ICANN stakeholders are in the early stages of reviewing draft revisions to bylaws, and initial analyses indicate the draft largely tracks with provisions included in the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan and a related set of recommended changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, said stakeholders in interviews. ICANN tasked its in-house and outside legal counsel last month with rewriting its bylaws to conform with the IANA transition-related plans. ICANN’s board approved both plans last month and sent them on for an NTIA review (see 1603100070). Some issues that affected negotiations on recommendations from the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) resurfaced in CCWG-Accountability members’ review of the draft ICANN bylaw revisions, but those concerns are unlikely to result in major changes to the draft, stakeholders told us.
A potential legal challenge to the new trans-Atlantic “Privacy Shield” data protection framework creates legal uncertainty for stakeholders in both the U.S. and Europe, but that shouldn't prevent both the parties from moving forward on the framework, said FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez and European Commission Article 29 Data Protection Working Party Chairwoman Isabelle Falque-Pierrotin during an event Tuesday. The Article 29 Working Party is set to release its views on a draft version of the Privacy Shield during a plenary meeting next week, feedback that will influence the EC's decision on whether it supports the framework. Members of the European Parliament and privacy advocates have questioned whether Privacy Shield would hold up in European courts given the European Court of Justice's standards in striking down the old safe harbor framework (see 1603170028).
A last-minute campaign by Fight for the Future raised the public profile of the Copyright Office’s study of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Section 512 ahead of Friday night's deadline for public feedback on the study. CO reported Monday that it collected more than 91,000 comments. Fight for the Future claimed credit Monday for generating more than 86,000 of the Section 512 comments via users who used its TakeDownAbuse.org website, which the digital rights group said had affected the performance of the federal government’s Regulations.gov website. Fight for the Future is planning to send the CO an additional 11,000 Section 512 comments collected after the filing deadline via a petition. The CO didn’t comment Monday.
The Copyright Office is likely to encounter both praise and criticism of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's Section 512 in comments on the CO's ongoing study of Section 512, stakeholders said in interviews. Comments were due after our deadline Friday on the CO's study, which will assess the effectiveness of Section 512's safe harbor provision and the current notice-and-takedown process. The study will also examine Section 512's counter-notification process and legal standards related to the section (see 1512300039). The CO said Friday it's extending the deadline for parties to file to participate in the office's planned Section 512 roundtables in New York and Stanford, California, to April 11. The New York roundtable is set for May 2-3 at the New York University School of Law, while the Stanford roundtable is set for May 12-13 at Stanford Law School (see 1603180059).
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on Wednesday criticized a DOJ proposal to alter its Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 to allow federal judges to issue warrants for remote searches of computers outside their jurisdictions. Rule 41 currently severely limits federal judges' ability to issue search warrants outside their court districts. Wyden said at AccessNow's RightsCon summit that he will work via the Senate “to block plans that would threaten to weaken strong encryption,” calling both Justice's proposal and expected legislation from Senate Intelligence Committee leaders that would require tech firms to decrypt data under court orders “lose-lose” propositions.
Public feedback on the Copyright Office's preliminary IT modernization plan is expected to be largely supportive, though several copyright stakeholders told us the issue of funding for the CO's plan will continue to loom large going forward. The CO's preliminary five-year IT plan, released in February, focuses on moving the office away from depending on the Library of Congress' large IT infrastructure base and increasing stakeholders' use of copyright registration (see 1602290071). Several copyright stakeholders said their comments will laud the CO's IT plan but declined to offer an early preview of the comments before filing. Comments on the plan are due Thursday.
ICANN pushed back against DotConnectAfrica (DCA) Trust's lawsuit against the nonprofit corporation over its delegation of the .africa generic top-level domain (gTLD), saying in a filing Friday that the DCA Trust waived its right to sue ICANN when it filed its application to become the .africa gTLD registry. DCA Trust disputed ICANN's decision to delegate the .africa gTLD to the ZA Central Registry (ZACR). DCA Trust filed suit against ICANN for not following a binding 2015 independent review process ruling that said ICANN violated its bylaws in its handling of DCA's 2013 challenge to the .africa delegation decision. The U.S. District Court in Los Angeles granted a temporary restraining order earlier this month to halt ICANN's delegation of the .africa gTLD until after an April hearing (see 1603070062). DCA Trust's lawyers didn't comment Monday about ICANN's filing.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said he and many other House members “believe the Copyright Office should remain in the legislative branch of our government.” During an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators set to have been shown Saturday, he said he is open to separating the CO from the Library of Congress. Some advocates of CO independence have proposed making it an independent congressional agency, while others proposed making it a Department of Commerce office (see 1511180063). Goodlatte said he is exploring whether Congress can give the CO “some greater independence so that we can not only target money to them” but also give the Register of Copyrights “the independence to make some of the decisions” on modernization issues without LOC approval.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other World Wide Web Consortium interests differed about the state of support among W3C stakeholders for an EFF-proposed covenant that would obligate all W3C stakeholders not to file or join a lawsuit against entities under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and similar laws for circumventing technological protection measures (TPMs) for security research purposes, they told us. EFF said it's “cautiously optimistic” it made headway during a Sunday-Tuesday W3C Advisory Committee meeting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in convincing other stakeholders to support adoption of the covenant. Another party said support for the covenant remains minimal.
The House Homeland Security Committee fast-tracked approval Wednesday of the Combating Terrorist Recruitment Act. It would counter terrorist groups’ online recruitment, but some committee Democrats were concerned the bill places too much emphasis on recruitment by Islamic terrorist groups. HR-4820, which Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., filed Monday, would require the Department of Homeland Security to counteract online terrorist recruitment by using the “public testimonials” of former terrorists and their families in “counter-messaging” communications and community engagement efforts. House Homeland Security cleared HR-4820 16-5. Also Wednesday, a conference heard from panelists about spreading terrorism online (see 1603230039)