The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has issued a notice announcing that pursuant to a request of the European Communities, the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB) of the World Trade Organization has established a compliance panel concerning the U.S. implementation of a 2005 WTO panel finding that the following were inconsistent with U.S. WTO obligations:

In the November 21, 2007 issue of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Bulletin(Vol. 41, No. 48), CBP published a notice proposing to modify a ruling and revoke a treatment as follows:

Tuesday’s FCC meeting was twice delayed as commissioners negotiated over a finding in a coming report to Congress that cable operators have surpassed a threshold that would allow additional regulation by the commission, Chairman Kevin Martin said. He told reporters that other commissioners are reviewing his compromise plan. Under it, the agency would require the companies to report data to help determine whether the so-called 70/70 test has been met. Most of the commissioners have been skeptical of data in the 2006 Video Competition Report that the Media Bureau said show more than 70 percent of U.S. homes passed by systems with 36 or more channels buy cable (CD Nov 15 p3). “Obviously, a lot of the commissioners had raised concerns about that previously,” Martin said.

Chinese online game company Giant Interactive said it’s innocent of allegations in a suit by disgruntled shareholders that it violated securities laws. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court, Manhattan, seeks class-action status. Giant’s primary title is the free-to-play massively multiplayer online game ZT Online. The suit -- filed by Pyramid Holdings on behalf of it and other Giant shareholders -- claimed Giant and certain of its officers and directors violated the Securities Act of 1933 by making “inaccurate statements” about its business prior to making an initial public offering of stock early this month. Also named in the suit were Merrill Lynch and UBS Investment Bank, the lead underwriters of Giant’s IPO, who weren’t immediately available for comment Tuesday. More than 57 million shares of Giant’s American Depositary Shares were sold to the public at $15.50 per ADS, raising more than $886 million for the company. The suit claimed Giant’s registration statement and prospectus for the IPO failed to disclose the company had experienced a decline in average concurrent users (ACU) and peak concurrent users (PCU) in its third quarter due to a significant rule change for ZT Online. Giant, after the market closed Nov. 19, announced the game’s ACU fell 6 percent to 481,000 in Q3 from Q2, while the PCU 17.2 percent to 888,000. Giant then told analysts in a conference call the declines were because of a rule change implemented to discourage “gold farming” activity, in which a player aggressively attempts to acquire gold or other valuable items in a game, often to sell those items for a profit, the suit said. Although Giant mentioned the Q3 ACU and PCU figures, the suit complained the company “did not explain or describe the rule change in any meaningful fashion, did not highlight the negative trend in ACU and PCU and did not disclose the negative impact that the rule change was having at the time of the IPO.” Giant shares tumbled from $14.88 per share to $11.10 after the earnings announcement and conference call, the suit said. The plaintiff requested a jury trial and is looking to recover unspecified damages on behalf of all purchasers of Giant Interactive common stock during the class period, Nov. 1-19. Also requested was that Giant pay for the plaintiff’s legal expenses. The plaintiff is being represented by the law firm of Coughlin Stoia.

Commissioners will vote Tuesday on whether to adopt media ownership proposals (CD July 31 p1) by the Minority Media & Telecommunications Council and others to help people of color buy TV and radio stations, two FCC officials said. They said an order that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin circulated Nov. 15 would approve many of the minority ownership plans and deny or seek additional comment on others. The order and a related further-rulemaking notice deal with 34 minority ownership proposals the commission sought public comment on Aug. 2 in its media ownership review, FCC officials said.

The Communications Act doesn’t allow the FCC to mandate program carriage on pay TV “absent a showing of wrongdoing,” DirecTV said. If the commission follows through on proposals for program carriage, DirecTV “would raise our subscriber’s rates, force us to drop channels (which could include other unaffiliated channels), and hinder our ability to roll out high-definition channels, which in turn would harm the digital transition,” Stacy Fuller, DirecTV vice president of regulatory affairs, told Amy Blankenship, advisor to Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate. “DirecTV already has every incentive to carry programming its subscribers want,” according to an ex parte filed about the Nov. 16 phone call.

The FCC has been considering digital-TV public interest rules since 1995, a year longer than it’s been engaged in media cross-ownership proceedings, the Benton Foundation and Campaign Legal Center wrote Commissioner Robert McDowell Tuesday. Monday, McDowell asked if anyone knew of an agency proceeding that’s taken longer than the cross-ownership review and its various incarnations (CD Nov 20 p1). The commission should finish the public interest proceeding before acting on Chairman Kevin Martin’s proposal that the FCC partly lift a 32-year ban on cross-ownership in the largest 20 markets, wrote Benton Chairman Charles Benton and Campaign Legal Center Policy Director Meredith McGehee. TV stations already must serve community education, information, civic and minority needs, they wrote. “Further guidance from the FCC is necessary to clarify how these public interest obligations apply to DTV broadcasters and to answer outstanding questions raised by the increased technological capabilities of the digital medium.”

A majority of commissioners are likely to approve a controversial order from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin that would revamp the rates that cable operators can charge to lease channel capacity to independent programmers, agency sources said. The FCC confirmed Tuesday that the commissioners will vote on the order at their Nov. 27 meeting, along with several other cable rulemakings drawing scrutiny from members of Congress and some commissioners (CD Nov 14 p2). The leased access order would cut the maximum monthly price that cable operators can charge for leased access to 10 cents a subscriber from 40 cents, FCC officials said. Martin told an October conference that he wants to slash leased access fees to help independent programmers.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff gave a keynote speech on November 15, 2007 at U.S. Customs and Border Protection's 2007 Trade Symposium in Washington, D.C., where he spoke on the security partnership between the government and private sector, and the importance of layering and risk management.

Some network-neutrality rule backers hope to see recent headlines on network operators’ traffic-management methods move the FCC to act favorably on a series of petitions and complaints. Web video distributor Vuze.com asked the FCC Thursday to open a rulemaking that sets “parameters of reasonable network management” and bars network management strategies that “block, degrade or unreasonably discriminate against lawful Internet applications, content or technologies.” Vuze’s petition closely follows complaints by public interest and consumer groups over Comcast handling of some peer-to-peer file transfers (WID Nov 2 p4).