House Judiciary Constitution and Civil Justice Subcommittee Chairman Trent Franks, R-Ariz., all but declared his support during a hearing Wednesday for the Securing Participation, Engagement and Knowledge Freedom by Reducing Egregious Efforts Act, saying the Speak Free Act “enjoys broad bipartisan support.” HR-2304 would create a national statute to curb strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs). The hearing largely lauded HR-2304's virtues, as expected (see 1606210061). But Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, and Yeshiva University Benjamin Cardozo School of Law professor Alexander Reinert raised concerns about the bill's scope.
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
Contours of the Copyright Office’s pending legislative recommendation for a digital-age update of Copyright Act Section 108’s exemption allowing libraries and archives to reproduce and distribute copyrighted works are clear. But ongoing opposition from library stakeholders makes it far less clear that Congress will want to prioritize an update of the statute, copyright stakeholders said in interviews. The CO said earlier it’s planning meetings with stakeholders in advance of a planned legislative recommendation on a Section 108 update, with those meetings to occur through July (see 1606070052).
Re:Create Coalition-affiliated copyright stakeholders urged Congress to avoid passing copyright legislation that would threaten Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512 safe harbor provisions or the DMCA notice-and-takedown system. The current notice-and-takedown arrangement helped online giants like Amazon and Google grow exponentially since DMCA passed in 1998, with e-commerce now contributing more than $8 trillion to the global economy annually, stakeholders said during a Monday briefing. There's escalating interest in how the House Judiciary Committee will prioritize the copyright policy issues it plans to tackle in legislation related to its Copyright Act review.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Thursday in favor of Thai citizen Supap Kirtsaeng in its review of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, remanding Kirtsaeng's copyright fee-shifting case to the U.S. District Court in New York. Kirtsaeng sought Supreme Court review of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals' 2015 ruling that he wasn't entitled to receive attorney’s fees from textbook company Wiley after winning a 2013 Supreme Court case that extended the scope of the first-sale doctrine (see 1601190071). The Supreme Court ruled in 2013 that Kirtsaeng's resale and import of textbooks to the U.S. was covered by the doctrine (see report in the March 20, 2013, issue).
Several House Cybersecurity Subcommittee members raised concerns during a hearing Wednesday about what they view as sluggish private sector participation in the Department of Homeland Security's Automated Indicator Sharing (AIS) program, which DHS set up as part of its implementation of the Cybersecurity Act of 2015. The Cybersecurity Act, which Congress passed in December as part of the FY 2016 omnibus spending bill (see 1512180052), codified the DHS National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center's role as the main civilian hub for cyberthreat information sharing. The bill also enacted strong liability protections for information sharing and required private sector entities to remove personally identifiable information (PII) from data prior to sharing. Industry stakeholders told House Cybersecurity they're optimistic that private sector participation in the AIS program will increase over time and attributed sluggish early uptake of the program to stakeholders' cautiousness about participating in the program's earliest stage and the need for finalized information sharing rules.
Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Mark Warner, D-Va., jointly formed the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus Tuesday in a bid to keep Senate colleagues and their staffs updated on cybersecurity policy issues. Gardner and Warner will co-chair the caucus, which Gardner said was the first body to coordinate Senate activity on cybersecurity issues. A separate House-centric Congressional Cybersecurity Caucus formed in 2008. Gardner said during an American Enterprise Institute policy briefing that the caucus would help lawmakers coordinate on cybersecurity policy issues across multiple Senate committees that share jurisdiction on cybersecurity, noting his long-standing desire to establish a separate select Senate cybersecurity committee. Gardner and Warner later demurred in interviews on whether the Senate Cybersecurity Caucus' work would include pushing for a full cybersecurity committee, but industry lobbyists told us they believe the caucus is likely to be a springboard toward more serious consideration of the idea.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday against the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s standards for awarding enhanced punitive damages in patent infringement cases and remanded two consolidated patent cases -- Halo Electronics v. Pulse Electronics and Stryker v. Zimmer -- to respective district courts in Las Vegas and Grand Rapids, Mich. Chief Justice John Roberts criticized the Federal Circuit’s enhanced damages standards for being “overly rigid,” saying federal law “allows district courts to punish the full range of culpable behavior.” The Supreme Court’s ruling on the Halo and Stryker cases will affect only a fraction of all patent litigation but is significant for solidifying the court’s dissatisfaction with the Federal Circuit’s interpretation of patent law, patent lawyers said in interviews.
NTIA’s endorsement of ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition-related plans drew criticism Thursday and Friday from congressional Republicans skeptical of the transition, and praise from a top House Commerce Committee Democrat. NTIA said Thursday it decided ICANN’s IANA transition plan and a related set of changes to ICANN’s accountability mechanisms meet the agency’s own criteria for the transition spinoff, plus criteria set by other federal agencies and by a corporate oversight review panel (see 1606090067). Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and three other Republican legislators who have repeatedly criticized the transition jointly said Thursday that NTIA’s report “is a clear indication that it has flagrantly violated federal law.” Cruz and other Republicans who issued the statement -- Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis. -- are the lead sponsors of the Protecting Internet Freedom Act. It would in part prohibit NTIA from allowing the IANA transition to occur unless Congress “expressly grants” the agency's administrator the authority to allow the transition to proceed (see 1606020056). NTIA’s report “is the latest step in a troubling series of steps that the administration has taken to relinquish its responsibilities, and it should send a concerning message to every American,” Cruz and the other Republicans said: If the IANA transition occurs as planned, “authoritarian regimes could try to undermine the new system of Internet governance and thereby threaten free speech around the world.” House Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee Chairman John Culberson, R-Texas, said in a letter to Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker he will ensure that a rider in Commerce’s FY 2016 budget that prohibits NTIA from using its funds to facilitate the IANA transition “is fully enforced” in the coming months. “I continue to oppose the use of any funds to plan for, prepare for, work on, or transition the Internet Domain Name System Functions,” Culberson said. House Commerce Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., declined to comment Thursday, telling us he needed to study the report’s findings. House Commerce ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., praised NTIA Friday for following the review framework set up in the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters Act (HR-805/S-1551), which passed last year in the House but stalled in the Senate. HR-805/S-1551 would give Congress 30 legislative days to review an NTIA report on the IANA transition plan before NTIA could relinquish its IANA oversight authority. “I’m grateful that the NTIA did such a thorough job following our framework and giving Congress time to thoroughly review the findings before the transition takes place,” Pallone said in a statement.
NTIA strongly backed ICANN's Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition-related plans Thursday, saying in a report sent to ICANN and Congress the plans meet NTIA's 2014 criteria for an acceptable spinoff of the agency's oversight of the IANA functions. NTIA had been reviewing ICANN's transition plan and a related set of changes to ICANN's accountability mechanisms since mid-March (see 1603100070 and 1603110075). NTIA's endorsement of the transition plans starts a period of heightened congressional scrutiny of the plans that has increasingly centered on whether to allow the transition to proceed -- a debate that has the potential to become more partisan, industry lobbyists said in interviews.
Reps. Judy Chu, D-Calif., and Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., are separately circulating draft legislation aimed at establishing a voluntary small claims copyright court, said multiple industry lobbyists, in interviews this week. Chu and Jeffries aren't directly coordinating but both contacted copyright stakeholders for input in recent months and are both likely to bow their bills in the next few weeks, lobbyists said. Introduction of the bills at this point in Congress' legislative calendar appears to be aimed at giving the legislation visibility and to set them up as a possible part of the House Judiciary Committee's legislative priorities for the committee's ongoing Copyright Act review, an industry lobbyist told us. Chu and Jeffries are House Judiciary members.