FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Thursday that he will seek a vote by the commissioners on the national broadband plan before it’s sent to Congress. His comment came in an interview in his corner office, still little decorated, on the FCC’s eighth floor. It had been unclear whether the other commissioners would be asked to sign off on the plan or whether it would in effect be released as a chairman’s report. Genachowski also said providing Universal Service Fund support for broadband should be a top FCC priority.

U.K. wireless microphone companies are irate over government plans for paying for the spectrum move they're required to make, they said Wednesday. The Office of Communications decided in June to clear the 800 MHz band used by those in what’s called program-making and special events and turn it over to mobile applications. Now it’s seeking suggestions on how to compensate users required to switch spectrum. The criteria for funding eligibility, however, fall far short of what’s required, the British Entertainment Industry Radio Group said.

A U.S. District Court judge in Delaware Monday denied Universal Studios Home Entertainment’s motion to dismiss the antitrust claim made against it by Coinstar’s Redbox subsidiary in a recent suit. But Judge Robert Kugler granted Universal’s motion to dismiss two other claims included in Redbox’s suit.

The Iowa Utilities Board ruled in Qwest’s favor on a traffic pumping complaint against eight local exchange carriers. But the carriers are challenging the action at the FCC. The board decided Friday that Great Lakes Communications, Superior Telephone and other local rural telcos were engaging in “unreasonable practices” that violate their tariffs, Qwest said. Great Lakes and Superior immediately petitioned the FCC for a ruling that federal law preempts the board from acting against the local companies.

Facebook is not on the verge of being sued by Canada Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart for failure to comply with her recommendations on data-sharing and privacy practices, a Facebook spokesman told us. Stoddart had said some Facebook practices around personal data violated Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (WID July 17 p2). Canadian media reported the company had passed Stoddart’s Monday deadline to change its policies to more closely supervise third-party developers, get permission from people tagged in photos before they're posted and let users permanently delete personal data from Facebook from their settings page, among other demands. Stoddart has 15 days to decide whether to file suit against Facebook, but the parties are still in negotiations, the Facebook spokesman said. The Monday deadline “was never for implementing the changes,” but simply to make proposals, he said. The company previewed its proposals to Stoddart’s office last week and was scheduled to formally submit them Monday afternoon, though they won’t be made public because of the back-and-forth nature of the talks, he said. A spokeswoman for Stoddart’s office confirmed the timeline. It has 45 days to go to court to challenge violations, and gave Facebook 30 days to respond. “We continue to have positive discussions with Facebook,” she said. “We are hopeful that Facebook has responded to the concerns we raised in our investigation report, but we're not in a position to determine that at this time -- we need to review their actions thoroughly.”

The Consortium for Energy Efficiency urged the EPA to “develop a more explicit rationale” for the energy use cap it has proposed for large TVs in version 5.0 of the Energy Star specification that’s set to take effect in 2012. The consumption cap will have “broader potential implications” across the Energy Star program, the group said. So the agency should come up with a “set of criteria that define the circumstances under which a consumption cap might be appropriate for an Energy Star product,” it said.

The group that has lobbied for low-power TV stations since 1985 blamed its going out of business recently(CD Aug 14 p10) on inaction by lawmakers and regulators on DTV, carriage and digital equipment funding issues. The group, the Community Broadcasters Association, had long warned that additional low-power stations would close and the industry could face financial ruin without government intervention (CD March 9 p6). But the association said it shut down because it was running a budget deficit and members wouldn’t agree to a surcharge to cover it.

The Justice Department has again waded into the constitutional squabble over whether statutory damages for copyright infringement violate due process. This time it’s facing off against a judge known to be skeptical of the federal law authorizing the $750-to-$150,000 range per infringed work. The department filed a brief Friday defending the range for damages in P2P defendant Jammie Thomas-Rasset’s appeal of a $1.92 million verdict against her.

The group that has lobbied for low-power TV stations since 1985 blamed its going out of business recently (CED Aug 14 p6) on inaction by lawmakers and regulators on DTV, carriage and digital equipment funding issues. The group, the Community Broadcasters Association, had long warned that additional low-power stations would close and the industry could face financial ruin without government intervention (CED March 3/08 p2). But the association said it shut down because it was running a budget deficit and members wouldn’t agree to a surcharge to cover it.

Judicial Watch sued the FCC over a Freedom of Information Act Request seeking communications between the White House and the commission about the delay in the DTV switchover. Judicial Watch sought “any records concerning the decision to delay” the switch and “any and all records of communication” between the White House and commission about putting off the switch, it said in a lawsuit filed at the U.S. District Court in Washington. The FCC fulfilled the first part of the request with volumes of heavily blacked-out material, but it told Judicial Watch it would need to check with the White House before releasing the documents, the lawsuit said. Judicial Watch is concerned that political motivations besides protecting consumers affected by the switch were at play in the decision to delay, said President Tom Fritton. “We're not pursuing the FOIA necessarily just to get more information about the DTV transition, but to uncover whether or not there was any corruption behind the decision to delay the transition,” he said. Judicial Watch is concerned the delay may have given a leg up to Clearwire by delaying Verizon and AT&T’s access to 700 MHz spectrum. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., raised those concerns in February and questioned Clearwire Executive Vice President Gerard Salemme’s involvement with federal DTV policy (CD Feb 4 p8).