*PALLONE TALKS ICANN, ENCRYPTION AND MORE *- MT sat down recently with Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Frank Pallone to chat about all things tech and telecom. The big takeaways: there's an appropriations fight brewing... Q: The House appropriations bill for the Commerce Department has a provision that would keep the NTIA from transitioning its domain name system oversight role to ICANN later this year. How are you working to strip that provision from whatever government funding bill passes? A: We're definitely going to push to try to make sure that whatever omnibus or [continuing resolution] is done, that it's not included in there. I'm hoping that it gets taken out before [a final bills goes to the floor] and that we just have regular order and we get the DOTCOM Act passed in the Senate. (An aide chimed in that Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's office "feels as strongly as we do that this is a bad one, so we've coordinated.")