The course of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition process is less certain since an ICANN working group meeting over the weekend on a related proposal on changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms and amid renewed congressional scrutiny of the transition, stakeholders said in interviews. ICANN stakeholders had planned to use a meeting Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles to move closer to a consensus on the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN Accountability’s (CCWG-Accountability) draft ICANN accountability proposal (see 1509240072), but stakeholders who participated in or observed the meeting told us they don’t believe the group made enough progress. Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, joined two vocal critics of the IANA transition in requesting a Government Accountability Office review of whether it’s constitutional for the transition to proceed without Congress’ approval.
The FCC should pursue "strong" privacy rules in its upcoming rulemaking, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill said Saturday during a Telecommunications Policy Research Conference. The NPRM is expected to get a vote as early as the FCC’s Oct. 22 meeting and is likely to revive sharp divisions within the commission (see 1509110027 and 1509230063). Brill said she supports a dual FCC-FTC role in privacy protections for broadband users. She said Communications Act Title II reclassification of broadband service “presents a rare opportunity to discuss consumer privacy in a specific context -- the relationship between consumers and their broadband providers.” FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai and FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen recently said the FTC is better equipped to protect privacy (see 1509020040).
Librarian of Congress James Billington will leave his post earlier than expected, after saying Friday that he plans to retire Wednesday. Billington announced in June that he planned to retire Jan. 1 (see 1506180057). Deputy Librarian of Congress David Mao will serve as acting librarian until the Senate confirms a permanent replacement for Billington, the Library of Congress said. Billington's early departure refocuses attention on the selection of Billington's replacement, but doesn't necessarily put additional pressure on the White House to select a nominee, copyright stakeholders told us in interviews.
The European Commission moved forward Thursday with its digital single market (DSM) strategy by announcing new consultations aimed at collecting public feedback on Internet platforms' behavior in the European market and geographic restrictions of content. European Commission Digital Economy and Society Commissioner Günther Oettinger pointed to the new DSM consultations Thursday as an area in which U.S. stakeholders should work with the EU to maintain their trans-Atlantic ties on information and communications technology (ICT) issues. The U.S. responses to the EU's DSM strategy have been mixed since the strategy first went public in May (see 1505060038 and 1505070053), with some perceiving the strategy as “a secret key to a Fortress Europe,” Oettinger said during a Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies event. “My message to all our friends in D.C. is clear -- don't fall into that trap.”
ICANN's board and the Cross Community Working Group on Enhancing ICANN's Accountability (CCWG-Accountability) are “much closer to being aligned” on proposed changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms “than it appears in the chaotic nature of the multistakeholder model,” said ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé during an appearance on C-SPAN's The Communicators set to appear online Friday and to be broadcast on C-SPAN Saturday. The ICANN board is aligned with CCWG-Accountability on the basic contours of the groups' draft ICANN accountability proposal but has been objecting to a few portions of the proposal, including those that deal with enforcing proposed new ICANN community powers, said Chehadé.
Participants in a House Judiciary Committee copyright roundtable in Nashville Tuesday rallied around high-level concepts like equitable royalties compensation for songwriters and performers, but couldn’t agree on specific solutions, industry stakeholders who attended the roundtable said in subsequent interviews. House Judiciary had set the roundtable as part of a planned “listening tour” on copyright issues to follow up on earlier hearings related to the committee’s Copyright Act review (see 1509110063). The Nashville roundtable was intended to focus on music licensing issues, with participants largely coming from music publishers and other well-established industry entities.
The Copyright Office handed Pandora a procedural victory late Friday in the Internet service's quest to have the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) consider its past deals with independent music label rights consortium Merlin and independent label Naxos as possible benchmarks for CRB’s 2016-2020 webcasting rate-setting proceeding. The 2009 Webcaster Settlement Act (WSA) doesn’t prohibit the admissibility of direct licenses like Pandora’s Merlin/Naxos deals that are clearly influenced by WSA terms, Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante said in the ruling. Copyright royalty judges are normally barred from considering alternative rate structures authorized by WSA in rate-setting proceedings since they aren’t set by CRJs, but direct licenses don’t fall under that prohibition, Pallante said.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the U.S. District Court in Miami was correct when it ruled in 2014 that blogger Irina Chevaldina's use of an unflattering photo of Miami Heat minority owner Raanan Katz in a blog post critical of Katz's business practices constitutes fair use. Katz had sued Chevaldina for copyright infringement, prompting outcry from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other groups. Katz had also sued Google for not complying with a takedown notice related to the photo but later dropped the search engine company from the lawsuit (see 1505080057). A three-judge 11th Circuit panel -- Judges Susan Black, Gerard Tjoflat and Charles Wilson -- affirmed the 2014 ruling by Magistrate Judge Chris McAliley in Katz v. Chevaldina, with the panel saying Thursday that use of the photo of Katz in Chevaldina's blog posts “was of a primarily educational, rather than commercial, character. Chevaldina unabashedly criticized and commented on the dealings of Katz, his businesses, and his lawyers. Chevaldina’s blog posts sought to warn and educate others about the alleged nefariousness of Katz, and she made no money from her use of the photo.” Chevaldina's use of the photo can also be considered transformative, because “in the context of the blog post’s surrounding commentary, she used Katz’s purportedly 'ugly' and 'compromising' appearance to ridicule and satirize his character,” the 11th Circuit panel said. It admonished Katz for “improper” motivations for pursuing his case. “Instead of using the law for its intended purposes of fostering ideas and expression, Plaintiff obtained the photograph’s copyright solely for the purpose of suppressing Defendant’s free speech,” the 11th Circuit said. “People who go around trying to buy up bad pictures of themselves in the hope they can suppress them won't succeed,” said Center for Individual Rights General Counsel Michael Rosman, who represented Chevaldina at the 11th Circuit, in a blog post. Katz lawyer Alan Kluger didn't comment. EFF, which filed an amicus brief on Chevaldina's behalf, said the 11th Circuit's ruling is significant because “although copyright law is frequently misused as a tool to censor speech, it rarely makes it into court to be challenged. And here, the court stopped the plaintiff in his tracks.”
NTIA should assess the planned transfer of oversight of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions to ICANN based on concrete frameworks, GAO recommended Friday. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and other House Commerce Committee Republicans ordered the report to aid NTIA in determining its criteria for evaluating the IANA transition. The agency's evaluation should be based on frameworks that “incorporate leading practices to help organizations obtain reasonable assurance that their goals and objectives will be met or that they will meet certain requirements,” GAO said.
Federal lawmakers and regulators should be careful to regulate bitcoin and other applications that use blockchain distributed database technology by function, rather than lumping all blockchain-based applications together as currencies requiring financial regulation, stakeholders said Friday during a Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee event. Federal agencies are becoming increasingly interested in regulating bitcoin, with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission defining bitcoin and other virtual currencies Thursday as commodities in its settlement of charges against bitcoin exchange Coinflip for operating a commodities exchange without complying with agency regulations.