Hill, The

Rep Peter King (R-NY) says lawmakers should investigate leaks of US intelligence to the media exposing Russian interference in the 2016 election. “This is not a trivial matter,” he said. "This is supposed to be top secret, classified information, which they won’t even give to the [House] Intelligence Committee but they’re leaking to the press. “That’s what’s really disgraceful about this,” Rep King added, noting how most lawmakers had not seen a classified report on Russia’s election meddling. "I think there should be a federal investigation into how that was leaked out.”

Civil libertarians are blasting new rules from House Republicans that would impose fines on lawmakers who take pictures or live-stream video on the House floor. The fines are intended to prevent a repeat of protests like the sit-in by House Democrats in 2016 calling for gun control legislation after the mass shooting in an Orlando (FL) nightclub. Democratic Reps broadcast their sit-in on social media, including Periscope and Twitter, after GOP leadership cut the camera feed that was being aired by C-SPAN.

Democratic Reps in the House Judiciary Committee released a letter by a group of law professors denouncing the fines, which they believe pose “significant constitutional and policy problems.” “If adopted, the new provisions would undermine core constitutional protections under Article I of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,” wrote the group, which included Laurence Tribe of Harvard University and scholar Norman Ornstein.

Legislation to allow Congress to repeal in a single vote any rule finalized in the last 60 legislative days of the Obama Administration sailed through the House Jan 4, the second time in less than two months. The GOP-backed Midnight Rule Relief Act, which passed the previous Congress in November, was approved largely along party lines by a vote of 238-184 on the second day of the new Congress, despite Democratic opposition. If passed by the Senate and signed by President-elect Donald Trump, the legislation would amend the Congressional Review Act to allow lawmakers to bundle together multiple rules and overturn them en masse with a joint resolution of disapproval. That could include things like Federal Communications Commission broadband privacy regulations or Lifeline subsidy reforms that drew fire from Hill and FCC Republicans. The White House has already threatened to veto the bill if it were to make it to President Obama's desk before he leaves office.

[Commentary] Sewlyn Duke’s recent op-ed for The Hill, “Antitrust should be used to break up partisan tech giants like Facebook, Google,” addresses the serious problem of how a few privately owned internet companies have unprecedented control over the distribution of information. Breaking up the actual platforms would seriously harm consumers.

Google’s algorithm improves with more searches and Facebook’s users value the ability to connect with the other billion people on the network. Reducing their size eliminates these benefits without increasing free speech. Antitrust regulators recognize this type of economy of scale, known as network effects, when evaluating a company’s market concentration. Increased social media censorship did not result from the market share of any company or even the political ideology of its executives.

[Mark Epstein is an attorney practicing regulatory and antitrust law in Washington, D.C.]

Here are five regulatory fights the tech world will be watching closely in 2017.
1) Apple's record tax penalty in Europe: In August, the European Union’s Commission on Competition handed a record judgment against Apple, ordering the company to pay over $13 billion in back taxes to Ireland.
2) The fight over encryption
3) AT&T-Time Warner merger: AT&T's plans to merge with Time Warner will be under heavy scrutiny.
4) Google's antitrust fight: Google has its own fight with the European Commission.
5) Amazon's EU tax case: Amazon is also awaiting a key tax ruling form the European Union. The decision was expected in 2016 but will be coming in the new year.

Here are 5 looming fights for the Federal Communications Commission in President-elect Donald Trump's first year:
1. Network Neutrality: The fate of the agency's net neutrality rules will be the FCC's biggest fight of the year.
2. Set-top cable boxes: The FCC's lone, remaining Democratic commissioner, Mignon Clyburn, supports FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's set-top proposal. But its unclear how much of a fight Clyburn can put up.
3. Broadband privacy: Chairman Wheeler's new privacy rules for broadband providers were another high-profile item from his tenure. It's unclear, though, if the FCC's Republican Commissioners would agree to scale them back. Internet companies and consumer groups, though, are likely to keep up pressure for the rules.
4. AT&T-Time Warner merger: The Justice Department will be looking into the proposed deal, but its unclear yet if the FCC will take up its own review.
5. Business data services: Chairman Wheeler also hoped to pass a major reform of the market for so-called special access deals, but dropped those plans after Trump's victory.

Tech trade groups penned a letter to US regulators warning against a European Union copyright proposal. “The Commission’s Proposal on copyright in the Digital Single Market risks undermining trans-Atlantic commerce and internet openness,” the groups wrote in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker and US Trade Representative (USTR) Michael Froman. The letter's signatories included the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), Consumer Technology Association (CTA), Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the Internet Association (IA) — groups that represent a number of major tech companies such as Google parent Alphabet, Amazon and Facebook.

At issue is an EU measure that would require internet companies to create content filtering software to detect copyright material. But the tech groups say the proposal breaks from established international standards and wrongly put liability for copyright violations on internet companies instead of those who actually publish copyrighted material on their platforms. The letter argues that the content filters are expensive to maintain, citing the $60 million YouTube has reportedly spent on the technology.

[Commentary] For a significant segment of the globe, tyrannical governments determine what is permitted on communication networks. This is the world of Big Brother. Fearful dictators control the Internet with sophisticated firewalls. In breaking down artificial communication barriers, the will of the people becomes an antidote to tyrannical authority. It is a rival of arbitrary power. Perhaps Jean Jacque Rousseau said it best when he noted, “A little bit of agitation gives motivation to the soul, and what really makes the species prosper is not peace so much as freedom.”

[Herbert London is the president of the London Center for Policy Research.]

President-elect Donald Trump confirmed that he met with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim recently. Trump and Slim met for a private dinner Dec 17 at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's resort in Florida.

The two feuded throughout the presidential campaign. Trump had accused Slim of launching a media smear campaign against him through his ties to The New York Times and other companies. Slim denied Trump's accusations. He was also a vocal critic of Trump's promises to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border that Trump vowed Mexico would pay for. The two are now looking to open a friendly line of communication.

SoftBank will invest $1 billion in One Web, a broadband access company based in Arlington (VA), as part of a pledge to President-elect Donald Trump to invest $50 billion in American companies.

“Earlier this month I met with President-Elect Trump and shared my commitment to investing and creating jobs in the U.S. This is the first step in that commitment,” the Japanese tech giant’s CEO, Masayoshi Son, said. President-elect Trump announced after meeting with Son earlier this month that SoftBank would invest $50 billion in U.S. businesses and create 50,000 new jobs domestically. The president-elect said Son made the pledge as a direct result of his presidential election victory.