Multiple Parties (Including The Author Of The Law Governing PACER) Ask Court To Stop PACER's Screwing Of Taxpayers

from the 'free'-as-in-'open,'-but-also-as-in-'no-cost' dept

The US government is either going to end up giving the public free access to court documents via PACER or find a group of legislators willing to extend a middle finger to the public by codifying the ridiculous fees charged to digitally access supposedly public documents.

The government has been sued over PACER fees on multiple occasions. One lawsuit alleged that PACER is miscalculating page lengths on dockets, resulting in thousands, if not millions, of dollars of overcharges. Another lawsuit -- currently awaiting review by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals -- argues PACER fees are excessive and violate the law that governs PACER's existence.

The E-Government Act says PACER fee intake should not exceed the cost of running the system. But as Matt Ford points out for The New Republic, PACER has an incredible profit margin.

The statute authorizes the judiciary to levy fees “only to the extent necessary” to provide “access to information available through automatic data processing equipment.” Though data storage costs have plummeted over the past two decades, PACER’s fees rose from seven cents a page at its establishment to ten cents a page by 2011, which remains the cost today. That may not sound like much, but it adds up fast. The PACER system itself brought in more than $146 million in fees during the 2016 fiscal year, even though it cost just over $3 million to operate.

This isn't how the system is supposed to operate. This single phrase in the E-Government Act has prompted more than a few lawsuits. And it's usually met by the government claiming that isn't what the law means when it's not arguing screwed PACER users don't have standing to sue over PACER screwing.

In addition, the fees are supposed to used only for PACER-related stuff. The money is getting spent, but very little of it is directed towards modernizing the archaic online system or finding a way of lowering access costs. Instead, millions of dollars are going to things that don't appear to be authorized by the law, like touchscreens for jurors or other courtroom tech.

The government continues to argue the law should not be read so narrowly, but it's going to be facing a lot of opposition in this appeal, including an amicus brief written by the E-Government Act's author.

In his friend-of-the-court brief, [former Senator Joe] Lieberman argued that the lower court had misinterpreted the law and its intent. He speaks with some authority on the matter, having introduced the Senate’s version of the E-Government Act and overseen its passage as a committee chairman. In his filing, Lieberman warned that excessive PACER fees would “impose a serious financial barrier to members of the public who wish to access court records, and these fees thereby create a system in which rich and poor do not have equal access to important government documents.”

In addition to Lieberman, the list of amici includes dozens of journalistic entities and former judges Richard Posner and Shira Scheindlin -- the latter most famous for dismantling the NYPD's unconstitutional stop-and-frisk program. The Knight First Amendment Institute and the Free Law Project (part of the RECAP project, which mirrors paywalled court documents for free) have also submitted briefs arguing for a stricter interpretation of the law and free access to documents already paid for once by the taxpayers who fund the court system that creates the documents.

If they prevail, the government's going to be greeted by a long line of taxpayers expecting refunds. The system in place now is needlessly expensive. The cost of accessing court documents should be $0 for all taxpayers -- especially since the portal handling requests looks and acts like it cost roughly that much to get up and running. Overcharging and under-delivering is something the government does well, but that doesn't mean we should be expected to sit there and take it.

Filed Under: courts, fees, joe lieberman, pacer, us courts

On Heels Of Favorable FCC Ruling, Verizon Imposes 'Spam' Fees On Text Message Service For Schools, Nonprofits

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

Just about a month ago the FCC quietly handed the telecom industry another favor by voting to reclassify text messages as an "information service" instead of a "telecommunications service" under the Telecom Act, effectively freeing text messaging practices from government oversight. While the FCC stated the move was essential in order to fight text spam, consumer groups were quick to note the lack of oversight provided cellular carriers a nifty way to hamper third-party SMS services that might just compete with, or cause problems for, their own offerings.

