Several groups representing state government entities urged the FCC not to pre-empt North Carolina and Tennessee state laws restricting municipal broadband deployment, saying in filings posted Tuesday that pre-emption would constitute bad public policy. They also said the FCC doesn’t have authority under Telecom Act Section 706 to pre-empt state laws. Pre-emption opponents have repeatedly said the FCC can’t use Section 706 as a basis for granting pre-emption petitions from the Electric Bower Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the city of Wilson, North Carolina (CD Sept 2 p2). Comments in the two proceedings -- dockets 14-115 and 14-116 -- were due Friday. Other pre-emption opponents and supporters who filed comments also noted the public policy implications of the petitions.

The FCC opted to put a heavier burden on satellite operators to pay the regulatory fees that fund agency operations, in an order released Friday. The agency did not make any decisions on whether to reallocate agency employees for the purpose of calculating fees after the wireless industry raised concerns.

A federal appellate court reviewed one of the key challenges issued in the past year to the U.S. government’s bulk collection of phone metadata under Patriot Act Section 215. The American Civil Liberties Union faced off Tuesday in oral argument against Assistant Attorney General Stuart Delery in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York for ACLU v. Clapper. Judges expressed skepticism about certain government arguments for why it needed such bulk collection, all while repeatedly considering the status of congressional and Obama administration efforts to overhaul surveillance law.

Pandora’s request for the FCC to waive foreign ownership rules so it can buy its first terrestrial radio station to get lower royalty rates could lead to further commission relaxation of such rules, said industry lawyers in interviews this and last week. The FCC should update its rules for foreign broadcast ownership to make it easier for “widely-traded, public entities” to comply, said NAB in response (http://bit.ly/1rLcegy) to Pandora’s petition for a declaratory ruling that it can buy KXMZ(FM) Box Elder, South Dakota, despite being unable to determine how many of its many shareholders are U.S. citizens. Comments were posted Thursday in docket 14-109 in response to Pandora’s petition to be allowed 100 percent foreign ownership (CD July 2 p6). The current rules are slanted to make it more likely that publicly traded companies will be treated as foreign owned, and changing them would be in line with the FCC’s relaxation of foreign ownership restrictions last year, said Minority Media and Telecommunications Council President David Honig, who supported relaxing the rules.

The FCC lacks Communications Act Section 706 authority to pre-empt state laws that pose obstacles to municipal broadband projects, said groups including the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL). USTelecom flipped the debate, arguing that the agency should use the pre-emption authority it does have to remove local governments’ barriers to private investment.

The FCC approved a waiver of its former defaulter rule, which requires bidders to make larger upfront payments for licenses if they ever defaulted on a license or were delinquent on a debt owed to a federal agency (CD June 3 p1). The order largely tracks rules proposed by the Competitive Carriers Association, CTIA and NTCA in a recent filing (http://bit.ly/1v3cHMo), FCC officials said Friday.

Some radio broadcasters and state broadcaster associations urged the FCC not to create an additional burden on radio stations by requiring them to provide public inspection files online, in comments in docket 14-127 on a public notice on whether to adopt such a rule for radio stations. Some public media entities argued against including noncommercial educational (NCE) stations in the regime. The notice also sought comment on whether to extend the requirement to cable- and satellite-TV operators. NCTA asked the FCC to explore how it can modify online filing rules to fit cable’s obligations.

Despite dire predictions and concerns, online advertisers are no longer worried about the imminent downfall of cookie-based tracking, they said in interviews last week. In December, Interactive Advertising Bureau General Counsel Mike Zaneis told us a swift downfall of the cookie -- precipitated by browser operators and the ongoing Do Not Track (DNT) discussions -- was “the biggest issue facing the digital advertising space.”

California’s enactment of the Smartphone Theft Prevention Act (SB-962) and recent industry commitments will likely result in anti-theft kill switch technology in smartphones nationwide, but that may not entirely quell interest in enacting further legislation at the federal and state levels, lawmakers and industry observers told us. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed SB-962 into law last week, requiring all smartphones sold in the state after July 1, 2015, to be pre-equipped with a kill switch that can be activated if the device is lost or stolen (CD Aug 27 p14).

Recent renewals of network affiliation agreements, some early, seem to demonstrate that networks will stay out of the upcoming broadcast spectrum incentive auction, some attorneys said in interviews. LIN Media signed long-term agreements with CBS to renew affiliations in 10 markets, LIN said Thursday in a news release (http://bit.ly/1qkXRfg). A CBS affiliate in Indianapolis will move from LIN’s WISH-TV to Tribune’s WTTV (CD Aug 12 p12) and Gray Television signed renewal agreements with CBS and Fox (CD Aug 26 p15). Any intent to participate in the auction would require setting terms in contract agreements, an attorney said. The companies had no comment on that.