Bicameral municipal broadband legislation is on the way. Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., and House Commerce Committee Vice Chairwoman Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., are preparing to introduce legislation on municipal broadband, likely following Capitol Hill’s recess next week, industry officials told us. The White House and FCC have outlined intentions to pre-empt state laws restricting municipal networks, and stakeholders in North Carolina and Tennessee have petitioned the FCC to pre-empt their state laws. The FCC will consider those petitions at its Feb. 26 meeting. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., has led an effort on Capitol Hill with his own bill, proposing that Congress pre-empt those restrictive state laws (see 1501220042). Tillis and Blackburn are both former state lawmakers and have slammed the idea of federal pre-emption in the past. Blackburn introduced a provision that passed the House last Congress that would have stopped the FCC from pre-empting those state laws, but the measure never advanced in the Senate. A different telecommunications industry lobbyist not familiar with the Blackburn-Tillis bill told us he suspects any new legislation would be along the same lines as what Blackburn introduced in the last Congress. Spokespeople for Tillis and Blackburn didn’t comment in response to multiple inquiries over the past week about possible pending legislation.
All World Intellectual Property Organization members should have an equal voice in amending the Lisbon Agreement for the Protection of Appellations of Origin, said a Thursday letter to WIPO Director General Francis Gurry. The letter was sent by bipartisan leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, Senate Finance Committee and House Ways and Means Committee. “The Lisbon Agreement is a WIPO-administered treaty that allows parties to the agreement to simultaneously register Appellations of Origin with all parties to the agreement,” a separate joint release said. “The proposed changes would substantially expand the scope of the Lisbon Agreement to allow for registration of Geographical Indications (GI’s) and could threaten market access for many common products, such as feta cheese, around the world,” it said. “Given that only 28 of the 188 WIPO members are parties to the Lisbon Agreement, lawmakers in Congress are concerned that departing from WIPO’s longstanding practice to allow this limited group of WIPO Members to amend the Agreement could result in unwanted changes that would ultimately harm workers and businesses in the United States and around the world.” WIPO didn’t comment.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., worries about duplication among federal agencies and sees technology as the silver bullet to address that concern, he said Wednesday in a speech at the Chamber of Commerce. “Are we really in the 21st century when it comes to our government?” McCarthy asked: “Would we really have the agencies we had today if cast in that light? … It’s all top down.” McCarthy plans to “look at every single agency,” pursuing duplication and accountability, he said. He said tech industry stakeholders could help pick an agency to evaluate. “The first thing you want to do is, ‘Do they have correct accounting principles so you can evaluate everything?’” McCarthy said. “How many programs for each department? … Every single one dilutes where it’s going, and why it is in this agency and that.” The answer is not more money, he said. McCarthy favored government agencies embracing digital technology and apps to make their systems more effective, efficient and accountable.
The House Commerce Committee signed off on the FCC Consolidated Reporting Act (HR-734) Thursday by voice vote. “This good government legislation reduces the reporting workload and increases efficiency at the FCC by consolidating eight separate congressionally mandated reports on the communications industry into a single comprehensive report,” Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in his opening statement Wednesday. “This streamlined report will give us important information about competition among technology platforms and the deployment of communications technologies to unserved communities.” House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden, R-Ore., Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., and Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., backed the bill. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., introduced the Senate companion (S-253) last month. The House passed the bill last Congress but it never advanced in the Senate.
Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., introduced the Eliminating Pornography from Agencies Act Wednesday, a Meadows news release said. The bill would “prohibit federal employees from accessing pornographic or explicit material on government computers and devices,” it said. “While there are rules in place at most agencies to ban this kind of unprofessional and potentially hostile workplace behavior, it continues to take place,” Meadows said. “There is absolutely no excuse for federal employees to be viewing and downloading pornographic materials on the taxpayers’ dime.”
