Senate and industry supporters of keeping the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA) language in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act customs reauthorization bill (HR-644) said Wednesday they're optimistic a deal struck Tuesday will forestall attempts to strike PITFA from HR-644 ahead of a planned final vote on that bill. Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill., agreed Tuesday to drop his plans to challenge the inclusion of PITFA language in HR-644 in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to allow Senate consideration of the controversial Marketplace Fairness Act (S-698) this year. McConnell filed cloture on HR-644 Tuesday, setting the bill on track for a final vote on the Senate floor Thursday.
Jimm Phillips
Jimm Phillips, Associate Editor, covers telecommunications policymaking in Congress for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2012 after stints at the Washington Post and the American Independent News Network. Phillips is a Maryland native who graduated from American University. You can follow him on Twitter: @JLPhillipsDC
The White House’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan released Tuesday is an ambitious capstone to the Obama administration’s work to improve U.S. cyberdefenses, industry lawyers and lobbyists said in interviews. But it's not certain whether Congress will sign off on the increased FY 2017 cybersecurity budget the White House proposed, lobbyists told us. The cybersecurity plan creates a federal chief information security officer (CISO) position and an executive order creating the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity (CENC) to make recommendations on strengthening private sector and public sector cybersecurity.
ICANN’s selection of Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) Director-General Göran Marby to be the nonprofit’s next permanent president and CEO (see the Communications Daily Bulletin here and 1602080025) drew both praise and concern Monday from communications and Internet stakeholders. Some told us Marby’s tech background will be an asset to ICANN. Others raised concerns about his record at Sweden’s postal and telecom regulatory body. Marby was previously CEO at AppGate Network Security, Cygate and Unisource Business Networks, and has been Cisco’s country manager for Sweden.
Swedish Post and Telecom Authority Director-General Göran Marby will be ICANN’s next permanent president-CEO, ICANN said Monday. CEO Fadi Chehadé is to leave ICANN in mid-March, with Marby set to take the helm in May. ICANN President-Global Domains Division Akram Atallah will be acting CEO until Marby can move from Sweden to Los Angeles, ICANN said. Friday night, Communications Daily reported that the nonprofit was nearing a pick, with one likely to come from Europe (see 1602050065).
Congressional scrutiny of retiring ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé’s involvement with the controversial Chinese government-led World Internet Conference (WIC) heightens the need for ICANN to select and announce Chehadé’s successor, while the controversy's potential effect on U.S. government approval of the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition is less clear, said ICANN stakeholders in interviews. GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and two other senators jointly sent a letter to Chehadé Thursday questioning Chehadé’s plan to become co-chairman of a high-level WIC advisory committee, and what compensation he will be receiving for that role, in a bid to determine whether his decision to take on a role at WIC while still ICANN CEO is a conflict of interest (see 1602040061).
GOP presidential contender Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and two other senators who have been skeptical about the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition raised concerns Thursday about retiring ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé's involvement with the controversial Chinese government-led World Internet Conference (WIC). Chehadé agreed to become the co-chairman of a high-level advisory committee to WIC after his planned March departure from ICANN, along with planned roles as a senior adviser to Abry Partners and World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab. Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke at WIC's December conference in Wuzhen, China, supporting allowing countries to “independently choose their own path of cyber development,” raising concerns among pro-multistakeholder Internet governance stakeholders (see 1512180049 and 1512290044).
Senators involved in the debate over whether to keep the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (PITFA) language in the Trade Facilitation and Trade Enforcement Act (HR-644) remained tight-lipped Thursday about the state of support for and against keeping the language. Meanwhile, some who support passage of PITFA as part of HR-644 told us they believe the margin between the number of senators who would support sustaining or overturning an attempt to remove the PITFA language from HR-644 is very tight. PITFA supporters have been lobbying in recent weeks to ensure they get at least 60 senators to vote to overturn an expected challenge by Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, D-Ill. Alexander and Durbin are expected to seek a point of order ruling that an ITFA extension is outside the scope of HR-644 (see 1601130071).
Book publishers Elsevier and Hachette, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), a group of writers and the Copyright Alliance were among parties filing amicus briefs supporting the Authors Guild’s petition to the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari seeking review of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling in the Google Books case, the guild said Tuesday. It petitioned the Supreme Court in December to review the 2nd Circuit’s ruling that the Google Books project to digitize portions of the world’s books is a “transformative” example of fair use, saying the 2nd Circuit’s ruling “fundamentally remakes” the fair use doctrine and conflicts with other courts’ fair use rulings. Copyright legal experts have told us they believe the Supreme Court is unlikely to grant the petition (see 1601040063). Elsevier and Hachette jointly argued in their brief that the 2nd Circuit took an “overly expansive view of the meaning and consequences of transformativeness, which displaces the statutory full factorial analysis Congress intended.” The 2nd Circuit’s ruling also “infringes and jeopardizes” authors’ exclusive rights to control their right to reproduce their copyrighted works, Elsevier and Hachette said. ASJA’s brief argued, as expected, that the 2nd Circuit failed to do a required “qualitative analysis of the portions of a work used by the defendant ... and instead it opted in favor of a quantitative analysis that makes no sense in the context of Google’s ‘snippet view’ product.” The 2nd Circuit also “erred by considering ‘transformativeness’ in a manner completely detached from ‘justification’ or fairness,” ASJA said. The Copyright Alliance said the 2nd Circuit’s ruling “employed a fair use analysis that is far removed from” the existing fair use precedent in Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, which found commercial parody to be fair use. The ruling also “necessarily ignored numerous important interests and considerations, many of which were reflected” in the Copyright Office’s 2011 mass digitization study, the Copyright Alliance said. Stephen Sondheim and a coalition of other major authors and dramatists jointly argued that the fair use doctrine wasn’t intended “to permit a wealthy for-profit entity to digitize millions of works and to cut off authors’ licensing of their reproduction, distribution, and public display rights.” Google’s deadline for filing its opposition brief to the Supreme Court is March 1.
The House Homeland Security Committee’s aim to make the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to reorganize the National Protection and Programs Directorate its first cybersecurity focus of 2016 is a reflection of timing rather than an indication that NPPD reorganization is a higher priority than other cybersecurity issues, cybersecurity-focused executives and lobbyists told us. But early consideration of the NPPD reorganization plan may be necessary, given ongoing industry concerns about the plan, executives and lobbyists said. DHS began seeking legislation last year to codify its planned reorganization of NPPD, which would rename it the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection division (see 1509170038). House Homeland Security plans to file a bill on NPPD reorganization this spring (see 1601290058).
The House Homeland Security Committee’s first cybersecurity priority for 2016 will be to continue examining possible legislation related to the Department of Homeland Security’s planned restructuring of its National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD), which leads much of the department’s cybersecurity work, a committee aide told us Friday. House Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, alluded in a blog post last week to plans for an ambitious 2016 cybersecurity agenda beyond conducting oversight of implementation of the Cybersecurity Act as enacted in the FY 2016 omnibus spending bill (see 1601270044). House Homeland Security began looking last year at DHS' plans for reorganizing NPPD and renaming it the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection division (see 1509170038). McCaul eventually paused work on legislation to authorize the NPPD reorganization amid lawmakers’ questions about the reorganization and the increased focus on conference negotiations on information sharing legislation that resulted in the Cybersecurity Act, an industry lobbyist told us. House Homeland Security plans to meet with DHS officials in the coming weeks and anticipates filing a bill on NPPD reorganization at some point this spring, a committee aide said.