Public Knowledge brought to the FCC allegations that Comcast has been favoring its Internet Protocol-video traffic over that of third parties (WID May 16 p1). In a petition filed with the agency Wednesday, the nonprofit group that’s backed the commission’s net neutrality rules said the way Comcast treated video traffic for its Xfinity video apps on TiVos and Xboxes hits on the concerns the regulator raised in the 2011 order approving Comcast’s takeover of NBCUniversal. “A consumer trying to decide between a number of OTT [over the top] video options on her Xbox 360 or TiVo knows that all of her choices count against her Comcast broadband data cap -- except the choice offered by Comcast,” the petition said.

Employees’ use of their own smartphones and tablets for work opens a Pandora’s box that can include criminal exposure as well as civil liability to parties from opponents in lawsuits to accident victims and the workers themselves, a technology lawyer said Tuesday. The use of Android products raises a broad risk of violating state and federal network-security laws and regulations requiring data encryption because the passwords for that protection are the same as those for the devices themselves, said Aaron Tantleff, an attorney with Foley & Lardner. Employees put their “entire personal life” on mobile devices they own and use them for purposes they wouldn’t put company-owned hardware to, so they have a high expectation of privacy in the information on them, he said on a Celesq AttorneysEd Center webcast over the West LegalEdcenter. Company access to the devices and the data on them becomes a major issue, Tantleff said. Actions including an IT department’s “remote wipe” of a device that has been lost or hacked, or that has been used by a departed employee, go from routine with company-owned gear to possible violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the counterparts passed by all the states, he said. Employers can face court sanctions for failing to turn over to lawsuit opponents information subject to evidence discovery requirements but unavailable because it’s on devices owned by others, Tantleff said. And even companies aware of legal risks like these never think about personal injuries in this connection, he said. “Employers in some cases have been found liable” for distracted driving by employees, Tantleff said.

Employees’ use of their own smartphones and tablets for work opens a Pandora’s box that can include criminal exposure as well as civil liability to parties from opponents in lawsuits to accident victims and the workers themselves, a technology lawyer said Tuesday. The use of Android products raises a broad risk of violating state and federal network-security laws and regulations requiring data encryption because the passwords for that protection are the same as those for the devices themselves, said Aaron Tantleff, an attorney with Foley & Lardner. Employees put their “entire personal life” on mobile devices they own and use them for purposes they wouldn’t put company-owned hardware to, so they have a high expectation of privacy in the information on them, he said on a Celesq AttorneysEd Center webcast over the West LegalEdcenter. Company access to the devices and the data on them becomes a major issue, Tantleff said. Actions including an IT department’s “remote wipe” of a device that has been lost or hacked, or that has been used by a departed employee, go from routine with company-owned gear to possible violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the counterparts passed by all the states, he said. Employers can face court sanctions for failing to turn over to lawsuit opponents information subject to evidence discovery requirements but unavailable because it’s on devices owned by others, Tantleff said. And even companies aware of legal risks like these never think about personal injuries in this connection, he said. “Employers in some cases have been found liable” for distracted driving by employees, Tantleff said.

Employees’ use of their own smartphones and tablets for work opens a Pandora’s box that can include criminal exposure as well as civil liability to parties from opponents in lawsuits to accident victims and the workers themselves, a technology lawyer said Tuesday. The use of Android products raises a broad risk of violating state and federal network-security laws and regulations requiring data encryption because the passwords for that protection are the same as those for the devices themselves, said Aaron Tantleff, an attorney with Foley & Lardner. Employees put their “entire personal life” on mobile devices they own and use them for purposes they wouldn’t put company-owned hardware to, so they have a high expectation of privacy in the information on them, he said on a Celesq AttorneysEd Center webcast over the West LegalEdcenter. Company access to the devices and the data on them becomes a major issue, Tantleff said. Actions including an IT department’s “remote wipe” of a device that has been lost or hacked, or that has been used by a departed employee, go from routine with company-owned gear to possible violations of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the counterparts passed by all the states, he said. Employers can face court sanctions for failing to turn over to lawsuit opponents information subject to evidence discovery requirements but unavailable because it’s on devices owned by others, Tantleff said. And even companies aware of legal risks like these never think about personal injuries in this connection, he said. “Employers in some cases have been found liable” for distracted driving by employees, Tantleff said.

