Early signs are that the industry attack on draft ISP privacy rules will center on the FCC’s determination of what kind of data is considered “sensitive” information requiring opt-in consent before it can be used or shared. USTelecom and NCTA already raised concerns the draft rules include eight categories of sensitive data, a broader definition than under the FTC’s privacy framework (see 1610060031).
Notable CROSS rulings
The FTC released a long-awaited report Thursday on its study of the business practices of patent assertion entities, as expected (see 1610040082). The agency proposed several reforms in the report, aimed at mitigating what it called “nuisance infringement litigation” brought by PAEs. The recommendations are largely aimed at balancing the rights of defendants during the early stages of patent lawsuits brought by PAEs, the FTC said. The commissioners approved the report 3-0. The report's scope was narrower than the FTC originally envisioned, but its data provide a strong basis for future patent litigation revamp efforts in Congress and federal courts, stakeholders told us.
Any CBS/Viacom reunion might not face particularly big regulatory hurdles to clear, experts tell us. For the companies and Wall Street, such a potential deal carries numerous upsides, said Jonathan Taplin, director emeritus, University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab. "The only potential derailing" is if CBS CEO "Les Moonves says, 'Viacom is so broken, I don't want to take it on,'" Taplin said. But, he added, Moonves "is an ambitious guy; he is smart enough to fix a broken thing."
The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition took place as expected Saturday (see 1609300065). NTIA confirmed it allowed its contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions to lapse just before midnight Friday, after U.S. District Court Judge George Hanks ruled in Galveston, Texas, against a temporary restraining order request to delay the switchover. Four Republican state attorneys general filed the TRO request (see 1609290073). Industry officials lauded the transition’s completion, with several telling us the handoff provides certainty to the internet industry and allows them to move on to other pressing issues.
U.S. cybersecurity policies depend on strong partnerships with Canada and Mexico, said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce Bruce Andrews and industry executives Monday. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto agreed in June to engage on cross-border cybersecurity practices, including on incident responses that affect the three main North American nations. Andrews said during a New America event the goal is to “start a dialogue between our three governments and our business communities on our cybersecurity threats, practices and priorities.”
“No specific federal legal barrier” prevents the sale of any autonomous vehicle that complies with existing federal safety standards and “maintains a conventional vehicle design,” said the Department of Transportation and its National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in a long-awaited guidelines report, released Tuesday, on promoting the safe development and testing of self-driving cars.
DirecTV and MasTec Advanced Technologies, one of its contractors, were out of bounds firing a group of employees who griped to a Florida TV news station about pay policies, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled Friday, upholding a 2011 National Labor Relations Board ruling. DirecTV and MasTec said the workers' comments weren't protected concerted activity because of malicious untruths and flagrant disloyalty. Judges Judith Rogers and Sri Srinivasan -- who wrote the majority opinion (in Pacer) -- said the court's interest isn't where that line between protected and unprotected activity sits but on the correctness of NLRB's finding that the workers' appeal is on the protected side of that line. Judge Janice Brown dissented. The pay policy required MasTec installers to hook up DirecTV set-top boxes to customer phone lines, with MasTec setting up financial incentives and punishments for hook-up quotas, the D.C. Circuit ruling said. MasTec fired nearly all technicians who were part of a TV news broadcast about the policy, the court said. An NLRB administrative law judge said going public is protected activity, but their statements were so disloyal and disparaging that they weren't protected. The full NLRB disagreed that the comments to the TV news crew reached that level. Judges' decision Friday said MasTec workers' on-air comments "were neither so disloyal and incommensurate with their labor grievances nor so maliciously untrue as to fall outside" of National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) protections. They also dismissed DirecTV arguments that because the direct broadcast satellite company is the fired workers' employer's customer, the workers had no protected rights to criticize it, ruling DirecTV clearly committed an unfair labor practice in causing MasTec to do the firings. In her dissent, Brown said the workers crossed the line from labor dispute to public disparagement aimed at eroding the companies' reputations. "This is not a close case," Brown said, pointing to the workers' telling the station that MasTec was requiring them to lie to customers when it had not done so, and was trying to have them scare customers into accepting the service: "By soberly repeating that joke to a public audience without its context and as though it were a serious instruction, these technicians left the NLRA and its protections behind." DirecTV in a statement said it agreed with the dissent and is "considering [its] options.” MasTec didn't comment.
House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., will introduce legislation to repeal broadcast cross-ownership rules, he said at an NAB Broadcast Innovations event (see 1609070065) Wednesday. The FCC's view of media ownership is “outdated,” Walden said. The cross-ownership rules are unnecessary and the commission should have repealed them, Walden said. “If the FCC can't figure it out . . .we will help them do that,” Walden said. Such legislation would be moving forward “soon,” Walden said. He also noted coming legislation that would make FCC processes more transparent and “more public.” Congress will continue “to work to improve their process,” Walden said of the commission. Public policy is “best done” when stakeholders can comment on in-progress rules “in real time,” Walden said. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, speaking at the event, and Walden said legislators will monitor the incentive auction and ensuing repacking process.
The chairmen of the House and Senate Commerce and Judiciary committees jointly urged the departments of Commerce and Justice Thursday to reconsider proceeding with the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition Oct. 1, saying they have serious concerns about ICANN's existing transition-related plans. The letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker follows increased interest from Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., and other Senate leaders in including an extension of a rider in the Department of Commerce's FY 2016 budget that bars NTIA from using federal funds on the transition via the planned short-term resolution to fund the government once FY 2016 expires Sept. 30 (see 1609070053). An extension of the transition funding ban rider would delay NTIA's plan to allow its existing contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions to expire as planned just before midnight Sept. 30.
International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, AFL-CIO, Local Union No. 3 violated its contract with its 2014 work stoppage and "has been attempting to avoid the consequences of its mischief" by focusing on a technicality, Time Warner Cable said in a brief (in Pacer) Monday in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That technicality is the ostensible retroactive nullification by the National Labor Relations Board of Local 3's collective bargaining agreement with TWC to arbitrate disputes, the company said. The NLRB didn't invalidate the entire contract, but instead decided the parties failed to agree on a tangential issue, TWC said. Federal appellate precedent is that when a party repeatedly acknowledges its collective bargaining arbitration obligations and submits a dispute to arbitration without objection, that party is bound by the results of that arbitration, TWC said. Local 3 is appealing a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn ruling upholding an arbitrator's award of damages to TWC, and the company is cross-appealing the portion of the Brooklyn court's judgment that denied confirmation of part of a 2015 final arbitration award ordering the union to refrain from further violations. TWC said Brooklyn court was entitled to adjudicate the case and it should have confirmed the NLRB arbitrator's award in full or at the least confirmed the monetary portion. A union brief (in Pacer) earlier this month said there was no valid collective bargaining agreement when the arbitrator used that agreement as the basis for ruling Local 3 had violated it.