John Eggerton

According to legislators and others, a bill protecting e-mail privacy has enough votes to pass in the House if it is brought up for a vote. The Email Privacy Act has 218 co-sponsors, according to the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Microsoft, Google and eBay, as well as Dish, Aereo, Sprint and T-Mobile.

Reps Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and Jared Polis (D-CO) are lead sponsors on the bill, which would change the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) to require a warrant before ISP's would have to disclose the contents of e-mail communications.

“This bill would finally offer email, social messaging and other cloud-stored data the same protection as files stored inside someone’s home," said CCIA president Ed Black. "If the government agency wants to obtain cloud-stored data, it would need to go before a judge and get a warrant for that search.” "With 218 representatives backing H.R. 1852, the bipartisan 'Email Privacy Act,' the House of Representatives should seize the opportunity to pass legislation that takes a meaningful step in addressing concerns that Americans have about law enforcement access to their data," said the Information Technology Industry Council.

The House Judiciary Committee has approved a bill that would make permanent the moratorium on Internet access taxes and multiple discriminatory online taxes.

The vote was 30 to 4 on the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act (HR 3086), and followed the defeat of an amendment proposed by ranking member John Conyers (D-MI), that would have simply extended the moratorium another four years, and removed a provision eliminating the grandfathered taxes of seven states who had those access taxes in place before the 1998 passage of the initial moratorium.

Several Democrats argued that a permanent ban was favoring the broadband sector, was a violation of states' rights, and did not allow Congress the flexibility to review the ban periodically to see if it was still necessarily, given that it was passed when the Internet was a fledgling. They also pointed out that removing the grandfather clause could mean hundreds of millions of lost revenues in those seven states -- including over $300 million in Texas alone -- which would mean states would turn elsewhere for the money, impacting other sectors.

Bill backers countered that the grandfather clause had been a way to give those states time to transition to other sources of revenue, and they had had 16 years to do so. Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), argued that the Internet’s ubiquity was even more reason to insure that an ISP tax did not threaten its continued growth and prosperity.

The House Judiciary Committee on June 18 is marking up the Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act. As its name suggests, the bill would permanently extend a ban on local and state Internet taxes that dates from 1998.

A bipartisan group of House committee and subcommittee chairmen and ranking members had introduced the bill in September 2013. It is backed by cable and telecommunications Internet service providers (ISPs). As its name implies, it would make permanent the current 1998 law that placed a moratorium on state and local governments' ability to tax Internet access or levy multiple taxes on e-commerce.

“The House Judiciary Committee is taking the first step tomorrow morning to avoid new Internet access taxes on millions of Americans across the country," said Annabelle Canning, executive director of the Internet Tax Freedom Coalition. "The markup is the first step of many to ensure consumers, students, and small businesses are not burdened with new taxes on Internet access that could be as high as double the national sales tax rate. We applaud their efforts and hope the Senate will follow suit in moving a companion bill prior to the August recess to ensure Congress extends the Internet tax moratorium before it expires on November 1.”

Computer companies and others were quick to praise a congressional effort to ban paid prioritization, while cable operators suggested the Federal Communications Commission had it under control.

Following the introduction of the Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act on June 17 in both the House and Senate, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association said that it supports the FCC's new rules and is not prioritizing anyway.

“The cable industry has consistently stated our support for sensible but clear rules which ensure that American consumers continue to enjoy an open and unfettered Internet experience," NCTA said. "Cable companies do not engage in paid prioritization and have every incentive to ensure that all consumers enjoy fast and robust Internet services. We are confident that Chairman Wheeler can restore effective rules under the path that the Court suggested, and we will work with all parties to preserve consumer protections enforced by the FCC and Federal Trade Commission.”

The Computer & Communications Industry Association was all for the bill, praising its focus on the last mile connection, but also using that as a jumping-off point to criticize paid peering. “Congresswoman Matsui and Senator Leahy have prudently focused their legislation on the problems arising from the power which Internet access providers have to arbitrarily charge edge providers for priority local or “last mile” delivery capacity," CCIA President Ed Black said, then turned it to the issue of middle mile and payments for interconnection hand-offs.

