Directors Guild Of America Urges Senators To Reject Joe Biden’s FCC Nominee Gigi Sohn As Vote Nears

deadline.com:

The Directors Guild of America is urging the Senate Commerce Committee to reject Joe Biden’s nominee to the FCC, citing Gigi Sohn’s past stances on copyright.With the committee scheduled to take up Sohn’s nomination on Wednesday, the guild sent a letter on Tuesday to its chairwoman, Sen.

Maria Cantwell (D-WA) objecting to the choice. In the letter obtained by Deadline (read it here), the DGA’s national executive director Russell Hollander wrote that Sohn’s “long standing record and hostility towards copyright law is inconsistent with the role of the FCC.”In confirmed, Sohn would give Democrats a majority in the FCC, giving them the votes needed to restore net neutrality rules or take a harder line against media concentration.But industry lobbyists, often at odds with Sohn when she led the media and telecom public interest group Public Knowledge, have expressed their misgivings to the Biden administration.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), an industry ally on issues of copyright, in December urged Biden to withdraw the nomination.The Motion Picture Association has been publicly silent on her nomination, while other trade groups, like the NCTA- The Internet & Television Association, representing the cable industry, and the National Association of Broadcasters, have expressed concerns but not outright opposition.Hollander pointed to one of the proposals that Sohn championed when she served as counselor to FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler during Barack Obama’s second term.

Wheeler and Sohn saw the proposal, introduced in 2016, as a way to free cable and satellite subscribers from having to pay monthly rental fees for their set top box.