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  2. February 2016

February 2016

Mark Zuckerberg says Free Basics shutdown won’t keep Internet.org out of India

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India effectively banned Facebook's Free Basics program from the country, ruling that the system and others like it violate the principles of network neutrality. It's a big setback for Facebook's Internet.org program, which looks to provide basic connectivity to poor nations — but in a post Feb 8, Mark Zuckerberg said the ruling would not push Internet.org out of India entirely.

"Our mission is to make the world more open and connected," Zuckerberg wrote. "That mission continues, and so does our commitment to India." In the post, Zuckerberg framed the ruling as a defeat for Free Basics and other zero-rated programs rather than Internet.org at large. "While we're disappointed with today's decision, I want to personally communicate that we are committed to keep working to break down barriers to connectivity in India and around the world," the Facebook CEO wrote. "Internet.org has many initiatives, and we will keep working until everyone has access to the Internet." While Free Basics has traditionally been the centerpiece of Internet.org's access efforts, the organization is also working on a number of other projects that could be deployed without violating TRAI's recent order, including ambitious satellite and drone-based internet systems developed in the company's Connectivity Lab.

Statement of NTIA Head Strickling on 20th Anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996

Twenty years ago today President Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act into law, removing regulatory barriers for our nation’s communications companies and fueling investment in broadband networks. Since this time, we have witnessed an incredible transformation of our communications landscape.

As we look forward to the future, we must continue to support innovation and economic growth by strengthening competition and the free flow of information. In today’s fast-changing digital economy, multistakeholder processes are the most nimble and effective means for addressing our most pressing policy challenges. At the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, we are working to leverage multistakeholder processes to address today’s new policy issues.

Jim Cicconi Reflects on 20 Years Under 1996 Telecommunications Act

Passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 offers great perspective on today’s political and policy gridlock in Washington. It signified a moment in time when an Administration and far-sighted legislators from both parties, holding different perspectives, but all keenly interested in the dawning Internet age, joined ranks to craft a statute that was far-reaching in its scope and visionary in its impact.

At bottom, the framers of the ’96 Act embraced a wise humility toward technology and its future development. They were conscious of the Communications Act of 1934’s sixty-year legacy, and wanted their work to last. It took nearly six years over three Congressional sessions to negotiate, compromise, draft and re-draft what ultimately became the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and their work provided a roadmap for the future of the nation’s communications landscape. Indeed, the framers of the Act did their work better than they perhaps knew, piloting the ship of telecommunications policy through a foggy harbor into an open and unknown sea towards a destination of today’s cross platform communications marketplace.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 Employed 1000 Lawyers for A Decade

[Commentary] February 8, 2016 is the 20th anniversary of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, whose primary goal was creating a “procompetitive, deregulatory framework.” In this blog post, I consider one indicator near and dear to Washington (DC): How did it affect lawyers? (And what might that answer say about how well the Act met its goals?)

It’s not obvious what would be the best data on corporate legal activity or how to compile it, but one indicator is the number of Federal Communications Bar Association (FCBA) members. The FCBA, founded in 1936, describes itself as “an organization of attorneys and other professionals, including engineers, consultants, economists and government officials, involved in the development, interpretation and practice of communications law and policy.” The earliest data I could find showed the FCBA with 223 members in 1943, increasing to 517 in 1959. In 1991, it had “about 2000” members. In 1996 that increased to 2850 and in 2001 peaked at 3,450 members These data are imprecise—for example, today the FCBA reports having “over 2000” members. Regardless, they show that the 1996 Act appeared to generate work for about 1000 additional telecommunications lawyers for a decade. This increase suggests that TA96 did not lead to deregulation, at least to the extent to which deregulation should result in less interaction between industry and the regulator. Based on several heroic assumptions, that’s about $10 billion worth of legal services generated by the Act. To be fair to the lawyers, the legislation probably could never have worked in practice without lawyers stampeding in to figure out how to implement the thing. Whether the Act brought net benefits is another question, but on this anniversary lawyers, academics, think tankers, and advocacy groups should raise a toast in honor of the complex and ambiguous law that brought them so much good fortune.

Remarks on Waging a Digital Counterinsurgency

One of the things under me at the State Department is the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications, which was actually created in 2010 under Secretary [Hillary] Clinton to combat the online terrorist threat from al-Qaida, and because al-Qaida had differentiated themselves in terms of being more sophisticated than any terrorist group in history in using the Internet. So what CSCC started seeing a year and a half ago was this – the rise of this other group, and they were exponentially more sophisticated than al-Qaida. And this became – CSCC was focusing exclusively on ISIL.

One of the things we realized from this very central insight over the – and I’ve been doing this now for almost two years – is that we the government, the US Government, any government, is not necessarily the best messenger for the message we want to get out there. In fact, they use us as a recruiting tool. They use our messaging as a recruiting tool. The most effective counter-messengers are Muslim men and women with a mainstream view of Islam who can say that this is a violation of everything the prophet ever stood for, that Islam is a religion of peace and reciprocity, and this is an abuse of the Qur’an, of hadiths, and all of that. I cannot say that. I shouldn’t even say that now as a member of the USG, but private groups can say that. And we realize that really the best thing that we can do as a government messaging agency is really to help those voices get out there. So we’re turning the CSCC into something called the Global Engagement Center, which is to help optimize these kinds of third-party messages and help optimize these groups and do some seed funding with those groups and help them figure out how to message against this pernicious message that’s out there. And that is the vision that we’re trying to execute.

Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
Thursday, March 1, 2016
9 am
https://itif.org/events/2016/03/03/regulating-broadband-privacy-under-ti...

With the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considering a rulemaking to create broadband privacy rules, please join ITIF for a panel discussion on the wisdom or folly of sector-specific regulation, how to best balance consumer protections with the value unlocked by data analytics, and the broader context of ongoing changes in both telecommunications and privacy policy.

As a part of last year’s controversial Open Internet Order, the FCC classified broadband access as a common carrier service, giving itself considerably broader jurisdiction to make rules around net neutrality. With this new-found regulatory authority, the FCC now looks to repurpose old telephone marketing laws for rules around broadband providers’ use of customer data.

Privacy is an important value, but it should be balanced with other goals including usability, cost, and future innovation. Some advocates seem to think privacy an absolute right, making a rigid regulatory regime more attractive than the current, flexible protections of the Federal Trade Commission. Instead, we should look to embrace principles that allow consumers to protect their privacy, but not at the expense of productivity or experimentation with welfare-enhancing changes to business models.


Federal Communications Bar Association
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
6:00 – 8:15 p.m.
http://www.fcba.org/events/cle-seminar-the-20th-anniversary-of-the-telec...

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 became law 20 years ago, on February 8, 1996. The stated objective was to create a “pro-competitive, de-regulatory framework” for telecommunications in the United States of America. At the time, it was seen as a ground-breaking experiment because most of the world was still served by state-owned monopoly providers that were widely seen as providing outdated and costly services of poor quality. The development of competition for long-distance services in the U.S., particularly over the preceding decade, was seen as positive and hopes were high for even greater success in local markets. At this CLE, we will hear from some of the key players in the development of the Act and its implementation. The discussion will address the legal and policy issues at the time and their ongoing impact today.

Agenda

6:00 – 6:05 p.m. Welcome and Introductions
Chris Wright, Partner, Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP; President, Federal Communications Bar Association

6:05 – 6:30 p.m. Reed Hundt
Mr. Hundt was the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1993-1997 and in that capacity led the agency when the Telecommunications Act of 1996 was enacted and implemented in the ensuing 18 months. Mr. Hundt, who contributed an essay to the special issue of the Federal Communications Law Journal addressing the 1996 Act, will give his unique perspective on the genesis and implementation of the Act.

6:30 – 7:15 p.m. Lessons Learned: A Review of the Legal Approaches to Interconnection and Unbundling and the Resulting Evolution of Markets Domestically and Around the World
These two panelists have published articles in the most recent edition of the FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS LAW JOURNAL, which is a special symposium on the twentieth anniversary of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. From 1997 through 2001, Mr. Furchtgott-Roth served as a commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. Before his appointment to the FCC, he was chief economist for the House Committee on Commerce and a principal staff member on the Telecommunications Act of 1996. He is the author of A Tough Act to Follow, a book about the difficulties implementing the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Harold’s article revisits those difficulties and offers some thoughts for the next effort to update our communications laws.

Prior to founding the Phoenix Center, Mr. Spiwak was a Senior Attorney with the Competition Division in the FCC’s Office of General Counsel from 1994-1998. Larry’s article outlines various lessons learned from the U.S. unbundling experience. Larry will also talk about his separate essay in the commemorative issue that details early efforts to promote utility entry into telecommunications markets.

Moderator:
Chris Wright, Partner, Harris, Wiltshire & Grannis LLP

Speakers:
Harold Furchtgott-Roth, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and Founder and Director of the Center for the Economics of the Internet
Lawrence Spiwak, President, Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies

7:15 – 7:30 p.m. Break

7:30 – 8:15 p.m. Policy and Legal Roundtable on the Drafting and Implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996
This panel will feature an in-depth discussion of the legal and policy issues involved in the development of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and its implementation. The panel participants held various key positions during those early years and each has published a short essay in the Twentieth Anniversary of the 1996 Act Symposium published by the Federal Communications Law Journal. Mr. Casserly was Senior Legal Advisor to Commissioner Susan Ness from 1993-97. Ms. Gomez held several leadership positions at the FCC and on the Hill from 1994-2006. Ms. Sohn was the President and co-founder of Public Knowledge. Mr. Thorne held senior legal positions and Bell Atlantic and Verizon in the 1980s-2000s. Mr. Waldron served as the senior counsel on the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications for much of the 1990s.

Moderator:
Jeff Lanning, Vice President, CenturyLink

Speakers:
James Casserly, Partner, Willkie, Farr & Gallagher LLP
Anna Gomez, Partner, Wiley Rein LLP
Gigi Sohn, Counselor to the Chairman, Federal Communications Commission (Invited)
John Thorne, Partner, Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, P.L.L.C.
Gerald Waldron, Partner, Covington & Burling LLP (Invited)


Senate Commerce Committee
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
10 am
http://www.commerce.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/hearings?ID=F3D2645F-5D1...

Witnesses:

- The Honorable Tom Wheeler, Chairman, Federal Communications Commission
- The Honorable Mignon Clyburn, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
- The Honorable Michael O’Rielly, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
- The Honorable Ajit Pai, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
- The Honorable Jessica Rosenworcel, Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission


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