Internet governance experts agreed that Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions must remain free from government control, but not all are convinced that governments won’t gradually eclipse the multistakeholder approach, they said at a Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee event Friday. NTIA said it would transition the IANA functions last month, provoking a series of hearings and legislation (CD April 11 p2). The House Communications Subcommittee approved the Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters (DOTCOM) Act (HR-4342) last week, which requires the GAO to study the transition proposal for up to one year before allowing NTIA to move forward with the transition. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers opened a working group submission document (http://bit.ly/1jvqqmy) to prepare for the NETmundial conference on Internet governance April 23-24 in Sao Paulo, Brazil (http://bit.ly/1lcUzai).

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., lashed out twice last week against Comcast for its lobbying powers. He raised the issue at the Wednesday Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Comcast’s proposed acquisition of Time Warner Cable, where the cable giants launched a vigorous defense of why the deal would be good for consumers. Franken, the most vocal critic in Congress of the deal, also needled the cable giant on the issue in an episode of C-SPAN’s The Communicators, slated to be telecast Saturday.

While Facebook and Twitter are promoted as driving people to tune in for TV shows, only a small percentage of those surveyed used social media during prime time and learned of new programs via social networks, according to a “Talking Social TV 2” report released last week by the Nielsen-funded Council for Research Excellence.

Briefings are getting started at the FCC this week on the second part of TV incentive auction rules set for a vote at the commission’s May 15 meeting, spectrum aggregation rules to be approved concurrent with auction service rules (CD March 10 p1), said agency and industry officials. Commissioners Ajit Pai and Mike O'Rielly are likely to raise objections with Chairman Tom Wheeler if he proposes rules that could limit bidding by Verizon and AT&T in what is expected to be a 2015 auction.

The Commerce Department, home to NTIA, NIST and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, faced pressure on multiple fronts on Capitol Hill this week. Lawmakers in both chambers scrutinized Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday and a House Appropriations subcommittee Wednesday, on the department’s proposed FY 2015 budget of $8.8 billion, 7 percent higher than in FY 2014. Key points of concern included Commerce’s management of patents, broadband projects and cybersecurity. Lawmakers also asked about the transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, which NTIA has contracted out to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), to global multistakeholder governance, an issue hotly contested among other congressional committees recently.

A deepening partisan divide over NTIA’s proposed transition of the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions was on full display at the House Communications Subcommittee markup of the DOTCOM Act Thursday. HR-4342, which seeks to delay any transition proposal until a study is done by GAO, was approved with 16 Republican members supporting and 10 Democratic members opposing, and none voting outside party lines (http://1.usa.gov/1kwsM8l). Four Democrats submitted five amendments to the bill, also defeated on party lines (http://1.usa.gov/1n4Pu4H).

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s tentative deal on a compromise version of the Patent Transparency and Improvements Act (S-1720) is a step forward in its effort to curb abusive patent litigation, but its decision to delay a vote until after the upcoming two-week recess could affect the outcome, stakeholders told us Thursday. Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in a statement Wednesday that the committee had reached “a broad bipartisan agreement in principle” on the compromise, to be contained in a manager’s amendment. “This is a complex issue and we need additional time to draft the important provisions that have been the subject of discussion,” he said. Leahy said he plans to circulate a finalized manager’s amendment as soon as the Senate returns from the recess, which begins Friday, and the committee will consider S-1720 the same week. Senate Judiciary had already delayed the S-1720 markup three times, most recently postponing a meeting set for Tuesday specifically to consider the bill (CD April 9 p13).

Congress misunderstands the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) transition and needs to be careful of the message its criticism of the transition sends, said several Democratic lawmakers during a House Judiciary Internet Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. In their second appearance on Capitol Hill to discuss IANA, ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé and NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling continued to face critical questions from mostly Republican lawmakers about the decision to transition oversight of IANA functions to a global multistakeholder group. A markup of the DOTCOM Act, to slow down the transition, in the House Communications Subcommittee also saw partisan divisions as it passed along party lines. (See separate report in this issue.)

The Senate confirmed Terrell McSweeny as an FTC commissioner by a 95-1 vote Wednesday. That fills the final FTC commissioner seat, which has been vacant since Jon Leibowitz left March 7, 2013. The Democrats now hold a 3-2 majority among FTC commissioners, which has caused some observers to wonder if it will take a more proactive stance on data privacy issues. “This may result in cases or issues being brought up that wouldn’t have been with an evenly split commission, for example in the privacy/data security area,” said Thomas Lenard, president of the tech, telecom and cable industry-backed Technology Policy Institute (TPI), by email.

The Telecom Act has many features that no longer make sense in the video market, said representatives of broadcasters, multichannel video programming distributors and public interest groups in interviews. “Competition in video is broken,” said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Frank Jazzo, pointing to the uneven regulations that apply variously to broadcasters and MVPDs, and the act’s failure to account for over-the-top competitors. “The act as written doesn’t take into account the changes in technology” in the video realm, said BakerHostetler cable attorney Gary Lutzker.