AT&T warned that the FCC is on perilous legal ground in approving rules for E-911 location measurement before it wrapped up a broader rulemaking. Carriers are widely expected to challenge the Sept. 11 order in federal court (CD Sept 11 Special Bulletin). Carriers were upset last week when the FCC established a five-year deadline, with benchmarks, for measuring success in locating wireless E- 911 callers at the public safety answering point (PSAP) level rather than using statewide averaging. The FCC action was stage one of a two-part E-911 rulemaking, which focused on measurement standards. Reply comments in the next phase, looking at broader E-911 issues, were due this week.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said Wednesday that emergency alerts on cellphones should target smaller areas than just counties. Martin briefly attended a meeting of the Commercial Mobile Service Alert Advisory Committee and urged the group to give that issue special attention as it prepares to vote on a final report to the commission.

Speakers on an FCBA-sponsored panel portrayed the special access market in very different ways Tuesday, as they debated whether it should be reformed. The market lacks competition and prices are way too high, said a lawyer representing big business customers. There’s plenty of competition and prices have been dropping, responded an attorney speaking for incumbent telecom companies.

The CEA endorsed the Media Bureau’s June rejection of NCTA’s CableCARD waiver request (CD Special Bulletin June 29 p1) and asked the FCC not to decide differently. In July, the NCTA asked the FCC to overturn the bureau’s dismissal of its request to exempt all cable operators from the set-top box navigation and security integration ban. The bureau’s “arbitrary and capricious” move didn’t treat pay-TV providers alike, NCTA said. But the CEA said Friday in an FCC filing that in seeking commission review, the NCTA raised no legal issues that hadn’t been dealt with in its initial request. In its dismissal, the bureau acted correctly under section 629 of the Telecommunications Act, trying to get cable operators to create a retail market for set-tops “on an incremental basis,” the CEA said. “In almost every year since 1996, NCTA has argued that the Commission must apply its device competition rules” to every pay-TV provider “at once, or not at all,” the CEA said. “The Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit affirmed the Commission’s rejection of this argument,” it said, citing a 2006 ruling in Charter v. FCC. The group added: “Even if the Commission had some rule forbidding an incremental approach (and it does not), there is no evidence of any disparate impact on cable.”

Net neutrality isn’t dead, but it’s being discussed in a broader context, Democratic congressional aides said Monday at the Future of Music Policy Summit in Washington. “The sword of Damocles” hangs over Internet service providers in the form of congressional oversight, said Kenneth DeGraff, aide to House Internet Subcommittee Vice Chairman Mike Doyle, D-Pa. But DeGraff said he fears that outright blocking of Vonage by Madison River, which set off the neutrality debate, may be the last such overt episode of abuse, with future instances of network discrimination invisible to technical staff, never mind to Congress.

The Justice Department served SanDisk CEO Eli Harari with a grand jury subpoena seeking his testimony in its probe whether NAND flash-memory prices were fixed, SanDisk said Friday in an SEC filing. SanDisk also got notice from the Canadian Competition Bureau that it’s investigating “anti-competitive activity” by companies selling NAND memory in Canada, SanDisk said.

A compromise FCC order giving wireless carriers five years to upgrade systems before their success in locating callers will be measured at the public safety answering point (PSAP) level (CD Sept 11 Special Bulletin) landed with a thud among carriers. The FCC approved the order late Tuesday in an unusual night meeting.

Free Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request at the Justice Department for information that it contends could show that “industry lobbyists or White House politics unduly influenced” the agency’s recent filing at the FCC, opposing net neutrality regulations (WID Sept 7 p3). The Justice filing was suspiciously late in the FCC’s broadband practices proceeding, said Free Press General Counsel Marvin Ammori. “The filing lacks any evidence of serious investigation… and fits into a pattern of politically motivated decisions coming out of the Justice Department.” Free Press, like the Media Access Project, also raised the likelihood that domestic surveillance will result from not imposing net- neutrality rules. “Actions taken against privacy and the open Internet by AT&T and the Bush administration are precisely why we need to make net neutrality the law,” said Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott. The group said the Bush administration hurt universal Internet access by opposing net neutrality.

Free Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request at the Justice Department for information that it contends could show that “industry lobbyists or White House politics unduly influenced” the agency’s recent filing at the FCC, opposing net neutrality regulations (CD Sept 7 p4). The Justice filing was suspiciously late in the FCC’s broadband practices proceeding, said Free Press General Counsel Marvin Ammori. “The filing lacks any evidence of serious investigation… and fits into a pattern of politically motivated decisions coming out of the Justice Department.” Free Press, like the Media Access Project, also raised the likelihood that domestic surveillance will result from not imposing net- neutrality rules. “Actions taken against privacy and the open Internet by AT&T and the Bush administration are precisely why we need to make net neutrality the law,” said Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott. The group said the Bush administration hurt universal Internet access by opposing net neutrality.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The Sony Betamax case is out and copyright-infringement filtering requirements are in for image-search engines and other Web sites that host third- party content. The leading attorney for Hollywood rights holders said that’s the message of rulings since spring by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. A defense lawyer who is one of his most prominent adversaries conceded that the cases make the outlook bleak for his side.