A bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers reintroduced legislation Thursday that would require radio stations to pay performance royalties for radio airplay to owners of sound recordings (see 2212120049). Introduced by Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Alex Padilla and Dianne Feinstein, both D-Calif.; and Thom Tillis, R-N.C.; and Reps. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the American Music Fairness Act requires “terrestrial radio broadcasters to pay royalties to American music creators when they play their songs.” It allows small and local stations that have less than $1.5 million annual revenue and whose parent companies have less than $10 million annual revenue overall to play unlimited music for less than $500 annually. SoundExchange, musicFIRST, the Recording Academy, the Recording Industry Association of America and the American Federation of Musicians endorsed the bill. NAB CEO Curtis LeGeyt said in a statement: "Local radio stations and performers have built a strong, mutually beneficial partnership that has endured for over a century. This partnership provides enormous value for new and established performers, local broadcast stations and the tens of millions of radio listeners that rely on our uniquely free service. Unfortunately, AMFA would destroy that relationship with a new government-imposed performance fee that is simply untenable for local radio."

FCC nominee Gigi Sohn's re-selection "has not been withdrawn," despite a Wednesday Fox News report to the contrary, a White House spokesperson told us Thursday. Fox News cited a Senate aide who said the Biden administration pulled Sohn after Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., agreed to GOP requests for a third confirmation hearing. Fox News reported Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., is seeking the hearing but misidentified him as still being Commerce ranking member. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas is now Commerce ranking member, while Wicker shifted at the start of this Congress to become lead Armed Services Committee Republican. A Commerce spokesperson also denied the report's claims. Cantwell has been eyeing a February hearing date, while panel Republicans are asking her to delay it until March (see 2301260068). Fight for the Future Director Evan Greer and National Digital Inclusion Alliance Communications Director Yvette Scorse want Cantwell and other Democratic leaders to “speak out immediately and make it clear that they will stand strong against” recent reports about Sohn’s role as an Electronic Frontier Foundation board member (see 2301300025) that they see as “weaponized homophobia” against the nominee, who would be the first openly LGBTQ commissioner if confirmed.

Apple and Google should remove TikTok from “their app stores immediately given its unacceptable risk to U.S. national security,” Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., wrote Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google CEO Sundar Pichai Thursday. The Chinese-owned app is unlike other social media platforms because China requires parent company ByteDance to “support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work,” Bennet said. “No company subject to CCP dictates should have the power to accumulate such extensive data on the American people or curate content to nearly a third of our population.” FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr made the same request in June (see 2207150064). The company said in a statement that Bennet's letter “relies almost exclusively on misleading reporting.” The letter also “ignores the considerable investment we have made through Project Texas -- a plan negotiated with our country's top national security experts -- to provide additional assurances to our community about their data security and the integrity of the TikTok platform." Apple and Google didn’t comment.

CTIA and other communications sector groups urged lawmakers Wednesday to appropriate $3.08 billion needed to fully fund the FCC's Secure and Trusted Communications Networks Reimbursement Program (see 2207150067). The leaders of the House and Senate Commerce committees tried and failed in December to attach the funding to the FY 2023 omnibus spending bill as part of an aborted deal on spectrum policy legislation (see 2212200077). “The success of this Congressionally mandated national security imperative depends on fully and immediately funding the Program,” the groups said in a letter to House Innovation Subcommittee Chairman Gus Bilirakis, R-Fla., and other leaders. “Carriers cannot complete the job without full funding. Failure to fully fund the Program means that untrusted equipment is still in service today, including some near military bases, airports, and other areas of strategic importance.” Providers “urgently want to complete the transition to secure and trusted networks” but “have been largely prohibited from servicing or upgrading their networks for years, increasing chances for network degradation or even failure, and leaving their communities behind as technology evolves to 5G and beyond.” Others signing the letter: the Competitive Carriers Association, Information Technology Industry Council, NATE, NTCA, Rural Broadband Association, Rural Wireless Association, Telecommunications Industry Association, Wireless Infrastructure Association and WTA.

The Senate Commerce Committee said Wednesday it's delaying its planned Thursday organizational meeting (see 2301300025) until Feb. 9, citing continued chamber delays in passing an organizing resolution. Senate Republicans approved their committee ranking members, including Commerce leader Ted Cruz of Texas. The GOP also approved its membership rosters, including adding three Republicans to Commerce: Ted Budd of North Carolina, Eric Schmitt of Missouri and J.D. Vance of Ohio. Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah and Rick Scott of Florida left the panel. Former Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., left the committee when he retired at the end of last Congress. The Commerce executive session will still be in 253 Russell at a to-be-determined time.