The National Football League, with the support of CBS, Fox and the National Association of Broadcasters, has launched a Web site, protectfootballonfreetv.com, to push back against the Federal Communications Commission's proposal to drop its sports blackout rule.

FCC rules prevent cable and satellite operators from importing distant TV station signals carrying an NFL game that has been blacked out on broadcast TV in a local market due to insufficient ticket sales. The leagues can still write such blackouts into their media rights contracts, but the rule provides a legal backstop.

"While every other professional sports service has moved to pay services like cable or satellite," says the site, "the NFL makes every regular-season and playoff game available to you for free," the site points out, saying scrapping the rule will threaten free TV and weaken local economies. The site claims that pay TV has "manufactured" the controversy, and adds that "we cannot let these special interests dictate what is best for the NFL fans."

National Association of Broadcasters President Gordon Smith has renewed his contract through Dec 31, 2018, NAB Board chair Charles Warfield said. The announcement comes the day before the board and members celebrate Service to America awards for stations' public service efforts.

Smith has been in the post since 2009. He is a former two-term Republican senator from Oregon and has been leading NAB's efforts to secure a fair incentive auction process.

The Consumer Electronics Association said that unlicensed spectrum generates $62 billion annually to the US economy, led by Wi-Fi in and outside the home.

The report, Unlicensed Spectrum and the American Economy, comes as the government is freeing up more unlicensed spectrum, with cable operators standing to benefit. According to CEA, Wi-Fi and wireless LANs account for almost a third ($20.029 billion) of that $62 billion total.

Federal Communications Commission chairman Tom Wheeler said he is recusing himself from the AT&T IP transition trials decision. Chairman Wheeler is a former board member at EarthLink, which has petitioned the FCC to participate in the AT&T trials.

He pointed out that there is plenty of other IP transition work to be done, and that he will be involved in.

In an update on AT&T's proposal to test retirement of traditional circuit-switched service in two wire centers -- in Alabama and Florida -- FCC staffers said at the June public meeting that the commission would employ a third party to insure no bias in the tests. They said that AT&T had agreed to work collaboratively with the commission.

The FCC has approved a framework for the AT&T tests, but has not provided final approval, which will depend on answers to a variety of questions, like how it will support legacy services like 911, health monitoring, credit card processing, and fax services with the new fiber and wireless replacement services.

Also a point of concern is how the replacement services will support Government Emergency Telecommunications Services (GETS), which allows public safety calls to get through when others can't.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler was getting some support from the Hill and elsewhere, including the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, for his announcement on June 13 of a deep dive into paid peering arrangements -- he said the FCC already had the agreements from the Netflix/Comcast and Netflix/Verizon deals that have drawn complaints, including from Netflix.

“We agree with Chairman Wheeler that Internet interconnection and peering issues are not net neutrality issues," said NCTA, focusing on Chairman Wheeler's statement that peering was a "cousin" to net neutrality. "We look forward to assisting the Commission in better understanding this vibrant, competitive marketplace.”

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA), ranking member of the House Communications Subcommittee said she welcomed the news, saying interconnection agreements are "a key aspect of connectivity that allows the Internet to serve as the platform for innovation and investment we know today." But she signaled the inquiry was only the beginning of the process.

Saying the Federal Communications Commission could not have meant to purposely leave 23 diversity proposals, including some of the FCC's own, out of its consideration of the quadrennial ownership review, the Minority Media & Telecommunication Council has petitioned the FCC to admit it made a mistake and "clarify" that they remain under consideration.

"The facts surrounding the history of these proposals, many of which have been pending for more than a decade, indicate that they fall squarely within the scope of the 2014 Quadrennial Ownership Review due to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals mandate to consider them within the quadrennial review," said MMTC, "yet the Commission has failed to consider them in the current proceeding."

It's not that the FCC did not mention them. But MMTC points out that its "entire disposition" of them was to say that though “accompanied by detailed and thoughtful analysis, and some of them may warrant further consideration…they are outside the scope of this proceeding.”