Broadband Expansion Replacing Neutrality on Hill, Staff Say

Jessica Rosenworcel, Senate Commerce Committee staffer, said Justice Department comments against net neutrality that missed an FCC deadline illustrate the White House approach. “I don’t think it dramatically changes the dialogue,” as some neutrality partisans claim, she said. “We're long past time” for raising the minimum speed that the government identifies as “broadband,” now 200 kbps, Rosenworcel said. Amateur video director DeGraff said creative professionals should harp on Congress to get providers to raise upload speeds, which he called essential to their success as artists.

S-1492, the broadband mapping bill, is key to expanding broadband and easing neutrality concerns, Rosenworcel said. “You can’t manage problems that you don’t measure,” she said. Such small, targeted measures are the new norm for Congress after the 109th’s failure to pass a major telecom bill, said DeGraff. “I don’t think there’s much appetite” for another multipurpose measure, he said.

For months consumed with patent reform, Senate Judiciary plans hearings on terrestrial radio and extending the performance right, said counsel Aaron Cooper. DeGraff said to watch must-pass year-end spending bills to see if performance-royalty language gets inserted. “Anything can happen [at] the last minute.”

Neutrality Opponents Have Empty Heads?

Senator Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., liberally used folksy proverbs at the conference to rib his opponents on net neutrality. Told that his neutrality arguments didn’t make sense, Dorgan said: “When you hit someone over the head with a book and it makes a hollow sound, it doesn’t mean the book is empty.”

Media ownership rules affect net neutrality, Dorgan said. Big-media companies that own vast Web properties say there are more “voices” on the Internet than ever, but there are really “more voices for one ventriloquist,” he said. Telcos that want to control access to their “pipes” can’t be allowed to preempt the next Google. “You know who owns your pipes? Your customers. You have no right to set up a tollbooth.” Dorgan said he has “a lot of hope” that the next administration will reverse gears on media ownership and neutrality.

Dorgan’s neutrality bill will be back and needs activists to help get 60 votes for floor passage, he said. It narrowly lost as an amendment to the telecom bill last Congress, and the larger bill was killed before it could come to the floor. Dorgan said, “The success of a rain dance depends on the timing.” With the Justice Department and FTC intervention against neutrality, activists must strike now, he said: “I don’t wake up in the morning thinking we're not going to win.” -- Greg Piper

Future of Music Notebook…

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act “did what it was supposed to do” and has worked “pretty good,” though the law is showing “some signs of age because nobody anticipated peer-to-peer” swapping, U.S. Register of Copyrights Marybeth Peters told the conference. Other issues the law didn’t anticipate and may not resolve are the YouTube infringement litigation, “reasonable steps” to prevent reposting of removed copyrighted material and the “making available” theory of infringement, she said. The last is winding its way through a handful of courts in P2P infringement cases. Peters at first strongly opposed the Copyright Office’s newfound role in evaluating technological access control exemptions every three years, “but that’s actually something that seems to have worked,” she said. The new assignment gives her agency a chance to see where the market needs a nudge from government, she said. It finished its second triennial review a year ago. Generally the DMCA has given people access to unlocked content, perhaps not “in the most convenient form,” she said. Peters joked that she hopes to see a performance royalty instituted for terrestrial radio “in my lifetime,” because although “pure justice says that recording artists need to get paid” when their work is used, the NAB is formidable opposition. “Once you hit the Senate with the holds, if there is a provision that is anathema to any particular group, I think that is a difficulty.” Asked how the Copyright Office has changed in her 40 years there, Peters said it was “much more genteel” when she started in 1967. More industry players now jockey for influence, and there’s actually a notion of consumer interest, a concept originally pushed by libraries, she said. Lawmakers once simply pushed through changes if combatants couldn’t agree, but that’s largely gone, she said, citing the negotiations between webcasting parties after House and Senate leaders told them to settle it themselves.