Several broadcast unions backed a bill they say would make it easier for employees to join collective bargaining units. American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, Directors Guild of America, Screen Actors Guild and others urged speedy Senate passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (S-1041), sponsored by 47 senators. The bill would let unions represent employees after a majority of workers sign a card supporting representation. Current rules allow a company to request an election overseen by the National Labor Relations Board, called by many employers the best way to ensure fair elections but scorned by unions as a delay tactic. The Senate bill is “perhaps the most important U.S. labor law reform to emerge in the last 70 years,” said the unions. They said the House passed it March 1, 241-185.
New executive board members at the National Emergency Number Association: President Jason Barbour, Johnson County, N.C.; First Vice President Ronald Bonneau, SouthCom Dispatch; Second Vice President Craig Whittington, Guilford Metro 9-1-1… As a result the planned retirement of Disney- ABC Worldwide TV President Laurie Younger, Ben Pyne is promoted to president of global distribution, and David Preschlack to executive vice president of affiliate sales, Disney and ESPN Networks… CBS promotes Aaron Radin to senior vice president, ad sales and business development, CBS TV Stations Digital Media Group… Kent Schneider, ex- Northrop Grumman, becomes president and CEO of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association.
CHICAGO -- Long-promised innovations like ultra-speedy fiber networks and smart cellphones that replace wallets are here, executives of top communications companies said Wed. at the NXTcomm show. In his speech, Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said his company, now trialing 100 Mbps speed in its FIOS Internet service, this fall will begin using “GPON” technology that boosts speeds four times downstream and eight times upstream.
Among new members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Advisory Council: Robert Connors, Raytheon; Phillip Reitinger, Microsoft; David Barron, BellSouth/AT&T… New members of the FCC Consumer Advisory Committee: John Sander, National Association of Broadcasters; Charles Benton, Benton Foundation; Paul Schlaver, Consumer Federation of America… Peter Leon, ex- CompTel, joins Lent Scrivner & Roth lobbying shop… Verizon Wireless promotes Ajay Waghray to chief information officer… Shari Weisenberg, ex-Bravo, becomes Sci Fi Channel vice president of strategic marketing… New Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers officers: Chairman Tom Gorman, Charter; Western Vice Chairman Frank Eichenlaub, Scientific- Atlanta; Eastern Vice Chairman Steven Johnson, Time Warner; Secretary Vicki Marts, Cox; Treasurer Greg Allshouse, Comcast… Foundry Networks promotes Ken Kiser to vice president, North American service provider sales… Former FCC Chairman Al Sikes joins Gather.com board.
As of June 15, the FCC had inspected nearly 600 stores and e-commerce sites, issuing over 250 citations to retailers alleged to have failed to put consumer alerts next to analog- only TV products as a new FCC new labeling order requires, Chairman Kevin Martin said Monday in a letter to House Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and Telecom Subcommittee Chairman Ed Markey, D-Mass.
GENEVA -- Consensus is emerging in ITU’s focus group on identity management (FG-IdM) for a three-part identity management framework and using an OASIS specification called Extensible Resource Identifier (XMI) for discovery, officials said, but even if it were adopted as a global standard, global buy-in could be elusive.
Deep disparities between delegations remained after a second day of talks on a proposed World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty to update broadcasting protections (CD June 19 p4). With Chairman Jukka Liedes away on personal business, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights focussed Tuesday on the draft preamble, said Ville Oksanen, co-chairman of the European Digital Rights working group on intellectual property (IP). Cultural diversity, access to knowledge and competition law’s role remain stumbling blocks, he said. The U.S. will not accept a treaty including provisions on them as substantive clauses, but Brazil, Chile and others feel the opposite, and the European Union has yet to state a position, Oksanen said. The “conflict is quite profound,” and it will be interesting to see how Liedes resolves it, particularly with only two days of talks left, he said. Some nations want language on cultural diversity, public interest issues and competition in the draft (dubbed the “non-paper"), said an official from a developing country. Rights conferred, exclusive rights over retransmission and deferred transmission by any means to the public of fixed broadcasts benefit from strict technical protection measures and rights management provisions, the official said: “All this together makes for a very powerful treaty, unlike what is being claimed.” Even worse, the official said, the treaty covers works lacking substantive creativity, apart from investing to transmit. You can criminalize the act of stealing a signal without recognizing broadcast entities’ exclusive rights of a commercial nature, he said. It is unclear whether consensus will emerge sufficiently to warrant a diplomatic conference later this year, but the chairman of one non-governmental organization has said he remains optimistic. A treaty has “a good chance, much better than Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected Miss France this year,” Mihaly Ficsor, Central and Eastern European Copyright Alliance chairman and former WIPO assistant general director, told an April Fordham University property conference. Success hinges on the international IP atmosphere, complicating accord on new substantive terms, a difference from 1996, when the WIPO Internet treaties were devised, he told us. Ficsor sees a link between the Doha Round of trade talks and events at WIPO, he said. If World Trade Organization talks end with an appropriate compromise, “it would certainly improve the conditions for the necessary treaty-making activities in WIPO,” he said.
GENEVA -- Consensus is emerging in ITU’s focus group on identity management (FG-IdM) for a three-part identity management framework and using an OASIS specification called Extensible Resource Identifier (XMI) for discovery, officials said, but even if it were adopted as a global standard, global buy-in could be elusive.
Deep disparities between delegations remained after a second day of talks on a proposed World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) treaty to update broadcasting protections (WID June 19 p1). With Chairman Jukka Liedes away on personal business, the Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights focussed Tuesday on the draft preamble, said Ville Oksanen, co-chairman of the European Digital Rights working group on intellectual property (IP). Cultural diversity, access to knowledge and competition law’s role remain stumbling blocks, he said. The U.S. will not accept a treaty including provisions on them as substantive clauses, but Brazil, Chile and others feel the opposite, and the European Union has yet to state a position, Oksanen said. The “conflict is quite profound,” and it will be interesting to see how Liedes resolves it, particularly with only two days of talks left, he said. Some nations want language on cultural diversity, public interest issues and competition in the draft (dubbed the “non-paper"), said an official from a developing country. Rights conferred, exclusive rights over retransmission and deferred transmission by any means to the public of fixed broadcasts benefit from strict technical protection measures and rights management provisions, the official said: “All this together makes for a very powerful treaty, unlike what is being claimed.” Even worse, the official said, the treaty covers works lacking substantive creativity, apart from investing to transmit. You can criminalize the act of stealing a signal without recognizing broadcast entities’ exclusive rights of a commercial nature, he said. It is unclear whether consensus will emerge sufficiently to warrant a diplomatic conference later this year, but the chairman of one non-governmental organization has said he remains optimistic. A treaty has “a good chance, much better than Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected Miss France this year,” Mihaly Ficsor, Central and Eastern European Copyright Alliance chairman and former WIPO assistant general director, told an April Fordham University property conference. Success hinges on the international IP atmosphere, complicating accord on new substantive terms, a difference from 1996, when the WIPO Internet treaties were devised, he told us. Ficsor sees a link between the Doha Round of trade talks and events at WIPO, he said. If World Trade Organization talks end with an appropriate compromise, “it would certainly improve the conditions for the necessary treaty-making activities in WIPO,” he said.
Former FCC Chairman Al Sikes joins Gather.com board… Among new members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency National Advisory Council: Robert Connors, Raytheon; Phillip Reitinger, Microsoft; David Barron, BellSouth/AT&T.