Fast forward to this month, and lo and behold, Verizon's already ruffling some feathers on this front. Remind, a free school texting, chat and messaging service used by teachers, students, school coaches, and parents, this week sent a notice to its customers stating that it may no longer be able to offer the service on the Verizon network thanks to a new "spam" fee Verizon is imposing on a service that's not really spam. From the notice to customers:

"To offer our text messaging service free of charge, Remind has always paid for each text that users receive or send. Now, Verizon is charging Remind an additional fee intended for companies that send spam over its network.

Your Remind messages aren’t spam, but that hasn’t helped resolve the issue with Verizon. The fee will increase our cost of supporting text messaging to at least 11 times our current cost—forcing us to end free Remind text messaging for the more than 7 million students, parents, and educators who have Verizon Wireless as their carrier.

While several Canadian companies charge similar fees, Remind said on Twitter that Verizon was the only US company (for now) to begin charging this fee, which the company estimates could cost it up to several million dollars annually. And because the FCC gutted all regulatory oversight, the agency eroded any meaningful authority over Verizon or any additional company looking to impose such spurious surcharges. When pressed by Ars Technica, Verizon stuck to its claim that the new surcharge is essential to help combat spam:

"Verizon, which touts its commitment to education, defended the new fee. Such fees are "intended to share costs incurred to help protect students, parents, and teachers from spam and dangerous text messages over the Verizon network, while reducing fraud," Verizon said in a statement to Ars.

Verizon said the "very small fee will be charged only to major text-messaging aggregation companies such as Remind and Twilio–and not schools, parents, or students." The fees "pay for the work required to contain spam and fraud associated with this service," Verizon said.

But Remind and the company they use to send the messages and alerts (Twilio) already pay Verizon money to carry the texts, and this new fee will only compound those costs dramatically to Verizon's direct financial benefit. In the midst of the bickering between the two companies, Verizon issued a news release saying it would back away from its original plan, slightly. This being Verizon, it was unable to do so without attempting to shift the blame entirely to Remind:

"As discussed this week with Remind, Verizon will not charge Remind fees as long as they don’t begin charging K-12 schools, educators, parents and students using its free text message service. Despite this offer, made Tuesday, Remind has not changed its position that it will stop sending free texts to Verizon customers who use the service regarding school closures, classroom activities and other critical information."

In short, Verizon's "compromise" is that it will reverse the fee for K-12 users of the free Remind service, but that still means numerous other users of the service (like coaches, preschools, and day care centers) will still face the arbitrary fee. Remind tells Ars Technica they've yet to get that proposal in writing, and there's questions as to how K-12 users would even verify their exemption with Verizon in the first place. A better option remains to simply not engage in the cash grab at all.

This particular fight over text messaging oversight began a little more than a decade ago, when Verizon decided to ban a pro-choice group named NARAL Pro-Choice America from sending text messages to Verizon Wireless customers who had opted in to receiving them. Verizon justified the ban by declaring the text messages "controversial or unsavory." A curious move for an industry that has historically cuddled up to marketing spammers and crammers when it's profitable.

Ever since then consumer groups, worried that cellular carriers would abuse their gatekeeper power on the text messaging front, have been urging the FCC to declare text messages a “telecommunications service," making it illegal for carriers to ban, hinder, or impose arbitrary fees on such select SMS services. Of course the Ajit Pai FCC did the exact opposite, and here we are, with non-profits and schools lighting up Twitter with complaints under the #reversethefee hashtag.

Filed Under: fcc, fees, nonprofits, schools, spam, text messaging
Companies: remind, twilio, verizon

Minnesota AG Just The Latest To Ding Comcast For Shady Fees

from the transparency! dept

How many lawsuits does it take to get Comcast to back off of shady fees designed to falsely inflate the company's advertised prices? Good question.

For several years now cable and broadband providers have been using hidden fees to covertly jack up their advertised rates. These fees, which utilize a rotating crop of bullshit names, help these companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock the consumer with a significantly higher-rate post sale (often when locked into a long-term contract). The practice also allows the company to falsely claim they're not raising rates on consumers. They omit that they're talking about the above-the-line rate being charged, implying that anything below the line (where real fees like taxes are levied) is outside of their control.

