The House passed HR-1123, the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, by a vote of 295-114, despite last-minute revolt from a few members. The latest version of the bill was different from the one passed by committee, and it no longer addressed bulk unlocking, prompting active resistance from some members and the loss of support from Public Knowledge and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The bill “protects consumer choice by allowing consumers flexibility when it comes to choosing a wireless carrier,” said bill author House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in a statement following the bill’s passage. “This is something that Americans have been asking for and I am pleased that the House of Representatives acted to restore the exemption that will allow consumers to unlock their cell phones.” Public Knowledge is happy consumers would be able to unlock their phones but “language recently added to the bill could be interpreted to make future unlocking efforts more difficult,” said Vice President-Legal Affairs Sherwin Siy, saying the group is “hopeful” the legislation can be changed in the Senate. Of the 295 members voting for the bill, 200 were Republicans and 95 were Democrats, and of those voting against it, 20 were Republicans and 94 were Democrats.

Comcast’s plan to buy Time Warner Cable may provide a way to “start the endowment” for public broadcasting, depending on how the deal proceeds, Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., told members of the Association of Public Television Stations. “A crazy idea? Perhaps. But we need to be aware of opportunities like that.” Blumenauer founded the Public Broadcasting Caucus in 1999 and co-chairs it. He mentioned a “lot of concerns” about the proposed cable acquisition. “How are we going to establish a permanent endowment for public broadcasting?” Blumenauer asked, slamming the annual “circus” that surrounds funding it. He praised association members for “a magnificent outpouring of support,” which has helped buy them “breathing room,” he said Tuesday at the Library of Congress. But “the point for me is ‘can we build on this moment?'” he asked. “I hope we can.” He urged public broadcasters to take a look at the congressional recess calendar and encourage members of Congress to visit their stations when back in their home districts. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said funding for public broadcasting “has just kept pace with inflation” and “we can use a lot more.” There’s also a need for more than just money -- there’s a need to fight the “broader assault on our public institutions” and ideological attacks on public broadcasting, Harkin said. It’s “complete nonsense” to say public broadcasting advocates are “elitist” or “snobby,” Harkin insisted. He recalled former FCC Chairman Newton Minnow’s quote about TV being “a vast wasteland” and then Harkin derided Jersey Shore and Honey Boo Boo, which he said he hadn’t watched but his staff told him about. “That can’t be true,” Harkin had told his staff about the latter program, he said. “Duck Dynasty? Is that really a show?” He said there should be space for at least one public network. “I may be retiring from the Senate, but I'm not retiring from the fight,” said Harkin.

Several key committees of Congress are gearing up for satellite reauthorization. The House Communications Subcommittee scheduled a hearing next week on the reauthorization of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA), it said in a tweet (http://bit.ly/MYMsTp). STELA expires at the end of 2014 and is under the jurisdiction of both Commerce and Judiciary committees. House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., has pledged a STELA draft by the end of Q1 and indicated a desire not to address retransmission consent in the reauthorization process. Witnesses and other details haven’t been announced. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told the NAB State Leadership Conference Tuesday that retrans is an issue “almost every member of Congress has heard about” and that House Judiciary will consider during more hearings on STELA: “These hearings will help inform the committee members on the issues as we move forward.” Following the speech, Goodlatte told reporters “we have made no decision” on whether to address retrans issues in STELA but promised hearings “soon,” with decisions later. During his speech, Goodlatte said “clearly, broadcasting has changed in ways that make our existing laws seem outdated” and indicated current consumer expectations can “clash” with copyright law written before the advent of the Internet. Goodlatte pointed to the Aereo case as one issue that “could reshape” how the broadcast industry reaches consumers. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., spoke to the Leadership Conference earlier, emphasizing STELA reauthorization. “I just talked about how we needed to get it done by the end of the year,” Klobuchar, a member of both Commerce and Judiciary, told us after the speech.

The Telecom Act of 1996 “ushered in several major advancements in communications,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told the NAB State Leadership Conference Tuesday when mentioning a possible overhaul of the act. Congress should tweak the act if needed “without destroying the fabric of the law,” she said, emphasizing the importance of the nine pillars enshrined in the law. Clyburn also touched on the broadcast incentive auction and suggested perhaps the FCC should offer bidding credits so that spectrum acquired in auction could be used to supply fixed wireless to schools or anchor institutions. The FCC should “be more creative” in lowering barriers for small businesses, she said. “When the market does not operate fairly or efficiently, those in government should not hesitate to step in judiciously,” Clyburn said, saying she favors not only an even playing field but also one in which all potential participants are able to play. NAB President Gordon Smith praised Clyburn as both a commissioner and acting chairwoman, saying she spoke truly in promising an open door to broadcasters and “is open to the other side.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., spoke to the conference earlier Tuesday. “The major substantive focus was on getting the incentive auction right, the importance of the auction for public safety,” Klobuchar told us after her speech. She also mentioned the need to get the repacking process handled properly and cited important spectrum coordination considerations along the borders with Canada and Mexico. “We need to get the incentive auction right.”