The House Commerce Committee voted 28-23 Tuesday against an amendment from ranking member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., seeking to change GOP-led panel rules to continue allowing the minority party to select its share of hearing witnesses without majority party approval. The amendment would have allowed witnesses to appear virtually without the Commerce chair’s approval. Allowing “witnesses to participate remotely in those hearings provided the opportunity for the committee to hear from a diverse group of people from outside of Washington, D.C., and from all walks of life,” Pallone said: He cited full House rules for this Congress that give the House majority leader “new veto” power to deny requests for remote witness testimony. “Rather than taking advantage of the technological tools that allows us to engage with Americans where they are, instead of forcing them to come to us, I am afraid that Republicans’ unnecessary restrictions on remote witnesses means Congress will only hear more from the wealthy and well-connected,” Pallone said. Republicans proposed “rules that are identical” to the ones the then-majority Commerce Democrats wrote for the last Congress, said committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash. “I don’t think it’s fair to burden the majority with requirements that the Democrats chose not to impose upon themselves” when they were in the majority. Rodgers said she will “do my very best to follow the House rules,” including urging House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., to grant requests to allow remote witness testimony. House Commerce approved committee rules by voice vote.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation tried to “set the record straight” Tuesday about FCC nominee Gigi Sohn’s role as a board member in the group’s decisions, after what it called “outlandish headlines” aimed at twisting “EFF's long-held positions and commitments into dog whistles against” the embattled nominee (see 2301300025). Those reports centered on the group’s opposition to the 2018 Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (see 1806290044) and its 2020 award to OnlyFans-affiliated sex worker Danielle Blunt, known professionally as Mistress Blunt. EFF acknowledged Blunt is “a professional dominatrix” and “a leader in the technology policy space and advocate for sex workers” but said “no one is more aware of the way that the power imbalances of the real world permeate online, and is more poised to act, than she is.” The group said its “opposition to FOSTA-SESTA was and remains based on the facts: It will not stop sex trafficking and will instead make stopping it harder. At the same time, the law puts a wide range of online expression at risk and we are always, unapologetically, against the criminalization and chilling of legal speech.” The “flurry of hyperbole and personal attacks should not be allowed to deflect attention from” Sohn being “one of the most qualified people possible for the role of FCC commissioner,” EFF said: “She has been a fair and balanced advocate for public interest for her entire career,” which “is why we were happy to add her to our board -- a role from which she will step down if she is appointed -- and why we would be thrilled to see her confirmed to the FCC.”

Senate Communications Subcommittee ranking member John Thune, R-S.D., and Chairman Ben Ray Lujan, D-N.M., led filing Monday of the Rural Internet Improvement Act in a bid to bolster Agriculture Department broadband programs’ funding for rural areas. The measure, which Lujan and Thune first filed in November (see 2211290064), would combine USDA’s traditional broadband loan and grant program and the ReConnect program. It would also mandate that ReConnect funding goes only to areas in which 90% of households are unserved, and would make changes to the program’s challenge process. Thune’s office suggested the legislation is among his proposals for inclusion in the 2023 farm bill process. “Our bipartisan legislation would help bridge the digital divide by improving” ReConnect “to ensure its funding goes to truly unserved areas,” Thune said. The “difference between fast internet, slow internet, and no internet” must “change to bridge the digital divide that leaves rural and Tribal communities unconnected,” Lujan said. Sens. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., are co-sponsors. Thune’s office cited support from the American Farm Bureau Federation, NCTA, NTCA and other agricultural groups.

Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, on Monday reintroduced legislation that would amend Communications Decency Act Section 230 and require platforms to report illegal drug sales and other illicit activity (see 2009290065). Originally introduced in 2020, the See Something, Say Something Online Act would require platforms to “report suspicious activity to law enforcement, similar to the way that banks are required to report suspicious transactions over $10,000 or others that might signal criminal activity.” The legislation “strong-arms online platforms into handing over the correspondence of civil rights and parents groups to law enforcement simply because speech and chat websites would need to take a better-safe-than-sorry approach to maintain protection from liability,” said NetChoice Vice President Carl Szabo.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will testify March 23 before the House Commerce Committee, Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., announced Monday. The Chinese-owned social media company “knowingly allowed the ability for the Chinese Communist Party to access American user data,” and “Americans deserve to know how these actions impact their privacy and data security, as well as what actions TikTok is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms,” she said. The company didn't comment.