A renewed and bipartisan push for a Senate panel on cybersecurity may not result in the creation of such an entity, lawyers and lobbyists said in interviews Monday. Four senior senators, including incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., intensified a push for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to create a Senate select committee on cybersecurity in response to claims that Russia hacked U.S. institutions to affect the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., joined McCain and Schumer Sunday in calling for the new committee. Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus Co-Chairman Jim Langevin, D-R.I., called Friday for Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., to create a House select cybersecurity committee.
Jimm Phillips
Jimm Phillips, Associate Editor, covers telecommunications policymaking in Congress for Communications Daily. He joined Warren Communications News in 2012 after stints at the Washington Post and the American Independent News Network. Phillips is a Maryland native who graduated from American University. You can follow him on Twitter: @JLPhillipsDC
The Library of Congress moved forward Friday with the process of selecting a new register of copyrights to replace Maria Pallante, launching an online survey via SurveyMonkey aimed at giving the public input on the needed qualifications for the next register. The move got a mixed response from the copyright community. Content-side stakeholders told us they believe the LOC’s decision may lead to a bigger conflict with the House and Senate Judiciary committees in the next Congress. Tech sector stakeholders viewed the decision to proceed more positively, telling us it shows Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden is trying to increase transparency at the LOC.
The Copyright Office concluded its yearlong study of the role of copyright law in the use of software-embedded products, saying Thursday it decided against making any legislative recommendations related to the study. The CO aimed to examine how provisions​ in existing U.S. copyright law affect and are affected by software-embedded products, and how potential legislative changes could affect the innovation of such products (see 1512150050). Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and ranking member Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., sought the report last year (see 1510230036).
The Commerce Department's Digital Economy Board of Advisors (DEBA) delivered recommendations Thursday that included focuses on the job market within digital sectors, improving metrics to gauge the health of the digital economy and the role of platforms in enabling competition. The recommendations are aimed at guiding President-elect Donald Trump's incoming administration's thinking on digital economy issues, the group said during a meeting Thursday. The recommendations also would help Commerce “establish itself as a lead organization for matters relating to the digital economy,” DEBA said in its report. Leaders of DEBA, which formed a little over a year ago to give recommendations to Commerce (see 1511240034 and 1605160058), said the group hopes to continue its work well into the next administration.
Infidelity website Ashley Madison parent ruby will be required to pay out $1.66 million of a $17.5 million monetary settlement with the FTC and attorneys general of 13 states and Washington, D.C., officials announced Wednesday. That is part of a larger settlement with federal and state officials to end a joint case on claims that Ashley Madison deceived consumers and failed to protect the account information of the 36 million users whose data were exposed in a July 2015 breach, the FTC said. The data breach targeted Ashley Madison’s parent firm, then known as Avid Life Media, and resulted in the exposure of about users’ personal and financial information. Published information included users’ real names and addresses, as well as their sexual preferences on the site that helped those seeking sex affairs match up (see 1507200017).
ICANN received minimal but mixed stakeholder response through Monday on its proposal to implement a revised policy for consistent labeling and display of “thick” WHOIS registration data for all generic top-level domains. Thick registration data includes data associated with the domain name itself, along with the registrant and other contacts of the domain name. Thin registration data has only data associated with the domain name itself. The revised labeling policy plan ICANN proposed in October doesn't require registries to implement a registration data access protocol (RDAP) service to achieve consistent labeling, which was criticized by the Registry Stakeholder Group (RySG), ICANN said. RySG said it “supports the removal” of the RDAP requirement from the labeling policy plan. RDAP “is outside the scope of the Thick Whois PDP recommendations,” the stakeholder group commented: “The RySG’s concerns with the inclusion of RDAP were compounded by the introduction of a requirement to implement the RDAP in accordance with an Operational Profile that was introduced unilaterally by ICANN staff” in the policy plan. The Internet Architecture Board urged ICANN to remove “all barriers to the deployment and use of RDAP.” The protocol “was developed within the IETF [Internet Engineering Task Force], by technical contributors whose affiliations include registries, registrars, and other WHOIS users and providers, to resolve the technical shortcomings of WHOIS,” IAB said. “Given the well known issues with WHOIS, the IAB strongly encourages ICANN, Registrars, and Registries to begin experimenting with RDAP as soon as possible.” The Generic Names Supporting Organization's IP Constituency (IPC) said it “has no substantive objections” to the revised policy plan but believes the decision to not include the RDAP requirement is "a 180 degree reversal” by ICANN. “While this requirement has been a consistent feature of the CLD [consistent labeling and display] implementation plan throughout the drafting process, ICANN staff completely reversed its position on it within days” of RySG's objection, the IPC wrote. “Wholly apart from the merits of the RySG objections, IPC empathizes with its frustrations regarding staff unresponsiveness. IPC will certainly bear this precedent in mind the next time the ICANN staff fails to heed IPC’s well-considered and repeatedly-voiced objections to a proposed course of action.” Verisign urged ICANN to include provisions in the labeling policy plan to allow extensions to the plan's Aug. 1, 2017, effective date. “It is possible for legitimate issues to arise during the implementation of the [CLD] Policy (include security and stability concerns) which may impact the ability of Registry Operators to comply with the” effective date, the company commented.
Copyright stakeholders again heard the federal government can play a role at the margins in improving the U.S. digital marketplace for copyrighted works, but cautioned during a joint NTIA-Patent and Trademark Office meeting that the private sector is working on its own solutions and prefers to continue to lead. The Internet Policy Task Force convened the meeting (see 1612010050) to explore further action on digital marketplace issues identified in a 2013 green paper and January white paper on copyright (see 1601280065). The meeting included discussions on development of voluntary standards for identifying the owners and controlling parties of copyrighted works, and the promotion of blockchain and other new technologies to improve interoperability.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich., jointly released their long-anticipated initial proposal for copyright-related legislation Thursday. As expected (see 1604260062), the paper focused on the Copyright Office’s operational and IT issues, including giving the office more autonomy from the Library of Congress.
Acting Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple Claggett said she has no plans to seek a permanent appointment as head of the Copyright Office, saying her tenure as the office’s leader is “temporary.” Claggett, who has been associate register of copyrights since 2013, took over as acting register in October after the controversial ouster of then-Register Maria Pallante (see 1610250062 and 1610210061). Claggett emphasized her role as the CO’s caretaker during a Free State Foundation event Wednesday, saying the office is moving forward with ongoing policy studies.
“It's imperative that we continue pushing to protect” IP rights, said House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., at a news conference about an International Intellectual Property Alliance report that core copyright industries contributed $1.2 trillion to the U.S. gross domestic product during 2015. The report “will help” the House Judiciary Committee in its work on possible legislation for its Copyright Act modernization review, said committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich. These are “tangible metrics” of the value of IP to the U.S. economy as House Judiciary considers its next steps on copyright legislation, said House IP Subcommittee Vice Chairman Doug Collins, R-Ga. Major U.S. copyright holders' sales of products to overseas markets increased to almost $177 billion in 2015, from $164 billion in 2014 and almost $155 billion in 2013, IIPA said.