Areas of Law – Page 5

Consumers Union Supports Stay of FCC’s July 2016 Broadnet Ruling Exempting Federal Contractors from Ban on Robocalls

Aug 24 2016

By Andrew C. Glass, Gregory N. Blase, and Roger L. Smerage

Consumers Union, the consumer advocacy arm of Consumer Reports, has filed a letter in support of the National Consumer Law Center’s (NCLC) request that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) stay its recent ruling on Broadnet Teleservices LLC’s Petition for Declaratory Ruling in the on-going rulemaking matter In re Rules and Regulations Implementing the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 while that ruling is under appeal. The July 5, 2016, Broadnet Ruling (previously discussed here) held that the TCPA, and its ban on autodialed calls to cellular telephones, does not apply to calls placed by the federal government itself, or its contractors, so long as the calls are placed in the course of conducting “official government business” and, for calls placed by contractors, the calls comply with the government’s instructions. On July 26, 2016, the NCLC moved the FCC to reconsider its ruling and stay its effect until the motion is resolved. Consumers Union is joining the request for the stay as part of its “End Robocalls” campaign, which purportedly seeks “technological solutions to the unwanted robocall problem,” according to the group’s letter to the FCC. If the requested stay is granted, federal government employees and contractors will continue to be subject to the TCPA unless the Broadnet Ruling is upheld.

Drones May Have Limited Range, But Regulatory Coordination Doesn’t Have To

Jan 22 2016

By Former Rep. James T. Walsh, contributor, and Rod Hall (Originally published in The Hill)

Safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the national airspace is one of the foremost policy challenges of 2016. But while Capitol Hill has largely focused on the regulatory efforts of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), developments overseas will also shape the future of the dynamic UAS industry in the year ahead.

Just before the end of the year, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) released its technical framework for UAS regulation across the 28 member states of the European Union. The framework will serve as the basis for rule-making activities at the EU and member-state levels in 2016 and 2017.

Your Money Is No Good Here: U.S. Supreme Court Holds That an Unaccepted Rule 68 Offer of Complete Relief Does Not Moot an Individual’s Claims, but Questions Remain

Jan 22 2016

By Andrew C. Glass, Gregory N. Blase, Jennifer J. Nagle, Jeremy M. McLaughlin, and Matthew Lowe

On January 20, 2016, the United States Supreme Court issued its decision in Campbell-Ewald Company v. Gomez regarding Rule 68 offers of judgment.[1] The Court held that a defendant cannot moot a case by merely offering complete relief to a plaintiff but left unanswered whether a defendant may do so by actually providing complete relief. Nor did the Court reach the question of whether a plaintiff can continue to seek to represent a putative class when his or her individual claims are mooted before a class is certified.

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Third Circuit Applies FCC’s New TCPA “Autodialer” Interpretation

Nov 05 2015

By Joseph C. Wylie II, Molly K. McGinley, Nicole C. Mueller

The Third Circuit recently applied the FCC’s new interpretation of “automated telephone dialing system” under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”), which the Commission adopted this past summer in its highly controversial Telephone Consumer Protection Act declaratory ruling. The court in Dominguez v. Yahoo, Inc. vacated and remanded for further proceedings the district court’s order on summary judgment for Yahoo.

According to the Third Circuit, under the FCC’s newly-formulated definition, a system is an autodialer, and, in general, subject to the TCPA’s prohibition on autodialed calls to wireless numbers absent consent of the called party, if it is “able to store or produce numbers that themselves are randomly or sequentially generated ‘even if [the autodialer is] not presently used for that purpose.’” In adopting this definition and following the FCC, the Third Circuit focused on the “capacity” element that was at the crux of the FCC’s decision.

FCC Hits Companies in Latest Wi-Fi Blocking Inquiries, Proposing $718,000 Penalty, Fueling Further Controversy

Nov 04 2015

By Stephen J. Matzura and Marty Stern

On the heels of a consent decree with a services provider imposing a $750,000 penalty for its Wi-Fi management practices at convention center venues, the FCC slammed another services provider earlier this week for allegedly blocking Wi-Fi access at the Baltimore Convention Center. In a Commission-level Notice of Apparent Liability (“NAL”), the FCC proposed a $718,000 penalty against M.C. Dean, Inc. for allegedly blocking access to third-party Wi-Fi hotspots during at least 26 days in November and December 2014 at the venue, “apparently” in violation of Section 333 of the Communications Act.

