US Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) has always been opposed to the FCC regulating anything, but she has been particularly outspoken about the FCC's Open Internet Order since it was introduced in 2010. To that point, Rep. Blackburn recently said that she wants to make sure the FCC never interferes with "states' rights" to protect private Internet service providers from having to compete against municipal broadband networks.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 293-123 to cut funding for NSA spying programs that are aimed at Americans. Late last night an amendment to a defense appropriations bill put forth by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY) passed with wide support, though it still has to get the same approval in the U.S. Senate.

Lawmakers are not happy with the FCC's proposal to allow broadband providers to charge content providers extra money for faster access to their customers. This supposed fast lane approach has rubbed lawmakers the wrong way, according to The Wrap, prompting them to push legislation that bans "paid prioritization."

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Vice Chairman Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) issued a joint statement announcing their new plans to push for a revamped cybersecurity bill. While details on the bill have not be released because it is still in "draft form" at the moment, the bill sounds like it has the same language that CISPA did.

According to The Hill, one of the demands that Republican lawmakers in the House of Representatives have put forth calls for a repeal of the FCC's rules on net neutrality.

According to the publication, a memo was circulated late last week amongst Republican lawmakers detailing some of the demands that they have put forth as a condition of passing a budget and raising the debt ceiling.

While the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) failed to win support from the US Senate earlier this year, not every Senator has given up on passing some sort of legislation related to cybersecurity. This week Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California), chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, introduced a bill that is meant to "complement" CISPA and aims to encourage information-sharing between private companies and the government in the name of cybersecurity.

Last night in the United States House of Representatives the Amash Amendment was narrowly defeated by a vote of 217 - 205. Approximately 94 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted for the measure that would have put a stop to large scale domestic spying on Americans, while 134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted against it. Six Republicans and 6 Democrats abstained from voting or were not present. The Amendment was a rider to the massive defense bill.

Libertarian-themed political website Reason.com is reporting that the Amash Amendment has survived the House's Rules Committee process. The Rules Committee voted late last night to allow several anti-NSA amendments to the $598.3 billion defense bill to be voted on this week.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 50 organizations have sent a letter to U.S. lawmakers in both houses of Congress urging them to reform the patent system. The appeal urges Congress to deal with "abuses of the legal system by certain patent assertion entities, commonly referred to as patent trolls."

While lawmakers would like to get back to pushing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and other cyber security proposals, it looks like Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's spying has put the brakes on any legislation moving forward, according to Verge.

Earlier in the week while the National Governors Association and proponents of the Marketplace Fairness Act were hosting an event to encourage House members to approve the bill already passed the Senate, Republicans from the House and Senate joined Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform to rally against it. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joined House Republicans and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform on Tuesday to rally against the bill.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has joined the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and 85 other civil liberties groups and Internet organizations to U.S. lawmakers that it must put a stop to the National Security Agency and other U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies spying on American citizens. The letter is in response to two stories that leaked information about several NSA information gathering programs that target the internet and mobile phone activities of Americans.

In April the House of Representatives managed to push the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) through the chamber, but shortly thereafter it stalled in the Senate. Leaders there said they weren't planning on taking the issue up, instead planning to focus on a number of separate bills to address issues related to cybersecurity concerns by the government and corporations.

While the Senate is likely to pass the Marketplace Fairness Act being rammed through the Senate past the red tape of committees and onto the floor for a vote later today or by the end of this week by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NEV.), House Republicans face a roadblock that they put in place themselves when it comes time to vote for their Internet tax bill: a pledge.

As pointed out by RT, even while the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) may have passed by a 288 to 127 margin in the House (and garnered more votes from Democrats this time around than it did in 2012 when it passed), the bill faces an unknown future in the Senate where other issues like Internet taxes, immigration and more are the causes getting priority right now..

Representatives Anna G. Eshoo (CA), Rush Holt (NJ), Janice Schakowsky (IL) and Adam B. Schiff (CA) have written a "Dear Colleague" letter coming out strongly against the current version of CISPA, saying that the bill "has major shortcomings and would undermine the interests of citizens and their privacy."

