Only a “limited window of time” remains for Congress to intervene to stop the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition from occurring as scheduled Sept. 30, said Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, during a Heritage Foundation-TechFreedom event Thursday. Cruz has led Senate skeptics of the IANA transition, most recently by bowing the Protecting Internet Freedom Act (S-3034) last month. S-3034 and its House companion (HR-5418) would prohibit NTIA from allowing the IANA transition unless Congress “expressly grants” the NTIA administrator the authority to allow it (see 1606080044).
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
DOJ's final decision on the review of its American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc. consent decrees isn’t available, but initial negative reactions within the music industry to early leaks on a potential decision not to alter the existing decrees could foreshadow serious aftereffects for the two top U.S. performing rights organizations (PROs), stakeholders told us. ASCAP and BMI decried DOJ’s proposed decision on its consent decrees reviews in statements Thursday, days after executives met with Antitrust Division officials. The PROs have been negotiating with Justice since 2014 to alter their consent decrees to partially withdraw digital rights from compulsory licenses. Justice’s potential decision to let stand the current ASCAP and BMI consent decrees is said to be coupled with an update to licensing rules that would allow 100 percent licensing, in which any partial owner of a song would be allowed to fully license that song. A DOJ requirement for 100 percent licensing would end the music industry’s longstanding practice of fractional share licensing.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., acknowledged Thursday it will be “especially hard” to complete his push to stop a controversial DOJ alteration to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 from taking effect but urged privacy advocates not to be discouraged by Congress’ quickly narrowing legislative window. The rule change, which would expand federal judges’ ability to issue warrants for remote searches of computers outside their jurisdictions, will take effect Dec. 1 if Congress doesn’t act (see 1604290057). Wyden filed the Stop Mass Hacking Act (S-2952) in May to block the tweak. Reps. Ted Poe, R-Texas, and John Conyers, D-Mich., bowed a House companion (HR-5321) to S-2952 soon after Wyden (see 1605190021 and 1605250045).
It's early to definitively say how either presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton or presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump would handle copyright issues as president. An early reading points to neither deviating from the status quo, copyright lobbyists told us. Clinton's tech policy agenda, released Tuesday (see 1606280071), mentions copyright policy. Trump's campaign pointed us to its existing policy statements, which reference intellectual property policy only in the context of U.S. trade relations with China.
ICANN's New Generic Top-Level Domain (gTLD) Subsequent Procedures Policy Development Process (PDP) Working Group is “really just starting to get into the meat of our work,” said working group co-Chairman Jeff Neuman during a session Tuesday at ICANN's Helsinki meeting. ICANN's Generic Names Supporting Organization Council initiated the PDP after the nonprofit released a report in December urging additional policy development on the gTLD program before any future rounds of new gTLD rollouts (see 1606240055). The working group is deciding what changes could be made to the gTLD rollout process “to clarify what happened” during the original rollout period, Neuman said Tuesday. “We can amend that process, we can override that process, we can develop new policy recommendations or we can supplement and develop new policy guidance.” The working group is exploring whether the new GTLD applicant guidebook used in the initial rollout “is the appropriate approach” for future rollout rounds, Neuman said. The group will decide whether the guidelines should be revised or if there should be different guidebooks for different types of TLDs, he said. The working group also will monitor legal and regulatory issues for the new gTLD program, including whether changes are needed to the base registry agreement, Neuman said. The group is monitoring work in other working groups that may affect its recommendations, including working groups on the use of country and territory names as TLDs and secondary-level domains, Neuman said.
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling is opposing GOP senators' calls for the agency to delay the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition. He said in letters released Tuesday the agency sees “no tangible benefit” to doing so by extending its current contract with ICANN to administer the IANA functions. Amplifying their doubts about the IANA transition's propriety in the weeks since NTIA endorsed ICANN's transition plans were leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees (see 1606270070). Two ICANN officials separately said Tuesday ICANN is pressing forward with preparations for the IANA transition.
Additional groups warned the Copyright Office Friday against using a rulemaking to reduce the fee significantly for online service providers to designate agents to receive notifications of claimed infringement under Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512 as a way of undermining the statute’s safe harbor provisions. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, Internet Association (IA) and others cautioned the CO on its NPRM, though the American Association of Publishers (AAP) fully backed the proposal. The CO sought comment last month on the plan, which would lower the fee to $6 per designation in anticipation of a switch from using paper forms to designate those agents to an online filing system. The designation fee framework includes an initial $105 fee and an additional $35 fee for each of up to 10 alternate designated agents (see 1605250055).
The House and Senate Judiciary committees' leaders raised concerns Monday about the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition. They said in a letter to NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling that ICANN’s IANA transition-related plans and NTIA’s evaluation of those plans leave unanswered multiple legal, constitutional and human rights questions. The letter from House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, follows concerns raised by several other GOP lawmakers about the IANA transition (see 1605240067 and 1606210049). NTIA is reviewing the letter, a spokesman said.
The U.K.’s vote last week in favor of leaving the EU won’t change the fundamentals of EU digital policy or the trans-Atlantic partnership with the U.S. on digital issues, said European Commission Director General-Communications Networks, Content and Technology Roberto Viola during a Computer and Communications Industry Association event Monday. Industry officials said both before and after the U.K.’s Thursday referendum that Brexit would have implications for EU negotiations on trans-Atlantic data flows and IT-related trade agreements (see 1606240021), and potential effects for European telecoms (see 1606220001). U.S. and EU officials are to meet this week at the annual U.S.-EU Information Society Dialogue despite Brexit uncertainty. The ISD typically addresses a range of information and communication technology issues, including the digital economy.
ICANN stakeholders are set to pivot away from planning the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition and back to substantive work on long-delayed domain names policy issues, during a meeting this week in Helsinki, stakeholders said in interviews. The board approved a finalized IANA transition plan and a set of changes to the nonprofit’s accountability mechanisms during ICANN’s March meeting in Marrakech, Morocco (see 1603100070). NTIA said earlier this month that both transition-related plans met NTIA criteria for an acceptable spinoff of the agency’s oversight of the IANA functions (see 1606090067). The Helsinki meeting also will give most stakeholders their first opportunity to gauge how new CEO Göran Marby will operate as the leader, stakeholders told us. ICANN meets Monday-Thursday.