FCC Chairman Wheeler announced the members of the FCC’s Consumer Advisory Committee today, including Victoria Phillips, founding member of the American University Washington College of Law Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property.
The Committee includes a diverse range of other public interest representatives, including two other other academic programs – California Western School of Law, New Media Rights, and Digital Policy Institute, Ball State University. The Committee is primarily made up of a broad range of non-profit representatives (including Consumer Electronics Association, Consumer Federation of America, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Consumer Advocacy Network, Free Press, National Consumer Law Center, New America Foundation, Open Technology Institute). Representatives also include representatives of regulators (National Association of Telecommunications Officers and Administrators) and industry (Google, Inc., Verizon Communications, and the Wireless Internet Service Provider Association).
The mission of the Committee is
to facilitate the participation of consumers (including underserved populations, such as Native Americans, persons living in rural areas, older persons, people with disabilities, and persons for whom English is not their primary language) in proceedings before the Commission. The Committee may consider issues including consumer protection and education; implementation of Commission rules and consumer participation in the FCC rulemaking process; and, the impact of new and emerging communication technologies (including availability and affordability of broadband service and Universal Service programs). The duties of the Committee will include providing guidance to the Commission, to gather data and information, and to perform those analyses that are necessary to respond to the questions or matters before it.
The Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property is an academic and research program of American University Washington College of Law.
Professor Phillips teaches communications and intellectual property law and serves as the Director of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Law Clinic. She helped found the clinic and the law school’s Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property in 2001 to introduce students to the public interest dimensions of intellectual property, communications and information law and policy. Prior to joining the WCL faculty, she was Chief of the Legal Branch of the Mass Media Bureau of the Federal Communications Commission and counsel in the Office of General Counsel where she worked on a wide range of communications policy proceedings.
