Ted Johnson

President Donald Trump has withdrawn the nomination of Jessica Rosenworcel for another term on the Federal Communications Commission, leading to some speculation over how the White House plans to fill two vacancies on the commission.

The commission is split 2-1, with two Republicans and one Democrat. Rosenworcel, a Democrat, left the FCC at the end of 2016 after her tenure expired. President Barack Obama renominated her just weeks before he left office. The apparent expectation was that once President Trump took office, he would pair her nomination with a Republican choice and they would jointly go through the confirmation process. But Trump’s decision to pull her nomination has led to speculation that he would put forward another Republican and perhaps an independent or other Democrat more favorable to administration policy. In the past, the White House has deferred to Senate leadership in the selection of nominees from the opposing party. Democrats have already been vowing to push back if the administration tries to buck that tradition.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler, who will depart the week of Jan 16, said that if the incoming Republican majority on the commission seeks to rollback his agenda, it will be “easier said than done.” In an interview with Variety, hours after he gave a speech at the Aspen Institute defending the FCC’s network neutrality rules, Chairman Wheeler said that moves to undo some of the actions taken in recent years will face public scrutiny. “The idea of taking things away that American consumers and American companies enjoy today is not the easiest thing in the world,” Chairman Wheeler said. “And there are processes in the Administrative Procedure Act that they have to follow in order to do this, and they have to withstand court scrutiny. That is easier said than done.”

Having come from industry, Chairman Wheeler said that as chairman he came to a realization that, in meeting with lobbying and other groups, “everyone comes in here and talks about how their self-interest is synonymous with the public interest.” He added, “And you know, I used to do the same thing. My ‘aha’ moment was that the public interest was a pretty malleable concept. The public interest is determined by the old adage, ‘Where you stand depends on where you sit.’ And so, what I have tried to do is say, ‘OK, we need another standard.’ And I kept saying to myself, ‘What is it that is in the common good, as differentiated from the public interest?’ Because the common good is how you can serve the good of the most people the best way.”

A law restricting advertising on public television will remain in place after the Supreme Court refused to review a case in which a San Francisco station challenged its Federal Communications Commission fine for airing messages from a bevy of commercial sponsors.

Minority Television Project, the license holder for public television station KMTP-TV in San Francisco, sought to overturn lower court rulings that upheld a 1981 law that restricts public stations from airing ads for commercial products or political candidates.

The station also said that the court should reconsider a 1969 Supreme Court decision that allowed the government to place some restrictions on broadcast content, arguing that the media landscape had changed so much in the last 45 years. It contended that it didn’t make sense that stations had limits on First Amendment protections while other media do not.

An anti-piracy program launched in 2013 by movie studios, record companies and Internet providers sent out 1.3 million alerts to consumers that they were accessing infringing content.

The figures for the first 10 months of the program were the first official numbers released by the Center for Copyright Information, the group set up to implement the voluntary industry agreement designed to curb online copyright infringement.

The Copyright Alerts are sent to consumers in a “tiered system,” in which the initial notices are designed to inform or even educate users about the presence of infringing material. But if a consumer continues to access pirated movies, TV shows or music, ignoring the alerts, they may face penalties after the fifth or sixth warning that includes having their service slowed.

The center said that less than 3% of alerts were sent out to give those final warnings -- what the organization called the “final mitigation stage.” Some 70% of alerts were for the “initial education stages.”

As the Federal Communications Commission prepares new rules of the road for the Internet, more than 240 TV showrunners and creators have signed on to a Writers Guild of America West letter urging the commission to avoid regulations that would allow content companies to pay for speedier delivery to users.

The letter was the most significant response yet from Hollywood figures as the commission prepares for a key vote. In the letter, the writers argue that “if Net Neutrality is neutered, the Internet will become like cable television. A few corporate gatekeepers such as Comcast will be allowed to decide what content consumers can access and on what terms. The danger is that blocking, discrimination and paid prioritization could occur.

“This puts decision making and power over the Internet in the hands of the few, especially those with money. The Internet is too vital to the free exchange of ideas to allow the few companies who control Internet technology to edit the ideas and content that flow through it.”

The signers include an array of top showrunners, including John Wells, Matthew Weiner and Howard Gordon. “There are new buyers for what we as writers create. But if this new competition is unfairly pushed aside because the FCC adopts weak rules, rather than allowing consumers to decide what they prefer, neither innovation nor the best interests of society will be served,” the letter says.