This Week in Tech: House panel gets crack at full FCC

{mosads}Lawmakers might ask the commissioners to weigh in on whether Congress should modernize its rules regulating the distribution of video services.

At a hearing last month to examine the future of video, subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-Ore.) suggested that Congress should rework the 1992 Cable Act and other video laws.

A perennial hot-button issue is the commission’s net-neutrality rules, which Verizon is challenging in federal court. Democrats say the rules preserve competition and consumer choice, but Republicans on the panel, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), argue the rules burden businesses and amount to government regulation of the Internet.

The commissioners testified in May at a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee oversight hearing where Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) pressed the commissioners on whether they would consider revoking Fox’s broadcast television licenses due to alleged misconduct by parent company News Corp.

Federal law requires that holders of broadcast licenses be of “good character,” and Lautenberg argued that the FCC should consider pulling the licenses over the U.K. phone-hacking scandal.

Although some Democrats could push the issue at the hearing, it seems unlikely that the commission will want to wade into an issue as politically explosive as shutting down Fox stations.

In other technology news, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) will hold a meeting on Thursday to consider privacy issues related to mobile applications.

The meeting of consumer groups, advertisers and Web companies is part of the Obama administration’s push to get companies to abide by its online privacy “bill of rights.”

NTIA said it chose to focus its first meeting on mobile apps because they pose “distinct consumer privacy challenges.” NTIA noted that reading long privacy policies on mobile devices can be difficult because of the small screens. Mobile apps can access particularly sensitive personal data, such as the user’s location.

The agency said the goal of the meeting is to develop a code of conduct that “promotes transparent disclosures to consumers concerning mobile apps’ treatment of personal data.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on Wednesday morning that will explore the use of standards-essential patents, which companies are required to license on a fair basis and have recently been the subject of heated battles between mobile companies. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reportedly has opened an investigation into Google’s use of the patents. Slated to testify at the hearing are Joseph Wayland, acting assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, and FTC Commissioner Edith Ramirez.

On Thursday morning, the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Manufacturing and Trade will discuss reauthorizing the Safe Web Act of 2006, which gave the FTC power to combat spam and spyware. Ken Johnson, a spokesman for subcommittee Chairman Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), said a senior FTC official is likely to testify and that Bono Mack plans to introduce legislation to reauthorize the act ahead of the hearing.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will discuss the state of the online encyclopedia during a keynote speech at George Washington University on Thursday morning for the Wikimania conference. Wales was an outspoken opponent of the Stop Online Piracy Act earlier this year, and the blackout of Wikipedia helped sink the controversial anti-piracy legislation.

Industry officials are also keeping an eye out for the latest version of the cybersecurity compromise from Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), and observers are anxious to see how it deals with the thorny issue of protecting critical infrastructure. A brief outline of the proposal circulated last month but received poor marks from some business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Information Technology Industry Council, which found its regulatory approach heavy-handed.