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The US Copyright Office is asking the public to weigh in on what the Supreme Court’s ruling on streaming TV service Aereo means for the future of copyright law.

The office “is interested in commenters’ views regarding the Supreme Court’s opinion in Aereo and how that opinion may affect the scope of the rights of making available and communication to the public in the United States,” it said. Specifically, the office asked how June’s 6-3 decision affects “unauthorized filesharing,” the right to make content available and other aspects of copyright law.

The Copyright Office will be accepting comments from the public for 30 days.

A bipartisan trio of lawmakers wants to know why people can’t sign more federal government forms electronically. Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), Sen John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) wrote to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker asking for an update on what the government is doing to get rid of wasteful and redundant paper signatures.

“The acceptance of electronic documents has become a cornerstone of Internet commerce and is vital to our country’s economy,” they wrote. “We are concerned about the extent of the adoption of electronic signatures within the federal government.”

Privacy advocates are dusting off a months-old campaign to block cybersecurity legislation that they warn would send too much personal information into government hands.

After failing to prevent a similar bill from passing through the House in 2013, advocates now want to make sure that the Senate can’t finish the job and send the bill to the president’s desk.

Regulators are establishing new rules requiring closed captions for online video clips. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted unanimously Friday to approve the rules from Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Chairman Wheeler repeated a pledge he made at another closed captioning vote earlier this year.

“This is just the beginning in dealing with our responsibility to make sure that individuals with special needs are in the front of the technology train, not the back of the technology train,” he said.

The vote sets requirements for online video clips that have aired on television with closed captions, mimicking current requirements for full-length online videos that originally were broadcast with captions on television. The new requirements apply to video distributors like broadcasters and cable and satellite companies. Under the 2010 Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act, the FCC has the authority to require closed captions for online videos.

[Commentary]The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it has filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com, alleging that the company had failed to set sufficiently tight controls for purchases made by children while using mobile apps.

The Amazon suit reflects an unfortunate trend. By forcing companies into consent decrees, instead of using its own rulemaking authority or waiting for Congress to act, the FTC circumvents the democratic process, reduces transparency and limits public participation. These agreements can end up serving as de facto policy, which is a problem since they only reflect the agreement of two parties, rather than all stakeholders. At times, consent decrees may even be anti-competitive, by creating greater barriers for new entrants and entrenching established interests.

Rather than fostering disruptive innovation, these types of 20-year agreements lock companies into stagnant business practices and discourage companies from taking risks lest they be subject to the wrath of the FTC. A better approach is for the FTC to take ambiguity out of the equation by establishing clear rules and taking action against companies that knowingly violate them, or by going after companies that knowingly and willfully harm consumers, such as any app developers who try to exploit the in-app payment system in apps directed at children.

[Castro is a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation]

The House Judiciary Committee easily passed a critical satellite television law on a unanimous voice vote. The panel avoided making any controversial changes to the existing marketplace for retransmitting broadcast programs on cable and satellite with the “clean” extension of the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA), which came as a victory for broadcasters.

“I realize that current licenses are not perfect for everyone, but on balance I would say that they do a good job,” intellectual property subcommittee Chairman Howard Coble (R-NC) said. “Not unlike many other bills, this legislation will not satisfy all stakeholders, but it should satisfy enough and most importantly, it serves the interests of our satellite-viewing constituents.”

The bill ensures that more than 1 million people living in rural areas who would not otherwise be able to pick up broadcast signals with a roof antenna can have channels beamed to them through satellite TV service. The existing law is set to run out at the end of 2014 but would be renewed until 2019 under the committee’s bill. “This helps ensure that consumers in rural areas like my congressional district have the same access to news and entertainment that consumers in urban areas enjoy,” Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) said.

Music groups are pressuring Congress to back down from a pledge to keep AM/FM radio stations from paying musicians. “It’s hard enough to make a living as a musician -- and even harder when your own representatives in Congress won’t support your basic right to fair pay for your work,” new ads from music industry groups said.

The campaign from musicFirst, which includes music industry trade groups like the Recording Industry Association of America, the American Association of Independent Music and SoundExchange, asks lawmakers to remove their names from the Local Radio Freedom Act. The resolution, which would prohibit "any new performance fee, tax, royalty, or other charge” on local AM/FM radio stations, is supported by a majority of the House.

MusicFirst is targeting signatories of that resolution, starting with Reps David Price (D-NC) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), through social media campaigns and newspaper ads in their districts. The ads call the resolution “an anti-musician resolution pushed by big corporate radio companies.”

As Congress -- especially the House Judiciary Committee -- looks to overhaul the music licensing rules under current copyright law, many have homed in on traditional AM/FM radio stations. While cable, satellite and Internet radio services pay royalty fees to musicians for the songs they play, AM/FM broadcasters do not pay musicians; they defend the practice by arguing they provide free promotion for musicians.

The Senate Intelligence Committee voted 12-3 to advance a cybersecurity bill that privacy advocates fear will give more information to the National Security Agency (NSA) and other government agencies.

The bill's authors -- Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) -- hailed the vote as a step towards protecting the country from growing online threats.

Cybersecurity "is a serious problem and we need to begin" addressing it, Chairman Feinstein said after the vote. "No bill is going to be perfect that's going to be able to encompass a bipartisan approach.”

Making sure all surfers on the Web enjoy the same speed no matter which website they visit is a fundamental free speech issue, Sen Al Franken (D-MN) said. “It is absolutely the First Amendment issue of our time,” Sen Franken said.

“Do we want deep-pocketed corporations controlling what information you get at what speed?” he added.

Sen Franken, who has been a critical supporter of the concept of net neutrality, said that other members of Congress simply don’t understand the way the Internet works.

“This has been the architecture of the Internet from the beginning, and everyone should understand that,” he said. “Some of my colleagues in the Congress don’t understand that. ... You just want to go ‘Oh, come on,’ ” Sen Franken said. “ 'Really, don’t get up and talk unless you know something.' ”

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Dropbox’s Drew Houston, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and HP’s Meg Whitman are among the tech CEOs urging the Federal Communications Commission to provide billions for Wi-Fi in schools and libraries.

The FCC is voting at its upcoming monthly meeting on a plan from Chairman Tom Wheeler to boost Wi-Fi in schools and libraries.

“The message from America is clear, if our schools do not have the broadband they need, our students will not be able to compete in the global economy,” the CEOs told FCC commissioners.

Signatories also included current and former CEOs of YouTube, eBay, Adobe, Airbnb, Dell, Intuit, OpenTable, Salesforce.com, Xerox and prominent venture capital firms.

Chairman Wheeler’s plan would put $5 billion toward providing and upgrading Wi-Fi services and equipment over the next five years on top of the agency’s $2.4 billion annual budget for the E-Rate program, which works to connect schools and libraries to the Internet. The agency has already set aside the first $2 billion and plans to provide the following $3 billion through eliminating inefficiencies in the program and phasing out non-Internet access services, including pagers.