It’s unclear whether ICANN will vote this week to unleash potentially thousands of new generic top-level domains, board director Peter Dengate Thrush said at a news briefing Monday in Cartagena, Colombia. “We want to get it right,” he said, saying board members won’t be “swayed by some of the passion” that’s around, including a strongly critical letter from NTIA accusing the Internet body of failing to live up to its promises to the U.S. government (WID Dec 6 p2).

Because Sky Angel hasn’t demonstrated that it’s a multichannel video programming distributor, as defined by the Cable Act, it isn’t entitled to program access rights, Discovery Communications said in a letter sent to the FCC Friday. “By contrast, there is no question that Dish is an MVPD,” it said. “Discovery’s decision to not license Sky Angel while licensing Dish is therefore not discriminatory.” Discovery responded to a Sky Angel assertion that Discovery’s inclusion in the TV Everywhere service of Dish Network belies the programmer’s claims in a program access dispute with Sky Angel that it doesn’t allow any online distribution (CD Dec 3 p10). The innovations of Dish’s TV Everywhere doesn’t “somehow convert Sky Angel into an MVPD or in any way equate Dish and Sky Angel,” that cable programmer said. Issues related to copyright raised by Dish’s new products are beyond the scope of the FCC’s program access rules and the FCC’s jurisdiction, Discovery said.

Level 3’s accusations against Comcast are “decidedly” not a “net neutrality issue,” a senior AT&T policy executive said Thursday. Instead, Level 3’s allegations that Comcast is acting as a virtual toll booth over the Internet (CD Dec 1 p6) by seeking compensation to carry Netflix streaming videos and other content, is a dispute about a business relationship, Senior Vice President Bob Quinn wrote on AT&T’s blog. “Comcast doesn’t care whether that traffic is video or music or e-mail or web pages. So, this really has nothing at all to do with net neutrality despite the fact that Level 3 and Free Press would like to raise the volume level to eleven."

Level 3’s accusations against Comcast are “decidedly” not a “net neutrality issue,” a senior AT&T policy executive said Thursday. Instead, Level 3’s allegations that Comcast is acting as a virtual toll booth over the Internet (WID Dec 1 p2) by seeking compensation to carry Netflix streaming videos and other content, is a dispute about a business relationship, Senior Vice President Bob Quinn wrote on AT&T’s blog. “Comcast doesn’t care whether that traffic is video or music or e-mail or web pages. So, this really has nothing at all to do with net neutrality despite the fact that Level 3 and Free Press would like to raise the volume level to eleven."

Advocates of net neutrality rules pounced on a dispute between Level 3 and Comcast, seeing an opportunity to widen the debate. “The point of this is, that at a minimum it has the strong appearance of anti-competitive behavior,” Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky said. “At a maximum, there could be some net neutrality implications to it, depending on the net neutrality guidelines.” Chairman Julius Genachowski said Tuesday that FCC staffers are examining Level 3’s allegations. He declined to say more about the dispute when asked about it at a news briefing after Tuesday’s FCC meeting.

Combating advertising carrying malware -- known as malvertising -- is a responsibility that must be shared by all in online advertising, said some experts in the Internet advertising industry. The industry must act quickly to find solutions to avoid the need for legislation and maintain a high level of consumer trust, some professionals said.

Advocates of net neutrality rules pounced on a dispute between Level 3 and Comcast, seeing an opportunity to widen the debate. “The point of this is, that at a minimum it has the strong appearance of anti-competitive behavior,” Public Knowledge spokesman Art Brodsky said. “At a maximum, there could be some net neutrality implications to it, depending on the net neutrality guidelines.” Chairman Julius Genachowski said Tuesday that FCC staffers are examining Level 3’s allegations. He declined to say more about the dispute when asked about it at a news briefing after Tuesday’s FCC meeting.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has submitted a final rule to the Office of Managment and Budget for its approval that would establish revisions to the commercial driver's license knowledge and skills testing standards, implement fraud detection and prevention initiatives at the State driver licensing agencies, and establish new minimum Federal standards for States to issue commercial learner's permits (CLPs).

The International Trade Commission announces that a section 337 patent-based complaint has been filed regarding certain gaming and entertainment consoles, related software, and components thereof.

The federal government’s copyright policy toward the Internet should encourage innovation instead of reinforcing existing business models, said the Electronic Freedom Foundation, Public Knowledge and the New America Foundation Friday. In a response to the Commerce Department’s request for comments on copyright and innovation in the Internet economy the groups said Commerce should consider the costs of enforcement in copyright actions. The content industry’s focus on lawsuits and technological solutions to copyright problems does not work, they said. [A]t the height of the Recording Industry of America’s litigation campaign in 2007 and 2008, various file-sharing venues reported stratospheric growth in visitors, searches, and software downloads,” they noted. Tech solutions such as filtering data traffic of users raises serious privacy issues because a filter must examine all packets to separate the infringing from the non-infringing ones, they said. The current notice-and-takedown procedure of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act is working, and content providers should consider a voluntary collective licensing system, they wrote. Commerce’s Internet Policy Task Force issued the call for comments on Oct. 5 and accepted them through Friday (WID Oct 6 p4).