Senate Homeland Security ranking member Tom Carper, D-Del., introduced the Cyber Threat Sharing Act (S-456) Wednesday. The bill largely mirrors the White House’s January Department of Homeland Security-centric (DHS) cybersecurity information sharing proposal (see 1501130059), though Carper’s office said it also includes input from privacy advocates and the private sector. “We must all work together to find a legislative solution that will address our cybersecurity needs while upholding the civil liberties we all cherish,” Carper said in a news release. Carper, Senate Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis., and other committee members sought stakeholder input in late January on possible information sharing legislation (see 1501280060). Carper’s introduction of S-456 came two days before President Barack Obama is expected to announce an executive action that would focus on private sector information sharing at DHS.
House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., said his recently reintroduced Innovation Act (HR-9) is a necessary “updated and modernized statute” for patent reform, in an opening statement Thursday at a House Judiciary IP Subcommittee hearing on recent patent-related cases at the Supreme Court. “Many of the provisions in the Innovation Act do not necessarily lend themselves to being solved by case law, but by actual law -- congressional legislation,” Goodlatte said. The Patent and Trademark Office shouldn’t “simply be in the business of granting patents and leaving the mess created for the courts and Congress to fix, but rather focus on strengthening the requirements for patent eligibility to reduce the overall number of weak or overly broad patents from entering the system,” he said. HR-9 addresses the “patent trolls, which continue to burden businesses across the country with abusive patent litigation,” said subcommittee ranking member Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., in an opening statement. “A smartphone can contain hundreds of patents -- on everything from touch-screen technology to cameras to GPS mapping,” he said “There is also a patent for that. And worse, we are finding there is a patent troll for that too.” Several groups expressed support for HR-9 upon its introduction, including CEA, NAB and NCTA (see 1502050036).
All Senate Commerce Committee Democrats will sit on the Communications Subcommittee, ranking member Bill Nelson, D-Fla., said in a news release Thursday. There are 10 Democratic members besides Nelson. He released the subcommittee rosters in full for the first time this Congress. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, leads Democrats for that subcommittee. The Consumer Protection and Data Security Subcommittee will have six members, including ranking member Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a leadership choice Nelson announced last month. Other Democratic members of that subcommittee are Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Tom Udall of New Mexico.
“Serious questions remain about the wisdom” of transitioning the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) functions, said Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., in a CircleID blog post Wednesday. “Our committees have been conducting oversight of ICANN and we will continue to closely examine the processes of the United States government and ICANN as these transition discussions continue.” Goodlatte and Hatch said they're encouraged by NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling’s repeated statements that the transition doesn’t have “hard and fast deadlines.” If the Obama administration "is determined to give up oversight of ICANN and the IANA contract, permanent improvements to ICANN's accountability and transparency are critical to building public and congressional trust for any proposed transition,” they said. “Any consideration of such a transition must be done carefully and in close coordination with Congress, rather than in a unilateral way.” Reps. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., and John Shimkus argued Wednesday about the merits of Shimkus’ Domain Openness Through Continued Oversight Matters Act (HR-805) (see 1502110014). DOTCOM would require GAO to study the transition proposal for up to one year before approval by NTIA (see 1502100049).
ITS America warned Congress against the Wi-Fi Innovation Act, introduced Tuesday and compelling the FCC to investigate unlicensed spectrum use in the upper 5 GHz band (see 1502100041). “Experts from the automotive, Wi-Fi and intelligent transportation systems (ITS) industries are working together to explore whether a spectrum sharing technology can be developed to allow Wi-Fi devices to operate in the same 5.9 GHz band set aside by the FCC for ITS safety systems without delaying time-critical communications needed to prevent crashes,” interim President Thomas Kern said in a statement. “This collaborative process should continue without Congressionally-imposed deadlines, restrictive parameters or political pressure that creates regulatory uncertainty and could delay bringing these life-saving crash prevention technologies to consumers." Kern and other auto industry stakeholders, including AAA and the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, sent Hill Commerce Committee leaders a letter slamming the legislation’s “arbitrary deadlines and restrictive parameters.” The groups asked committee leadership to oppose the bill.