Legislation released Wednesday would deny the right to retransmission consent to a TV station or AM/FM radio station unless it agrees to provide compensation for transmitting a sound recording, said a news release from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. (http://1.usa.gov/1o7N091). The bill, the Protecting the Rights of Musicians Act (HR-4588) (http://1.usa.gov/1isK0fG), is co-sponsored by Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Blackburn, vice chairwoman of the House Commerce Committee.
Some witnesses plan to air grievances about Comcast’s proposed buy of Time Warner Cable during Thursday’s House Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee hearing. “ACA is most concerned about the competitive effects of the proposed Comcast-TWC transaction in two intertwined industries -- the (downstream) MVPD industry, which distributes video programming to consumers, and the (upstream) video programming industry, which provides this programming to these distributors,” American Cable Association President Matthew Polka will say, according to written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1j3bCrL). “Comcast is a behemoth in both industries.” The hearing will be at 9:30 a.m. in 2141 Rayburn. The FCC and Justice Department must approve the cable company deal, and these regulators must not “ignore or treat lightly the potential harms or provide inadequate relief” of the deal, Polka will say. Cogent Communications CEO Dave Schaeffer will slam the deal quite strongly, arguing it will hurt consumers and stifle innovation and criticizing the paid peering deals Comcast is seeking: “Fundamentally, Comcast’s strategy is to get everyone to pay them, either through paid peering with content providers like Netflix, paid peering with backbone providers like Cogent, or both,” Schaeffer will say (http://1.usa.gov/1kMpKY3). Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen and Time Warner Cable CEO Robert Marcus will also testify, defending the deal, and will submit a joint written testimony spanning more than 100 pages. The deal would yield “better broadband, video, and voice services for millions of additional consumers, while enabling the combined company to upgrade its broadband network, expand last-mile services, and increase Wi-Fi availability,” they said (http://1.usa.gov/1fUMau8). “It will make Comcast a more viable competitor for advanced business services, especially for the underserved small and medium-sized business segments, but also for regional, super-regional, and national enterprise customers.”
Rep. Doris Matsui, D-Calif., attacked in a blog post for The Hill Tuesday the notion of paid data prioritization deals. “Allowing deals for prioritization could easily be used to favor some content at the expense of others and be used as a barrier to entry for a small startup without the resources to buy access to an Internet fast lane,” Matsui said (http://bit.ly/1iYOQRY). “We need open Internet rules that encourage companies to compete for customers without striking special deals.” She encouraged people to weigh in on net neutrality with the FCC. Net neutrality means there shouldn’t be any “'gatekeepers,’ or toll roads,” she said. The FCC is expected to vote May 15 on a net neutrality NPRM (CD May 6 p1).
Privacy advocates had mixed reactions to the House Judiciary Committee taking up the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361) for markup Wednesday at 1 p.m. as well as the substitute language key committee lawmakers plan to offer, as the committee announced earlier this week. “The mere fact that the Judiciary Committee is taking up this bill now is positive and encouraging,” the ACLU said (http://bit.ly/1kTXXHN). “The details still need to be hammered out, but the bill is certainly better than the one that the House Intelligence Committee will be considering this week, which is a non-starter.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation called the substitute a “potentially powerful approach to stopping the mass collection of phone records under the Patriot Act,” but said: “Nonetheless, we are deeply concerned about the number of ‘hops’ that the bill would permit, as well as the undefined phrase ’selection term,’ which may leave the door open to government attempts to take a nonintuitive interpretation of the language” (http://bit.ly/1if9Fg0). “We are also concerned that this bill [substitute language] omits important transparency provisions found in the USA FREEDOM Act, which are necessary to shed light on surveillance abuses.” The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute also said it was pleased the bill is being taken up but said it’s “dismayed to see that the strong transparency provisions in the original USA FREEDOM Act, which would have allowed Internet companies to engage in more reporting about the number and kind of government demands for information they receive and which were broadly supported by both industry and privacy advocates, have been removed” (http://bit.ly/1iZZFD7).
The House Communications Subcommittee received 58 responses to its Communications Act update white paper asking about spectrum policy, it said Tuesday, posting all of the comments in large batches on its website (http://1.usa.gov/1duRyNw). Comments were due late last month. Commenters included several stakeholders whose comments were already known, such as AT&T, CTIA, NCTA, NTCA, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon. Other commenters included Comptel, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, Public Knowledge, Qualcomm, the Satellite Industry Association and the Utilities Telecom Council, who weighed in on myriad spectrum policy issues, from FCC structure and spectrum management to unlicensed spectrum to how the agency handles spectrum auctions. “The priority of the auction must be to ensure an adequately competitive environment for consumer wireless access nationwide,” Public Knowledge told Congress of spectrum auctions generally. “Any additional consideration of revenue, such as deficit reduction, has too attenuated an effect on the public interest to be taken into account. Auction revenue should be irrelevant.” Recommended approaches differed notably depending on the commenter. Congress “should consider using spectrum auction revenue to create an ‘efficiency endowment fund’ to cover agency costs to experiment with new technologies or systems that would enable them to relinquish Federal spectrum,” Mobile Future said. “Without such funding and targeted budgets for these initiatives, agencies have little incentive to incur the costs and risks associated with such system and process upgrades.”
