The House Commerce Committee is working on compromise language to amend the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (HR-805) in a way that will reflect bipartisan consensus on how to ensure ICANN proceeds effectively in its transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, said House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore. That subcommittee and the IP Subcommittee examined the IANA transition as part of separate ICANN-related hearings Wednesday (see 1505120045).
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
Stakeholders’ perception of ICANN's development of plans for the anticipated spinoff of its Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions is expected to be the dominant topic during two ICANN-related House hearings Wednesday, though other recent ICANN-related controversies are set for debate, lawmakers and others told us. ICANN’s IANA transition and the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (HR-805), which would prohibit NTIA from approving ICANN’s IANA transition plan until the GAO completes a study of the plan, are the sole focus at a 2 p.m. House Communications Subcommittee hearing. Vox Populi Registry’s pricing of domains within the new generic top-level domain .sucks and questions about ICANN’s oversight ability in light of the IANA transition are expected to dominate a 10 a.m. House IP Subcommittee hearing (see 1505070037).
The ICANN cross-community working group on ICANN accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) draft accountability proposal is meant to take ICANN oversight powers that have traditionally been in the NTIA’s bailiwick and “hand them over” to ICANN community stakeholders, said CCWG-Accountability Co-Chairman Thomas Richert during an ICANN webinar Monday. The CCWG-Accountability proposal, released last week, is being developed in concert with work at the ICANN Internet Assigned Number Authority (IANA) stewardship working group (CWG-Stewardship) on an IANA transition plan (see 1505060067). The current CCWG-Accountability draft proposal doesn’t reflect the full working group consensus, which CCWG-Accountability Co-Chair Mathieu Weill also noted during the webinar.
The Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) and TracFone jointly filed a revision with the U.S. Copyright Office that would alter a proposed exemption to Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 1201 (DMCA) for unlocking cellphones to resolve TracFone’s concerns about the exemption’s original language. The exemption is one of 27 the CO is currently considering as part of its sixth triennial rulemaking process for Section 1201, which prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs). Other proposed exemptions include one that would allow smart TV owners to circumvent TPMs that prevent the installation of user-supplied software and one that would allow for circumventing DVD, Blu-ray and digital video TPMs for personal uses. Comments on the proposed exemptions, which were due May 1, were limited to responses to previous filings. New America's Open Technology Institute told CO in comments given to us before they appeared online that a proposed exemption on software security research should move forward (see 1505050051).
The EU’s 16-step digital single-market (DSM) strategy for promoting pan-European e-commerce is likely to affect U.S. copyright stakeholders and has the potential to further spur the U.S. House Judiciary Committee to advance its burgeoning Copyright Act review, but the extent of that effect will remain unclear until the EU takes more concrete action on the proposals, copyright stakeholders told us in interviews. The DSM strategy released Wednesday proposes harmonizing copyright laws across all 28 EU member nations, particularly as they relate to third-party websites’ dissemination of copyrighted work and enforcement against “commercial-scale” copyright infringement. The EU proposal is also getting considerable attention from U.S. telecom stakeholders (see 1505060038).
The House Communications Subcommittee and House IP Subcommittee will examine ICANN’s planned spinoff of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions in separate Wednesday hearings. Both subcommittees said their hearings would focus on stakeholder perspectives on the transition process. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and other subcommittee members plan to focus on the current status of the transition process and its potential effect on the Internet, the subcommittee said. House Communications hadn’t disclosed the names of witnesses at our deadline. That hearing also centers on the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (HR-805), which Rep. John Shimkus, R-Ill., reintroduced in February. The bill would prohibit the NTIA from approving the final IANA transition plan for up to a full year while GAO conducts a study of the plan (see 1502100049). The hearing is to begin at 2 p.m. EDT in 2322 Rayburn. House Communications’ renewed interest in the IANA transition comes amid new progress by ICANN on its IANA transition proposals. ICANN’s cross-community working group on ICANN accountability (CCWG-Accountability) released its draft proposal earlier this week (see 1505060067), while the IANA stewardship transition working group (CWG-Stewardship) released its revised draft proposal last month (see 1504280060). The House IP Subcommittee hearing's focus on the IANA transition will be accompanied by a focus on stakeholders' perspectives on ICANN and the .sucks domain rollout. Amazon Vice President-Global Public Policy Paul Misener and NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco are among the eight set to testify during the hearing, the subcommittee said Thursday. “As we reflect on our long term aspirations for governing the Internet, we must take the utmost caution in establishing a process to transition to a new form of governance,” said subcommittee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., in a news release. “Before a transition of ICANN can occur, there must be robust protections in place to protect the essential functions of the Internet.” That hearing is to begin at 10 a.m. EDT in 2141 Rayburn. Past congressional scrutiny of the IANA transition process has been negative, including in Congress' passage of the "cromnibus" funding bill, which prohibits NTIA from using its funds for IANA transition-related activities through Sept. 30, the day the agency’s current IANA contract with ICANN ends.
ICANN's cross-community working group on ICANN accountability (CCWG-Accountability) released its draft accountability proposal, which recommends that ICANN community members have additional power to influence decisions made by the ICANN board. CCWG-Accountability has been developing its recommendations on a parallel track with work on the ICANN Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) stewardship working group (CWG-Stewardship), which released a revised draft proposal for an IANA transition plan in late April (see 1504280060). The CCWG-Accountability and CWG-Stewardship proposals are now “increasingly and effectively reliant” on one another’s recommendations to be effective, said CWG-Stewardship Co-Chairman Jonathan Robinson during an ICANN webinar Wednesday.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit affirmed two of U.S. District Court Judge Denise Cote’s decisions related to Pandora’s license for American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) works for 2011-2015. Cote had issued a summary judgment in New York in September 2013 that Pandora had the right to perform all compositions in the ASCAP repertoire (see report in the Sept. 19, 2013, issue). Cote subsequently set a “headline rate” in March 2014 of 1.85 percent of revenue for Pandora’s license for ASCAP works (see report in the March 17, 2014, issue).
New America's Open Technology Institute (OTI) urged the U.S. Copyright Office to disregard arguments by BSA/The Software Alliance, the Software Information Industry Association and other opponents of proposed exemptions to Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Section 1201 for software and medical device security research. The proposed software and medical device security research exemptions are among 27 proposed exemptions that the CO is considering as part of its sixth triennial rulemaking process for Section 1201, which prohibits the circumvention of technological protection measures (TPMs). Other proposed exemptions include one allowing resellers to unlock eligible cellphones on behalf of a selling customer or on the reseller’s own behalf and one that would allow smart TV owners to circumvent TPMs that prevent the installation of user-supplied software. Comments on the proposed exemptions, which were due Friday, were limited to responses to previous filings. CO officials told us they anticipated the comments would be available Tuesday, but none had been posted online at our deadline.
The Copyright Office issued a final order Monday that copyright royalty judges (CRJs) have jurisdiction to clarify the meaning of regulations included in royalty regulations for pre-existing satellite digital audio radio services (SDARS) for the period between 2007 and 2012 and that their jurisdiction didn’t expire with those SDARS I rules. The CRJs issued new royalty rates and regulations for satellite radio in 2013 to cover 2013 to 2017 (SDARS II). SoundExchange petitioned the CRJs in November to clarify the definition of gross revenue under SDARS I as part of its lawsuit against SiriusXM for allegedly underpaying royalties beginning in 2013 "by improperly excluding some of its revenue from its gross revenue calculations," including revenue from pre-1972 sound recordings, said the CO order. The CRJs sought a CO ruling to determine that the CRJs had authority to clarify the definition of gross revenue under SDARS I, the office said in Monday's Federal Register.