Back in 2014, Comcast introduced a new $1.50 per month surcharge it called its "Broadcast TV Fee." Said fee was really just a portion of the cost of doing business for Comcast (programming), busted out of the full bill and hidden below the line -- again to help the company falsely advertise a lower price. Over the last four years Comcast has quietly but quickly pushed this fee skyward, this week informing customers that -- alongside numerous other rate hikes like its "Regional Sports Network" fees -- the company's Broadcast TV fee would now be up to $10 per month for some cable TV customers.

While the federal government (FTC, FCC) routinely turned a blind eye to this practice (regardless of which party was in control), Comcast and other cable ops have been hit by a rotating crop of investigations and lawsuits for the practice. Just before Christmas, Minnesota Attorney General Lori Swanson joined the festivities, announcing that her office had filed suit against Comcast for "charging customers more than it promised for cable television packages, charging for unordered equipment and services, and not delivering prepaid Visa cards promised in its promotions."

The AG's office is quick to point out that Comcast enjoys falsely telling complaining customers that the bogus fees it uses to covertly raise rates are the fault of the federal government:

"Comcast/Xfinity falsely told some consumers who questioned these extra fees that the fees were out of the company’s control. For example, it told one customer that “those fees are actually local fees and correspond to the FCC and we don’t manage those okay? Those aren’t up to Comcast.” It told another customer that “we have no control over the fees.” Comcast is not, however, required by any state or federal law to collect such fees, and does so simply to generate revenue.

When criticized, Comcast has routinely tried to claim that adding these sneaky fees then lying about what they're for is just the company's way of being "transparent" with its customers. Denial appears to be the company's response to these allegations as well, despite the fact the practice has now been well illustrated by countless settlements and lawsuits.

In the streaming video wars to come, Comcast could differentiate itself by being clear with customers about how much its services actually cost, using "zero hidden fees" as a marketing point of pride. This being Comcast, the company is likely to instead move in the opposite direction, and just double down on the practice of misleading and confusing its customers in its relentless quest to nickel and dime the lion's share of America.

Filed Under: broadcast tv fee, fake fees, false advertising, fcc, fees, ftc, lori swanson, minnesota
Companies: comcast

Big Telecom Wants To Tax Netflix To Pay For Broadband Upgrades ISPs Refuse To Deploy Themselves

from the ride-my-pipes-for-free dept

Last year, FCC boss Ajit Pai repeatedly hyped the creation of a new "Broadband Deployment Advisory Council" (BDAC) purportedly tasked with coming up with creative solutions to the nation's broadband problem(s). Unfortunately, reports just as quickly began to circulate that this panel was little more than a who's who of entrenched telecom operators with a vested interest in protecting the status quo. The panel has yet to really offer up a meaningful proposal, but it has been rocked by several resignations due to cronyism, and at least one member who was arrested for fraud.

As the FCC looks to expand the council's charter for another few years, the panel itself has been pushing a plan that pretty clearly highlights the cronyism intentionally inherent in its design. More specifically, the panel has been pushing the FCC to adopt a new system that urges states to tax Netflix and Google to fund rural broadband deployment:

"A Federal Communications Commission advisory committee has proposed a new tax on Netflix, Google, Facebook, and many other businesses that require Internet access to operate. If adopted by states, the recommended tax would apply to subscription-based retail services that require Internet access, such as Netflix, and to advertising-supported services that use the Internet, such as Google and Facebook. The tax would also apply to any small- or medium-sized business that charges subscription fees for online services or uses online advertising."

To be clear, this is extremely unlikely to come to pass, even in the most myopic of states. Still, if you're playing along at home, this is just an extension of a multi-decade effort by ISPs to force somebody else to pay for network upgrades they refuse to fund, despite having received countless billions to accomplish this goal. In fact this push to have content companies pay for ISP network upgrades is really what began the net neutrality fight back in 2003 or so, when former AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre proclaimed that Google should pay him an additional troll toll just to access his network. You know, just because.