Opening statements for House Commerce Committee markup of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization draft and the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act begin Wednesday at 4 p.m. in 2123 Rayburn, said a committee news release Monday night (http://1.usa.gov/1lT8oww). The markup vote on the bills begins Thursday at 10 a.m. in the same room, it said. The STELA draft cleared the subcommittee with some tension remaining between Republicans and Democrats. They haven’t reached complete consensus on the STELA draft and are trying to hash out a compromise on the TV station joint sharing agreements provision this week, industry lobbyists told us. The DOTCOM Act (HR-4342) seeks to delay NTIA’s transition proposal of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority until a study is done by the GAO (CD April 11 p2). House Communications Subcommittee members John Shimkus, R-Ill., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are co-sponsors of that bill, which passed the subcommittee in a markup vote along party lines last month.
Two House Homeland Security Committee subcommittees plan a joint hearing Thursday to “examine the persistent threat, assess intentions and capabilities of these bad actors, and review U.S. coordination and response efforts,” said Counterterrorism and Intelligence Subcommittee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., in a statement. National Cybersecurity & Communications Integration Center Director Larry Zelvin is among the witnesses to testify during the hearing, which the Cybersecurity and Intelligence subcommittees are co-hosting. FBI Assistant Director-Cyber Division Joseph Demarest and Glenn Lemons, DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis senior intelligence officer-Cyber Intelligence Analysis Division, are also to testify. The hearing is to begin at 10 a.m. in 311 Cannon (http://1.usa.gov/1nZJopy).
The Senate Appropriations Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Subcommittee plans a hearing Wednesday on investment in cybersecurity. Phyllis Schneck, DHS deputy undersecretary-cybersecurity, is among the DHS officials to testify. Others include Peter Edge, executive associate director-homeland security investigations, and William Noonan, U.S. Secret Service deputy special agent in charge-Criminal Investigative Division Cyber Operations. Representatives from CenturyLink, Entergy, Indiana Statewide Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives and the University of Maryland are also to testify. The hearing is to begin at 2 p.m. in 192 Dirksen (http://1.usa.gov/Su3Tyc).
House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., will address net neutrality issues Wednesday, she said in a news release. She plans a Google Hangout discussion on the FCC’s proposed new net neutrality rules at 6:30 p.m. The panel will include Republican former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, content delivery network CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince and Stanford Law School professor Barbara van Schewick. Eshoo had issued a statement last month stating her fear that new FCC rules would “not do enough” to protect net neutrality. Several people have already posed questions on the Google Hangout page (http://bit.ly/RlMKFK): “What is holding up the FCC classifying internet providers as common carriers and access as a Title II telecommunications service??” one person asked.
Two key House committees on Monday announced markups of surveillance bills. The House Judiciary Committee plans to mark up the USA Freedom Act (HR-3361), which would strongly curb U.S. phone surveillance, introduced last fall. Judiciary lawmakers plan to introduce an amendment in the nature of a substitute (http://1.usa.gov/1okqc3e) Wednesday at the 1 p.m. session, the committee said in a news release. The substitute “prohibits bulk collection under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act (Section 501 of FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act]), prohibits bulk collection under the FISA Pen Register/Trap and Trace statute (Section 402 of FISA) and National Security Letter statutes, authorizes the government to acquire telephone records stored by telephone providers but only with prior approval from the FISA Court on a case-by-case basis, increases privacy protections at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), and clarifies privacy protections for Americans under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act,” the news release said (http://1.usa.gov/1iVA3av). Six Judiciary members -- Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich.; Crime Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., the original bill author; subcommittee ranking member Bobby Scott, D-Va.; and Reps. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and Randy Forbes, R-Va. -- issued a joint statement calling the substitute “a bipartisan solution” that’s the product of months of cooperation. Also Monday, House Intelligence Committee leaders announced plans to mark up the FISA Transparency and Modernization Act of 2014 (HR-4291) Thursday morning in a closed session in HVC-304. The committees have sharply disagreed throughout the past half-year over which has jurisdiction over FISA matters.