Russia export controls and sanctions

House Communications Subcommittee Republicans seek to oppose any international effort to impose regulations on the Internet, according to a majority staff memo that circulated among lobbyists this week. The Subcommittee has a hearing Thursday that will feature testimony from FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, among others. The GOP memo said there’s bipartisan agreement that the U.S. should “stand firm” and oppose any treaty provisions that expand the jurisdiction of the ITU over the Internet.

Global satellite revenue grew 5 percent last year to about $177 billion, led by revenue increases in the satellite manufacturing and launch sectors, the Satellite Industry Association said in a report. While the rate of net job losses decreased from 2.7 percent in 2010 to less than 1 percent last year, employment in the industry continued to drop in the first three quarters of 2011. The State of the Satellite Industry Report (http://xrl.us/bm8ydw) was done by Futron Corp., SIA said. Futron surveyed more than 80 satellite companies and assessed performance in the satellite services, manufacturing, launch and ground equipment sectors.

Arqiva and Eutelsat signed a new contract for additional satellite capacity to meet the demand for professional video services across Europe and the Middle East. The agreement allows Arqiva to take up 36 MHz on Eutelsat 7A, giving Arqiva “excellent overall coverage of Europe and specific coverage of the Middle East, Turkey and Russia,” Arqiva said.

GENEVA -- The idea of new negotiations on expanding the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA) to eliminate tariffs on new products won strong support during a two-day seminar and a meeting of the committee that deals with the agreement, officials said. Work on setting up a framework to best reach agreement on ITA expansion focuses in part on ironing out differences over, if and how the negotiations should address non-tariff measures (NTMs), participants said.

Gilat said it completed a project in support of Russia’s March presidential elections. Gilat provided very small aperture terminal connectivity to more than 1,600 of the voting sites to allow “the secure and reliable transfer of broadcasting data from the election venues to central servers located around Russia,” Gilat said. The company’s satellite-based connectivity helped serve a Web-based system of live video streaming to provide visibility of the sites, registration tables and ballot boxes, it said.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell sought feedback on letting TV stations lease spectrum in the rulemaking the agency’s expected to start in what he expects to be a multi-year effort to auction the frequencies of broadcasters who agree to participate (CD March 15 p1). He’s happy Chairman Julius Genachowski is “talking more and more about the need to have flexible uses of spectrum” as the commission seeks to reallocate frequencies to wireless broadband. On Internet governance, McDowell said U.S. companies and the government must step up efforts to oppose a growing number of nations’ desire to have authority he said could include charging for international over-the-top video and other traffic (http://xrl.us/bmztw6). Much of McDowell’s Q-and-A with Media Institute President Patrick Maines was devoted to Internet and spectrum matters.

The Co-Chairmen of the House Cybersecurity Caucus introduced a House resolution Tuesday that urges the U.S. to oppose any United Nations resolution that would allow regulation of the Internet. The bill aims to curb a recent UN proposal (http://xrl.us/bmzmis) by China, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan that they said could allow foreign governments to censor the Internet. Such a proposal would be a “significant setback for anyone who believes free expression is a universal right,” said Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I. “It must be made clear that efforts to secure the Internet against malicious hacking do not need to interfere with this freedom and the United States will oppose any attempt to blur the line between the two.” Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said: “Any action taken by the United Nations to attempt to limit Americans’ right to free and open Internet content is unacceptable.”

AT&T overcharged U.S. businesses millions of dollars by improperly handling and billing thousands of Internet Protocol relay calls made by Nigerian scammers, the Department of Justice alleged in a complaint filed Wednesday. The DOJ says AT&T violated the False Claims Act by seeking payment for IP relay calls made by international callers who sought to use the system for fraudulent purposes. The Telecommunications Relay Services Fund has reimbursed AT&T more than $16 million since December 2009, of which up to 95 percent of payments were made for non-compensable IP relay calls, the complaint said.

Republicans in the House and FCC took aim at Chairman Julius Genachowski for his proposal to require broadcasters to post political files online. At a budget hearing Monday of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services, the plan was criticized by Chairman Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. Genachowski defended the FCC’s authority to make the change and highlighted the commission’s progress freeing up spectrum and deploying broadband.

There’s a growing trend to filter and block content and communications on the Internet, warned Navanetham Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, at the U.N. Human Rights Council (HRC) meeting this week in Geneva. Pillay said the advent of the Internet means countries can no longer be a monopoly information provider, and human rights activists are able to use crowd sourcing to share facts about human rights violations: “No wonder this has resulted in a backlash.” She expressed concerned about constant or just-in-time blocking of websites, and arbitrary arrests of bloggers on the pretext of protecting national security or fighting terrorism. Norwegian statistics said 60 countries are filtering or blocking the Internet in some way. Intellectual property rights can be misused, said Frank La Rue, U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression. His 2011 report on the right to freedom of opinion and expression in the Internet boosted discussion on the human rights aspect of Internet governance. While La Rue said there’s no need for additional norms beside article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related international laws, he said he hoped the human rights perspective would take a center stage at Internet governance meetings throughout the year. While many governments applauded the first debate about the issue at the HRC initiated by Sweden, and, like the U.S. and the EU, urged considering the complicity of private companies in filtering, manipulating and censoring, Russia, Belarus, China and Cuba objected to continuing talks on procedural issues. Cuba warned against double standards of Western countries, pointing to the Wikileaks case. Carlos Afonso, executive director of the Brazilian Instituto Nupef, acknowledged that governments often acted inconsistently. In Brazil, a charter on Internet rights has been prepared for acceptance in Congress. On the other hand, the administration was preparing decrees that are contradictory to those principles.