By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 2-8-17 FCC chairman Ajit Pai says the Enforcement Bureau will no longer get to sign off on consent decrees settling proposed forfeitures without the commissioners voting on them. That was the latest in a series of process reforms the new chairman is implementing in his first few weeks [...]
By Victor Davis Hanson, National Review Online, 8-15-16 After nearly eight years of aiding and abetting Obama, leftists now fear the possible constitutional overreach of our next president. Peter Beinart writes angrily in The Atlantic of the supposed Trump intellectuals, apparently on the premise of not whether one has endorsed formally the Trump candidacy, but [...]
By Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer, Microsoft, 7-14-16 Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled in a case brought by Microsoft addressing the global application of U.S. search warrants for people’s email. The court ruled in favor of Microsoft overturning an earlier ruling from a lower court. We [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 7-12-16 An FCC source confirms the FCC's Dmeocratic majority has voted to approve the FCC's quadrennial media ownership review notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM). House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.) had said at an FCC oversight hearing Tuesday (July 12) that he had been told that [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 7-12-16 As expected, the FCC's set-top proposal got a lot of attention at the House Communications Subcommittee FCC oversight hearing Tuesday. Among the takeaways were that the U.S. Copyright Office is concerned about the proposal, and FCC chairman Tom wheeler is committed to working with the office to [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 6-14-16 In a big and sweeping victory for the FCC, the Obama Administration and FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has let stand the FCC's new Open Internet order. That includes the definition of Internet service [...]
By Des Bieler, washingtonpost.com, 4-26-16 The Washington Redskins have asked the Supreme Court to review their appeal of a federal judge’s July ruling that upheld the cancellation of their trademark. But there’s a catch: the team only wants the high court to consider its case if it takes up a similar one involving a band [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-19-16 The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing April 20 on federal rulemaking and the "administrative state." Among the topics being addressed is the FCC's network neutrality rulemaking, which Republicans have been highly critical of, including the perceived pressure from the Obama Administration [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-19-16 Patent and copyrights are essentially a contract between the federal government and inventors and artists, which "heightens" the government's responsibility and "solemn promise" to protect those rights. That is the central theme of a new paper, "The Public Contract Basis of Intellectual Property Rights," being released today [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-18-16 The major Hollywood studios were not pleased Monday after the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a decision that it was OK for Google to digitize millions of books and make them available online without compensating the copyright holders. In a blog post after the [...]