Owners of small online businesses are scheduled to arrive on Capitol Hill Wednesday to voice their concerns over the Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 (HR-684, S-336), which would allow states to collect sales tax on online purchases made by in-state residents from out-of-state retailers. The bills will harm small businesses by having a too-low small-seller exception of $1 million, eBay Senior Director of Global Public Policy Brian Bieron told us. EBay organized the small-business trips to the Hill. The Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board (SSTGB) -- which has been a major proponent of e-commerce sales tax bills -- raised concerns over the bill’s language during its federal implementation working group’s public conference call Monday.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday criticized a decision by the Copyright Office that said it’s a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for consumers to unlock new mobile phones. Genachowski asked Congress to take action. Meanwhile, a White House official said the administration agrees people should be able to unlock their phones. On Jan. 26, the librarian of Congress issued a ruling that effectively made it illegal to unlock new phones (http://1.usa.gov/ZaI6qS). Violators face heavy fines and prison time.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday criticized a decision by the Copyright Office that said it’s a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act for consumers to unlock new mobile phones. Genachowski asked Congress to take action. Meanwhile, a White House official said the administration agrees people should be able to unlock their phones. On Jan. 26, the librarian of Congress issued a ruling that effectively made it illegal to unlock new phones (http://1.usa.gov/ZaI6qS). Violators face heavy fines and prison time.

The mandatory special access data request (CD Dec 13 p5) will impose “extreme burdens” on cable operators, officials from NCTA, Comcast and Cox told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Wednesday, an ex parte filing said (http://bit.ly/13qq5vE). Several cable companies that were not previously subject to any reporting obligations on special access services will now require “significant time commitments from staff,” NCTA said. The cable association said it will be difficult for respondents to accurately estimate the burden associated with the data request for Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) purposes, “given that the Commission has not released any information about the data entry system it is developing for collection of the data.” NCTA said it was concerned about a “lack of transparency” in connection with the PRA process, such as no detailed breakdown of how the commission concluded that its data request would require more than 6,000 respondents to spend more than 850,000 hours compiling and submitting data. Comcast and Cox were particularly concerned about the requirement to submit a map identifying all fiber routes connecting their networks to end user locations; all nodes on their networks used to interconnect with third-party networks; and the year those nodes went live. The companies “do not use maps with that level of detail in the normal course of their business,” the filing said. “It would be tremendously burdensome to create such maps” solely for responding to the commission’s data request, it said. NCTA also raised concern over the “security risks” of keeping so many detailed maps at the commission, warning the identified interconnection locations would be “a target for hackers."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski paused the media ownership proceeding to give the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council time to study the impact of waivers allowing common ownership of stations and daily newspapers on minority and women-owned broadcasters. The delay had been expected (CD Feb 21 p5) and shortly after NAB and the Newspaper Association of America (NAA) backed MMTC’s plan to spend its own money on the research. Other FCC members and broadcasters generally support the delay in voting on rules first circulated Nov. 14, agency and industry officials told us, and commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell said they backed the delay.

IP-to-IP interconnection policy isn’t relevant to AT&T’s proposed wire center trials, the telco said in reply comments on its proposal Monday. The FCC need not address IP interconnection issues to OK the trials, AT&T said. Nonetheless, “because so much of the advocacy opposing AT&T’s petition focuses on these issues,” the telco took the opportunity to respond: IP-to-IP interconnection is “needless, harmful, and unlawful,” and the FCC lacks Title II authority over the interconnection of information services. Verizon argued against new regulation of broadband networks and services, and the imposition of unbundling obligations on new technologies. CenturyLink said the commission should reject attempts by CLECs to gain a “competitive advantage” by imposing “unnecessary and counterproductive regulations on next-generation IP networks and services” (http://bit.ly/XAm5ok). But state regulators, CLECs and others criticized AT&T’s request as a thinly veiled attempt to maintain ILEC power while preempting state regulations.

Three judges asked skeptical questions about the FCC making Comcast carry the Tennis Channel as widely as the two other sports networks which the operator owns. At oral argument Monday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, different jurists focused on different issues in the 2012 program carriage order that split the commission 3-2 on party lines (CD July 26 p5). Judges Harry Edwards, Brett Kavanaugh and Stephen Williams spent about twice their allotted 15 minutes for the FCC side asking the agency’s lawyer, Peter Karanjia, about the jurists’ various concerns with the order.

The Federal Maritime Commission published its proposal to impose registration requirements on foreign-based unlicensed non-vessel-operating common carriers (NVOCCs) and to extend an exemption from certain provisions and requirements of the Shipping Act of 1984 and the Commission regulations to foreign-based unlicensed nonvessel-operating common carriers that agree to negotiated rate arrangements (NRAs), scheduled for the Feb. 26 Federal Register. (See ITT's Online Archives 13021425 for a report on the FMC decision earlier this month.)

The FTC said HTC America reached a tentative settlement over charges that the company’s failure, until at least November 2011 to take “reasonable steps” to secure the software used on its smartphones and tablets, constituted “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” (http://1.usa.gov/YHPOtt). The agency accused the maker of consumer electronics of not using “well-known and commonly-accepted secure programming practices ... which would have ensured that applications only had access to users’ information with their consent."

4G Americas marked the one-year anniversary of the 2012 spectrum law Friday with a letter urging the FCC to move forward on an auction of the 1755-1780 MHz band, long viewed by carriers as one of the most valuable bands for wireless broadband. Commissioner Robert McDowell said Friday he shares the group’s concerns.