Harbinger Capital Partners and CEO Phil Falcone reached an $18 million settlement with the SEC over two civil actions. “The settlement was made without HCP Parties admitting or denying any of the SEC’s allegations,” Harbinger said in a 10Q SEC filing Thursday (http://bit.ly/10o1sc9). Under the settlement, Falcone is barred and enjoined for two years from starting another hedge fund, it said. During that bar period, the HCP parties and certain Harbinger Capital entities “may not raise new capital or make capital calls from existing investors,” the filing said. The SEC filed charges last year for illicit conduct against Harbinger (CD June 28 p20). Harbinger was the largest investor in LightSquared, a company that had its plans to build a terrestrial network stalled by an FCC action (CD Feb 15/12 p1). The wholesale satellite capacity company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year (CD May 15 p12).
Consumer Watchdog and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) said in separate statements they support the Application Privacy, Protection and Security (APPS) Act, introduced by Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., last week (CD May 10 p10). The bill “takes a common-sense approach to” the “urgent problem” surrounding mobile apps and the users that “lack basic rights with respect to the data that may be collected about them,” CFA Director of Consumer Protection Susan Grant said. “By requiring app developers to give consumers information about what personal data is collected, how it is used, with whom it is shared, and how long it is kept, and to obtain their consent, this legislation would ensure that consumers can make truly informed decisions before they download apps” and “give consumers control over their data if they decide that they no longer wish to use an app,” she said. In a separate statement, Consumer Watchdog Privacy Project Director John Simpson called the bill “a significant and important step forward in protecting consumers’ privacy” because it “will give consumers the ability to understand what happens to their data and some control over its use.” Grant and Simpson are participants in the mobile privacy multistakeholder process being facilitated by the NTIA. App developers that sign onto the process’s resulting code of conduct would be granted safe harbor under the bill.
Copyright assertion entities must have the exclusive rights to a copyrighted work to sue for infringement under the Copyright Act, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said (http://1.usa.gov/15t3ccT), affirming the dismissal of Righthaven v. Hoehn. “Merely calling someone a copyright owner does not make it so,” Judge Richard Clifton wrote in the decision that upheld the U.S. District Court in Las Vegas’s decision to dismiss the case. The case was against two individuals who republished online material from the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Under an agreement between the paper’s owner Stephens Media and Righthaven, the latter was granted limited rights for the copyrighted content, which did not include exclusive rights, the ruling said. “The assignment of the bare right to sue for infringement, without the transfer of an associated exclusive right, is impermissible under the Copyright Act.” Because Righthaven did not have standing to sue for infringement, the district court should not have “analyzed the merits of the fair use defense and granted the motion for summary judgment,” Clifton said.
Cablevision faces challenges after Q1 results disappointed analysts, several said. After last quarter’s cash flow fell 23 percent from Q1 2012 instead of the 6.4 percent increase UBS expected, analyst John Hodulik said he expects a 15 percent decrease to $1.7 billion in 2013. “More challenges ahead” was the headline of his note to investors. “Just when you think it hit bottom,” wrote Wachovia’s Marci Ryvicker, reducing estimates. The company “remains a tough one -- we really like the long-term focus on operations, the investment in the business,” but “this quarter in particular was a pretty significant financial miss -- although subscriber trends were actually okay,” she wrote. Q1 sales fell 0.8 percent to $1.52 billion as operating income fell 63 percent to $91.3 million, Cablevision said Thursday (http://bit.ly/14b390M). The company lost 31,000 customer relationships from Q1 2012, a 0.9 percent decline. “Cablevision started the year off delivering sequential growth in our customer relationship, high-speed data and voice subscriber metrics, all while continuing to recover from the impact of Superstorm Sandy,” CEO James Dolan said. “Investors now believe the odds of an eventual sale have increased,” wrote Citigroup’s Jason Bazinet, downgrading his rating on the stock to neutral from buy. “With the recent acceleration in programming costs, more investors seem to believe that consolidation may be the only way for pay TV firms to restore the balance of power between content and distribution."
Local broadcast TV viewers are 85 percent more likely to post photos and videos than those who more comprehensively consume radio, broadcast and cable media, said a new study from the Television Bureau of Advertising (http://bit.ly/15VdIcU). Using Nielsen Media Research and Kantar Media data, the study considered the “quantity and intensity” of social media behavior of 167 million Twitter and Facebook users related to relevant broadcast and cable TV, radio and newspaper media at the national and local level, TVB said. Local newspapers tend to generate more retweets, while radio and cable TV users tend to “like” content, it said. “Broadcast TV at the national and local level is still the dominant brand-builder in the media landscape, generating as much as [192 times] more brand fans within social media than advertisers in the same category who only purchased cable,” TVB said.