This mantra was long rooted in telecom envy of Silicon Valley online ad revenues, and a belief by telecom executives that they're somehow "owed" a cut of those revenues. Over time it evolved into endless claims by telecom sector allies, think tankers, and other cronies that companies like Google and Netflix were somehow getting a "free ride" on incumbent ISP networks, despite having invested billions into their own global transit and network operations. Over time it became a global telecom executive mantra of sorts, even if it never made coherent sense.

People forget, but it's this telecom industry attempt to "double dip" that truly launched the modern net neutrality debate just about fifteen years ago. That point has gotten lost as ISP efforts to extract unearned rents have gotten more elaborate over the years, but at its heart the fight has always been about monopoly ISPs trying to offload network construction and operation costs off to somebody else, while already earning fat revenues thanks to limited competition.

Of course AT&T, who generally drives most dubious DC telecom policy moves and would reap the lion's share of said tax, had originally tried to insist that the panel's recommendations (and the proposed tax) should apply to pretty much all traffic that touches the internet:

"An AT&T executive who is on the FCC advisory committee argued that the recommended tax should apply even more broadly, to any business that benefits financially from broadband access in any way. The committee ultimately adopted a slightly more narrow recommendation that would apply the tax to subscription services and advertising-supported services only."

The real problem here (or one of many) is that companies like AT&T and Verizon were already given billions upon billions in taxpayer dollars to fund these upgrades years ago. American history is filled with examples of these companies getting massive tax cuts or subsidies to deploy fiber, then using their lobbying prowess to wiggle out from under the obligations after the fact. Had the government ever conducted any real audit, you'd likely find American taxpayers have paid to upgrade the country with fiber several times over, yet still somehow often only have access to pricey, sluggish DSL.

That, nearly two decades later, AT&T's still running a lame variation of the same ploy is equal parts frightening and sad, but seems to be par for the course for a country that refuses to learn from history, and an FCC that has made it abundantly clear it's a glorified rubber stamp for lumbering natural monopolies and their very worst instincts.

Filed Under: broadband, capital expenditure, capital investment, fcc, fees, internet, taxes, upgrades
Companies: at&t, google, netflix, verizon

AT&T Finds Yet Another Way To Nickel-And-Dime Its Broadband, TV Customers

from the innovation! dept

While AT&T's marketing wing often likes to pat itself on the back for "innovation," the company's real skill set revolves around finding creative and ways to nickel-and-dime its own customers. Like the multiple times the company was caught aiding drug dealing directory assistance scammers, IP Relay credit card scammers, or crammers because it was getting a cut of the profits. Or the time the company started charging everybody more money for broadband if they wanted to protect their own personal privacy. Or the company's well-documented net neutrality shenanigans.

This week, AT&T's under fire yet again for some new bill changes that will, once again, result in users paying the company significantly more money. More specifically, the company has announced that it will now keep broadband and TV customers' money if you cancel in the middle of a billing cycle:

"AT&T will start charging customers for the full month after they cancel TV or Internet service, ending its customer-friendly practice of providing a prorated credit for the final month. Even if you cancel on the first day of a new billing period, you'll be charged for the full month and service will continue for the rest of the month whether you want it or not. To avoid paying for a month of service you don't want, you'd need to cancel by the last day of the previous billing period. The change will take effect on January 14, 2019 and apply even when a customer is paying on a month-to-month basis and no longer under contract.

Interestingly, the same company that has whined fairly incessantly about the logistical impossibility of adhering to state level privacy or net neutrality rules in the wake of federal repeals (a problem its own lobbyists created), isn't imposing the new rate system on users in states with tougher consumer protection standards:

"The new policy of charging for the full final month does not apply to any accounts in California, Illinois, and New York. The change also doesn't apply to "U-verse TV, AT&T Phone, or AT&T Internet accounts in Michigan," AT&T said.

AT&T is applying different policies in those states in order to comply with local regulations. “A limited number of customers will continue to receive prorated credits, either as a result of local or state regulations or for other specific reasons," AT&T told Ars.

Standing alone this may not be that big a deal, but cumulatively AT&T's nickel-and-diming matters very much to consumers.

