Broadcasting&Cable

Fight for the Future is asking the Federal Communications Commission and state attorneys general to investigate what it says is potential fraud related to the filing of comments in the FCC's network neutrality docket.

Campaign Director Evan Greer said the group has been collecting evidence that "a large number of anti-net neutrality comments have been submitted to the FCC using real people's names and addresses without their knowledge or permission." Greer argues that the FCC needs to investigate that potential fraud before it votes on its plan to roll back Title II classification of ISPs, which is scheduled for the May 18 public meeting. Greer cited reports of people confirming that they knew nothing about the anti-net neutrality comments filed under their names and said Fight for the Future had interviewed a dozen people itself who said that was the case.

Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn told a crowd of Title II fans that network neutrality is dead unless they make themselves heard, no matter what the vote on the upcoming Title II rollback is. Commissioner Clyburn is currently the lone Democrat under the new Republican Administration, so she cannot stop the reversal of Title II but could delay it if she does not show up for the May 18 meeting and denies the chairman the necessary quorum. That does not sound likely since she said she did not know what the FCC would be launching this week, but she would vote "in the opposite way" from the Republicans. She said net neutrality is dead if "we are silent," no matter how the vote goes. Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch asked whether public comments matter and pointed to identical pro-Title II comments that had been filed. Commissioner Clyburn said that the comments will not be officially part of the record until the FCC votes the rulemaking and said commenters should keep weighing in. She said that was the only way to defend net neutrality. Commissioner Clyburn said the FCC has the technical tools to deal with the duplicates or get rid of the comments where "there is a little something going on."

Stephen Colbert’s late-night jabs at President Donald Trump have drawn plenty of heat, with talk of Federal Communications Commission investigations and threats to creative content. But while the FCC is highly unlikely to take any action, there is still a cost to the regulatory overhang of a government investigation regardless of the eventual outcome.

Even complaints that are eventually dismissed have costs, says John Crigler, a partner with Garvey Schubert Barer in Washington, who has defended broadcasters against indecency and even obscenity claims. “The complaint can be the punishment,” he said, and have real consequences that can include holding up license renewals or transfers — the complaint would be against any CBS affiliate where there is a complaint from a viewer in that market (FCC complaints are against stations, not networks). A pending complaint is also something that a station has to report to its auditors. A complaint could also prompt a settlement with the FCC to get out from under the cloud of an investigation that can drag on, particularly if there is a pending merger with license transfers that need approving. “Sometimes it is worth it to pay the piper and march on,” Crigler said.

A group of nonprofit municipal broadband providers -- all members of the American Cable Association -- support Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to reverse the classification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II, and told him so in a letter dated May 11.

The letter drew a swift and lengthy thank you from the chairman. "By returning to light-touch regulation of broadband service, the Commission will give Muni ISPs incentives to invest in enhancing our networks and our deployment of innovative services at affordable prices while still ensuring consumers have unfettered access to the Internet," they wrote. They also said the FCC's "overly broad and vague" general conduct standard rule and other parts of the Open Internet order was based on the "unwarranted assumption" that they have the incentive or ability to be anticompetitive. They said the FCC, in adopting the 2015 Open Internet Order ignored the evidence that they don't block or throttle or engage in paid prioritization and put them in the "straight jacket" of utility regulation and the constant threat of action under the "unknown and unknowable" general conduct standard.

A coalition of groups, including GLAAD, CAIR and Common Cause, has written to the heads of Fox News, CNN and MSNBC calling for more diversity in the guests booked for morning political talk shows. "At a time when our communities continue to be the victims of hate crimes, the media must do better in representing the broad spectrum of America," wrote the members of the Coalition Against Hate. CAIR, for example, said: "Networks must work harder to include Muslim representation and avoid providing platforms to those who would condition Americans to fear and hate their Muslim neighbors." All the groups pointed to a Media Matters analysis of cable news coverage in January and March that concluded that white men were the overwhelming percentage of guests on those top cable news nets, while black, Latino, Middle Eastern, Asian-American, and LGBTQ guests are woefully underrepresented. "At a time when these communities are disproportionately impacted by the political climate—including as targets of a growing wave of hate crimes—it is imperative that your networks do better to reflect the full diversity of our country."

The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has agreed to review a three-judge panel decision that left the Federal Trade Commission's authority to oversee edge-provider privacy in some circumstances very much in doubt, according to a copy of the court’s announcement of the new hearing. The court also said that in the interim that panel decision is not to be cited as precedent of the Ninth circuit. Such en banc review is unusual, but the decision had prompted a lot of attention given that potential online privacy gap.

