E-mail, text messages and dedicated websites are gaining legitimacy as ways to provide notice to plaintiffs in class actions, but preferences in the law and even statutory bans are keeping electronic communications from taking over from conventional media like first-class mail and newspapers, speakers said on a Web and phone seminar Wednesday.
The European Parliament flexed its political muscle on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement Wednesday, approving a statement opposing the lack of openness in its negotiations. The successful declaration, a “rare event” which signals the strength of parliament’s bargaining power, will be sent to the EU Presidency before the next ACTA round at the end of this month in Tokyo, said Françoise Castex, of France and the Socialists and Democrats.
Federal agencies’ slow path in transitioning to Networx, the largest government telecom program, could leave the government few options but to negotiate temporary contracts and to raise fees to agencies to accelerate progress, Networx vendors said in interviews. The current FTS2001 (Federal Technology Service) contracts expired this summer with a continuity of service clause providing an additional year of service to June 2011. Quite a few agencies might not be able to meet the 2011 deadline and the General Service Administration is still evaluating the best solution for those that will miss the deadline, said Karl Krumbholz, director of the network services program at GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service.
The FCC is unlikely to act on Tribune’s request to transfer radio and TV licenses and waivers of cross-ownership rules banning common ownership of broadcasters and daily newspapers in the same market until pending bankruptcy issues are resolved, agency and industry officials predicted. Work by career commission staffers reviewing the deal for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 appears to have been slowed down because senior creditors of the company that were set to take control of it have abandoned that deal, they said. The officials said the regulator may be reviewing some elements of Tribune’s long-form application -- put out for public comment in May -- that aren’t directly affected by disagreement over bankruptcy emergence by creditors.
Wireline and wireless carriers said the FCC should back away from the controversial finding in its most recent Section 706 report that the commission couldn’t conclude broadband is being deployed to all Americans in a “reasonable and timely” way (CD July 21 p1). But Free Press said the commission was on the right track when it approved its sixth broadband deployment report during the summer and the seventh report should have the same finding. CTIA said the sixth report put too much emphasis on the speed of connections, to the detriment of wireless.
The U.S. may have dropped its demand that ISPs bear some liability for online infringement, but key provisions in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) remain controversial after last month’s negotiations in Washington, said a professor monitoring the talks. The latest ACTA draft was supposed to be kept confidential but leaked over the weekend. Fears persist of a “back-door” requirement of a graduated response to Internet piracy, overly restrictive anti-circumvention provisions, and criminal sanctions, said Michael Geist, University of Ottawa Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law, and others watching the talks.
A draft FCC order ties the E-Rate index to inflation and lets schools and libraries lease dark fiber from utility companies other than telcos, advisors to three commissioners said. The proposed order circulated Thursday by Chairman Julius Genachowski would also make permanent a temporary provision that allows communities to use schools’ and libraries’ systems after hours, the aides said. Genachowski is seeking a vote on the order at the Sept. 23 meeting.
The public-safety sector remains resilient despite state budget problems, Motorola Co-CEO Greg Brown said at Citigroup’s technology conference Tuesday. Meanwhile, the manufacturer is teaming up with Ericsson to create a unified public safety platform that will enable real-time information-sharing between command centers and remote devices, the company said.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Pay-TV operators and vendors are working on new on-screen guides to keep up with the pace of innovation of over-the-top services such as Netflix Watch Instantly and Apple TV, executives at the Set Top Box Conference said last week. But they diverged on how consumers will want to navigate all the programming choices after operators integrate DVR, VOD and online video options into a single user-interface.
Broadcasters’ arguments against the use of an indoor antenna standard to determine significantly viewed signal eligibility are “all either non-existent or easy to resolve,” Dish Network and DirecTV said in reply comments with the FCC. The two DBS companies get congressional intent wrong when they seek to change proposed FCC rules implementing STELA so indoor antennas can be used, a wide array of broadcasters said in docket 10-152. Broadcasters and DBS disagree whether indoor antennas can be used to test if a subscriber can’t receive terrestrial signals from a local TV station and so is eligible to get a distant station affiliated with the same network (CD Aug 26 p2). The law requires the commission to act by Nov. 23.