Intellectual Property Law

FCC Unveils P2P Hearing Line-Up. Open Meeting DOA?

By Cynthia Brumfield

The FCC unveiled today its line-up of speakers for the field hearing on broadband network management practices, scheduled for February 25 in Cambridge, MA. It's a good roster of speakers, featuring an impressive list of academics and, of course, industry folks. (A shout-out to the refreshing choice of MIT-affiliated Danny Weitzner.)

The real question for me, and at this point it's painfully personal, is: what happened to the Commission's regular monthly open meeting, also slated for February 25 (the field hearing was originally scheduled for the 26th but got bumped up to the 25th)? Although FCC Chairman Kevin Martin briefed reporters two weeks ago on the FCC's tentative February meeting agenda, no formal agenda for that meeting has been released.

Word circulating around the Commission is that the February open meeting has been cancelled and the items slated for that meeting pulled. The March open meeting will therefore feature a double dose of agenda items and I hear that many of the issues are (not surprisingly) contentious.

Which is fine, fine, fine by me except...the March meeting is scheduled for March 19, the date we're hosting the Internet Video Policy Symposium. As things stood last week, March 19 was already a difficult day to be hosting an event for government folks on the topic of Internet video policy.

Now that the March 19 meeting looks like a doozy (and these meetings just freak people out nowadays under the best of circumstances), I think we'll have to push back the Symposium by a day. If we can. That's why this is so personal. I will have to work double hard over the next few days to push everything back. If we can. It's never easy. Stay tuned.

Full post as published by IP Democracy on February 20, 2008 (boomark / email).