A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit, in overturning the FTC's action against AT&T for throttling the speeds of unlimited data customers, in 2016 ruled that the regulatory exemption that prevents the FTC from regulating common carriers is not confined to common carrier "activity" by an entity that has the status of a common carrier, but to noncommon carrier activity by that entity as well. That meant that if Verizon, a common carrier, bought Yahoo, an edge provider, the FTC could not enforce Yahoo! privacy policies, and the FCC could not either because it does not regulate edge providers, leaving a potential privacy gap.

With the days dwindling down to the Federal Communications Commission's May 18 planned vote on a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to roll back Title II classification of Internet service providers, Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) joined a dozen other Democratic lawmakers in a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai telling him not to "gut" net neutrality protections. Sen Markey has been a leader in the pushback on modifying/unwinding the FCC's Open Internet order, vowing to fight the effort on all fronts.

In the letter, the lawmakers issue with both rolling back Title II and the suggestion—which sources said was raised in meetings between Chairman Pai and ISPs—that the Federal Trade Commission could enforce voluntary openness pledges along the lines of the Open Internet order rules against blocking and throttling and anticompetitive paid prioritization. They said since a court had upheld the FCC's reclassification, the issue was settled and should remain so. As to voluntary guidelines, they said those do not provide the certainty that innovators and "anyone else" can get access to viewers and customers and leaves ISPs as the gatekeepers.

On the same day the Senate is grilling former Obama and Trump Administration officials about Russian interference in US elections, a group of Democratic Reps has asked the Federal Communications Commission to apply transparency requirements to RT (formerly Russia Today) broadcasts delivered over the airwaves. RT broadcasts from Washington (DC) studios. While it lists 19 cable systems, satellite operator Dish, Roku, Google and Apple apps, IPTV outlets and a lot of hotel channels, the only terrestrial outlet identified is MHz4 in Washington, one of a suite of noncommercial digital subchannels of WNVC and WNVT, although their spectrum was sold in the FCC inventive auction and will be going off the air soon, according to what they told the FCC.

The legislators said they were not looking to chill speech, just identify it. They asked whether the FCC's sponsorship rules should apply to foreign-state-sponsored channels. The letter comes following a January report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence finding that RT played a propaganda role in Russia's efforts to influence the election outcome. The letter was spearheaded by former House Communications Subcommittee ranking member Anna Eshoo (D-CA).

A Federal Communications Commission spokesperson confirmed that it is vetting the viewer complaints it received about Stephen Colbert's Late Show riff on President Donald Trump, which did not sit well with the creative community. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has said the FCC would look into any complaint it received and apply its rules to the facts presented and take "appropriate action." "Appropriate action" almost certainly means no action for a couple of reasons: 1) the comments—a bleeped oral sex reference, an unbleeped body part and some name calling—came in the FCC's 10 pm to 6 am safe harbor, where anything short of obscenity is not actionable, and 2) the bar for obscenity is very high. But even the talk about investigations has the creative community on edge, particularly with those already wary about the Trump Administration's threats to other kinds of media.

“As presidents of the Writers Guilds of America, East and West, we were appalled to read recent remarks by Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai," said Writers Guild of America East president Michael Winship and Writers Guild of America West president Howard Rodman, in a joint statement. "He said the FCC would investigate a joke about Donald Trump by Writers Guild member Stephen Colbert, 'apply the law' and 'take appropriate action' if the joke were found to be 'obscene.'"

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai gave definite signals that the FCC may have a different answer the next time it weighs in on whether wireless broadband is a competitor to wired. The FCC under his predecessor consistently said wireless broadband was a potential competitor but not yet one for the purposes of disciplining wired Internet service provider prices.

Chairman Pai was asked about that relative competitiveness by host and American Enterprise Institute visiting scholar Jeffrey Eisenach, who was a member of the Trump FCC transition team. Eisenach asked whether Pai thought that wireless is now a substitute for wireline. Chairman Pai said, for him, at least, "they are very competitive offerings." The "for him" is because the chairman is always careful to separate his views from what the FCC as a whole might conclude based on the fact record before it. But he suggested that fact record could be a strong one. Pai said that as 4G LTE and 5G networks get rolled out and the next generation of Wi-Fi is rolled out, "I think we are increasingly going to see that wireless is not this 'imperfect substitute' for wired connections. It is going to be the dominant means, the preferable means, by which people access the internet."