Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a presumptive candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2016, said Internet freedom will be one of his top issues as a new member of the Senate Commerce Committee. Rubio also emphasized the importance of spectrum, in a luncheon speech to the conservative Free State Foundation.
Representatives of the retail industry debated the Marketplace Fairness Act, HR-684 and S-336, during a Thursday congressional briefing hosted by the Advisory Committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus. The bills would require online retailers to collect sales tax from interstate online sales and remit those taxes to the states where the customers are located.
The “next great copyright act” will require “a few years of solid drafting and revision” to get right, Maria Pallante, U.S. Register of Copyrights, told the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property during a hearing Wednesday. Pallante urged members of the subcommittee to write the law in a way that allows it to be flexible so the Copyright Office can adapt the law to keep up with changing technology. Debates over copyright law should “get out of Washington,” Pallante said. She suggested the debate’s participants “go somewhere like Nashville, where people make a living writing songs from their kitchen tables."
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, reintroduced legislation Thursday aimed at clarifying the legal rules concerning how citizens’ geolocation data can be used by companies and law enforcement agencies. The Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act (HR-1312) would require law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant based on probable cause in order to track an individual by using cellphone location data or a GPS device. The new GPS Act proposal contains no changes from the bill Chaffetz introduced last Congress, his spokesman confirmed Thursday. The legislation previously faced stiff opposition from law enforcement officials and failed to advance (CD May 18 p8).
The issues of orphan works, illegal streaming and public performance rights for sound recordings are the three biggest issues calling for revised copyright law, said Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante during a Wednesday hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property. “I think orphan works is ripe” for a revised law, she said. “I think the public is so frustrated by the long copyright term,” which may keep individuals from using copyrighted works, even when the copyright holder can’t be located.
States should increase their role as a partner with the federal government to address Internet privacy issues, said Steve Ruckman, Maryland assistant attorney general and director of the Maryland Office of the Attorney General’s Internet Privacy Unit, at a joint FCBA-American Bar Association Forum on Communications Law event Wednesday. Maryland Attorney General Doug Gansler has made Internet privacy protections a priority -- both in his in-state work and in his role as president of the National Association of Attorneys General NAAG), Ruckman said. Gansler was originally scheduled to speak at the FCBA event, but needed to testify at a Maryland General Assembly hearing.
Major mobile satellite services companies expect to expand end-user services over the next several years, said executives from Iridium, Orbcomm and other companies. The MSS companies are looking beyond service offerings and moving into delivering solutions, said Marc Eisenberg, Orbcomm CEO. “We're transitioning to solutions and solving end-to-end user issues,” he said Wednesday at the Satellite 2013 conference in Washington. “I think we're going to continue to move in that direction,” he said. “Whether we produce the solutions or the solutions are produced around you, [these] are two different ways of getting to the same thing,” said Matt Desch, Iridium CEO.
Commissioner Robert McDowell announced Wednesday he will leave the FCC in a matter of weeks, after seven years on the commission. Attention immediately focused on who will replace the Republican, with House Commerce Committee aide Ray Baum, a former chairman of the Oregon Public Utility Commission, and longtime congressional aide Michael O'Rielly, who now works for Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, early front runners in the view of government and industry officials. Also getting some mentions by lobbyists are Neil Fried, chief counsel to the House Communications Subcommittee, and former State Department official David Gross, now at Wiley Rein. One unknown is whether Senate Commerce Committee Ranking Member John Thune, R-S.D., will have a candidate of his own.
Google Fiber is coming to another city -- Olathe, Kan., the fifth-most-populous municipality in the state and located not far from the Kansas City area where Google has begun building its gigabit network. Olathe has about 125,000 residents and is about 20 miles southwest of Kansas City. The Olathe City Council unanimously voted in favor of an agreement with the tech giant Tuesday night, the city said (http://bit.ly/WDJsgw), as the company hints at more such announcements to come.
The FCC asks a battery of questions in an NPRM approved Wednesday that tries to get to the bottom of what went wrong in June when the derecho storm led to problems at 77 public safety answering points across Ohio, the central Appalachians and the Mid-Atlantic states, with 17 PSAPs losing service completely. FCC officials said the NPRM is open-ended and doesn’t draw tentative conclusions, though it could lead to new requirements for carriers. The questions raised are based on the problems identified in the Jan. 10 FCC report on the storm (http://bit.ly/ZTzB3M).