By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-18-19 Some top Senate Democrats, including on Commerce and Judiciary, have released a set of core privacy principles they say should underpin any new federal legislation. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have said they support comprehensive privacy legislation, driven in no small measure by their concerns [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-18-19 House Judiciary Committee chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) has introduced yet another version of a STELAR renewal bill, the "Satellite Television Community Protection and Promotion Act (STCPP) of 2019.” There are already Senate Commerce and House Energy & Commerce versions of a bill that would renew the satellite [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-18-19 The Department of Commerce has extended for another 90 days the license that allows U.S. companies to continue to supply tech – like chips – to Chinese telecom Huawei, even though Commerce put the company on the list of entities "engaged in activities that are contrary to [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-18-19 In the wake of a hearing two weeks ago on Big Tech and its ties to China, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has introduced the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act which would attempt to stem the flow of info to that and other countries that pose [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-15-19 Republican FCC Commissioner Michael O'Rielly said that the FCC's outstanding proposal to classify over-the-top (OTT) platforms as MVPDs is the sort of "zombie" proceeding the FCC should finally kill off. O'Rielly made that proposal in a speech to the Massachusetts Broadcasters Association Thursday (Nov. 14). The FCC [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-14-19 Microsoft told the FCC this week it has issues with broadcasters' effort to extend their TV signals via distributed transmission systems (DTS). It's not the use of DTS, which the computer giant said definitely has upsides, but how broadcasters might be able to use it. The National [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-5-19 A pair of House Democrats have introduced a bill, H.H. 4978, the Online Privacy Act, that would create a privacy bill of rights and a new government agency to enforce those rights. Among those rights are the so-called "right to be forgotten," the right to no sharing [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 11-5-19 The FCC has issued the text of its decision approving the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint. That came in the form of a Memorandum Opinion and Order, Declaratory Ruling, and Order of Proposed Modification. The FCC modified some build-out requirements on Dish spectrum as part of the [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 10-30-19 Twitter is banning political ads on the platform, a move that has drawn a lot of attention, not all of it laudatory. Edge providers are under pressure inside the Beltway to prevent a repeat of the kind of 2016 foreign election meddling that exploited social media platforms [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 10-23-19 Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company will not launch its Libra digital currency payment system anywhere in the world unless and until it gets a sign-off from U.S. regulators. That came in prepared testimony for a Senate Financial Services Committee hearing Wednesday (Oct. 23) on Facebook's [...]