You'll recall AT&T just got done jacking up streaming TV prices on the heels of its massive merger with Time Warner, just like deal critics had warned. AT&T then quickly doubled an already bogus "administrative fee" on the company's wireless customers, alone netting AT&T an additional estimated $800 million per year. AT&T's now hinting it will raise streaming prices even higher (AT&T's version of competition). This is of course on top of existing TV and broadband rate hikes, usage caps, hidden fees, and other soaring consumer costs.

Most of this is occurring for two reasons. One, AT&T's desperately trying to bounce back from the utterly massive debt load it incurred from the one-two punch of the DirecTV and Time Warner mergers. As is usually the case, the one paying for our mindless merger mania is usually... you. Two, because AT&T and other telecom and media giants have been on a tear effectively neutering all federal oversight of their efforts, there's nobody really in power interested in doing much about it. The above example makes it pretty clear why AT&T and Ajit Pai have also tried to neuter state consumer protection authority.

Getting ripped off in this fashion is the price tag for the nation's mindless obsession with merger mania, and the entirely false, yet oddly persistent, dogma that blindly deregulating the telecom sector somehow creates a free market connectivity Utopia. After several decades of this approach clearly not working in telecom you'd think more people would be keyed into the fact that letting natural monopolies dictate policy only really benefits investors and executives. But our collective, almost willful ignorance on this subject is nothing if not stubbornly persistent.

Filed Under: bill changes, billing cycles, broadband, cancellation, fees, tv
Companies: at&t

From $1.50 To $10 Per Month: How Comcast's Bogus Fees Are False Advertising

from the fees-and-surcharges-may-apply dept

For several years now cable and broadband providers have been using hidden fees to covertly jack up their advertised rates. These fees, which utilize a rotating crop of bullshit names, help these companies falsely advertise one rate, then sock the consumer with a significantly higher-rate post sale (often when locked into a long-term contract). The practice also allows the company to falsely claim they're not raising rates on consumers. They omit that they're talking about the above the line rate being charged, implying that anything below the line (where real fees like taxes are levied) is outside of their control.

Back in 2014, Comcast introduced a new $1.50 per month surcharge it called its "Broadcast TV Fee." Said fee was really just a portion of the cost of doing business for Comcast (programming), busted out of the full bill and hidden below the line -- again to help the company falsely advertise a lower price. Over the last four years Comcast has quietly but quickly pushed this fee skyward, this week informing customers that -- alongside numerous other rate hikes like its "Regional Sports Network" fees -- the company's Broadcast TV fee would now be $10 per month for the company's cable TV customers:

"Comcast is raising its controversial "Broadcast TV" and "Regional Sports Network" fees again on January 1, with the typical total price going from $14.50 to $18.25 a month. The newly raised broadcast TV fee will be $10 a month, and the sports fee will be $8.25 a month, Cord Cutters News reported last week. The new fee sizes are confirmed in a Comcast price list for the Atlanta market. About a year ago, Comcast raised the broadcast TV fee from $6.50 to $8 and the sports fee from $4.50 to $6.50."

Not to be outdone, Comcast's also socking millions of its customers with a bevy of additional fees in the new year. Including a wide variety of modem and cable box rental fees, the latter of which arrive after Comcast worked overtime to kill FCC plans to improve cable box competition. Comcast users still routinely pay an arm and a leg in rental fees for hardware that actually costs very little for Comcast to buy wholesale:

"Equipment rental fees are rising, too. Comcast last year raised its modem rental fee from $10 to $11 a month. The new price list for January 1 lists an "Internet/Voice Equipment Rental" fee as $13. Comcast confirmed to Ars that the modem rental fee is rising $2 a month. Customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own modem."

There's nothing healthy about a scenario where customers don't know how much they'll pay for service until the bill actually arrives, and face a rotating bevy of covert fees while purportedly under contract. In a country with functional regulators or healthy competition (or hey, both) Comcast wouldn't be allowed to completely make up a bogus fee specifically to help it advertise a lower price. But despite some occasional noise on this front, neither party has given much of a damn about such "creative" pricing. It sends a pretty clear message: ripping off consumers is fine if you're semi-creative about it.

