The U.S. and other strong supporters of multistakeholder Internet governance must engage with a “diverse set of voices” on governance issues to prevent Internet fragmentation, said State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary-Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs Daniel Sepulveda during an Internet Society event Tuesday. Fragmentation “would constitute a grave threat” to the Internet's potential to encourage innovation and economic development globally, Sepulveda said. The Internet's track record in fostering economic and social development is a “development that's worth preserving,” he said. Recent developments at the U.N.'s World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Forum in Geneva and other Internet governance forums indicate global support for multistakeholderism is strengthening, Internet governance stakeholders said in interviews.
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 Senate Commerce Committee plans a hearing later this month on the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition, renewing the committee’s oversight of IANA at a key point in the transition process, multiple lobbyists said in interviews. Senate Commerce is aiming to hold the hearing May 24 but is still finalizing details, lobbyists said. The Senate Commerce hearing will mirror a March House Communications Subcommittee hearing on the IANA transition, focusing on the perspectives of private-sector ICANN stakeholders, but will include parties who have been skeptical about the transition, lobbyists said. House Communications members said during their hearing they're increasingly at ease with the trajectory of the IANA transition, while ICANN stakeholders strongly endorsed ICANN’s transition-related plans (see 1603170051). A Senate Commerce spokesman said he couldn’t confirm the committee’s plans.
SoundExchange remains the likeliest party in the Copyright Royalty Board’s 2016-20 noninteractive webcasting rate-setting proceeding to appeal the CRB’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, but other parties may also consider a challenge, music industry lawyers said in interviews. The CRB released a final version of its decision on noninteractive webcasters’ royalty payments in Monday’s Federal Register, starting the 30-day clock for parties in the proceeding to appeal the decision to the D.C. Circuit (see 1605020058). The CRB’s final ruling kept intact the rates it set in December -- 0.17 cent per performance on nonsubscription services and 0.22 cent per performance on subscription services (see 1512170063). The final ruling didn’t substantially change from a preliminary full determination the CRB released in February (see 1602120058).
Copyright Office officials appeared to be searching for nonlegislative fixes to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s Section 512, during a New York roundtable this week, but stakeholders failed to coalesce around any particular solution, participants in the roundtable said in interviews. The CO held the roundtable to collect stakeholder input on the office’s study of Section 512’s notice-and-takedown process and safe harbors. The office plans a second session May 12-13 at the James Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building in San Francisco.
The U.S. has made substantial progress in adopting Europay, MasterCard and Visa-standard (EMV) chip technology in credit cards and debit cards since the payments industry shifted liability for fraudulent charges Oct. 1 to merchants not using chip technology, but financial services and consumer protection groups said Tuesday the transition is far from complete. The U.S. is now the largest user of EMV technology globally despite most European countries having a substantial head start in adopting the technology, said White House National Economic Council Policy Adviser Camille Fischer during a Protect My Data event. She credited the White House-led BuySecure initiative, which led to the issuance of 2.5 million EMV-enabled cards linked to government accounts, for driving strong U.S. adoption of the technology. Merchant adoption of EMV-capable terminals “has been a longer process” than anticipated, Fischer said.
The direction of the Copyright Office’s study of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512’s notice-and-takedown process and the section’s safe harbors remains highly fluid ahead of the conclusion of the first of CO’s two planned roundtables on Section 512, multiple participants in the first sessions said in interviews. The first roundtable, which began Monday and is to conclude Tuesday, is at the Thurgood Marshall U.S. Courthouse in New York. The CO is planning a second event May 12-13 at the James Browning U.S. Court of Appeals Building in San Francisco.
Congressional, industry and advocate scrutiny has just begun on a controversial DOJ proposal to alter the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 41 to expand federal judges’ ability to issue warrants for remote searches of computers outside their jurisdictions, stakeholders agreed in interviews Friday. At least one legislative challenge in the Senate is already likely. Opponents of the proposed Rule 41 revision said further attention will come, but may take time. The Supreme Court approved DOJ’s proposal Thursday as part of a larger set of changes to Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure that the court received from the U.S. Judicial Conference’s Committee on Rules of Practice and Procedure. The Supreme Court forwarded the suggested revisions to Congress, which has until Dec. 1 to give its opinion on the proposals. The suggested revisions will automatically take effect if Congress doesn’t act to block them by then (see 1604280074).
Switzerland is now on the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative's lower-tier watch list for copyright and other IP rights violations, USTR said Wednesday in its annual Special 301 report on the global status of IP rights enforcement. China and India remain on USTR's mid-tier priority watch list, which includes nine other countries, because ongoing IP rights enforcement problems outweigh efforts to reform both nations' IP laws. USTR again chose not to include any countries on its higher-tier priority foreign country list.
The House Judiciary Committee plans to identify in the coming weeks which issues in its Copyright Act review that the committee believes have “a likelihood of potential consensus and circulate outlines of potential” revamp legislation on those items, said Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in a video Tuesday. Goodlatte released the video as part of a joint Copyright Office-Copyright Alliance event marking World IP Day. He used a similar CO event in 2013 to announce the start of House Judiciary's copyright review (see report in the April 25, 2013, issue). Several copyright stakeholders told us they believe the CO's IT and operational issues may be one of Goodlatte's top priorities, but said it's not clear whether there's a true consensus solution yet to those items or other areas of copyright law. House Judiciary's copyright review has targeted a wide range of issues, including the fair use doctrine, music licensing and Digital Millennium Copyright Act Section 512's notice-and-takedown framework.
Several Supreme Court justices appeared to agree that no single factor for determining copyright fee-shifting cases as set in Fogerty v. Fantasy should outweigh other factors, during oral argument Monday on its review of Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons. Two supporters of Kirtsaeng who attended the argument told us they are unsure how that position will translate into a court ruling. Thai citizen Supap Kirtsaeng sought a review of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' 2015 ruling that Kirtsaeng 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).