Globalstar continued to urge the FCC to reject Iridium’s petition for an NPRM to revisit the band plan in the Big Low Earth Orbit. Iridium’s request is an “unsupported” and “competitively-driven attempt” to capture almost 3 MHz of Big LEO spectrum “assigned to and used by Globalstar,” it said in an ex parte filing in docket RM-11685 (http://bit.ly/11oz29k). Iridium filed the petition this year (CD Feb 13 p14). Globalstar also asked the commission to open a rulemaking to reform the FCC’s terrestrial use rules in the Big LEO band, it said. Globalstar made the request through a petition (CD Nov 14 p26). The deployment of its proposed terrestrial low-power service “will quickly add 22 MHz to the nation’s wireless broadband spectrum inventory,” it said. The filing recounted a meeting last week with Globalstar’s general counsel and Michael Steffen, aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Globalstar said.
Colorado’s EAGLE-Net Alliance broadband project is cooperating with federal auditors, the stimulus grantee told us in a statement late Thursday. It was responding to concerns raised by three House Republicans in a letter to the Commerce Department Office of Inspector General Thursday (CD May 10 p19). “The OIG has been in our facilities this week, and we have already responded to most of the questions that were listed in the letter sent by the three Congressmen on May 9th,” EAGLE-Net said in a statement through its spokeswoman. “We have been and will continue to answer OIG’s questions in a timely and efficient manner.” Rep. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., was critical of the project, in addition to signing the letter. “EAGLE-Net has spent all but $7.8 million of the $100 million it was originally given, and it has only reached half of the schools it promised to serve,” Gardner said in a statement Thursday. “Now they're trying to raise additional funds from the private sector with no clear plan for how they're ever going to be sustainable. This is a government program run amok, and we owe it to the taxpayers to find out exactly what happened before EAGLE-Net wastes anymore money.” EAGLE-Net and NTIA have defended the infrastructure project’s spending in the past, countering persistent claims from Gardner and other critics in the state.
Time Warner Cable said the Massachusetts Department of Telecommunications and Cable showed no valid reason for the FCC Media Bureau to reject the company’s request for video-rate deregulation in three Massachusetts communities. DTC’s concerns (CD May 2 p12), that DBS subscriber data from the Satellite Broadcasting & Communications Association (SBCA) make it seem like the operator has more competition than really faced, “have absolutely no foundation,” the company said. “The Bureau has for over 15 years accepted the accuracy of SBCA’s DBS Provider subscriber counts in the effective competition context, repeatedly rejecting speculative attacks on such data after a cable operator has made its prima facie showing that the 15 percent threshold has been exceeded” of subscribership to other pay-TV companies in a franchise area, the filing said. DTC’s “attack” that the data includes “seasonal/vacation/temporary accounts” is “entirely speculative,” the company said in the reply Thursday in docket 13-92 (http://bit.ly/12jvYIn).
The Houston region will add the 346 area code, said the Texas Public Utility Commission Thursday (http://bit.ly/14aXW9g). The region now includes the 713, 281 and 832 area codes but “continued growth” of Houston compelled a new code as part of an overlay process, it said. The North American Number Planning Administrator (NANPA) projected that the three existing area codes will run out of numbers by Sept. 30, 2014, the PUC said. “The new area code will not require any reprogramming changes to existing equipment because an area code overlay requiring 10-digit dialing for local calls already exists in the affected region.” The code can be assigned to numbers starting in July of 2014, it said.
"Incomplete and incorrect translator data” in the FCC Media Bureau’s Consolidated Database System “will pose difficulties” for low-power FM station seekers that must protect translator input signals, an LPFM advocacy group told officials of the bureau’s Audio Division. Agency staff should “improve the data quality prior to the upcoming LPFM window,” said officials of the Prometheus Radio Project. It cited “records missing data on the primary station being rebroadcast.” The group asked Chief Peter Doyle of the division and others for “guidance in advising” applicants located near translators with incomplete records, said a filing posted Friday in docket 99-25. The LPFM window may be opened this year (CD May 8 p7).