Make the Internet economy a part of U.S. trade negotiation, several members of Congress said Tuesday. They sent a letter, signed by Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., and 17 other members of both parties, to U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman. Polis’s office called for “a balanced approach to our intellectual property framework” and wants “increased transparency in our trade negotiations,” a press release said of the letter’s demands (http://1.usa.gov/11KkWgl). The letter said the trade priorities would help facilitate innovation and touched on the many objections to the failed Stop Online Piracy Act.

An analyst said an FCC UHF ownership discount review, which “might take some time,” may “undergo further delay given incoming personnel” of Chairman nominee Tom Wheeler and Michael O'Rielly, a Republican who President Barack Obama said last week he will nominate to be the agency’s fifth member. News that an NPRM on reducing the discount is circulating (CD Aug 6 p1) is causing “uncertainty” among investors in publicly traded broadcast companies, with some of their shares falling Tuesday, wrote Wells Fargo’s Marci Ryvicker. “Given that this pending proposal is not in response to M&A, we do not anticipate the FCC holding up subsequent deals should they arise,” she wrote of mergers and acquisitions. “We don’t think the FCC wants to set precedent based on one or two transactions.” Most TV station owners are “WELL BELOW the 39 percent coverage limit” of nationwide reach, Ryvicker wrote, citing LIN at 11 percent, Nexstar at 14 percent and Gray Television at 6 percent. At Tuesday’s stock market close, Gray fell 3.6 percent to $7.59, LIN fell 3.6 percent to $15.15 and Nexstar fell 3.9 percent to $35.49, and some stocks had fallen by a larger percentage earlier in the day.

Fisher Communications shareholders approved the company’s takeover by Sinclair, said Fisher in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/156dE3u). It said about 77 percent of total outstanding common shares eligible to vote approved. The April deal is worth about $375 million (CD April 12 p14).

CEA is sponsoring a new “Trolling Effects” website that will allow entities that receive demand letters from “patent trolls” to post the documents online. The website will also allow individuals to research “exactly who is really behind these threats,” CEA said. “Initiatives like Trolling Effects -- coupled with smart legislation from Congress -- promise an end to the patent troll plague and allow entrepreneurs to innovate without constant threat of frivolous lawsuits,” said CEA President Gary Shapiro in a statement. Other groups sponsoring the site are: the Application Developers Alliance, Ask Patents, Computer & Communications Industry Association, Electronic Frontier Foundation, New York University Law School’s Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy, startup advocacy group Engine, Public Knowledge, Public Patent Foundation and the University of California-Berkeley School of Law’s Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic (http://bit.ly/14guT69).

Frontier Communications sought reconsideration of the FCC Wireline Bureau’s July 1 order on its waiver petition on USF rules. The bureau had declined Frontier’s request to use a weighted average of local rates to determine if local rates meet the FCC’s rate floor requirement. Frontier will “bear losses of high-cost support contrary to the purpose of the rule, given the history of West Virginia local rate setting and Frontier’s high basic flat-rate local plan, and to the detriment of Frontier’s customers in West Virginia,” the telco said Tuesday (http://bit.ly/1eqqhMg), calling the bureau’s decision flawed. It described and defended its many calling plans in West Virginia and criticized the FCC’s interpretation of the setup.

Towerstream must forfeit $202,000 for willfully and repeatedly generating “unacceptable and potentially life threatening” interference to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Terminal Doppler Weather Radar (TDWR), the FCC said Tuesday. Towerstream had faced repeated FCC warnings and enforcement actions since 2009 for generating interference via its Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) transmission systems at the Empire State Building in New York City and the Four Seasons building in Miami. The systems interfered with TDWR stations at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Miami International Airport, the FCC said. The FCC found Towerstream operated radio transmitters without a license and caused harmful interference in violation of Sections 301 and 333 of the Communications Act of 1934. Towerstream must pay the $202,000 to the FCC within 30 days or formally ask for cancellation of the forfeiture. Towerstream must also submit a written statement to the FCC within 30 days showing that the company has implemented a 30 MHz guard band around TDWR center frequencies for all U-NII devices within 35 kilometers or the line of sight of a TDWR system (http://bit.ly/19LvgJH). Towerstream did not immediately comment.

