The privacy rules covering so-called “smart TV” services and devices aren’t clear, industry executives and public interest advocates said. That could be a problem if such services become popular with consumers, as TV set makers and pay-TV distributors seek to add apps, widgets, interactivity and ad targeting to their services, they said. “The same business models that collect a tremendous amount of data online, and have raised privacy concerns in congress and at the FTC, can now be found on the television set,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy. “This is a major privacy issue that is about to boil over and regulators will be caught flat footed by not trying to address it,” he said.
The government may continue using roving wiretaps and other Patriot Act powers that were to expire at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Late Thursday, President Barack Obama signed into law an extension until June 1, 2015, of the government spying powers. The law made no changes to surveillance, but Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced legislation Thursday based on his failed amendment to add privacy protections. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and privacy groups said they were disappointed the renewal had no new protections for U.S. citizens.
The privacy rules covering so-called “smart TV” services and devices aren’t clear, industry executives and public interest advocates said. That could be a problem if such services become popular with consumers, as TV set makers and pay-TV distributors seek to add apps, widgets, interactivity and ad targeting to their services, they said. “The same business models that collect a tremendous amount of data online, and have raised privacy concerns in congress and at the FTC, can now be found on the television set,” said Jeff Chester, executive director for the Center for Digital Democracy. “This is a major privacy issue that is about to boil over and regulators will be caught flat footed by not trying to address it,” he said.
The International Trade Commission announces that a section 337 patent-based complaint has been filed regarding certain protective cases and components thereof.
The U.S. Copyright Office should not delve into “hypothetical questions” about whether changes to the statutory copyright system would require changes to the Communications Act or FCC rules, said the NAB. It filed reply comments with the copyright office on what the office should recommend to Congress about alternatives to statutory licensing, a report required by the Satellite TV Extension and Localism Act. Multichannel video programming distributors made “misleading complaints about communications regulatory policies over which this Office has no jurisdiction,” said NAB.
NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling clashed sharply with Jim Snider, president of iSolon.org and a longtime critic of the openness of the Commerce Spectrum Management Advisory Committee, at the end of the group’s meeting Wednesday. Snider has spoken out repeatedly during a public comment session at the end of CSMAC meetings, questioning whether the group’s work is transparent. Snider recently began a website that focuses in part on his complaints about NTIA and Strickling, at http://xrl.us/bkpsivat. Snider said he has filed more than 50 Freedom of Information Act requests at NTIA, and many haven’t been addressed. “I sat here for two years listening to you raise these totally spurious allegations about us and they've gone without response,” Strickling said. He said Snider asked NTIA to expel a member of the CSMAC based on allegations that the unnamed individual plagiarized some of Snider’s work. “This we chose not to do,” Strickling said. “Instead, you have gone on the attack against this agency, raising all sorts of spurious, libelous allegations about us. You've made demands for documents you're not entitled to, you know you're not entitled to them, and when we don’t give them to you you say we're hiding the truth."
At a May 25, 2011 Senate Finance Committee hearing on the Panama Trade Promotion Agreement, the Administration reasserted its position that it will not submit the implementing legislation packages for the pending free trade agreements with Panama, Colombia, and Korea until it reaches an agreement with Congress on renewing Trade Adjustment Assistance legislation that is consistent with the 2009 expansion of TAA1.
The FCC is starting to implement rules to tamp down the volume of ads so they're not startlingly louder than the shows they appear within. Agency and industry officials said a draft rulemaking notice seeks comment on putting into place the Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act. The CALM Act was passed by Congress in December (CD Dec 6 p8), and applies to TV stations and subscription-video providers. A Media Bureau rulemaking notice circulated May 5 may be voted on within the next few weeks and has already attracted lobbying at the commission from telco-TV providers, cable and broadcasters, FCC and industry officials said.
The International Trade Commission announces that a section 337 patent-based complaint has been filed regarding certain equipment for communications networks, including switches, routers, gateways, bridges, wireless, access points, cable modems, IP phones, and products containing same.
The FCC is backtracking on an AllVid proposal it floated (CD March 24 p1) as an alternative to cable and telco-TV providers having to connect to consumer electronics, said agency and industry officials. They said the alternative to a gateway connector approach the Media Bureau floated in recent months, for pay-TV providers to let CE devices connect to their IP streams using application programming interfaces, appears dead. Lobbying by the CE industry against the plan and technical concerns within the bureau and possibly the office of Chairman Julius Genachowski sunk it, said commission officials and executives in the CE and pay-TV industries. AllVid aims to replace CableCARDs.