Communications Law

The internet plays a crucial role in modern life; however, equal access to it is not guaranteed. Drawing on existing tribal spectrum sovereignty arguments, Morgan Schaack writes that the control exercised by the FCC’s licensing of the electromagnetic spectrum and language common in many tribal treaties create a tribal access right to spectrum under the trust responsibility. Framing this access to spectrum as a trust-protected resource, the Comment situates allowing tiered internet service in the absence of net neutrality as a violation of the government's obligations under the trust responsibility.

Antidemocratic forces rely on intimidation tactics to silence criticism and opposition. Today’s intimidation playbook follows a two-step pattern. We surface these tactics so their costs to public discourse and civic engagement can be fully understood. We show how the misappropriation of the concept of online abuse has parallels in other efforts at conceptual diversion that dampen democratic guarantees. Democracy’s survival requires creative solutions. Politicians and government workers must be able to operate free from intimidation. Journalists and researchers must be able to freely investigate governmental overreach and foreign malign influence campaigns that threaten the democratic process. Surfacing the two-step strategy is a critical start to combating it.

In the fall of 2017, the world’s largest social network put hundreds of women in “Facebook jail,” indefinitely suspending their accounts for posting “men are scum.”