People need to trust the government, which requires a new approach to privacy, New America Foundation Vice President and Director of the Open Technology Institute Sascha Meinrath told White House officials Tuesday. The New America Foundation described a Tuesday meeting between Meinrath and others and administration officials, including Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and Chief White House Counsel Kathy Ruemmler. “While the government assures us that there is balance between privacy and security in the execution of these programs, the information that has leaked to date shows the opposite,” Meinrath said in a statement. “To be clear, continued violations of privacy only make us all less safe by accelerating a virtual worldwide arms race of surveillance, encouraging bad actors to develop methods to circumvent American monitoring.” The U.S. “shouldn’t be on par with China in spying on its own people,” he said, urging on the government to disclose all its surveillance activity.

The Disney Channel and Common Sense Media launched a campaign to educate children and parents about online safety, the groups said Monday. The campaign includes a public service announcement to be aired on the Disney Channel, featuring tips for children and parents “for smart and safe use of digital media,” the release said. “The tips include guarding privacy while online, balancing time spent in cyberspace and thinking before texting or posting material online.” The PSA (http://bit.ly/14wwV4V) and list of tips (http://bit.ly/15Gr2RY) can be viewed on the Disney Channel site as well.

The FCC’s rules for shared use on the 3.5 GHz band “will trigger widespread licensed and unlicensed deployment only if they provide predictability and allow operational flexibility,” AT&T and Google said Tuesday in a joint letter to the FCC. The companies said they support the three-tiered framework proposed in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s (PCAST) July 2012 report. Government users would remain the primary incumbents; secondary exclusive users would be required to protect government users, while general access users would be allowed to use the band only when neither government nor secondary exclusive users were using it. A three-tiered framework “will protect incumbents, ensure secondary exclusive use for those with a need for especially reliable, uninterrupted access, and permit innovative unlicensed access where 3.5 GHz spectrum is not otherwise in use,” AT&T and Google said. The companies recommended the FCC establish broad eligibility for the secondary exclusive tier. The FCC’s NPRM proposes limiting the tier to “critical users.” The FCC should instead open the tier up to any applicant that “commits to a substantial service requirement,” AT&T and Google said. The companies said they backed using a spectrum access database to manage the three-tiered framework, saying “appropriate device certification and registration along with existing database technologies can be used to assign frequencies dynamically and mitigate interference where incumbent uses are geographically known.” The companies said they agree with the FCC that the exclusion zones calculated for the 3.5 GHz band should be based on small cell deployments rather than macrocells. NTIA had recommended calculating exclusion zones based on macrocell deployments, but the band is better suited to small-cell use, AT&T and Google said. “NTIA’s proposed zones are overprotective in the small-cell context, and the FCC can reduce exclusion zones dramatically if it designates the band for use by small cells rather than macrocells,” the companies said. The FCC should calculate protection zones “based only on the interference tolerance of incumbent operations, not the tolerance of potential new operations,” AT&T and Google said. Incumbents have a need for protection from harmful interference, while new entrants on the band have chosen to operate in an environment where harmful interference might occur, the companies said. The FCC should institute “lightweight, fast, and flexible auction mechanisms” when they are needed to resolve mutually exclusive demands for spectrum licenses, AT&T and Google said. Streamlined auction procedures would be appropriate for small cell deployments, they said ((http://bit.ly/13hYAAf). AT&T continues to support government efforts to clear and license spectrum below 3 GHz, particularly on the 1755-1780 MHz band, but the FCC’s proposal for use of the 3.5 GHz band provides “an interesting opportunity for mobile broadband operators to explore spectrum sharing models,” said Stacey Black, AT&T assistant vice president-federal regulatory, in a blog post. “Even on a shared basis, spectrum in this band could be critical to increasing capacity in high demand areas and improving coverage inside buildings or other difficult to cover areas, all without causing interference to incumbent government users” (http://bit.ly/13hYAAf).

Cox Media Group is using iJento for analytics and data discovery, said the vendor in a news release Tuesday (http://bit.ly/15GjwGI). It said the owner of radio and TV stations and newspapers is using products for data from Adobe SiteCatalyst, DoubleClick, Janrain, subscriber information, the media company’s customer relationship management system and Nielsen data.