This commercial space boom is fundamentally different from the one that collapsed in the 1990s, executives said Wednesday at a State Department/Commerce Department conference on commercial outer space. The industry should be able to keep growing with smaller satellite sizes and masses meaning lower payload costs, said Spaceflight Industries CEO Curt Blake. Lower payload costs "have really created a platform open to everyone now," he said.
Congress should consider offering the tech industry a set of standards to ensure proper moderation practices for malicious content, House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., told reporters after a hearing Wednesday. Democrats from the panel hammered witnesses from Facebook, Google and Twitter, saying industry isn't doing enough to remove content from bad actors like the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass shooter (see 1905150047). Republicans mostly focused criticism on First Amendment issues and claims of anti-conservative bias.
The orbital debris problem not being talked about enough is avoiding "rocks" -- satellites over which the operator loses control -- Iridium CEO Matt Desch said Wednesday at the Secure World Foundation space sustainability summit. "It's basically a missile ... to create more debris." There's lack of discussion in the industry about rocks because it doesn't want to invite reliability standards, he said. If just a fraction of satellites in a constellation fail, it could be a significant danger if that constellation is made up thousands of satellites, he said.
Lawmakers “would be well served to take” up policy issues on their work on privacy legislation like anti-conservative censorship, antitrust concerns and wireless carriers' location tracking practices (see 1906120076) “a piece at a time and come to bipartisan agreement so that we have guidelines that are going to last,” said Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. She's on a Judiciary Committee informal privacy legislative working group (see 1903180038), one of several ongoing efforts to draft a bill. Also at Wednesday's Free State Foundation event, FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips urged Congress to not adopt privacy legislation that would allow a private right of action.
The compulsory license that enables satellite operators to import distant broadcast TV network programming without negotiating with local broadcasters should expire, Register of Copyrights Karyn Temple told the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. The Copyright Office believes the Section 119 license is only necessary if there’s market failure, and that’s not the case, she testified. The license is to expire Dec. 31, with the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act up for renewal.
Texas cities soon plan to revise their lawsuit contesting the state’s 2017 small-cells law to additionally challenge a law signed June 14 related to local telecom fees, an attorney for the suit’s lead plaintiff told us this week. McAllen and the other cities take a risk combining the cases, said Ewell Brown's David Brown. Florida cities are deciding whether to amend their own lawsuit against that state’s small-cells law after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) Tuesday signed a wireless bill tightening restrictions on cities.
Technologies for making domain name system transactions confidential are gaining traction but could pose problems for ICANN, said panelists Tuesday at its meeting in Marrakech, Morocco, and in interviews. Domain name system (DNS) over Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) (DoH) and DNS over transport-layer security (TLS) (DoT) are throwing up complex issues, they said. ICANN's primary interest is to ensure the continuance of the single, unified namespace, Chief Technology Officer David Conrad said in an interview Monday.
Consumers should be able to turn off algorithm filtering that determines the online content they see, Senate Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., said during a hearing Tuesday, announcing legislative efforts. Ranking member Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, told reporters he likes the concept but suggested it could be folded into the Senate Commerce Committee’s ongoing privacy legislation talks.
More willingness to name and shame bad actors and stronger international requirements that satellites be actively brought down from orbit after their missions expire instead of waiting for drag and gravity were suggested by space experts Tuesday at Secure World Foundation’s space sustainability summit on an increasingly crowded orbital domain. As the pace of space activities and number of actors grow, there needs to be a shift from academic discussions to real-world policy debates, said Secure World Executive Director Peter Martinez.
Colorado municipalities are trying to work with the wireless industry on 5G infrastructure rollout despite shot-clock concerns and apparent differences between a 2017 state small-cells law and last summer’s FCC order, said local government representatives Tuesday at the livestreamed Mountain Connect conference in Dillon. It shouldn't be "us against them," said Scott Harry, Crown Castle government affairs manager, Rocky Mountain region. “We want to create an environment of collaboration."