collaboration between TLPC and Palo allowed the comment to offer thoughtful commentary on a variety of complex issues, including satellite deployment heights, propulsion requirements, application fees, wireless spectrum requirements, and more.

The CU comment had a significant effect on the FCC’s rulemaking, helping lead the FCC to significantly lower deployment height, ensuring university researchers would maintain a range of small satellite licensing options, and more. For example, the comment successfully argued that the FCC’s proposed deployment rules would hinder university researchers from conducting important climate and space weather research.

“It’s critical that university researchers can launch critical scientific and other public interest missions that take advantage of the decreased size and cost of the small satellite form factor. It’s a privilege for the clinic to work with Dr. Palo and his colleagues to ensure the ability for university researchers to have access to space for their important work,” Professor Reid said.

“This project was a great example of how a collaboration between the College of Engineering and Law School can be impactful while educating student. As subject matter experts, the engineers provided specific details about the technical challenges and the law students used this information to create a convincing argument,” Dr. Palo said. “The TLPC took the lead on creating the filing and insured the documents were succinct and professional.”

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TLPC Files Amicus Brief on Behalf of Print Disability Advocates in Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org

On October 16, 2019, the TLPC filed a brief of amici curiae in the matter of Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, a case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court of the United States involving the copyrightability of annotations to state law. The TLPC filed the brief of amici curiae on behalf of print disability advocate organizations American Association of the Deaf-Blind, American Council of the Blind, Burton Blatt Institute, Disability Rights Advocates, National Federation of the Blind, World Institute on Disability, and individual print researcher and advocate Sina Bahram. The brief addresses concerns about Georgia’s failure to provide its laws to those with print disabilities in accessible forms as required by Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. As part of its wider project to promote free and open access to the law, Public.Resource.Org has undertaken to make the law accessible to those with print disabilities. The brief also raises concerns about Georgia’s use of copyright law to quash efforts to provide the accessible information which Georgia has itself failed to provide and underscored that making works accessible to those with disabilities is an uncontroversially non-infringing fair use.

Print Disability Advocates Brief (PDF)Download
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Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Groups and Researchers Call on FCC to Improve the Quality of Live Captions

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.

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How The rightsback.org Termination of Transfer Tool Helps Authors (Cross-post from Authors Alliance)

The following is a guest post by Luke Ewing, student attorney at the Colorado Law Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic. We’d like to thank Luke and his classmates Sean Doran and Andi Wilt, and their supervisor Blake Reid, at Colorado Law; and law students Eric Malmgren, Erica Row, and Julia Wu, and their supervisor Jack Lerner, at UC Irvine Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinic for their assistance with the development of the Termination of Transfer tool and templates.

Erica Row, Julia Wu, Pamela Samuelson, Mike Wolfe, Eric Malmgren, and Jack Lerner (not pictured: Sean Doran, Luke Ewing, Andi Wilt, and Blake Reid)

Yesterday, Authors Alliance and Creative Commons released the Termination of Transfer tool at rightsback.org. You may be wondering what the tool does and how termination helps authors. Along with many other beta testers, student attorneys at the Colorado Law Samuelson-Glushko Technology Law & Policy Clinic and the UC-Irvine Intellectual Property, Arts, and Technology Clinichelped verify that the tool accurately reflects the state of termination law. We scoured statutes, regulations, and case history to determine what is required to make the termination process go smoothly under a wide range of circumstances. We also tested the tool to ensure that its results accurately reflect the current state of the law. Finally, we drafted a standardized form and written guidance that make the paperwork simple once an author decides to exercise their termination right.

Authors who assigned their copyrights many years ago may feel that their works are being underutilized or misrepresented, or they may want to renegotiate their earlier agreements. Fortunately, Congress devised a mechanism by which authors can take back those rights. This is a critical opportunity for authors who made less-than-advantageous deals early in their careers, saw their works become unavailable when a publisher went bankrupt, or want to release their works into the public domain or under an open access license. But because the window for termination opens decades after that original transfer of rights and requires navigating a particularly difficult and complex area of copyright law, exercising termination rights can be daunting.

Termination windows are determined by three separate subsections of the Copyright Act (§ 203, 304(c), and 304(d)), the format and instructions for notifying the Copyright Office are spelled out in a list of very particular regulations, and each subsection of the Copyright Act yields a different list of regulations. Determining whether the window is open for a copyrighted work, or which subsection applies, depends on a number of variables, including:

  • Was it published?
  • If so, when was it published?
  • When were rights transferred?
  • Did those rights include the right of publication?
  • Has the agreement already been renegotiated?
  • Were there multiple authors involved, and do they all agree to terminating the transfer?
  • Are all the authors still alive?
  • And more.

Every one of these questions is relevant, and every answer leads down different branches of a decision tree that indicates whether, when, and how an author may exercise termination rights rights. Without help, trying to understand these rights can be tedious and discouraging.

The tool makes understanding the process easy.  It knows which questions to ask and what to do with the answers to those questions. Within minutes, the tool helps authors better understand how termination of transfer works. Congress intended for authors to exercise these rights, and Authors Alliance wants to simplify the process by removing as much confusion and uncertainty as possible. If you want to learn more about taking back the rights to your work, or are just curious about the process, you can try out the tool right now. It’s free, simple, and only takes a few minutes.

And if you decide to exercise your termination rights, check out our termination of transfer resource page for notice of termination templates, a cover letter, and instructions on how to notify the Copyright Office as well as any relevant parties.

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TLPC Files Complaint Against Wireless Carriers Over Unauthorized Disclosure and Sale of Customer Location Information

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.

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TLPC Releases White Paper for EFF Reevaluating Sharing Obligations for the Modern U.S. Wireline Broadband Market

(by Elliott Browning, Colorado Law 2L)

The TLPC is happy to release a white paper, prepared on behalf of and in collaboration with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reevaluating the viability of sharing obligations in light of lackluster competition and deployment in the modern wireline broadband market. With an eye towards remedying this stagnation and encouraging the widespread deployment of fiber-to-the-home, the paper discusses the history and development of competition in last-mile connectivity.

Specifically, the paper evaluates the current market for high-speed wireline broadband in the U.S. with a specific focus on the deficiency in fiber deployment; reviews the development of competition in the local exchange from the invention of the telephone to the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996; and reconsiders the FCC’s 2005 decision to not extend sharing obligations to wireline BIAS providers in light of the modern market.

The paper will provide historical support for a broader series of policy papers by EFF aimed at improving competitive conditions in the wireline broadband market with the ultimate goal of connecting more Americans to a reliable, high-speed broadband network.

TLPC EFF Broadband Sharing White Paper (PDF)Download
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The FTC’s Right to Repair Inquiry and the Copyright Office’s Section 1201 Proceedings

(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.

Cover Letter to FTC (.pdf)Download
Copyright Office Repair Records (.zip)Download