Industry officials urged Congress to reconsider many elements of USF support policy, despite lauding the broad principles that have guided it. House Communications Subcommittee Republicans issued a white paper last month (http://1.usa.gov/1pmX66c) asking several questions about USF, seeking responses by Friday. It was the fifth white paper the subcommittee issued as part of efforts to overhaul the Communications Act, an initiative announced in December. Initial responses, which the committee has not posted online but were shared with us, were on what parties considered necessary changes to the USF contribution mechanism.
The FCC is confident the communications industry will voluntarily lead commission-facilitated efforts to improve the industry’s cybersecurity risk management practices, but could look to its recent 911 annual reliability audit order as a model for regulatory action if the industry doesn’t “pull it together,” said Public Safety Bureau Chief David Simpson Wednesday. Simpson’s remarks at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event echoed the FCC’s message all year on the need for a voluntary industry-led effort on cybersecurity risk management. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said in June that the FCC’s vision of a “new paradigm” on cybersecurity would include readiness to act if voluntary efforts failed (CD June 13 p1).
The FCC Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) is to meet Sept. 24, the commission said in a notice in Monday’s Federal Register. CSRIC’s working groups are to present updates on emergency warning systems, 911 location accuracy, distributed denial-of-service attacks and cybersecurity best practices (http://bit.ly/1urGZ9c). The meeting is to begin at 1 p.m. in the Commission Meeting Room.
Congress must craft a National Consumer Protection Plan (NCPP) to keep pay-TV subscribers safe, TVFreedom said in a blog post Thursday. TVFreedom is a broadcaster coalition that has NAB as a member. “Legislation necessary to implement the NCPP should better define the jurisdiction, roles and responsibilities of federal regulators, namely the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), that can aid consumers and address existing market failures in the video marketplace,” TVFreedom’s spokesman said in the blog post (http://bit.ly/1uKqGTe). “Today, government oversight of the cable and satellite TV industry is under the jurisdictions of states and local franchising authorities, which has resulted in significant variations in state-by-state government oversight.” The plan “should be guided under the principles that consumer satisfaction is top priority, and that consumers must be empowered with the tools necessary to address recurring billing errors, ’surprise’ charges and inferior service quality,” TVFreedom said. It cited Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., as a champion in this arena and her desire to hold a Consumer Protection Subcommittee hearing on pay-TV industry billing practices before the end of this year, as she told us earlier this week.
The California Public Utilities Commission put on hold Thursday plans to submit reply comments to the FCC supporting its net neutrality Title II NPRM. The decision came on a vote to overturn an earlier 3-2 decision to submit comments urging the commission to reclassify broadband as a Communications Act Title II service and use that authority in conjunction with other authorities as jurisdiction bases for new net neutrality rules. Commissioner Carla Peterman, who had originally voted in favor of reclassification, decided later in the meeting to officially abstain, tying the vote 2-2. The tied vote means any comments are on hold, a CPUC spokeswoman said. Commissioners Mike Florio and Catherine Sandoval had voted in favor of the staff’s set of recommendations, while Commission President Michael Peevey and Commissioner Michael Picker voted against them.
If Congress overhauls the Telecommunications Act of 1996, policymakers seem to have agreed that the categories of the old Communications Act placing technologies in silos no longer work, said University of Pennsylvania law professor Christopher Yoo. But “they can’t agree on what replaces it,” he said. That’s one challenge of the Communications Act overhaul endeavor that House Republicans launched last December, said Telecommunications Policy Research Conference speakers on Capitol Hill Thursday.
