Criminalizing the use of the Internet has serious implications for basic human freedoms, said Frank La Rue, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of opinion and expression. The Internet is a tool that enables freedoms and while it can be used for defamation and hate speech, governments around the world should not censor it, he said Wednesday at George Washington University Law School in Washington.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski worries that U.S. appeals courts sometimes interpret statutes too narrowly in reviewing federal agency decisions. Hopeful his agency will prevail in a challenge to net neutrality rules before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, he voiced concerns that courts generally aren’t giving agencies enough leeway to interpret legislation. That trend is “making it more and more difficult for agencies in fast-moving areas to respond to changes in technology or changes in the marketplace,” Genachowski said Wednesday during a Q-and-A with Jeffrey Rosen of The New Republic. Genachowski said he gets the rationale behind court decisions that say an agency overreached.

The FCC misunderstood AT&T’s objections to remarks last week by Chairman Julius Genachowski over how much authority the agency should have to set the rules for incentive spectrum auctions, Senior Vice President Robert Quinn said in a blog. Quinn said AT&T’s primary concern is that the company not be excluded from bidding in upcoming auctions because of its large size relative to other carriers.

Congress is close to passing cybersecurity legislation, House and Senate aides told the State of the Net conference Tuesday. The Senate, returning from recess next week, is “narrowing in” on a cybersecurity bill to bring to the floor in three to four weeks, said Tommy Ross, aide to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Meanwhile, House committees are marking up individual bills to be combined later, House aides said.

More consumer electronics are subject to new FCC requirements to display online captions from content originally broadcast on TV or seen on cable, DBS or telco-TV than industry executives expected. They said the order (CD Jan 17 p3) requiring TV stations and multichannel video programming distributors to caption video they put online appears to go beyond what’s required by 2010 disabilities legislation. The order said the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act didn’t say in great detail what type of CE equipment must be covered by Internet Protocol captioning rules.

CTIA urged the FCC to allow a 24-month transition period if it changes its hearing aid compatibility (HAC) rules to incorporate the 2011 revision of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) technical standard C63.19. The revision would replace the 2007 version of the standard now part of the rules. Groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing said a year is time enough. In a Nov. 1 notice of proposed rulemaking (http://xrl.us/bmozvb) the Wireless Bureau and Office of Engineering and Technology proposed giving Tier 1 carriers a year to meet the revised standard and smaller carriers 15 months.

A letter from the Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) Executive Committee to the NTIA released Friday is raising questions about the FCC’s ability to allow LightSquared to move forward, said industry executives. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2012, signed New Year’s Eve, which prevents the agency from lifting conditions on LightSquared without resolving Defense Department concerns, could be in play due to the letter, the executives said. LightSquared said the PNT process for review was deeply flawed and the NTIA should assert itself to take over the next testing phase. The PNT committee, co-chaired by the DOT and DOD deputy secretaries, works to “advise and coordinate federal departments and agencies on matters concerning,” according to the PNT website.

The most common concern with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act is how they will affect the domain name system, Public Knowledge Deputy Legal Director Sherwin Siy said Tuesday. Other concerns about SOPA and PROTECT IP include their broad definitions, he said during a conference call with reporters on the bills hosted by several associations.

President Barack Obama received twice as many campaign contribution dollars from the Communications and Electronics sector as the entire field of GOP challengers in the 2012 election cycle so far. But among House incumbents, GOP members continued to receive more than Democratic members in political action committee contributions from the sector heading into 2012, showed data from the Center for Responsive Politics. The numbers are consistent with a trend of PACs favoring incumbents and the party in control (CD July 19 p1).

The FCC didn’t back down from First Amendment concerns expressed by video programming owners that VPOs should have no or little role in ensuring broadcast-TV and subscription video is captioned when put online. Such concerns expressed by VPOs led Commissioner Robert McDowell to concur with the rules implementing the Internet Protocol captioning rules in the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn cited the “marketplace of ideas embodied in the First Amendment” as reason to let those with hearing problems know what’s happening on-screen, online. The final order released Friday afternoon had few changes from the first draft that circulated for a vote the last work day before Christmas. That conformed with expectations (CD Jan 6 p4).