The House was prepared at our deadline Tuesday to sign off on the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act (HR-734). It’s “a reflection of what our Subcommittee can accomplish when we work together in a bipartisan manner,” House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo D-Calif., said in a written statement. Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., praised the nature of the bill, speaking on the House floor. “This legislation consolidates eight separate reports” the FCC is required to make on the state of competition, Walden said, framing the legislation as a “small but significant step” in addressing flaws in the Communications Act. The House was about to approve the bill under suspension of the rules, reserved typically for noncontroversial legislation, but Walden requested the yays and nays. House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., praised the bill as a “model” for the committee. The bill had cleared the Commerce Committee and Communications Subcommittee easily, by voice vote. Eshoo said the bill won’t affect how the FCC uses any Telecom Act Section 706 authority or its ability to review retransmission consent fees. The Senate Commerce Committee plans to mark up a companion bill Thursday at a 10 a.m. executive session.
Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., reintroduced the Local Radio Freedom Act (S. Con. Res. 4) Tuesday, a Senate aide said. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., is also a lead sponsor of the resolution, she said. Reps. Michael Conaway, R-Texas, and Gene Green, D-Texas, were also expected to take the lead in reintroducing the House version of the resolution Tuesday, a radio industry official said. The resolutions would prohibit terrestrial radio stations from paying any new taxes or royalties, a House aide said. The number of the resolutions’ co-sponsors was expected to be around 75, the radio official said. Prohibiting terrestrial broadcasters from paying new royalties contradicts one suggestion in the Copyright Office’s recent music licensing study, which called for terrestrial stations to pay public performance royalties (see 1502050055).
The House has set the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act (HR-734) for a floor vote Tuesday under suspension of the rules, a form of voting usually reserved for noncontroversial legislation. The House has approved versions of the legislation in the past and it easily cleared the Communications Subcommittee and Commerce Committee earlier this year. Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., is the bill’s primary sponsor, along with Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif. House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, joined as a co-sponsor last week. Communications Subcommittee lawmakers reached a compromise on this legislation text to specify that its intent is not to touch FCC authority. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., has introduced the Senate companion. The Senate Commerce Committee plans an executive session at 10 a.m. Thursday to consider the Senate companion (S-253), said an agenda it released this week. House legislative business begins at 2 p.m. with votes at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
The Internet Governance Coalition (IGC) supports NTIA’s criteria for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority transition, plus the agency’s stipulation that the IANA functions not be handed over to an intergovernmental organization, said attorney David Gross of Wiley Rein in prepared testimony for Wednesday’s Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the IANA transition, which was advanced to us Monday. Gross is testifying on behalf of the IGC, which includes Amazon, Cisco, Google and Verizon as members. The IGC believes a “thriving Internet depends on a governance structure that is open, transparent, and representative of all stakeholders,” said Gross. “By allowing for the careful transition of the IANA to a bottom-up multistakeholder entity, the United States has affirmed its commitment to the multistakeholder model,” he said. “If the principles NTIA identified for the transition are met -- which is a critical condition for this process to work -- the United States will also succeed in maintaining the freedom, openness, security, and stability of the network we have all enjoyed since its inception.” ICANN CEO Fadi Chehade and NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling are also testifying Wednesday.
The House Commerce Committee is planning an FCC reauthorization hearing for next week, industry officials told us Monday. One official said the committee is eyeing March 4 as the hearing date. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune, R-S.D., has emphasized his desire to formally reauthorize the agency and predicted earlier this month that the Senate Commerce Committee may do so in the summer or fall, given a busy agenda (see 1502030039). The agency has not been formally reauthorized since 1990.
Secretary Penny Pritzker will testify on her Commerce Department’s FY 2016 budget request before the Senate this week. The Senate Appropriations Commerce Subcommittee scheduled a hearing for 10:30 a.m. Thursday in 192 Dirksen. NTIA would be slated to receive $49.2 million, an increase of more than $10 million compared with FY 2015. The first Financial Services Subcommittee hearing will be March 3, focusing on the Treasury Department, a GOP Senate staffer told us. Later subcommittee hearings on agencies, including the FCC, likely will take place in the spring, the staffer said.
The Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee scheduled a hearing for March 10 on the Justice Department’s ongoing consent decrees review (see 1406050081) for performance rights organizations Broadcast Music Inc. and American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, a subcommittee aide said Friday. The consent decrees bar PROs from refusing a license to any organization that requests one, leading to rate negotiations. Broadcasters are reaping the rewards of a consent decree process that unfairly compensates songwriters, music attorneys have said. The outcome of the DOJ review could influence the nature and timing of related legislation expected this Congress (see 1501070052).
The House Judiciary Committee plans a hearing on the Copyright Office’s (CO) functions and resources Feb. 26 at 1:30 p.m. in 2138 Rayburn, a committee news release said Thursday. Witnesses weren’t listed. The CO also released a study Thursday on its modernization challenges. The 87-page study was first undertaken in November 2011. Four areas were found to have “great need of improvement,” including “user experience” and “access to and the usability of copyright records,” it said. “Poor performance of outdated IT architecture and infrastructure” and “inefficiencies with current copyright data” are the other primary challenges. “The Office should have a new and dedicated enterprise copyright system, which might be perceived as ‘eCO 2.0,’" it said. That means a “large-scale application package that includes the capabilities for registration, recordation, public information and records, accounting and processing, and acquisition,” the study said. “While the result would be an over-arching enterprise system, each copyright function must have its own dedicated development cycle to include analysis, requirements, design, build, testing/pilot, deployment and maintenance phases,” it said. “These goals would need to be reconciled with the existing systems and future plans of the Library of Congress.”
Two congressional Democrats want to make sure AT&T and Verizon don't acquire too much of the available spectrum. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler Thursday cautioning that revenue raised should be only one factor to weigh ahead of the agency's broadcast TV spectrum incentive auction. “While this is no doubt a critical measure of a successful spectrum auction, it should not be the only metric for determining use of this scarce public resource,” they said. “Consistent with the objective of Congress, we applaud you for recognizing the need to include a ‘reserved’ block of spectrum as part of the incentive auction. While this is an important mechanism for achieving greater competition, the Commission should continue to evaluate its auction rules to ensure they are sufficient to prevent excessive concentration of spectrum among the nation’s largest wireless providers.” The agency’s reassessment should not prevent the incentive auction from beginning in early 2016, as planned, the lawmakers said. The FCC’s incentive auction is “a unique opportunity to free up additional low-band spectrum for wireless broadband,” they said. House Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., wrote a separate letter to Wheeler saying the FCC’s incentive auction rules “should be used to benefit actual small businesses,” citing the more than 800,000 small businesses in New Jersey. “I am deeply concerned, however, by reports that major corporations have been able to game certain FCC rules designed to aid small businesses,” Pallone said. “If these reports are true, large businesses took advantage of loopholes first adopted in the Bush administration. Not only do these Bush-era rules undermine Congressional intent, they may result in real small businesses being boxed out of the telecommunications market.” The upcoming auction gives the FCC “a chance to get this right,” he said. The agency should “make sure its competition policies are geared toward those who need it most -- not just major corporations and incumbents,” he said.
Another group of House Republicans pressed the FCC on possible process problems. House Commerce Committee leaders sent the FCC a letter Wednesday demanding a bevy of documents by March 4. “One area of ongoing concern is your office’s use of so-called ‘delegated authority,’” said the letter from Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., and Oversight Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, R-Pa. “It is not appropriate for use with regard to new or novel questions of law or policy.” They cited several instances of the use of this authority, and criticized “a series of actions that call into question the openness and fairness of the Commission’s rulemaking processes,” questioning the timeliness by which the FCC chairman’s office provided copies of commission documents to other commissioners. The lawmakers also criticized the FCC’s delay on a congressional request for management and performance metrics last year. The committee learned in December, “nearly six months after the initial request,” that “such metrics were not available because they ceased being employed in the management of the agency’s largest bureau in 2009.” The FCC, under Wheeler, “is not sufficiently committed to fulfilling its obligation to operate independently, with processes that are open, fair and transparent,” they said. They requested documents on how the chairman’s office circulates documents to other commissioners and how that has changed under Wheeler, as well as documents about the agency’s compliance with the Administrative Procedure Act. They want to know what the Office of General Counsel advised on the use of delegated authority and the discretion of Wheeler to use it. They also asked about document retention policies. Walden is also expected to press the FCC on net neutrality at a Wednesday hearing and during a speech at American Enterprise Institute headquarters March 2.