Recent attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, “tragically [put] an exclamation point” on the FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council work on telecom infrastructure security and reliability, said CSRIC Chairman John Schanz, Comcast Cable chief network officer. CSRIC's work on reliability of 911 systems is critical to police having situational awareness “that will make possible big data added to emergency response,” said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson after a presentation at the group's meeting by Working Group 1. It's working on recommendations for rerouting 911 calls between public safety answering points and on recommendations on aspects of location-based routing that use latitude and longitude information and other information.
Cybersecurity stakeholders moved forward via NTIA's multistakeholder process on vulnerability research disclosure, further revising the scope of working groups' examination of the issue. A working group on increasing adoption and awareness of vulnerability disclosure best practices generated the most debate during Wednesday's NTIA-facilitated meeting. Other multistakeholder working groups are examining possible incentives for safe vulnerability research disclosures, best practices for multi-party vulnerability disclosures and best practices for disclosures within safety industries. Most at an initial multistakeholder meeting in September identified increasing adoption of vulnerability disclosure best practices and examining incentives for adoption as the most pressing issues the NTIA process should focus on (see 1509290061).
The House Administration Committee’s Wednesday hearing on IT issues at the Copyright Office and Library of Congress is likely also to continue to raise questions about whether the CO should be granted additional autonomy from the LOC, copyright interests told us. House Administration said in a statement that the hearing will include “an update on the current state of management over the entire Library of Congress information technology systems, as well as how both the Copyright Office and the Library of Congress are working together to meet the demands of today’s digital age.”
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability reached a rough compromise Thursday on how to handle advice from the Governmental Advisory Committee following the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, CCWG-Accountability members told us. CCWG-Accountability had been struggling to reach a consensus on whether to propose amending ICANN’s bylaws to require the ICANN board to find a “mutually acceptable solution” when GAC provides advice that’s supported by GAC member consensus. Lack of consensus on the issue earlier this month forced CCWG-Accountability to issue a formal update on its progress instead of an anticipated executive summary of its latest draft of a proposed set of changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms (see 1511160047). CCWG-Accountability's compromise likely removes the last major barrier to finalizing the revised draft, which is set for release Monday, working group members said. The CCWG-Accountability proposal is widely seen as crucial to moving ahead with the IANA transition process.
A Copyright Office ruling that declined to opine if the Copyright Royalty Board was prohibited from setting differentiated webcasting royalty rates in its ongoing 2016-2020 webcasting rate-setting proceeding is more of a loss for some major record labels than a true win for webcasters, copyright lawyers told us Wednesday. Sony and other major labels argued the CRB could adopt different royalty rates for different music copyright owners, while independent labels aligned with webcasters in arguing that Congress hadn’t allowed for anything but a uniform rate structure. Webcaster Pandora released a copy of Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante’s ruling Tuesday. The CO won’t formally release the ruling until it’s published in the Federal Register next week, a Library of Congress spokesman said. Pallante’s ruling is unlikely to have a major effect on the CRB’s expected mid-December decision on the webcasting rate-setting proceeding, copyright lawyers said.
ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, now a partner at consulting firm RiceHadleyGates, led an off-the-record roundtable event Monday on the national security and geostrategic implications of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, stakeholders told us. The event, at the Atlantic Council’s Washington office, was aimed at civil society Internet governance stakeholders but also included State Department officials, an industry official said. The event was also an opportunity for invited stakeholders to learn what they “can do in the critical coming months, as ICANN prepares to present” the IANA transition proposal and a related set of proposed changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms to NTIA for final approval, an invitation to the roundtable said. The roundtable is “really another in a long series of events we’ve participated in to raise awareness among” Washington-based parties about the IANA transition as planning for the transition has continued to progress, said ICANN Vice President-Business Engagement Chris Mondini. The roundtable was a follow-up to a similar off-the-record Atlantic Council event earlier this year. ICANN has participated in “dozens of these smaller roundtables,” including events at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Mondini said. ICANN’s presence at the off-the-record roundtable raised concerns among some stakeholders amid a push for ICANN to increase its transparency, though an industry lobbyist said hosting organizations -- rather than ICANN -- typically dictate whether such meetings are on or off the record. The Atlantic Council and Hadley didn’t comment. This roundtable specifically focused on general security issues on how international pressure in the Internet governance space might lead to balkanization of the Internet along national borders, Mondini told us. The session wasn’t being held in connection with recent concerns about government stakeholders’ demands for revisions to the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) proposed ICANN accountability mechanism changes, Mondini said. CCWG-Accountability hasn’t reached consensus on whether to propose amending ICANN’s bylaws to require the ICANN board to find a “mutually acceptable solution” when the Governmental Advisory Committee provides advice that’s supported by GAC member consensus. CCWG-Accountability is also grappling with a proposal from Brazil and several other GAC members to resurrect a 2014 proposal to amend the ICANN bylaws to require two-thirds of the ICANN board to vote to be able to reject consensus GAC advice (see 1511160047).
The Internet Governance Forum (IGF) will need to continue evolving in coming years to remain relevant for influencing Internet issues, said Internet governance stakeholders Friday during a D.C. Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-DC) event. IGF’s latest annual meeting, this month in João Pessoa, Brazil, focused on the Internet's importance in economic development and how to connect more users. The 2015 IGF also operated under the specter of efforts to include a 10-year renewal of IGF’s mandate in an outcome document to be drafted at the U.N.’s Dec. 15-16 high-level meeting on its 10-year review of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+10) outcomes.
There’s broad support for some form of Copyright Office modernization, but it’s unclear whether there’s momentum in a particular direction for modernizing the office, particularly on whether to relocate the CO out of the Library of Congress, establish it as an independent agency or fold it into the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), copyright stakeholders told us in interviews. CO modernization has been one of the marquee issues to emerge from the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing Copyright Act review, with most stakeholders and Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante backing some form of modernization. Pallante earlier this year strongly backed making the CO an independent agency (see 1504290058), while stakeholders have favored proposals ranging from granting the CO more autonomy but keeping it within the LOC, to making it an independent agency or absorbing CO into the PTO.
Improving the functionality of the U.S. copyright system shouldn’t center solely on proposals to modernize the Copyright Office, said Re:Create Coalition-affiliated lobbyists Tuesday during a group event. Fixes to the CO should center on improving its adaptation to modern technologies and narrow the scope of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s (DMCA) Section 1201 anti-circumvention rules so the CO isn’t bogged down with regulatory duties related to that statute, the lobbyists said. The House Judiciary Committee has been exploring a possible modernization of the CO as part of its ongoing Copyright Act review, including examining proposals to move CO out from the Library of Congress. The CO modernization issue has repeatedly been mentioned in House Judiciary’s recent copyright roundtable sessions (see 1511100063 and 1511120049).
The Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) appears to still be on track to release the full text Nov. 30 of its revised proposal for changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms despite not being able to report a full executive summary on the revised draft Sunday as originally scheduled, ICANN stakeholders told us. CCWG-Accountability instead released a formal update on the working group’s progress on the draft proposal since ICANN’s October meeting in Dublin. CCWG-Accountability agreed at ICANN’s Dublin meeting to proceed with the sole designator model as the mechanism for enforcing proposed community powers in an expected third draft proposal (see 1510220053). CCWG-Accountability has continued to make progress on its proposal since the Dublin meeting, but “there are outstanding elements that remain to be finalized,” the working group said.