FCC commissioners and panelists at the Practising Law Institute’s Institute on Telecommunications Policy & Regulation Thursday outlined expectations for 2023 involving employment data collection, enforcement and the USF, but many speakers were focused on cyber and national security, such as compromised apps and obsolete devices. “It’s time to turn our attention to the millions of wireless devices in our country that are insecure,” said Commissioner Nathan Simington. “There’s an industry-wide acquiescence to careless practices.”
The U.S. government hasn’t sufficiently made a case defending the Copyright Royalty Board’s Web V ruling on royalty rates for webcast music, said reply briefs Friday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from NAB, SoundExchange and the National Religious Broadcasters Noncommercial Music License Committee.
The U.S. Office of the Solicitor General thinks Gonzalez v. Google should be remanded to the lower courts to consider whether YouTube’s recommendations make its owner Google liable under the Antiterrorism Act, it said in an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court Wednesday (docket 21-1333).
Broadcasters tout ATSC 3.0’s capabilities for disseminating detailed emergency information, but it’s not clear what form the standard’s advanced emergency information offerings will take and who will provide it, said participants at an Advanced Warning and Response Network Alliance roundtable event at NAB’s headquarters Wednesday. AWARN’s roundtables are intended to help determine what advanced emergency alerting is, said AWARN Executive Director John Lawson, who's also the president of ATSC 3.0 alerting firm America’s Emergency Network.
Courts have interpreted the protections of Section 230 of the Communications Act too broadly and social media companies should be held responsible for the content recommended to users by their algorithms, said several amicus briefs filed at the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google (docket 21-1333) Tuesday by advocacy groups, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., 26 states and a group of Israeli generals. “Far from discouraging terrorists, social media platforms actively assist their spread,” said the joint filing from former Israeli Minister of Defense Moshe Ya’alon and other retired Israeli military officers. “The same technology that connects dog lovers with chew-toy suppliers on social media platforms carries a parasitic byproduct that is deadly anti-social.”
Upholding the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that Twitter abetted terrorists because the platform was used by ISIS for recruitment (see 2211300073) would have a chilling effect on free speech, open numerous businesses to massive liability, and ignore the difficulties, costs and scale of content moderation, said amicus filings from the U.S Chamber of Commerce, CTA, CCIA and others in Supreme Court case Twitter v. Taamneh (docket 21-1496). “If that is a sufficient basis for liability, intermediaries will no longer be able to function as fora for others’ speech, and free expression will be the loser,” said a joint filing from the ACLU, the R Street Institute,the Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press, the Center for Democracy & Technology, and others.
The FCC should go after insurance companies that buy sales leads from robocallers and users of spoofed numbers, said communications attorney Arthur Belendiuk, of Smithwick and Belendiuk, in a complaint filed on his own behalf Monday in docket 20-195. “Starting as early as 8 a.m. and continuing into the evening hours, Complainant is barraged with a steady stream of unwanted telephone calls on both his mobile telephone and office telephone number, seven days a week,” said Belendiuk. The FCC “has the statutory authority to eliminate this scourge on American consumers,” said the complaint, comparing robocalls to “a plague of locusts” and calling for a forfeiture of $500 million for each company involved.
Websites sending users unsolicited recommendations and creating links to content on their own platforms aren’t protected under Section 230 of the Communications Act because the information they're offering wasn’t created by a third party, argued the petitioners in the initial brief filed Wednesday with the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzalez v. Google.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' broad interpretation of laws against abetting terrorism would mean any provider of goods or services -- from banks to airlines -- could be held liable for treble damages if a terrorist patronized their businesses, said Twitter, Google and Facebook in briefs filed Tuesday in docket 21-1496 in their U.S. Supreme Court appeal of the ruling, Twitter v. Taamneh. “The Ninth Circuit embraced an atextual and boundless conception of ‘knowingly providing substantial assistance,’” said Google and Facebook in a joint filing. “That is not a tenable scope of liability,” said Twitter in a separate filing.
Fourteen cellular partnerships filed breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty suits against AT&T and several subsidiaries in Delaware Chancery Court in relation to a decade-long court case over cellular partnerships, said multiple filings Monday.