CCIA President & CEO Ed Black and CDT senior policy counsel David Sohn told reporters gathered for a press breakfast they expected privacy measures, oversight hearings and possibly patent reform to be a focus of the new Congress.
Black
said that Internet freedom is a paramount issue facing the country and behind everything from net neutrality to government surveillance to copyright enforcement. He said the Internet has been an amazing development of the last couple decades. “We don’t know how it’s going to be governed, who’s going to control it, and to what extent,” Black said. But he added that “there are all kinds of pressures from governments to private sector players to have increasing control” for seemingly good reasons like pornography or copyright violations or security.
“Individually they all sound like legitimate reasons,” Black said. “But if you put them all together, it’s death by a thousand cuts” to freedom and openness on the Internet.
Both Black and Sohn expect privacy legislation this year, but do not expect it to be detailed. Black
said user empowerment and transparency is a key part of any outcome. He said he’d like to see privacy policies developed for competitive advantage by companies. For example an Internet access provider could offer to erase records of where a customer has been online within 24 hours for a fee.
Black said competition is a critical element because most Internet users have such limited choices among too few Internet access providers. He said the problem is that unlike a website or application which has some limited information an IAP knows the totality of everywhere an Internet user goes on the web and what he or she does.
Patent reform is another measure incoming House committee chairs expect will come up. Black
said that the House had offered real patent reform during the previous Congress, but more recent legislation from the Senate would have been worse for the tech industry than even the current system.
Black acknowledged that pharma and biotech companies have lobbied heavily against reforms, and said a solution would be to treat software and computer patents differently than other patents.
With the FCC scheduled to vote next week on net neutrality, Black expressed some optimism the latest compromise proposal could be tweaked to close some of the big loopholes and provide a more clear definition of broadband access and who would get protections from discrimination by Internet access in the new rules.
He said banning paid prioritization is critical along with including wireless Internet access providers.
CCIA Vice President Cathy Sloan
said the latest open Internet neutrality proposal leaves too much room for commercial interference and that CCIA believes no government or company should regulate the Internet itself.
Black said that the Internet has historically been content neutral. He pointed out that while members of Congress can and should have an interest in Internet openness, the FCC is the agency charged with protecting the public interest in access to advanced telecommunications services. He said he hopes that Congress would respect the FCC’s role and not try to interfere with their job of protecting consumers.
