February 2015

The worst thing about Chairman Wheeler’s net neutrality plan

[Commentary] What is the saddest is that this decision to impose heavy regulation damages the moral authority of the United States to keep the global Internet free and open for debate and innovation.

The Internet is under severe threat from China, Russia, and Iran -- from dictators and central planners everywhere. In international organizations like the International Telecommunication Union, the US has stood up courageously and cogently for Internet freedom. Now, even if the Obama/Wheeler effort is overturned in the courts, we will look just plain silly trying to tell the authoritarians to keep their hands off, pointing to our own successes as the lodestar and arguing that, hey, a light touch really works. It does. It brings prosperity; it unleashes the imagination; it makes the world a better place. We can’t let them take it away from us.

[Glassman is a visiting fellow at AEI]

NAB Drops Court Challenge To Online Filing Requirement

The National Association of Broadcasters has dropped its court challenge to the Federal Communications Commission's requirement that TV stations upload their public files to an FCC database.

“Requiring broadcasters to put their public file online was a no-brainer,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director of the Campaign Legal Center. "Both its name and its purpose reflects the intention that the file be publicly accessible, but the public virtually never saw them unless they were willing to travel to the station and request the opportunity to review them. Broadcasters maintain their programming information in digital format, so in fact it was more burdensome for the stations to produce the statutorily required information on paper.”

Copyright Office Has Thoughts on What Streaming Music Services Should Pay for Music

A report from the US Copyright Office offers ten pages of recommendations for how existing copyright laws over music licensing should be updated to better reflect how people listen to music now. The report could be used as a basis for legislation that could change how much artists, songwriters and music labels receive for their music as well as the amount radio stations and music streaming services are required to pay.

Among the recommendations:

Government licensing processes should aspire to treat like uses of music alike.
Require AM/FM radio stations to pay performance fees to recording artists like satellite and Internet radio stations.
Close a loophole that allows digital streaming services to avoid paying royalties on songs recorded before 1972.
Consolidate all rate-setting activities within the Copyright Royalty Board, instead of having some rates set by federal district courts (thanks to decades-old industry consent decrees with the Justice Department).

Lawmakers call for 'virtual Congress'

Reps Steve Pearce (R-NM) and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) have introduced a bill urging development of ways for members of Congress to avoid traveling to Washington (DC) away from their districts.

The resolution offered by Reps Pearce and Swalwell, who both hail from districts on the opposite side of the country as Washington, envisions a Congress allowing members to vote and participate in committee hearings via the Internet. That way, they argue, lawmakers wouldn't have to travel all the way to the Capitol to conduct official duties and jet back to their districts every week. Specifically, their resolution directs the House Administration Committee to identify "best practices" for conducting congressional business virtually. The measure further cites security concerns of having all 535 members of Congress in one place. It notes "concerns were raised after 9/11 about the possibility of future terrorist attacks on the Nation's Capitol and the safety of the Members of Congress" as well as "the security challenges of convening government officials in one specific place."

Silicon Valley really is more innovative, study finds

Researchers have built a new map of entrepreneurial "hotspots" in California and pinpoint the San Francisco Bay Area -- Silicon Valley, in particular -- as birthing more successful startups than anywhere else in the state.

Startups in Menlo Park, Mountain View, Palo Alto, and Sunnyvale have 20 times the average quality of the median and 90 times that of the lowest-ranked cities in California, according to the analysis. "The entire ecosystem is nurturing and helping companies within Silicon Valley realize their promise on a more guaranteed basis than anywhere else in the state," said co-author Scott Stern of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The study focused on whether businesses had a "meaningful growth outcome" -- an initial public offering or acquisition within six years of founding -- in relation to characteristics such as how the business was named, how it was registered and whether it was associated with high-technology industry clusters. Then they mapped the locations of these successful startups.

GCHQ mass Internet surveillance was unlawful, court rules

Mass surveillance of the Internet by the British monitoring agency GCHQ was unlawful until the end of 2014, the UK’s most secretive court has ruled.

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) ruled that the agency’s access to intercepted information obtained by the US National Security Agency (NSA) breached human rights law. Human rights groups said the decision raised questions about the legality of intelligence-sharing operations between the UK and the US. The ruling appears to suggest that aspects of the operations were illegal for at least seven years – between 2007, when the Prism intercept programme was introduced, and 2014. The critical judgment marks the first time, since the judicial oversight body was established in 2000, that it has upheld a complaint against any of the UK’s intelligence agencies.

Google panel backs limits on ‘right to be forgotten’

Google’s decision to limit censorship under Europe’s new “right to be forgotten” requirement to its search sites based there, rather than extend it globally, has won the backing of an independent group of experts.

However, the experts called on Google to adjust some of its processes for deciding which links to strip out of its search service, for instance by giving publishers the right to appeal against having links to information suppressed. The conclusions of the group, which was convened by the search company to advise it on how to implement the right to be forgotten ruling, could signal a battle ahead with European regulators. The data protection watchdogs have called for Google to extend its suppression of links to all its global search sites, since these are also accessible from inside the EU.

FCC chairman: Internet rules will define congressional debate

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler discussed his proposed Internet regulation with the relevant leaders of Congress, and said his proposal will define the debate going forward.

"The Congress makes our rules,” Chairman Wheeler said. “I look forward to working with the Congress on these issues. I have talked to all the leadership of Congress in telecommunications in the last 24 hours and I said, 'You know, these rules -- by us putting out … these rules, it creates some certainty in terms of just what the debate is about, rather than these ethereal kinds of concepts that have been kicking around.' ” Chairman Wheeler expressed little concern that a future commission would undo the regulations, noting similar rules governing wireless voice calling have been around for two decades.

Chairman Upton Comments on Reports of White House Calling Shots on Net Neutrality

House Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI) responded to a report in the Wall Street Journal that chronicles the White House’s meddling in Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler’s efforts on net neutrality.

“Acting like a parallel version of the FCC itself,” the report reads, the White House ran a process to develop the guidelines for rules that Chairman Wheeler outlined Feb 4. “Tom Wheeler infamously declared to reporters ‘I am an independent agency,’ after the president publicly pushed for heavy regulation of the Internet. Turns out that wasn’t the case then, it’s not the case now, and the White House needs to get its hands off the FCC. The White House’s efforts to drag the Internet into 1930s regulations is a move that puts the FCC on the fast-lane to the federal courthouse,” said Chairman Upton. “We have a solution that achieves bipartisan goals to protect an open Internet, satisfying both the president’s and Chairman Wheeler's previously stated requirements.”

Why cable stocks surged after the FCC’s net neutrality proposal

When Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler announced his proposal to regulate Internet providers, shares of cable companies unexpectedly surged. Whether or not investors understand network neutrality, they are apparently relieved that Chairman Wheeler's draft rules aren't more restrictive, according to BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield. What shareholders feared the most was the FCC swooping in to tell Internet providers what prices they could and couldn't charge to consumers -- and the proposal currently doesn't call for that. In short, the markets are responding favorably because price regulation is off the table, at least for now.

Benton

Search