Editor’s Note: For more information of the personal privacy and cyber security risks inherent in the FCC’s set-top box proposal to unlock cable company data streams, see CRE’s comments to the docket here. For more information on the proposed rule’s threats to intellectual property, see Is the FCC Undermining the Rule of Law?
From: Free State Foundation
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Although this by-product of the FCC’s proposal has not received as much attention as others, copyright violations that inevitably would result from the NPRM almost certainly will harm minority and diverse content creators. In a March 2016 letter to the FCC, a number of organizations representing minority consumers and diverse ethnicities, including the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet (MMTC), League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), asked the Commission to study the effects the proposal would have on “diversity and inclusion.” In April, MMTC submitted comments to the FCC stating: “[T]he unintended consequences of the FCC’s choice would harm diverse programmers and content creators by violating their copyright and licensing agreements and existing distribution arrangements with MVPDs, the lifeblood of their very existence.” Indeed, Commissioner Rosenworcel has publicly recognized the threat of harm that NPRM-induced copyright violations would pose to minority and diverse content creators.