Jimm Phillips

House Judiciary IP Subcommittee ranking member Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., House Judiciary Committee ranking member John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., and Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., plan to officially introduce the Fair Play Fair Pay Act Monday during an event sponsored by artist advocacy group musicFIRST. Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., is the bill's other co-sponsor. The bill’s provisions are likely to reflect the provisions Nadler highlighted during a Recording Academy event in February, when he discussed his plans to introduce an omnibus package of previous music licensing legislation aimed at expanding the payments of performance royalties, music industry experts and attorneys said in interviews Friday. Broadcasters and digital media groups, which have opposed attempts to extend performance royalty requirements, said they don’t believe the bill is likely to advance further than previous attempts to address the issue.

The Department of Commerce Internet Policy Task Force’s March 13 request for comment on possible cybersecurity issues the IPTF should address through multistakeholder work is a continuation of its earlier work on cybersecurity issues, industry stakeholders told us. The IPTF’s reopening of its cybersecurity work shows that Commerce is seeking ways to explore cyber items not directly addressed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cybersecurity Framework, stakeholders said. NIST is one of the federal agencies that the IPTF comprises. The IPTF said in its request for comment (see 1503160059), published in the March 19 Federal Register, that it seeks input from industry stakeholders on cyber-related topics that veer away from securing critical infrastructure sectors while also complementing federal initiatives like the NIST framework that focus on those sectors. Comments are due May 18 (see 1503190059).

Conservative privacy advocates urged Congress not to automatically reauthorize the controversial USA Patriot Act Section 215, telling congressional aides during an R Street Institute event Wednesday to urge their bosses to conduct a thorough debate on the provision that authorized controversial NSA bulk collection of phone metadata. The phone metadata collection program was one of the major NSA surveillance initiatives disclosed through former NSA contractor Edward Snowden's leaks to the media beginning in June 2013. Without reauthorization, Section 215 and other key provisions of the Patriot Act are to sunset June 1, with May 21 widely seen as the last working day Congress can act on reauthorization, given the Memorial Day recess. The debate over Section 215 reauthorization is set to reignite when Congress returns from recess next week, while other legislators are pushing for more wholesale NSA surveillance reforms.

The FCC Enforcement Bureau said Monday it reached a $16 million settlement with CenturyLink and a $1.4 million settlement with Intrado Communications over the companies’ roles in the April 2014 multistate 911 outage. The FCC found in October that the outage, which affected seven states and resulted in more than 6,600 emergency calls not reaching public safety answering points (PSAPs), stemmed from a software error at an Intrado 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). The bureau said it calculated the fines against CenturyLink and Intrado based on the number of PSAPs served by the companies.

NTIA said it is immediately suspending its early build funding for the Los Angeles Regional Interoperable Communications System Authority’s (LA-RICS) construction of a public safety LTE cell tower network in the city, after recent votes by the L.A. City Council and L.A. County Board to halt construction of portions of the network. The Council voted 12-0 Wednesday on its motion halting construction of LA-RICS project towers at city police stations and fire stations. The County Board vote March 24 halted LA-RICS construction at county fire stations. The city and county councils’ votes to halt the project make it “clear that LA-RICS faces substantial challenges in fulfilling the project's goals by the statutory deadline of September 30, 2015,” an NTIA spokeswoman said Friday.

The Texas House’s State Affairs Committee is considering legislation that would buck a recent national trend of states pre-empting regulation of VoIP services by requiring partial Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) oversight of those services. A revised version of the bill, HB-2650, would give PUCT oversight of consumer complaints against VoIP providers and require those providers to either cap the length of subscribers’ contracts at 180 days or allow them to opt out of their contract without penalties after the 180-day mark. The bill has encountered opposition from industry, which lobbied for recent bills in other states to pre-empt regulation of VoIP. State Rep. Ed Thompson, HB-2650’s Republican sponsor, told us he believes it’s unlikely the bill will make it out of the State Affairs Committee but he wants to draw attention to the issue and find ways to improve VoIP providers’ self-regulation of consumer issues.

President Barack Obama issued an executive order Wednesday authorizing the attorney general and secretaries of State and Treasury to impose sanctions on foreign-based individuals and entities that launch malicious cyberattacks against networks owned by the U.S. government or U.S. companies. Cyberattacks that could result in sanctions would need to significantly disrupt a network’s availability, affect the provision of a critical infrastructure sector company’s services or cause the theft of U.S. economic resources, assets or personal information, the executive order said.

The FCC is aware “our story is not done” on its municipal broadband pre-emption order, given Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery’s legal challenge to the order, said Daniel Kahn, Wireline Bureau Deputy Competition Policy Division Chief, during a commission webinar Monday. Slatery, a Republican, sued the FCC March 20 in the 6th U.S. Court of Appeals over the order, which pre-empted municipal broadband restrictions in North Carolina and Tennessee at the respective requests of Wilson, North Carolina, and the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga (see 1503240059). North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, is considering whether to join Slatery’s lawsuit, a spokeswoman said. The FCC webinar also addressed the commission’s new NPRM on implementation of Section 111 of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) Reauthorization and implementation of the FCC’s net neutrality order.

Release of the FCC net neutrality order brought limited clarity to how the rules and the commission’s accompanying reclassification of broadband as a Communications Act Title II service will affect state telecom regulation, state telecom lawyers and observers said in interviews last week. That lack of clarity largely stems from continued uncertainty about whether the net neutrality rules -- and particularly Title II reclassification -- will survive legal scrutiny, lawyers said. Alamo Broadband and USTelecom filed lawsuits Monday seeking reviews of the net neutrality order at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, respectively (see 1503230066). The order faces continued scrutiny on Capitol Hill (see 1503200048).

State and local 911 stakeholders urged the FCC in filings on the commission’s 911 governance NPRM (docket 14-193) to not usurp state and local jurisdiction on 911 issues in its pursuit of revised rules that will curb 911 outages like the April 2014 multistate event. The FCC’s rulemaking proposal followed that widespread outage, which the FCC later determined was caused by a software error at an Intrado 911 call processing center in Englewood, Colorado (see 1410170057). Carriers and public safety groups urged the FCC to consider a consensus proposal from the groups that would curb 911 outages without requiring the implementation of new rules (see 1503240049).