Local Choice received more heat after the Senate Commerce Committee leadership’s decision to include it in their Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act reauthorization bill (CD Sept 8 p1). Economists Kevin Caves and Hal Singer wrote a letter Monday (http://bit.ly/1weizzd) to committee leaders saying Local Choice, which would overhaul retransmission consent rules to end TV blackouts, “would likely harm cable customers by raising the price of their cable bills.” The letterhead is marked Economists Inc., a company with clients including ABC, CBS, Comcast and many others. NAB asked Singer to write the letter, he told us. Local Choice “singles out the content creators that appeal to the broadest swath of American households for discriminatory treatment,” Caves and Singer said of the broadcast a la carte proposal. “If broadcasters are forced to accept narrower distribution on the cable lineup, the odds are that the license fees for broadcast networks would increase, perversely leading to higher cable bills for the majority of Americans.” A footnote to the letter mentioned that NAB had commissioned the economists to conduct a study recently on sharing agreements and advertising but that “opinions expressed here are our own.” Ad groups also blasted Local Choice on substance and process. “We are in strong opposition to the proposal,” Association of National Advertisers Executive Vice President-Government Relations Dan Jaffe told us, saying his group and the American Association of Advertising Agencies and the American Advertising Federation were sending a joint letter to the committee (http://bit.ly/1ArNF70). Local Choice is “clearly premature” and “not an insignificant step,” likely to hurt advertisers, broadcasters and consumers, Jaffe said. “[Committee staff] have not reached out to us at all.” But Rep. Bob Latta, R-Ohio, said the Senate Commerce Committee legislation “marks an important step forward in advancing this must-pass legislation that will ensure uninterrupted access to broadcast television programming for more than one million satellite television subscribers.” Communications Subcommittee Vice Chairman Latta praised the Satellite Television Access and Viewer Rights Act for including “a provision to eliminate the [set-top box] integration ban, similar to the one I sponsored in the House, and I look forward to a conference committee to work out the differences between the House and Senate bills,” he said in a statement Monday (http://1.usa.gov/1s5klm0).
RESTON, Va. -- Candidates for Virginia’s U.S. Senate seat outlined some similar fundamental priorities of technology policy, despite vastly different tones, in a campaign town hall session. Both Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., and former telecom lobbyist Ed Gillespie, his Republican challenger who has also operated as a party strategist, would create a privacy advocate challenge process within the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, permanently extend the research and development tax credit, and seek to avoid the effects of sequestration, they said.
The FCC Enforcement Bureau under Chairman Tom Wheeler and acting Chief Travis LeBlanc has shown a willingness to go after companies that violate agency rules with more aggressiveness than in the past, said agency and industry officials in recent interviews. They said LeBlanc has taken a particularly hard line, refusing to consider reductions in penalties if a company won’t acknowledge wrongdoing and declining to allow language in consent decrees that a company was making a “voluntary” contribution to the government as part of the agreement. The latter change is significant since “voluntary” contributions can often be deducted as business expenses on tax returns, but the Internal Revenue Code explicitly forbids deduction of penalties.
Common Cause said the FCC should review the Media Bureau’s decision to dismiss complaints against stations owned by Allbritton and Sander Media for allegedly identifying front groups incorrectly as the “true sponsors” of political advertisements. The commission is “shirking its responsibility to enforce the longstanding federal law requiring broadcasters to disclose the ’true identity’ of the sponsors of political advertising,” Common Cause said in a news release (http://bit.ly/1unNRU5). It’s one thing that the “congressional gridlock precludes passage of laws to right the many wrongs our special interest political culture faces,” former FCC commissioner and Common Cause special adviser Michael Copps said in the release. It’s infinitely worse “to ignore laws already on the books that enable us to tackle these problems,” he said. This year, Common Cause, the Campaign Legal Center and the Sunlight Foundation filed the complaints against Allbritton-owned ABC affiliate WJLA-TV Washington, D.C., (http://bit.ly/1oIOaDq) and Sander’s KGW-TV Portland, Oregon (http://bit.ly/1mlDLw8). The stations allegedly attributed political ads to political action committees (PACs) instead of identifying the true sponsors, the groups said (http://bit.ly/Z8JiCv). The complaints don’t provide a sufficient showing “that the stations had credible evidence casting into doubt that the identified sponsors of the advertisement were the true sponsors,” the bureau said in a letter to Andrew Schwartzman, the attorney for the groups (http://bit.ly/1waY6eM). The complainants’ theory is understandable, but “whether it is legally correct is another story,” a broadcast attorney said. While Section 317 of the Communications Act refers to “persons,” that term isn’t limited to individuals, but must also include legal entities, Fletcher Heald attorney Harry Cole said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1Abbtfm). As long as the PACs were properly identified, that arguably satisfied Section 317, he said. In tossing the complaints, the bureau didn’t address other concerns, like who is a “true sponsor” if it isn’t the entity signing the check, he said. It also isn’t clear in what cases the donors should be identified as the true sponsors “and when the PAC itself is properly identified as the sponsor,” Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford said in a blog post (http://bit.ly/1qAk2OC). The decision will likely be used as a tool to make broadcasters think twice about taking third-party political advertising money, he said.