Internet service providers’ voluntary agreements with state attorneys general to cooperate more closely on child porn highlight the role of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The federally-funded nonprofit center seems to taking on duties usually handled by police agencies and its activities raised serious due-process questions, critics told us.

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has announced that the U.S., together with Japan and Chinese Taipei, have requested the World Trade Organization to establish a dispute settlement panel (DSP) to review whether the European Union has failed to accord duty-free treatment to certain products covered by the WTO Information Technology Agreement (ITA)¹ and thus entitled to such treatment.

Wireless Communications Association board members said Wednesday the group hired former FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Fred Campbell as acting president to bring new leadership as WiMAX nears commercialization, they said Wednesday. Campbell, a former top aide to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, replaced long-time president Andrew Kreig. Campbell, along with Hank Hultquist, an AT&T vice president, and Mark Pagon, CEO of Pegasus Communications, met Wednesday with reporters to discuss his hiring.

Council Tree won support for its federal court challenge to FCC designated entity rules from other DEs and public interest groups, which filed an amicus brief in the case. Council Tree, Bethel Native Corp. and the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council asked the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to vacate the AWS-1 and 700 MHz auction results. The court has not set oral arguments in the case, pending there in one form or another more than two years.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Thompson sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff stating that DHS is trying to undermine congressional intent to fully scan 100% of all U.S.-bound maritime cargo.

Innovation stands to suffer from government involvement in network management, broadcast localism and cable a la carte, Meredith Baker, NTIA acting assistant secretary, told the Progress & Freedom Foundation on Sunday evening. “The right policies can unlock private investment and innovation in the telecom and technology sectors, and… others can close off access to the resources necessary for advancement,” she said, according to her prepared remarks. She disputed an FCC decision to chastise Comcast for its handling of peer-to-peer file transfers on its network using the BitTorrent protocol. A better approach would have been to give industry more time to devise a solution through collaborative organizations and processes such as produced the Internet’s success, she said. “Such an approach would have been consistent with the Administration’s principals outlined by Commerce Secretary Gutierrez in May -- namely, that government should avoid prescriptive rules that can’t keep pace with technological change and that inhibit investment in new Internet capacity,” Baker said. “A hands-off approach has helped the cable TV industry and new efforts to regulate the way programmers sell bundles of programming networks to distributors raise questions about whether it would benefit consumers or pass constitutional muster. And then there’s the whole separate question of the First Amendment.” Likewise, now is not the time to saddle broadcasters with more regulation, she said, citing proposals for localism mandates. “If these proposals are finalized, more resources will be tied up in regulatory compliance and fewer on local programming,” she said. “There is something distinctly counter-intuitive in today’s vast and diverse media marketplace to suggest that regulation broadcasters will serve local communities better than competition.”

The FCC circulated an order dismissing an OrbitCom forbearance request before it made the carrier’s petition public, acting nearly a year after Orbitcom filed the petition. The agency never posted a public notice seeking comment. The 12-month statutory forbearance deadline is Aug. 27. The situation raises red flags about FCC openness and the forbearance process, industry officials said in interviews.

A federal appeals court ruling that Cablevision’s “remote DVR” service doesn’t infringe programmer copyrights (CD Aug 6 p6) is giving the Copyright Office pause. The office moved to Aug. 28 from Aug. 15 a deadline for comments on its notice of proposed rulemaking on section 115 of the Copyright Act. The office suggested that compulsory licenses -- perhaps set at a royalty rate of zero -- are required for incidental copies of songs, sometimes called buffer or server copies, made during Internet streaming. The office said in its Federal Register notice that it fielded requests for more time to comment due to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings. That decision reversed a lower court ruling the Copyright Office cited in its section 115 rulemaking notice, the new notice said. “The Office agrees that the ruling in the Cartoon Network case may be pertinent to the issues raised in this rulemaking and that interested parties should be given sufficient time in which to consider and comment upon the implications of that ruling,” it said. The Copyright Office set a Sept. 19 hearing in its rulemaking.

A federal appeals court ruling that Cablevision’s “remote DVR” service doesn’t infringe programmer copyrights is giving the Copyright Office pause. The office moved to Aug. 28 from Aug. 15 a deadline for comments on its notice of proposed rulemaking on section 115 of the Copyright Act. The office suggested that compulsory licenses -- perhaps set at a royalty rate of zero -- are required for incidental copies of songs, sometimes called buffer or server copies, made during Internet streaming (WID July 18 p5). The office said in its Federal Register notice that it fielded requests for more time to comment due to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Cartoon Network v. CSC Holdings. That decision reversed a lower court ruling the Copyright Office cited in its section 115 rulemaking notice, the new notice said. “The Office agrees that the ruling in the Cartoon Network case may be pertinent to the issues raised in this rulemaking and that interested parties should be given sufficient time in which to consider and comment upon the implications of that ruling,” it said. The Copyright Office set a Sept. 19 hearing in its rulemaking.

Wireless carriers choosing not to send emergency alerts to subscribers must warn customers of that with “clear and conspicuous notice” at the carrier store, kiosk or any other place service is sold, the agency said late Thursday. The FCC will hold carriers responsible for ensuring that distributors who sell their service indirectly likewise post notice, it said. Carriers can’t impose a separate charge to offset the costs of the warnings, but can charge more for service, the agency said. The FCC action was required by the WARN Act.