By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-15-20 House Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman David Cicilline (D-R.I.) and ranking member Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) have introduced a stand-alone bill that would make radio and TV stations that are part of larger broadcast groups eligible for forgivable small business loans. There is a provision to that effect in the [...]
Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Perry v. Hollingsworth. The case concerns access to the video recording of the 2010 Proposition 8 trial. In April 2017, KQED moved to unseal the videotapes, but the district court [...]
Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Husch Blackwell v. WMATA. This case concerns the “consultant corollary” and Exemption 5 of FOIA and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority’s Public Access to Records Policy (“PARP”). Husch Blackwell LLP [...]
Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the New York Appellate Division in Center on Privacy & Technology v. New York City Police Dept. This case arises out of a public records request that CPT made to the NYPD under New York’s Freedom of Information Law. The NYPD claimed [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-12-20 House Energy & Commerce Committee Republican leaders have unveiled an ambitious tech legislative agenda including bills using AI to combat deep fakes, promoting data security and coming up with an IoT strategy. They may not control the House, or the Consumer Protection Subcommittee agenda, but House Republicans [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-12-20 Microsoft and the National Association of Broadcasters continue to be poles apart on how much "white space" between TV channels the FCC should open up for unlicensed uses like portable internet access devices. Microsoft told the FCC in comments that while it is not now, nor does [...]
By Mike Brest, Washington Examiner, 5-12-20 The nonprofit organization that filed a lawsuit against Fox News claiming the news outlet violated a Washington state consumer protection statute with its coronavirus coverage said it would not back down following a motion to drop the case. In a court filing submitted to the King County Superior Court [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-11-20 Cable operators are using the rise of both over-the-top video and the novel coronavirus in arguments to the Federal Communications Commission for help in deregulating the market for both video and broadband services. It has been a couple of years since video streaming overtook traditional cable and [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-30-20 High-profile Senate Republicans say they plan to introduce a data privacy bill, the COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act, that would hold companies accountable for their use of personal data to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. There are concerns that contact-tracing technology employed by companies including Apple and Google [...]
By Ellen Nakashima, washingtonpost.com, 4-28-20 The public has a right to know a court’s reasons for restraining the government’s power to force a tech company to break its encryption to help law enforcement, the ACLU and The Washington Post told a federal appeals court on Tuesday. But an attorney for the Justice Department argued that [...]