The Internet’s root zone file should be managed by a proposed Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) consortium, not ICANN, said a bill introduced Wednesday by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa. The Defending Internet Freedom Act (HR-5737) said the consortium would be financed and managed by top-level domain registries. HR-5737 also calls for an “Internet Freedom Panel” within ICANN. The panel would have the power to “review and veto” any proposed changes to the Domain Name System by ICANN, said the bill. “Preserving Internet freedom is an American duty,” Kelly said in a news release Wednesday. “The requirements within this bill will guarantee that the Internet remains unchained and out of the grasp of bad actors and hostile powers that actively limit freedom.” HR-5737 is co-sponsored by Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas., and has been endorsed by the American Center for Law and Justice, Center for Security Policy, Eagle Forum and Heritage Foundation, the release said. Kelly spoke at a Heritage Foundation event about the IANA transition in July (see 1407160044). A June paper released by Heritage also called for an IANA consortium.
The House Appropriations Committee named subcommittee chairs Thursday for the next Congress. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, R-Fla., will remain the head of the Financial Services Subcommittee, which oversees such agencies as the FCC and the FTC. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, will chair the Commerce, Justice and Science Subcommittee, replacing Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. The Republican Steering Committee signed off on the 12 subcommittee chairs, an Appropriations news release said.
The House Commerce Committee added seven Republicans to its roster for the new Congress, it said in a news release Thursday. The new members are Reps. Susan Brooks and Larry Bucshon, both Indiana; Chris Collins, New York; Kevin Cramer, North Dakota; Bill Flores, Texas; Rich Hudson, North Carolina; and Markwayne Mullin, Oklahoma. The committee did not announce which subcommittees these members will join.
Communications Subcommittee members spoke up on net neutrality on the Senate floor Wednesday. “People are trying to send a message here,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., reflecting on the recent midterm elections that featured many GOP seat gains. “It’d be a good idea if the White House would get on receive and try to figure out what that message is and what is wrong with those policies the American people don’t like.” Voters are “concerned about the president’s recent overreach” on net neutrality “where even the chairman of the FCC, nominated by the president, confirmed by this Senate, even the chairman of the FCC says, no, I think the president’s headed in the wrong direction there and we need to do something different than that,” Blunt said. President Barack Obama recently backed Communications Act Title II reclassification of broadband, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has not publicly disagreed with that proposal (see 1411190039). Wheeler is widely seen as having worked on a hybrid proposal, drawing on Title II and Section 706. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., defended net neutrality. She called for strong rules to prevent blocking, throttling, paid prioritization deals and to promote transparency, for wired and wireless networks. She worries about ISPs “cutting backroom deals,” she said, flanked by a large sign displaying the words net neutrality. “We face a pivotal moment,” Cantwell said. “I’m calling on the FCC to take forceful action that adopts the strongest rules possible to provide maximum protection for consumers, maximum flexibility to promote the Internet economy.” She called net neutrality “one of the most important economic issues before us.”
The White House thinks “federal criminal law should be modernized to include felony criminal penalties for those who engage in large-scale streaming of illegal, infringing content,” said Alex Niejelow, White House IP enforcement coordinator chief of staff, in a blog post Wednesday. Such laws are “already on the books" for the "reproduction and distribution of infringing content,” he said. Niejelow was responding to two petitions to the White House, asking that penalties not be increased for online media sharing (see petitions here and here). The petitions invoked the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) (HR-3261), which would have imposed much stiffer penalties for such infringement. SOPA was tabled after public outcry. “We should keep in mind that a felony is meant to reflect significant criminal activity,” Niejelow said. “Congress should consider the question of whether changes in the business model of streaming-based infringement also counsel corresponding changes in the way we set the harm thresholds … required to establish a felony penalty for illegal streaming under the criminal copyright statute.” Those thresholds include the number of infringing acts, their monetary value and the “statutory” time frame in which those acts are committed, Niejelow said.
