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Art Brodsky
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Art Brodsky is the former vice president of communications for Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group, and is a veteran of Washington, D.C. telecommunications and Internet journalism and public relations.

He consults on a wide range of telecommunications and intellectual property issues, and is the proprietor of Continental Drive.

Art worked for 16 years with Communications Daily, a leading trade publication. He covered Congress through the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and other major pieces of legislation. He also covered telephone regulation at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and at state regulatory commissions. In addition, he has covered the online industry since before there was an Internet, coming in just after videotext died but before the World Wide Web. Art was later an editor with Congressional Quarterly, with responsibilities for the daily and Web coverage of telecom, tech and other issues. He also worked at newspapers around the country. Art’s work has appeared in publications as diverse as the Washington Post, TomPaine.com and the World Book encyclopedia. He was a commentator on the public radio program, Marketplace, and appeared on C-SPAN.

On the PR front, Art worked as communications director for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and for the Washington, D.C. office of Qwest Communications International.

Art graduated from the University of Maryland in December 1973 with High Honors and a degree in government and politics. He received an MSJ degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in June 1975. He and his wife, Liz, live in Olney, MD. They have two daughters.

Entries by Art Brodsky

A Fan's Guide to the Washington Scandal Game

(23) Comments | Posted June 7, 2013 | 12:33 PM

It's no shame to admit that sports can be confusing. Some baseball fans don't know what the infield fly rule is. Some basketball fans may not recognize the difference between a blocking foul and a charge. At least there are game officials and broadcasters who can help to clarify matters...

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Bin Laden 'Manhunt' Has Lessons For Albany Schools

(10) Comments | Posted May 3, 2013 | 4:24 PM

At the end of the week before the Boston Marathon bombing, a little story started making waves out of Albany, NY. Under normal circumstances, the story would have provided lots of raw material for the cable news noise factory.

The story about a high school writing assignment then dropped out...

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When Planes, Trains and Cars Have Their Own NRA

(136) Comments | Posted April 24, 2013 | 4:53 PM

The National Rifle Association (NRA), aka the Gun Manufacturers Association, should be feeling pretty good about itself. It blocked approval in the Senate of a provision for expanded background checks that overwhelming numbers of people support -- even in those states of Senate Democrats who voted against the modest bill.

...
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How the NFL Can Save the U.S. Senate From Filibuster Hell

(12) Comments | Posted February 19, 2013 | 11:05 AM

Once the Senate gets back from its much-needed break to deal with little issues like the economic security of the country, it really should turn to one of the reasons the once-grand institution exists as exalted only in the minds of its members.

That reason, of course, is the filibuster,...

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Crisis Communications Advice for CBS: Fix Your CNET Mess. Now.

(4) Comments | Posted January 15, 2013 | 10:09 PM

Congratulations, CBS. You have earned yourself a place in the curriculum of journalism classes for the next couple of decades. And not in a good way. CBS will be studied for as blatant a violation of journalism ethics as you can imagine.

Of course, ethics can be an ethereal, subjective...

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U.S. Internet Suffers When the Refs Blow the Calls

(3) Comments | Posted January 9, 2013 | 3:57 PM

Remember last fall when the National Football League (NFL) began its regular-season schedule? Even if you weren't a football fan, it would have been hard to avoid the public wailing and gnashing of teeth at the dreadful performance of the "replacement" officials stepping in for the game officials who were...

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Metrics for Winning The War on Christmas

(79) Comments | Posted December 6, 2012 | 4:13 PM

Kudos to Fox News for its vigilance in monitoring the War on Christmas. Kudos, too, to Jon Stewart and the Daily Show for monitoring the monitors.

To its credit, Fox has kept a close eye on the small skirmishes which make up the War on Christmas....

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The Mystery of the Missing E-Books

(146) Comments | Posted November 14, 2012 | 1:12 PM

Holiday shopping season is just around the corner, and e-books and e-book readers will be high on many people's wish lists. But public libraries don't share in the joy, and the people who use libraries will look in vain for e-books that aren't available from any library. They are missing,...