The Federal Aviation Administration must update its assessment of federal liability risk from commercial space launches, the Government Accountability Office said in a report. The U.S. provides less commercial space launch indemnification for third-party losses than China, France and Russia, the report said (http://xrl.us/bniqmo). Indemnification coverage is limited in the U.S. by the Commercial Space Launch Act Amendments (CSLAA), it said. Estimating probable losses from a rare catastrophic event is difficult, “and insurance industry officials and risk modeling experts said that FAA’s method is outdated,” it said. The agency hasn’t had outside experts or risk modelers review the appropriateness of its method, the report said. The planned increase in manned commercial launches and re-entries raises some issues “that have implications for the federal government’s indemnification policy for third party liability,” according to insurance officials and experts interviewed, GAO said. The amount and price of insurance that could be provided “could change quickly if a large loss were to occur, according to insurance industry representatives.” GAO said launch companies and customers it contacted “believe that ending federal indemnification could lead to higher launch prices for U.S.-based launch companies, making them less price competitive than foreign launch companies.” They said a gap in federal indemnification is the lack of coverage of on-orbit activities -- “that is, activities not related to launch or reentry, such as docking with the ISS [international space station] and relocating a satellite from one orbit to another.” Although the actual effects on competition of eliminating CSLAA indemnification are unknown, “several launch companies and customers with whom we spoke said that in the absence of CSLAA indemnification, increased risk and higher costs would directly affect launch companies and indirectly affect their customers and suppliers,” GAO said.

House Communications Subcommittee Ranking Member Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., proposed an exemption Wednesday for the government’s development of FirstNet and voluntary spectrum incentive auctions from a House bill aimed at reducing regulatory spending (http://xrl.us/bnh64e). Eshoo said the passage of the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act (HR-4078) would delay the government’s work to implement the spectrum provisions of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act, and urged colleagues to vote no on HR-4078. “With the auction of this prime spectrum expected to raise over $25 billion, passage of HR-4078 will not only delay access to this critical revenue, it’s simply bad policy,” she said in a speech on the House floor. Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said he too was concerned. “The key to the development of America’s broadband mobile devices is more spectrum,” he told us. “I called for an inventory of all spectrum including military, and I'd like to see the military get incentives in the sequestration on the horizon to get money from the [broadcast incentive] auctions to give up some of this spectrum,” he said. “Anything I can do to help spectrum, I will.”

Replies to an FCC rulemaking became another venue for multichannel video programming distributors and programmers to more broadly debate the economics of the MVPD industry. In initial comments, Mediacom and others urged the agency to expand program access rules to cover the volume discount and bundling practices of unaffiliated pay-TV programmers (CD June 26 p7). In replies in docket 12-68, the major media content companies attacked Mediacom’s arguments and argued the commission should limit itself to deciding whether it should allow its ban on exclusive deals between an MVPD and a network it owns to expire Oct. 5.

The Department of Defense Monday proposed a list of sites that might be “amenable” for a test of spectrum sharing between commercial and government users, Tom Power, White House deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications, told a meeting of the Wireless Spectrum Research and Development (WSRD) Committee in Boulder, Colo. Power also said the administration has not given up on making parts of the 1755-1850 MHz band, which he called “this most appealing of spectrum,” available for exclusive commercial use.

The CEO of a cable operator that has had blackouts shared with Senate Commerce Committee members a Sept. 1 letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski saying the agency’s lack of action on new retransmission consent rules was “inexplicable inaction” (CD Sept 2 p3). Rocco Commisso said Mediacom would agree to not raise rates for basic and expanded-basic video service for two years if TV stations and cable operators freeze what they charge multichannel video programming distributors for carriage. “With your backing, I am confident that a significant number of MVPDs would join the freeze,” Commisso wrote the committee about Tuesday’s hearing on retrans. (See separate story above.) “Despite the clear and compelling evidence that the immense power held by a handful of media giants has created a dysfunctional marketplace in which the harm to consumers is compounding every year, the FCC has failed to act,” Commisso wrote. Thursday’s letter to the committee also was posted in commission docket 10-71 (http://xrl.us/bnhw6v).

An FCC proposal to relax rules around non-commercial educational stations using airtime to raise funds for non-profit organizations received support from religious broadcasters and opposition from some university organizations, in early comments that were due by midnight Monday in docket 12-106. The proposal includes forgoing the waiver process to raise third-party funds and devoting no more than 1 percent of airtime to raise funds for non-profit entities (CD April 27 p8). The University Station Alliance and some public broadcasting stations opposed the change, claiming that the current system of obtaining a waiver is sufficient. Northwestern College in Minnesota supported earlier comments by National Religious Broadcasters (CD July 17 p16) that entities for which fundraising may be conducted should be limited to organizations that are recognized as non-profit tax exempt under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.