As such, regulatory promises to mandate some transparency on this front come and go without meaningful change, and bills attempting to stop the practice routinely get crushed by lobbyist cash in Congress. The FCC's net neutrality rules included some meager provisions requiring that ISPs being transparent about hidden surcharges, but even those requirements were killed during the agency's net neutrality repeal (at direct Comcast lobbyist behest).

And while Comcast is occasionally singled out for the practice via lawsuits and consumer groups, it routinely tries to insist that socking customers with bullshit fees is just Comcast's way of being "transparent."

Obviously it's not just the cable industry that engages in such nonsense; telecom companies learned the tactic from the banking, airline, and other industries, who similarly get to confuse customers with surprise surcharges with zero meaningful market or regulatory repercussions. From hotel "resort fees" to family-separating airline assigned seating fees, the United States has repeatedly made it clear across industries that lying to consumers about how much they'll pay is now a great American pastime akin to baseball.

Filed Under: below the line fees, broadband fees, broadcast tv fee, false advertising, fees, sneaky fees
Companies: comcast

Charter Spectrum Jacks Up Rates (Again) Thanks To Merger 'Synergies'

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

When Charter Communications (Spectrum) proposed merging with Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016, the company repeatedly promised that the amazing "synergies" would lower rates, increase competition, boost employment, and improve the company's services. Of course like countless telecom megamergers before it, that never actually happened. Instead, the company quickly set about raising rates to manage the huge debt load. And its service has been so aggressively terrible, the company recently almost got kicked out of New York State, something I've never seen in 20 years of covering telecom.

Cities like Lexington, Kentucky continue to explore their legal options in efforts to hold Charter accountable (something it's clear the Trump FCC won't do). Charter, meanwhile, has informed many of these users that they'll be seeing yet another rate hike in November across the company's entire, 41-state territory. All told, users will pay at least $100 more for the same service annually, thanks in part to increases in several of the sneaky fees Charter routinely tacks on to user bills to jack up the advertised price post sale:

"Broadcast TV surcharge will increase from $8.85 to $9.95/month, Charter said, "This reflects costs incurred from local broadcast TV stations."

• Spectrum receivers will increase from $6.99 to $7.50/month.

• An increase from $54.99 to $59.99/month for Spectrum Internet for current customers who subscribe to Spectrum TV.

• An increase from $64.99 to $65.99/month for Spectrum Internet for current customers who do not subscribe to Spectrum TV."

Modest hikes, but they add up. It's worth noting that that "Broadcast TV fee" is simply a part of the cost Charter pays for programming, broken out of the bill, and tacked on below the line to help covertly jack up the advertised rate post sale. It's something most cable operators have been routinely sued for, and regulators enjoy turning a blind eye to (despite largely being false advertising). The company, for its part, continues to insist that these price hikes simply reflect the wonderful service users are now getting from the nation's second biggest cable provider:

"The price of Spectrum Internet reflects the dramatically faster speeds and investments we’ve made in reliability and quality," Michel said. "Earlier this year, we doubled the starting download speed of Spectrum Internet from 100 to 200 megabits per second. Lastly, our receivers are still comparable or lower in price than our major competitors'."

Charter omits that many of these speed hikes only came about thanks to merger conditions, or that its speed increases lagged dramatically behind contemporaries like Comcast as it focused primarily on its last megamerger. Of course higher prices, poor service, and some of the worst ranked customer support of any company in America (no easy feet given the airline and banking industries expertise) are the net result of both the blind deregulation of natural monopolies and our adoration of blindly buying into megamerger promises, a reality that our tech policy never quite seems capable of keying in on.

This is, unfortunately for you, a problem that's only going to get worse before it gets better thanks to a lack of competition in broadband and a refusal to embrace policies that actually encourage said competition. Instead, the telecom industry (with the Trump FCC's help) has been waging a not subtle war on both federal and state consumer protections, while at the same time quietly securing a significant monopoly over faster broadband speeds. You'd think the end result of this would be obvious, but given our refusal to address this reality, you'd apparently be mistaken.

