Overnight Tech: Key Republican has Communications Act in his sights

THE LEDE: Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.) said Wednesday he would try to tackle a Communications Act update if he runs for and wins the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee after current chairman Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) steps down at the end of this Congress.

“It’s a great, exciting opportunity to try to bring competitive market forces to solving our nation’s problems,” he said while taping an episode of C-SPAN’s “Communicators” program.

“In the telecommunications world, what’s fun there is it just moves so fast that we can’t regulate it — hence all the new gadgets and equipment. I would like to see the FCC work with us to try to deal with the Communications Act. You know, the bureau system there no longer meets the modern technological age, and if they joined us in trying to rewrite the Telecommunications Act that would be a blast.”

{mosads}Communications and Technology Subcommittee Chair Greg Walden (R-Ore.), considered another likely candidate for the full committee gavel, has said he wants to update the law. But he’s suggested that any update will have to take place in stages, rather than all at once. He has also said that the Federal Communication Act’s net neutrality rules make achieving any compromise much more difficult.

Shimkus, who chairs the panel’s Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, said that although he was “very much interested” in running to lead the committee, he hadn’t started reaching out to colleagues about a candidacy yet.

“We’ve got enough issues in the Republican conference,” he said. “Everybody loves Chairman Upton, we want to help him move his agenda. There’ll be plenty of time to do that, but I can guarantee you right now in this environment is not the time to be moving in that direction.”

Asked about making his case should he decide to launch a run, he pointed to his exposure to a broad range of issues the committee deals with.

“I’ve been serving on four of the subcommittees,” he said. “I think people who’ve observed me know I work hard, I’m somewhat conversant on the issues. I can be tough when I need to be tough, I can be bipartisan when we need to move bills in a bipartisan manner.”

Upton, who took over the gavel in 2011, is term-limited in the chairman role.

AND HE PUSHES BACK ON CRITICS OF ICANN TRANSITION: Shimkus is also the sponsor of the DOTCOM Act, which would give Congress a chance to review any plans to transfer the domain name system out of U.S. control. He took issue with critics of the transition, like Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who want a GAO review of whether it’s legal for the U.S. to transfer certain elements of the system. “By the time the GAO report comes out, this could already be resolved,” he said. “I mean, a GAO report is going to take at least a year to do that.”

N.H. TV STATION REVERSES ON AD DISCLOSURES: A New Hampshire broadcast TV station is reversing course after it irked media buyers by omitting some important information in an online public database, required by Federal Communications Commission regulations. The station WMUR — located in the nation’s first presidential primary state — had stopped including ad rates that it was quoting advertisers in those online disclosures. Ad buyers charged the station was attempting to shield its pricing data just as demand for ads is slated to skyrocket ahead of the primary. National Journal reported Wednesday that the station will again start posting the information, but it noted that the prices quoted could change due to demand.

MIT BOOSTING MOOCS: MIT announced it will be one of the first major universities to allow students to complete half of a masters program online for free, known as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) The project is an experiment that will only be available for its master’s program in supply chain management. The university announced Wednesday that students would be able to take an entire semester of courses free online — without admissions tests — and complete a test at a designated facility. Students who wanted to complete the master’s program would have to enroll and attend the university for the final semester of the program.

LAWMAKERS QUESTION ‘DO NOT TRACK’ STANDARDS: A trio of lawmakers on Wednesday questioned the proposed standards to govern how Web users can be tracked by advertisers online. They criticized the international organization that is developing the standards — the World-Wide Web Consortium — for not representing a “broad range of interests. In a letter, the lawmakers charged that there are weaker tracking standards for companies that directly face customers online, compared to companies that only help display ads. The letter was signed by Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas).

SECOND HOUSE COMMITTEE EYES FANTASY SPORTS: An aide to the House Judiciary Committee said that it is looking into the issues involving DraftKings and FanDuel, the daily fantasy sports sites backed by many professional leagues and teams. The interest comes in the midst of a controversy rocking the growing industry. A DraftKings employee with access to proprietary data about which players users were picking for their fantasy football teams recently won $350,000 in the same week on FanDuel — leading to accusations of what is essentially “insider trading.”

It comes after Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said that the committee should examine the industry. The companies are also facing a possible hearing from the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which would likely look more broadly at whether they are venues for gambling that should be more closely regulated.

‘WHAT VERIZON’S PRIVACY UPDATES REALLY MEAN’: Verizon’s Chief Privacy Officer Karen Zacharia published a blog post on Wednesday again trying to explain the results of its merged advertising with the newly purchased AOL Advertising Network. In explaining the use of its so-called super cookie tracking tool (known as a unique identifier header), it said: “First, the UIDH does not contain or transmit any personally identifiable information. Second, it does not broadcast web browsing information to advertisers or others. Third, when the Verizon and AOL programs are combined, this Verizon identifier will be transmitted only to entities that are on a pre-approved “white list.”

PATENT REFORM CRITIC WARNS OF SENATE ACTION: Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who opposes broad patent litigation reform, tried to put some urgency behind his fight against the Senate’s Patent Act on Wednesday. During a Google Hangout, he warned that the Senate bill could move quickly if a compromise is reached, even though “it’s at an impasse at the moment.” He said: “It has come out of the committee. It’s primed and ready for action. If several of the big companies that are competing over this come to an agreement, it could move to a vote very quickly.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who opposes similar legislation, noted that the bill was pulled from the July calendar. “I think we’ve stopped it for now in the House,” he said. “But listen, this battle will go on for another 100 years. There will always be some of the big companies that are up here with a lot of money, trying to weaken the patent system.”

SENATOR CRITICIZES ROBOT GRANT: Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) took to the Senate floor on Wednesday to criticize a $440,855 grant recently handed out from the National Science Foundation to — in the words of his office — “create robots that can tell stories to children.” It was one of his “waste of the week” speeches.

ON TAP:

At 11 a.m., four House members and transparency advocates are slated to “rally” outside the Supreme Court to protests the court’s ban on cameras and other recordings.

At 2:30 p.m., the Congressional Trademark Caucus will hold a panel on trademark basics called “Trademark 101.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Four bipartisan House members plan to introduce a new bill to require the Supreme Court and all other appeals courts to allow video recording and live streams of their proceedings.

Lawmakers from both parties at a House hearing Wednesday called for freeing up federally controlled wireless spectrum, echoing similar calls at a Senate hearing in July.

Senate Democrats are warning Republicans that they will fight to keep budget riders to block net neutrality out of a government funding bill that must be passed by Dec. 11. 

Verizon will start combining its mobile advertising with AOL’s ad services next month, including the wireless company’s tracking tool that raised privacy and data security concerns earlier this year. 

New York’s attorney general is launching an inquiry into two daily fantasy sports sites, DraftKings and FanDuel, that are at the center of a growing scandal, according to his office.

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