Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he hopes to strike a balance between defending against cyberattacks and protecting privacy online. Speaking Tuesday at the Newseum, Judiciary Committee Chairman Leahy said he will direct his committee to modernize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). He said he also wants to take up intellectual property theft and finish cybersecurity legislation.
Performance rights legislation and hearings on the FCC’s net neutrality order will be the IP issues Congress will tackle in the next 90 to 180 days, congressional staffers said Tuesday. Worries have been expressed that ISPs will use copyright law as a justification for not carrying certain content -- in effect, as a way to skirt net neutrality rules. Meanwhile, Congress will abandon a comprehensive approach to overhauling the patent system in favor of small changes that have bipartisan support, the aides said.
Wireless “bill shock” is “not remotely as large” a problem as the FCC suggested in a rulemaking notice, CTIA said in a filing Monday at the commission. The rules proposed would cost carriers, and therefore consumers, “tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars to put into practice,” the association warned. CTIA also hinted that a legal challenge is likely if the FCC moves forward on rules. The FCC at its October meeting proposed rules to require carriers to provide usage alerts and related information to help consumers avoid unexpected charges.
Carriers and others involved in online and wireless payments risk regulation as banks, legal and industry experts said Tuesday. A rulemaking by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will be important in sorting out any reporting and credentialing requirements triggered by peer-to-peer mobile transfers using mobile applications, said Kate Kingberger, CTIA wireless Internet development director, on a webcast of the American Law Institute and the American Bar Association.
A draft Comcast-NBC Universal FCC condition could help a growing group of websites specializing in local news and often staffed by journalists who left traditional media raise their profile and increase their funding from other sources, said broadcast and Internet executives and professors studying the issue that we interviewed. Part of the proposed order that commissioners are studying this week on Comcast’s agreement to buy control of NBC Universal would require an additional four NBC TV stations owned by the combined company to enter into news-sharing arrangements with nonprofit sites, agency officials said. Proposing conditions, which agency officials said the commission would require, Comcast and NBC Universal cited KNSD San Diego’s arrangement with VoiceofSanDiego.org.
So-called bill shock regulations offer a “common-sense approach” to consumer protection “in an increasingly complex and frequently confusing wireless marketplace,” consumer and public interest groups said in a filing at the FCC. But the groups said the rules proposed by the FCC in October don’t go far enough. Comments were due Monday at the FCC under the commission’s revised timetable. CTIA and the major carriers hadn’t filed comments at our deadline.
When it comes to FCC implementation of the Local Community Radio Act signed into law by President Barack Obama this month (CD Jan 6 p8), low-power FM (LPFM) and translator representatives told us they have different recommendations while relying on the same section of the legislation for authority. A commission official encouraged the submission of recommendations on how HR-6533 -- meant to make it easier for LPFM seekers to get new station licenses in urban areas where spectrum is scarce -- affects a proceeding on implementing a 2003 auction of translators, said Womble Carlyle broadcast lawyer John Garziglia, representing a dozen radio companies. That group and Prometheus Radio Project filed comments posted Monday to docket 99-25, both citing Section 5 of the act.
The split Congress could agree on spectrum and privacy matters, former Hill aides said Saturday on C-SPAN’s The Communicators. But it’s likely Senate Democrats and House Republicans will continue to butt heads on net neutrality, and it will take time to get new members comfortable with communications issues before Congress can move forward on a rewrite of the 1996 Telecom Act, they said.
There is “an overwhelming consensus” among those that filed comments at the FCC that the commission should not repurpose public safety narrowband spectrum to allow for broadband use, AT&T said in reply comments. Motorola agreed with AT&T. But T-Mobile and Sprint Nextel said changing the rules to give public safety the option of using the spectrum for broadband should not cause the problems cited by many commenters.
LAS VEGAS -- The FCC could begin auctioning broadcast spectrum within “the next year or two” if Congress approves sharing the proceeds with spectrum holders, Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a Q-and-A session late Friday after his speech at the Consumer Electronics Show (CD Jan 10 p2). He said commission staffers have begun “creating the framework” for the auctions, in case they're authorized.