Filed Under: fees, mergers, rates, synergies
Companies: charter, charter communications

African Countries Shooting Themselves In The Digital Foot By Imposing Taxes And Levies On Internet Use

from the how-not-to-do-it dept

Techdirt has written a number of stories recently about unfortunate developments taking place in the African digital world. The Alliance for Affordable Internet (A4AI ) site has usefully pulled together what's been happening across the continent -- and it doesn't look good:

A4AI's recent mobile broadband pricing update shows that Africans face the highest cost to connect to the internet -- just 1GB of mobile data costs the average user in Africa nearly 9% of their monthly income, while their counterparts in the Asia-Pacific region pay one-fifth of that price (around 1.5% of monthly income). Despite this already high cost to connect, we're seeing a worrying trend of governments across Africa imposing a variety of taxes on some of the most popular internet applications and services.

The article goes on to list the following examples.

Uganda

imposes a daily fee of UGX 200 ($0.05) to access social media sites and many common Internet-based messaging and voice applications, as well as a tax on mobile money transactions.

Zambia

has announced it will levy a 30 ngwee ($0.03) daily tax on social network use.

Tanzania

requires bloggers to pay a government license fee roughly equivalent to the average annual income for the country.

Kenya

aims to impose additional taxation on the Internet, with proposed levies on telecommunications and on mobile money transfers.

Benin

imposed a 5 CFCA ($0.01) per megabyte fee to access social media sites, messaging, and Voice-over-IP applications, causing a 250% increase in the price for 1GB of mobile data.

The article explains that the last of these was rescinded within days because of public pressure, while Kenya's tax is currently on hold thanks to a court order. Nonetheless, there is a clear tendency among some African governments to see the Internet as a handy new source of tax income. That's clearly a very short-sighted move. At a time when the digital world in Africa is advancing rapidly, with innovation hubs and startups appearing all over the continent, making it more expensive and thus harder for ordinary people to access the Internet threatens to throttle this growth. Whatever the short-term benefits from the moves listed above, countries imposing taxes and levies of whatever kind risk cutting their citizens off from the exciting digital future being forged elsewhere in Africa. As the A4AI post rightly says:

Africa, with the largest digital divide of any geographic region, has the greatest untapped potential with regards to improving affordable access and meaningful use of the internet. With affordable internet access, African economies can grow sustainably and inclusively.

Sadly, in certain African countries, that seems unlikely to happen.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: africa, benin, censorship, fees, internet, internet access, kenya, levies, social media, tanzania, taxes, uganda, zambia

Surprise: Bill Introduced To Finally Make PACER Free To All

from the nice! dept

So this is somewhat unexpected, but Rep. Doug Collins has introduced HR 6714, a bill to make federal court records free to the public.

H.R. 6714, the Electronic Court Records Reform Act, would guarantee free public access to federal court records through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records (PACER) system, which currently charges the public a fee to access documents. The bill would also require updates to the PACER system, including adding a function to enable all users to search its catalog of court documents easily. Currently, litigants are handicapped because they cannot conduct research through the system.

The bill would further support legal professionals and the general public by consolidating the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system. The CM/ECF system was designed to increase efficiency for all stakeholders within the judicial system, but it is compartmentalized among different courts. This makes locating records and filing documents difficult and inefficient. The Electronic Court Records Reform Act would unify these disconnected systems under the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts in order to ensure uniform access to all federal litigants.

This would be... amazing. We've spent years highlighting the massive problems with PACER, the federal court system that charges insane amounts for basically everything you do, just to access public records, and which functions very much like it was designed around 1995. There are a few court cases arguing that PACER fees are illegal and a recent ruling in one of those cases agreed. As we noted at the time, that was hardly the final word on the matter. A bill like the ones Collins introduced would be an amazing leap forward in giving public access to court documents.

Unfortunately, it's unclear if the bill has any support beyond Collins, but this is the kind of thing you would hope that Congress could get behind.

Filed Under: access to information, doug collins, fees, pacer, public documents, us court system