FCC Chairman Kevin Martin held his ground against strong bipartisan criticism at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing Thursday of his plan for a vote Tuesday on broadcast ownership rules, saying the proceeding has long been under way and needs to be completed. Martin said Democratic commissioners urging delay favor a process that would take several months, postponing action on a “contentious” rulemaking already overdue. Martin said he’s “open” to colleagues’ suggestions before the meeting but plans to proceed.

The European Commission authorized a French tax credit aimed at encouraging videogame creation, it said. The tax credit may be granted only to videogames that meet standards of “quality, originality and contributing to cultural diversity,” it said, adding that “after an in-depth investigation that began in 2006,” it decided that the measure “qualifies for the exemption provided for by the EC Treaty for aid to promote culture.” The tax credit, approved for four years, will enable videogame manufacturers taxed in France to deduct up to 20 percent of the production costs of some games, the EC said. European game software development trade association Tiga gave the decision a thumbs up, saying it believed the credit “would be applicable to more than 50 percent of games made in Europe this year.” Tiga had supported French developers and the government in applying for support to the industry, it said, and it gave the European Commission information on state aid elsewhere and argued that the EC “needed to support its own industries in the face of market distorting state aids being applied by Canada and other territories in the world.” Separately, the provincial Viennese government voted in favor of making the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system mandatory for videogames under the Viennese Youth Protection Act. PEGI is similar to the Entertainment Software Rating Board system in the U.S. The Austrian Entertainment Software Association was “closely involved” in the decision-making process, along with PEGI’s developer, the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, the groups said in a joint statement with the government. A final resolution is expected to be go in January from the committee of the Youth, Education, Information and Sport business group to the provincial Parliament, they said. Vienna’s amendment requires that videogames can be sold only to those of the ages they're rated for. Viennese authorities raised the subject at a Family and Youth State Consultants’ meeting to achieve a pan-Austrian agreement beyond the Youth Protection Act coordinated between Vienna, Lower Austria and the Burgenland. The amendment was based on recommendations of a task force, consisting of experts in various specialist areas as well as all parties represented on the municipal council, the government said.

Internet users seeking federal information better know just where to look, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee heard Tuesday in a review of federal efforts to make material more accessible under 2002’s E-Government Act. More agencies are using social technologies to improve their work, as seen in the intelligence community’s Intellipedia wiki, but neglect “relatively simple” steps that would make their sites more user-friendly, said Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn. His five-year reauthorization bill for the E-Government Act (S- 2321) won committee approval last month. It would require “regular review, reporting and testing” to ensure agencies are making information easy to locate, he said.

The FCC is run in an open way, fair to the public and other commissioners, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., in a Dec. 10 letter released Tuesday. Responding to Dingell’s request for information on agency operations, Martin said Commission “processes and decision-making time frames remain essentially the same” as those set nearly 10 years ago by former Democratic Chairman William Kennard.

It would be “premature and legally barred” for the FCC to approve a government agency request for three toll-free suicide prevention hotline numbers without first acting on a pending request for review of a related decision, said Kirstin Brooks Hope Center. The center filed for review shortly after the FCC’s Wireline Bureau temporary reassignment in January of Hope Center numbers to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration. SAMHSA now wants the numbers assigned permanently. “The SAMHSA petition cannot be granted without having the direct and immediate effect of denying the KBHC application for review,” the center said in comments filed Friday. “The Commission must first resolve the issues raised by KBHC.” The dispute arose last year after KBHC fell behind in payments to telecom carrier, Patriot Communications, and SAMHSA raised concern about Hope Center’s financial ability to operate the numbers.

A federal appeals court Friday rejected challenges to a controversial March 2006 FCC “deemed granted” approval of a Verizon forbearance petition (CD Oct 16 p1). Verizon’s petition was approved automatically when the FCC, down one member and deadlocked 2-2, missed a statutory deadline to act. Verizon wanted forbearance from regulation of broadband services offered to businesses.

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has issued a press release announcing that in November it met with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) for the first Japan-U.S. Conference on Product Safety, with discussions on an accident information reporting system, among other things. (METI press release, dated 11/20/07, available at http://www.meti.go.jp/english/newtopics/data/nBackIssue20071120_01.html)

If the FCC doesn’t open up its rulemaking procedures Congress may step in, David Cavicke, minority counsel for the House Commerce Committee, said Tuesday at an FCBA conference just before a Hill hearing on related issues. The Senate Commerce Committee wants a more open regulatory process, said committee majority counsel James Assey. The committee will take up that issue and matters at an oversight hearing next week, Assey said, adding that Congress and the public need to be better informed about commission “process.”

Higher penalties for ISPs and Web sites found not to have notified the government immediately of child porn on their servers are a step closer to law. The House passed the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online (SAFE) Act (HR- 3791) under suspension of the rules. Another bill sponsored by Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Tex., passed late Wednesday, would double funding for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. At a news conference before the votes, Lampson, other sponsors, NCMEC and John Walsh of America’s Most Wanted criticized service providers that aren’t reporting to NCMEC. They also chided Congress for lagging in funding another Internet child safety law, enacted in 2006.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told fellow commissioners in an official communication that the agency won’t vote at the Dec. 18 agenda meeting on rules for emergency alert system warnings to cellphones and other wireless devices. Martin hopes for a vote before the meeting, though some fellow commissioners still are studying concerns raised by wireless carriers, sources said Tuesday.