The USA Freedom Act (S-2685) surveillance overhaul died before proceeding to Senate floor debate or the amendment process Tuesday night. A cloture vote fell short of the required 60, coming to 58-42 and mostly divided across party lines. Sen. Bill Nelson, Fla., was the only Democrat to vote against advancing the cloture motion. Sens. Ted Cruz, Texas; Dean Heller, Nev.; Mike Lee, Utah; and Lisa Murkowski, Alaska, were the four Republicans voting in favor of cloture. A companion measure, widely considered by privacy advocates to be watered down, had passed the House earlier this year. “Yesterday a bill that was bipartisan in nature and came out under the auspices of the chairman of the Judiciary Committee after years of consternation, debate and just worked by so many different people came to the floor,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said on the floor Wednesday. “That was blocked yesterday -- blocked from even having a hearing here in the Senate floor. That’s really wrong. … Shouldn’t we at least be able to debate the issue here on the floor?” Wednesday, Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., author of the provision, slammed “some of the worst fear-mongering I’ve heard in 40 years” on the floor. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had urged senators to oppose the USA Freedom Act, saying it would increase U.S. vulnerability to terrorist groups. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a surveillance critic, voted against the measure and framed it as “renewal of the Patriot Act,” not doing enough to revamp surveillance law. Several supporters of the bill have issued statements saying they want to continue the overhaul efforts in the next Congress.
Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., asked Attorney General Eric Holder several questions about a recent report about the U.S. government collecting consumer cellphone information by attaching devices to airplanes to mimic cellphone towers. “What types of information (e.g., phone metadata, location, emails, files, and photos) are collected from phones?” Franken asked in the Tuesday letter. “What types of data are retained by the government using this program, both from phones of targets and innocent Americans? What is the effectiveness of this program? Please be specific about the number of fugitives who have been detained as a direct result of this technology.” Franken chairs the Judiciary Privacy Subcommittee.
Frenzy over surveillance overhaul continued Tuesday ahead of evening consideration of the USA Freedom Act (S-2685). “We cannot afford to delay action on these reforms any longer, as the American people continue to demand stronger protections for their privacy,” said Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., in a floor statement Tuesday. “Unfortunately, some would rather use scare tactics than legislate. Some would have us wait while American businesses continue to lose tens of billions of dollars in the international marketplace. Or we could even wait until we are facing down the expiration of [Patriot Act] Section 215 in a matter of months, thereby creating dangerous uncertainty and risk for the intelligence community.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took to the Senate floor to blast the bill. Amendments were widely expected amid much debate over the bill’s fate as lawmakers proceeded with cloture. Several major tech companies recently urged the Senate to pass the bill, sending a coalition letter.
The Senate Judiciary Committee postponed its hearing on sports blackout legislation for a second time. The hearing was initially scheduled for September and then rescheduled for Wednesday. The committee announced the second postponement Monday, without giving any indication of when it may now be rescheduled.
House members and Commerce Department officials criticized alleged abuse by some employees within the Patent and Trademark Office’s telework program and its hiring practices (see 1411100040), in a joint House Judiciary and Oversight committees hearing Tuesday. The PTO employees who allegedly abused the telework program already should’ve been fired, said House Appropriations Committee member Frank Wolf, R-Va., in prepared testimony. Wolf said he’s a “huge advocate” of telework programs, but that the PTO needs stronger enforcement policies for those programs. Commerce’s 2014 investigation uncovered that a PTO “senior official intervened in the hiring process to ensure that a nonselected candidate, who was the fiancé of a close relative of the official, was ultimately selected for a position as a trademark examiner,” said Todd Zinser, Commerce inspector general, in prepared remarks. Ninety-five percent of PTO paralegals who participated in the Patent Hoteling Program had “insufficient work assigned to them over a four-year period despite a significant and growing backlog of appeals,” he said. The PTO received four “whistleblower” complaints in 2012 alleging abuse of the telework program, said Margaret Focarino, PTO commissioner for patents, in prepared testimony. “The USPTO investigated the claims, immediately took action to address issues raised during the investigation, and subsequently submitted a report to the Department of Commerce Office of the Inspector General." That report posited eight recommendations to improve the telework program, said Focarino. “We began implementing these recommendations and taking other actions even before submitting the report.”