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Energy Independence and Bob Dylan (Hint: The Answer, My Friend)

(18) Comments | Posted August 29, 2012 | 4:40 PM

It's about a three-hour drive on the highway from the port town of Warnemunde in the old East Germany to Berlin. There's not much to see, with mostly flat, rural countryside and non-descript buildings. Cars zoomed past our little bus at speeds highly illegal in the U.S. The only exception...

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The Arch Enemies of the Internet Defense League

(6) Comments | Posted July 23, 2012 | 6:32 PM

The Internet Defense League (IDL) had its formal coming-out parties the other night. To be sure, the individual members and supporters who would respond to the "Catsignal," like my day-job employer Public Knowledge, would be around anyway. And some members agree on some issues but...

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Figuring Out Who Your Friends Are On SOPA and PIPA

(8) Comments | Posted June 14, 2012 | 5:59 PM

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island is a Democratic torch-bearer.  He is a stalwart progressive, a reliable vote for an economic agenda aimed at helping people.  But at the recent Netroots Nation, it was what he didn't talk about that was more important.

On Saturday night (June 9) in Providence...

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Our TV Overlords Command: Watch Our Commercials or Else!

(171) Comments | Posted June 3, 2012 | 2:10 PM

It's hard to believe these days, but there was once upon a time when TV executives didn't mind consumers taking control over TV sets. There were no lawsuits, like the ones recently filed by the TV networks against Dish for its new commercial-skipping DVR. (A court has ruled for Dish...

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When The FCC Chairman Comforted Cable

(7) Comments | Posted May 24, 2012 | 5:28 PM

There probably was no great need for Comcast toraise the usage caps on its broadband service, as it did last week from 250 gigabytes (GB) to 300 GB per month. If the company thought for an instant that the modest increase bought it any good will from...

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Going Dutch a Great Idea for the Internet

(1) Comments | Posted May 11, 2012 | 5:09 PM

You have to hand it to the Dutch.  On one hand, they crack down on their biggest tourist attraction -- the ability of tourists to toke up legally in the famous cannabis cafes.  That's a big business over there and of course there are protests developing, mellow ones...

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Google Network Shows Hollywood Trap: Between Fiddlers and Franklin

(4) Comments | Posted May 4, 2012 | 6:51 AM

The entertainment industry today is caught in a kind of purgatory, somewhere between Zero Mostel and Franklin Roosevelt. It's an odd place to be, and not sustainable to be there for much longer.

From Mostel, comes the line, "Without our traditions, our lives would be as...

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The Long and Winding Road To A Bad Call On 'Piracy'

(3) Comments | Posted April 25, 2012 | 4:58 PM

It's hard not to feel sorry for Al Perry these days.  As Paramount Picture's VP for worldwide content protection and outreach, he has been on the road a lot, mostly to law schools. The past few weeks, he's been to the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina,

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Watch FCC Stand By As Verizon and Cable Form New Cartel

(3) Comments | Posted March 20, 2012 | 10:49 AM

On any given day, on any given cable or satellite system, subscribers will see a message telling them that a favorite channel which had been in one spot on the channel lineup has been shifted to another.  It happens all the time as channels are added, subtracted or moved around. ...

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Remembering Davy Jones: Jeff Sherman's Hollywood Story

(17) Comments | Posted March 4, 2012 | 7:12 AM

My friend Jeff Sherman is a Los Angeles writer and producer. He's also a fine documentarian, putting together with his cousin Greg a film about his father, Robert Sherman, and uncle, Richard Sherman. If their names aren't familiar, their music is. They wrote the music for Mary Poppins...

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No Letup on Big Telecom and Big Media Companies Behaving Badly

(1) Comments | Posted February 24, 2012 | 9:29 AM

It has only been a couple of months back that AT&T gave up on its attempt to take over T-Mobile, in what would have been quite a coup for the second-largest wireless carrier to take over the fourth largest. It took all of the gumption of the Justice Department and...

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The Jack Nicholson Answer to Hollywood Moguls on SOPA and PIPA: 'You Can't Handle the Truth'

(5) Comments | Posted February 6, 2012 | 4:31 PM

Earlier today (Feb. 6), a most extraordinary group of people sent a letter to Capitol Hill, in the latest round of the fight over the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), telling Congress it was time to reject the well-worn lobbying...

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