Collecting mobile broadband data is the easy part; what FCC officials really worry about is cleansing it. As the FCC and measuring firm SamKnows plan to record data on mobile broadband usage, officials are focused on developing privacy policies to protect personal information “without compromising the richness of the data set,” said SamKnows representative Alex Salter in a meeting Wednesday on the nascent mobile measurement program. The U.K.-based firm has a contract to help with data collection through 2013.

Several leading Democrats on the House Judiciary IP Subcommittee questioned in a hearing Wednesday why broadcasters do not compensate performance artists for music played on terrestrial radio broadcasts. Though the hearing focused on the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) (HR-6480), the Pandora-backed bill aimed at bringing parity to the royalty rates paid by Internet, satellite and cable broadcasters, several members said the legislation fails to address the lack of royalty payments to performance artists whose music is played on broadcast airwaves. Republicans were largely silent on the issue of broadcaster compensation for performance artists, though some said they would like to see a market-based, comprehensive solution for all the stakeholders involved.

Widespread, successful ad-brokerage agreements among separately owned TV stations in the same market are leading some executives to question why the FCC wants to make attributable to the broadcaster controlling the joint sales agreements such JSAs. There are more than 100 stations in such deals, where one often lower-rated and smaller revenue outlet lets a bigger rival sell ads and they share office space and other clerical functions, our survey of brokers, lawyers and executives found. They said JSAs have become more prevalent in recent years, particularly among stations in small and mid-size markets.

Wednesday’s House Intellectual Property Subcommittee hearing on music royalty rates could set the tone for the expected debate in the next Congress over how terrestrial, cable, satellite and Internet radio should pay music royalties to artists and record labels, industry officials predicted. The subject of the hearing will be the Internet Radio Fairness Act (IRFA) (HR-6480), sponsored by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and backed by Pandora.

When AT&T asked the FCC this month to launch a proceeding on the transition from time-division multiplexing to Internet Protocol networks (CD Nov 8 p11), the telco worked “very consciously” to avoid instigating a partisan battle, said James Cicconi, AT&T senior executive vice president, at a Brookings Institution panel Tuesday on broadband as a catalyst for the digital economy (http://xrl.us/bn3r2d). Panelists called for a rethinking of the FCC’s power to review mergers, changes to the USF system, and agency acknowledgment of the legitimacy of wireless service as a substitute for wired broadband.

The Communications Workers of America union wants conditions that assure no jobs will be lost if Deutsche Telekom is allowed to buy MetroPCS, to merge it with DT’s U.S. carrier, T-Mobile. In contrast to other recently proposed mergers, the T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal has seen little official opposition. Petitions to deny were due Monday at the FCC. As of our deadline Tuesday, the only major concerns were expressed by CWA, which has long had a rocky relationship with T-Mobile. But it filed comments rather than a formal petition to deny. CWA sought the same protections for carrier workers in connection with the failed AT&T/T-Mobile deal.

An order circulating at the FCC on rules to give Dish Network authority to deploy a terrestrial service doesn’t include restrictions on selling or leasing AWS-4 spectrum to other entities, and the buildout timeframe and out-of-band emissions (OOBE) limits mainly are in line with what was outlined in the notice of proposed rulemaking, some FCC officials said.

Cybersecurity solutions that rely on collaboration between the federal government and the private sector should look to the Electricity Subsector Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (ES-C2M2), officials said on a Tuesday panel on public-private cybersecurity solutions. The ES-C2M2, released earlier this year (http://xrl.us/bn3rmo), is a collaborative effort from the White House, the departments of Energy and Homeland Security and private companies to identify cybersecurity weaknesses, strengths and priorities and provide best practices for electric grid operators and utility companies. The ES-C2M2 allows the federal government and private companies “to understand what capabilities are really required to be able to manage the dynamic threats to the grid,” said Samara Moore, White House cybersecurity director for critical infrastructure within the National Security Staff.

The Internet Radio Fairness Act won’t solve the core problems in the music performance market, namely lack of true competition, said a new report by a group that sometimes opposes regulation. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation said the royalty system envisioned by the bicameral bills introduced in September favors “the status quo over innovation in the music and broadcasting industries.” The bill “doesn’t address inter-platform competition, intra-platform competition, or inter-music competition, all of which suffer in the current royalty system,” ITIF Senior Analyst Daniel Castro wrote.

A 2013 treaty conference on copyright exceptions for the visually impaired moved a step closer at the meeting of the World Intellectual Property Organization Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR) that ended Friday. Details continued to be debated. But the committee approved a “draft text of an international instrument/treaty on limitations and exceptions for visually impaired persons/persons with print disabilities” and recommended that an extraordinary General Assembly Dec. 17-18 decide “whether to convene a diplomatic conference in 2013 to adopt a legal instrument/treaty."