April 2012

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) invited comment on whether to allow public broadcasters to spend a modest amount of their total annual broadcast time – up to one percent, or about 88 hours per year – to conduct on-air fundraising activities for charities and other nonprofits. This proposal is a recommendation of The Information Needs of Communities report, which was released in June 2011. The proposal gives viewers of public broadcasting the opportunity to raise funds for non-profit organizations in their communities and around the world. The Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) is another step in the FCC’s effort to review existing regulations and reduce unnecessary burdens.

Under longstanding FCC policy, noncommercial educational (NCE) public broadcast stations can only conduct fundraising activities for the benefit of the station itself. Fundraising activities for third-parties is prohibited if fundraising activities conducted on-air would substantially alter or suspend regular programming. The policy reflects concerns that public stations are licensed to meet their mission of public service to local audiences through noncommercial and educational programming, not through fundraising activities for other organizations.

With the first phase of the blockbuster Oracle/Google case nearly headed to the jury, Google asked the court for a judgment that would invalidate at least a portion of the copyrights Oracle claims over Java APIs.

Google's motion asks for a "judgment as a matter of law that the names and declarations from the 37 API (application programming interface) packages that appear in the Android source code are not copyrightable." Google criticized "Oracle claims that Google’s implementing source code is a derivative work of Oracle’s English-language descriptions because Google’s source code does the things that the English descriptions describe." Google argued that the source code and object code for implementing Oracle's APIs are not derivative works of the copyrighted work as a whole. Further, Google said the alleged copying of Java code is "de minimus," or insignificant, and "thus non-actionable."

Two members of the House Commerce Committee offered legislation that would put pressure on the Administration to do more than just talk about meeting President Obama's pledge to free up 500 megahertz of spectrum over the next decade.

The bill, offered by Reps. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) and Doris Matsui (D-CA), would require the administration to auction off a chunk of spectrum coveted by the wireless industry that is now used by federal agencies. The bill would require that the 1755-1780 megahertz block of spectrum be paired with the 2155-2180 band, which the Federal Communications Commission already has available, and be auctioned to wireless providers. The Stearns-Matsui bill would give the Pentagon and other federal agencies five years to relocate from the 1755 band and authorize funding to pay for the costs associated with that move.

Civil liberties groups are back actively opposing a cybersecurity bill that the House is scheduled to consider.

The Center for Democracy and Technology and the Constitution Project never really dropped objections to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, but after discussions with the bill's sponsors, the groups said on April 24 they would not actively oppose the bill and focus on amendments instead. But on April 25, the House Rules Committee shot down 22 of 43 submitted amendments to the bill, known as CISPA. All but one Republican amendments were made in order, while four out of 19 Democratic amendments and four with 10 bipartisan support made the cut. Five amendments were withdrawn. "In issuing a rule excluding amendments on two of the major privacy and civil liberties issues remaining in CISPA -- the flow of information to the National Security Agency and the authority to use information for non-cybersecurity purposes -- the House leadership has squandered an opportunity to achieve balanced cybersecurity legislation," CDT said in a statement.