On March 20 a coalition of advocacy groups, concerned citizens, academics, and web sites sent a letter to the White House urging the President of the United States to veto CISPA in its current state if it is passed by the House and Senate.

A letter signed by 33 organizations and nine individuals asks the top ranking lawmakers in the House of Representatives (Reps. Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers) and the United States Senate (Sens. Patrick Leahy and Charles Grassley) to make an exception for unlocking electronic devices to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Recently a petition signed by over 110,000 Americans asked President Barack Obama's administration to make the same exception.

Earlier in the week Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-CA.) penned an editorial over at Politico that takes aim at parenting and deflects the idea that video games are to blame for violent crimes in America. The editorial title sums up Hunter's thoughts on the top pretty succinctly: "Target parenting, not games for violence."

The American Civil Liberties Union had a simple message for Congress today about CISPA or any other plans for sharing internet user information between corporations and government intelligence agencies: keep cybersecurity information sharing out of military hands.

The House cybersecurity bill that received strong criticism from the White House, privacy groups and the Internet is going to be re-introduced on Wednesday according to The Hill. House Intelligence Committee leaders Reps.

Yesterday Congressman Mike Thompson (D-CA) released "A Comprehensive Plan That Reduces Gun Violence and Respects the 2nd Amendment Rights of Law-Abiding Americans," which details the recommendations of the " Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force." While there are plenty of recommendations on guns and curbing gun violence, mental health issues and school safety, there is a portion of the report dedicated to violent media.

Two U.S. lawmakers have asked federal prosecutors at the Department of Justice to answer a series of questions about the prosecution of Reddit co-founder and internet activist Aaron Swartz. In a letter to US Attorney General Eric Holder, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) want to DOJ to explain why federal prosecutors sought up to 50 years in prison and $1 million in fines for Swartz, who committed suicide prior to his trial. Swartz was arrested in 2011 for downloading 4.8 million documents from the academic archive JSTOR.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) went to Washington D.C last week to talk to members of Congress and their staff about the connection between video games and violence, and their conclusion was that Congress does not have the best interests of the millions of gamers in America in mind. The ECA says that when they tried to talk to lawmakers about the connection between video games and real-world violence they came away from those meetings feeling like lawmakers were not interested in the facts and instead were relying on their own biases and preferences about the video games.

UPDATE: Read the bill here.  (Credit: The Hill)

On CNN's State of the Union with host Candy Crowley, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TENN.) sat in on a panel discussion about gun control and the likelihood of legislation being passed by the current Congress. But instead of discussing gun control, Blackburn decided to take a few shots at Activision's Call of Duty series. Blackburn said that in preparation to appear on the show she watched some video of the game and was shocked at the violence she saw... she also called the game "Call to Duty."

Trade organization the Business Roundtable issued a 32-page report this week backing the approach taken by the House of Representatives to fight cybersecurity threats. That approach, the bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), passed the House. The Senate proposed another bill called the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. The House bill passed, but the President didn't think it offered enough protections for American Internet users' privacy rights.

A Republican House staffer who penned a memo on a different kind of approach to copyright law in November of last year found himself out of work as the new Congress was seated last Thursday and the new head of the Republican Study Committee - Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) - decided not to keep him on. He finally broke his silence on the whole ordeal to Ars Technica.

Npeaches offers an excellent interview with Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.) discussing some pretty important topics including the importance of net neutrality and intellectual property as it relates to the Internet.

The interview is 10 minutes 32 seconds long. You can watch it to your left in its entirety.

Source: Culture Cache Blog

The United States Congress may be a mess and the most unruly and uncompromising bunch in the land but they all apparently think that the UN should not be setting policy on the Internet. To that end, members of the House of Representatives - Democrats and Republicans - voted unanimously (397-0) against the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United Nations' efforts to push "increased government control over the Internet."