House Cybersecurity Subcommittee members and industry executives said they're hopeful the developing cyber insurance market could become a major force in improving private sector cybersecurity in the U.S., but executives noted during a Tuesday subcommittee hearing that the market will need to grow significantly first. The cyber insurance market is clearly “in its infancy but it is easy to envision its vast potential,” subcommittee Chairman John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, said. A fully matured cyber insurance ecosystem could incentivize companies of all sizes to improve their cyber risk management, he said.
The Supreme Court partially granted Samsung’s petition for a writ of certiorari seeking a review of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s May ruling that whittled down the amount of damages the company is required to pay Apple in a patent infringement lawsuit Samsung lost in 2012.
Lawyers for the House and Senate Judiciary committees urged copyright stakeholders Friday to be as active in advocating to congressional appropriators on Copyright Office funding as they are in advocating to Judiciary staffers for CO modernization. “I would encourage you to spend as much if not more time talking to” appropriators about CO issues and the degree to which funding can affect the office's ability to function, said Senate Judiciary Committee Democratic Counsel Garrett Levin. CO modernization has emerged as a top policy issue that copyright stakeholders have focused on amid the House Judiciary Committee's ongoing Copyright Act review (see 1511180063).
House Communications Subcommittee members are increasingly at ease with the trajectory of the planned Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, since ICANN's approval last week of two transition-related plans, they said Thursday. They indicated they'll continue to exercise their oversight of the IANA transition process until its completion. ICANN sent NTIA its finalized IANA transition plan and a related set of recommended changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms after the board passed both plans during its meeting in Marrakech, Morocco (see 1603100070). ICANN stakeholders strongly endorsed the IANA transition plan and the recommendations from the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability), saying during the hearing that the plans collectively meet NTIA criteria for the IANA transition.
The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council unanimously approved recommendations from five working groups Wednesday on 911 call rerouting and the security of communications systems. FCC Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson assigned CSRIC the task Wednesday of forming an additional working group on security best practices for services using the Wi-Fi spectrum band. Four other CSRIC working groups reported progress toward completing recommendations due before the current CSRIC mandate ends in March 2017.
The Copyright Office’s nascent examination of the U.S. moral rights landscape will delve into an area of copyright law that has largely been on the back burner within the U.S. but has major implications abroad, copyright stakeholders said in interviews. The CO will take its first steps in examining moral rights via a planned April 18 symposium with the George Mason University School of Law and GMU’s Center for the Protection of Intellectual Property (CPIP). The CO said the symposium will be a precursor to a more formal CO analysis of the issue (see 1603110072). A creator’s moral rights may include the right to attribution, the right to publish anonymously or under a pseudonym, and the right to preserve the integrity of a work from alteration. The direction a potential future Copyright Office policy study on moral rights could take remains unclear. Stakeholders offered divergent policy visions, including maintaining the U.S.’s current status quo and adopting moral rights laws more consistent with those enforced in Europe.
Much of the Copyright Office’s $74 million FY 2017 budget request is directed at “maintaining the current state” of the CO’s operations and “replenishing depleted staff to ensure we have sufficient personnel to meet our current responsibilities under the Copyright Act,” said Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante in written testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Legislative Branch Subcommittee. Acting Librarian of Congress David Mao will testify at the hearing Tuesday on the LOC’s proposed $719 million FY 2017 budget, while Pallante will be at the hearing to answer CO-specific questions, the CO said Monday. Both Mao and Pallante testified during an early March House Appropriations Committee Legislative Branch Subcommittee hearing on the LOC and CO budget requests (see 1603020055). The Senate hearing will begin at 3 p.m. in 192 Dirksen.
NTIA already has begun evaluating ICANN’s proposed Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan and a related set of recommendations for changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms, Administrator Larry Strickling said Friday in a blog post. NTIA hopes to complete its review of the proposals “within 90 days” to determine whether the proposals meet NTIA’s criteria for the transition, Strickling said. ICANN sent its IANA transition proposals to NTIA Thursday, after ICANN’s board unanimously approved the plans at ICANN’s meeting in Marrakech, Morocco. ICANN leaders said they're confident the IANA transition-related proposals fully track with NTIA’s transition criteria (see 1603100070). “Not only will ICANN be stronger as a result of this effort, but a successful outcome here would serve as a powerful example to the world that the multistakeholder model can be used to address challenging Internet governance issues,” Strickling said.
ICANN sent NTIA its finalized Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition plan and a related set of recommended changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms Thursday, after ICANN’s board approved both proposals, as expected (see 1603040065). IANA Transition Coordination Group Chairwoman Alissa Cooper told the board the IANA transition plan will provide “continuity with how the Internet works today. The proposal keeps in place the same operational realities that have been working on the Internet since the 1990s.” If the IANA transition moves forward as planned, “Internet users should experience no change,” Cooper said during an ICANN news conference Thursday.
Enactment of the Digital Security Commission Act (HR-4651/S-2604) would likely improve understanding of the encryption issues in Apple's ongoing legal standoff with the FBI but may not mean long-lasting changes to the encryption debate within the federal government, cybersecurity law experts said Wednesday during a New America event. Apple formally objected last week to U.S. District Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym's order in Riverside, California, which tried to compel the company to help the FBI access an iPhone used by one of the alleged San Bernardino, California, mass shooters (see 1603020061). Though the tech sector is attempting to be publicly monolithic in its support of Apple, they're far less so behind the scenes, said Steptoe and Johnson lawyer Michael Vatis, former director of the FBI's National Infrastructure Protection Center.