The FCC should defer to Congress in developing its net neutrality rules, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said at the NAB State Leadership Conference Tuesday. “I've introduced legislation in the past to ensure there is open access on the Internet,” Goodlatte added. But the agency should always “be looking back at the laws,” because it’s full of “unelected bureaucrats,” and shouldn’t be forging the path, he said. “That, to me, is the better way to legislate,” Goodlatte said, saying if the FCC were to advance net neutrality without looking to legislation approved by Congress, it would be a “very bad harbinger for the future of freedom and democracy in the United States.” Goodlatte said he’s not familiar with the “details of the agenda” that FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler outlined earlier this month.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., wants a bill to end any possibility of the FCC resuming its Critical Information Needs study, he said in a press release Tuesday (http://1.usa.gov/MrukAA). House Republicans had for weeks questioned the design of the study, which originally included questioning of media organizations, saying they feared it would be a revival of the Fairness Doctrine. The FCC suspended the study last week and said it would no longer question any journalists. “It took nearly 25 years to get the Fairness Doctrine off the books once it had been ‘eliminated’ in 1987, and we will do whatever it takes to ensure this study or any other effort by the government to control the output of America’s newsrooms never sees the light of day,” Walden said. The subcommittee plans a hearing on the issue in addition to developing legislation, he said.

Opposition rose Tuesday hours before a scheduled floor vote Tuesday evening on a cellphone unlocking bill, the Unlocking Consumer Choice Act (HR-1123), sponsored by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va. “It has overwhelming support in the House,” Goodlatte told reporters Tuesday afternoon after a speech at the NAB State Leadership Conference. He expressed no fear of any opposition derailing the legislation. Democratic Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Anna Eshoo both of California had on Monday urged colleagues to vote ‘no,’ citing last-minute changes to the bill revealed last week. The latest draft no longer addresses bulk unlocking. “We announced at the beginning of this process that we were not going to get into the whole [Section] 1201 of the [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] issue in this bill,” Goodlatte told reporters. “We were simply going to take care of individual cellphone unlocking, and that [change] was simply designed to make it clear that was the case.” Bulk unlocking will be addressed as part of the committee’s broader review of copyright, Goodlatte added. On Tuesday, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., joined the two Californians in opposition. “After this bill was marked up and reported out of committee, a new section was added to the bill without notice to or consultation with us,” said the Dear Colleague letter from the four members. “As a consequence of this late added provision, both the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge have withdrawn support for the bill.” House Judiciary ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., however, does “support this version of the legislation primarily because there is a critical limitation in the bill that tethers it to the sole purpose of switching carriers to increase consumer and carrier choice,” a Conyers spokesman told us. On Tuesday, Goodlatte circulated his own Dear Colleague letter requesting support for his bill. “Due to concerns over smartphone theft rings, the Fraternal Order of Police supports the current language in H.R. 1123 concerning bulk unlocking,” said the letter, signed by Goodlatte, Conyers and Reps. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, Howard Coble, R-N.C., Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

The Songwriter Equity Act, which will “level the playing field for songwriters, composers, and publishers to receive fair compensation,” will be introduced by House Judiciary Committee sponsor Doug Collins, R-Ga., and co-sponsor Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Tuesday, said a Collins news release. Jeffries and Collins plan a press conference Tuesday at 10 a.m. at Capitol Hill’s House Triangle to introduce the legislation, it said. They will be joined by Paul Williams, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers president; David Israelite, National Music Publishers’ Association president; Mike O'Neill, Broadcast Music Inc. CEO; and Daryl Friedman, the Recording Academy’s chief advocacy and industry relations officer, said the release.

House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., is wrong to compare net neutrality to the Fairness Doctrine, Computer & Communications Industry Association Vice President-Government Relations Cathy Sloan told us over the weekend. On Friday, Blackburn introduced HR-4070, the Internet Freedom Act, which would prevent the FCC from reinstating any net neutrality rules (CD Feb 24 p20) -- an idea which is widely expected to face an uphill battle in Congress. At the time, Blackburn called net neutrality “the Fairness Doctrine of the Internet.” House Republicans have been up in arms over the idea of the Fairness Doctrine recently amid fears over the FCC’s now-suspended Critical Information Needs study design and the possibility, as Republicans said, that the FCC might revive the doctrine. But that doctrine “involved the FCC in determinations about whether broadcasters were presenting balanced points of view in their programming over the public airwaves,” Sloan countered, and what Sloan would call open Internet regulation, “by sharp contrast, seeks to ensure that neither Internet access network operators OR the government have ANY editorial or gatekeeper role with respect to the nature of content available to end users on the Internet,” she said in an email. The Internet Freedom Act had five Republican co-sponsors upon introduction -- Reps. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, Steve Scalise of Louisiana, John Shimkus of Illinois and House Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Bob Latta of Ohio. It has been referred to House Commerce.

The FCC is taking the right course on net neutrality, House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., said over the weekend on Press: Here, an NBC news show broadcast in San Francisco and her home district in Silicon Valley. She emphasized the importance of FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s not appealing the D.C. Circuit appeals court decision that vacated FCC net neutrality rules as well as Wheeler’s decision to focus on barriers to municipal broadband networks. But “I don’t think an ISP and I don’t think a wireless service should be able to discriminate or block content,” Eshoo said. “Now we haven’t gotten to wireless yet.” The FCC’s vacated net neutrality rules, first issued as part of a 2010 order, did not apply to wireless service.