Internet Groups Urge Rewrite of 1996 Telecom Act
Lawmakers should rewrite the 1996 Telecom Act to address the impact that online entities have had on the video marketplace, said Barry Diller, chairman of IAC/InterActiveCorp, during a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Tuesday. But Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., remained a cautious advocate for a rewrite of the law.
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"Don’t you remember the failed Cable Act of 1992?” Rockefeller asked reporters after the hearing. “Do you remember what a disaster that was? We all sat around here screaming and yelling and absolutely nothing happened. So when we rewrite acts it’s not a simple business.” For the moment Rockefeller said he’s more interested in understanding how online video would “improve context and expand consumer choice. I want to know if it will bring a halt to escalating bills."
A rewrite of the Telecom Act is “overdue,” said Diller, an investor in Aereo, a service that brings broadcast TV to devices via the Internet. “There is a new entrant, it is a healthy entrant, it is the Internet,” he said. “The rules need to reflect that there is a potential positive competitor to what has become a very closed system of program content creators.” Diller explained to members that Aereo “simply allows a consumer to get what was the quid pro quo for a broadcaster getting a free license.” Aereo is currently being sued by broadcasters on infringement allegations (CD March 14 p9).
Rockefeller agreed that Congress needs to seek a “solution” to fill the gaps in the Telecom Act but said after the hearing it won’t happen this Congress. “I think generally the answer is yes, we're going to try for a solution. [But] virtually nothing in this Congress will get done,” he told reporters after the event.
Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., said that Congress needs to “do a better job” of managing and releasing spectrum in addition to building out broadband. “We are not doing what we need to do by any sense of the imagination,” he said. Subcommittee Ranking Member Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said Congress should be “creating deregulatory parity” in the video market and said current video laws need to be repealed. They “simply do not reflect the current realities of the marketplace and I'm afraid they actually foreclose innovative service offerings and consumer benefits,” he said. DeMint again promoted his bill, the Next Generation Television Marketplace Act (S-2008), which he said aims to “comprehensively withdraw government meddling from the video industry.”
Diller resisted DeMint’s labeling Aereo as a distributor service that resells broadcast content. “We have a technological platform, it is not a network, it is one to one,” Diller said. “You have an antenna that has your name on it … it is a platform for you to receive over the Internet broadcast signals that are free.” Online video is inherently different from TV, Amazon Vice President Paul Misener testified, because of the “push” nature of television and the “pull” nature of the Internet. “As a medium, television is the idea of pushing information out. The Internet is a pull medium, consumers pull what they want,” he said. “We want to give our customers the choice to watch whatever they want to watch.”