Consider Fair Use Before Submitting Takedown Request

Sep 30 2015

By Alexis Crawford Douglas (As originally posted at K&L Gates IP Law Watch)

The U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been a potent tool for combatting copyright infringement on the Internet. Section 512 shields Internet service providers from liability if they expeditiously remove content after copyright owners submit takedown requests notifying the ISP of infringing content. Last week, in Lenz v. Universal Music Corp., the Ninth Circuit held that copyright owners must consider fair use before sending takedown notices, or they could face liability for damages.

Southern District of New York Court Parses ‘Fair Use’ in Fox News’ Copyright Infringement Dispute with Media Monitoring Service

Sep 10 2015

By Mark H. Wittow and Alanna E. Peterson (as originally posted on K&L Gates’ IP Law Watch blog)

On 25 August 2015, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) ruled that certain functions of the TVEyes media-monitoring service infringe Fox News’ copyrights in its programming content.

TVEyes is a for-profit, media-monitoring service with over 22,000 subscribers that indexes nearly all news-related television and radio content in a searchable database. TVEyes allows users to track the usage of words or phrases of interest and to view the transcripts and video clips of the portions of the television broadcast that use the search term. Subscribers may set ‘watch lists’ for terms to receive real time alerts when certain terms are used and search past broadcasts. TVEyes also provides subscribers with analytic data such as a segment’s Nielsen viewership rating, the frequency with which a term has been mentioned over a specified time period and the geographic markets and channels where a term is used. Additionally, TVEyes users may archive, indefinitely, video clips that appear in response to search queries on TVEyes’ server. Users can also email the video clip links to others, allowing the recipients of the link to view the video clip on TVEyes’ server, as well as download copies of identified digital video clips for offline use and permanent storage.

Sixth Circuit Finds No TCPA Liability For Debt Collection Calls Made To Phone Number Provided After Inception of Credit Relationship

Sep 03 2015

By Joseph C. Wylie and Molly K. McGinley

In Hill v. Homeward Residential, Inc., the Sixth Circuit recently held that a plaintiff could not recover under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act for autodialed calls made to a wireless phone number that the plaintiff provided to the creditor. In so holding, the Court clarified that a consumer is deemed to have provided express consent to be contacted regarding a debt, so long as the consumer provides his or her wireless phone number “in connection with a debt he owes,” even if the phone number is not provided at the time the debt is created or the credit relationship is initiated.

The plaintiff in Hill obtained a mortgage but did not provide his cell phone number to the mortgage provider when the mortgage was first entered into. After his mortgage was sold, he voluntarily provided his cell phone number to the new mortgage company on a number of occasions, both orally and in writing. The successor mortgage provider proceeded to contact him at that number on hundreds of occasions, many of which involved use of a device that the plaintiff contended was an automated telephone dialing system under the TCPA.

The trial court denied summary judgment and allowed the case to proceed to trial on two disputed issues of material fact: whether the device in question was an ATDS, and whether the plaintiff had consented to be called via ATDS on his cell phone. The jury returned a general verdict in the defendant’s favor, and the plaintiff appealed.

FCC Confirms Fax to Email Subject to TCPA, Releases Additional Fax Rulings

Sep 01 2015

On August 28, 2015, the Federal Communications Commission, through its Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau, issued three separate rulings on petitions relating to its fax rules under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

In a declaratory ruling, CGAB clarified that:

faxes sent and received over telephone lines are subject to TCPA regulation even if those faxes are “converted to and delivered to a consumer as an electronic mail attachment.”
“the consumer to whom the content of a fax or efax is directed,” and not the company hosting the fax servers that receive the faxes over a telephone line and re-send the faxes to the subscriber of the service, is the recipient of the fax under the TCPA.
the act of sending a previously-faxed document by email is not subject to TCPA regulation.

CGAB also declined to provide “safe harbor” fax opt-out language, noting that the TCPA rules and orders already set forth the required content for opt-out notices. Finally, CGAB declined to issue a blanket rule as to whether “third parties, including fax broadcasters, who are retained to accept opt-out requests” are subject to TCPA liability, and instead noted that the question of whether a third party has sufficient involvement in the sending of faxes to create liability is an individualized inquiry.

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