CNET is participating in CES 2022, “just not in person,” emailed a spokesperson Monday evening. “We are a media partner and will continue to cover the show remotely,” she said. With COVID-19 and its omicron variant numbers on the rise, and “keeping employee and community safety top of mind,” CNET's parent company, Red Ventures, decided to “pause travel for all U.S.-based employees through mid-January,” she said. “CNET will now shift our CES focus to remote coverage.”
With settlement talks underway in a Lumen service quality probe (see 2106290048), the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission removed an item on next steps from its Dec. 22 meeting agenda. The state attorney general’s office sought delay Wednesday in docket C-20-432. The AG office, state Commerce Department, Communications Workers of America and Lumen plan to craft a settlement for PUC approval, with the first preliminary meeting set for Thursday, wrote Assistant AG Kristin Berkland: Parties will update the commission in about 60 days and every 30 days thereafter.
A spokesman for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said the government "is concerned with Canada’s announcement that it will continue to pursue a unilateral Digital Service Tax." The spokesman said that Canada agreed at the G-20 to pause new digital services taxes until international tax laws change how countries can tax non-residential corporations that provide services. "Canada’s proposed DST would create the possibility of significant retroactive tax liabilities with immediate consequences for U.S. companies. If Canada adopts a DST, USTR would examine all options, including under our trade agreements and domestic statutes.”
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An FCC Further NPRM on gateway providers and curbing illegal robocalls got a mixed reaction in comments posted through Monday in docket 17-59. Several questioned whether the proposed rules are duplicative. Most backed ending the foreign provider prohibition, which the commission paused enforcement on during the proceeding.
Iowa Utilities Board Chair Geri Huser pushed back on wireless industry concerns that the state commission is angling to expand its telecom authority through draft statutory changes that the IUB plans to propose to the legislature. At the board’s virtual workshop Monday, Lumen and wireless officials repeated some of their legal and policy concerns from written comments about possibly adding wireless and interconnected VoIP to the state definition of telecom service provider (see 2112010048).
A U.S. District Court in Austin judge denied a Texas motion to stay, pending appeal, the court’s preliminary injunction on the state’s social media law (see 2112070044). “The State largely rehashes the same arguments this Court rejected in its Order,” Judge Robert Pitman wrote Thursday in case 1:21-cv-00840. Pitman disagreed with Texas that his injunction was too broad. The judge granted a motion by plaintiffs NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association to stay proceedings during the state’s appeal at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
A U.S. District Court in Austin judge denied a Texas motion to stay, pending appeal, the court’s preliminary injunction on the state’s social media law (see 2112070044). “The State largely rehashes the same arguments this Court rejected in its Order,” Judge Robert Pitman wrote Thursday in case 1:21-cv-00840. Pitman disagreed with Texas that his injunction was too broad. The judge granted a motion by plaintiffs NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association to stay proceedings during the state’s appeal at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai took a victory lap at the U.S Chamber of Commerce's Transatlantic Business Works Summit, pointing to the removal of the digital services taxes on American firms, the agreement on steel and aluminum and the resolution of a 17-year fight on subsidies for Airbus and Boeing.
The tech industry should create a regulatory body to set best practices for protecting children, and Communications Decency Act Section 230 immunity should be earned through adhering to those protections, Instagram Head Adam Mosseri told the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee at a Wednesday hearing.