Four in five Internet users worry their personal data will be stolen or “misused” on social media platforms, according to a survey by Internet security firm Avira. Facebook (25 percent) and Google Plus (19 percent) drew the most concern, while 40 percent said they don’t “feel safe when using social media sites,” Avira said. Only 2 percent of users worried about stolen or misused data on Twitter. The company said it posed questions in January and February to the 100 million consumers and small businesses globally that use its antivirus and similar services, and drew full survey results from 2,710 respondents with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.88 percent.
Dish Network reached multi-year retransmission consent agreements with three broadcasting companies in Wyoming. Dish will carry affiliates of Fox, ABC and CBS in Casper, and the Cheyenne affiliates of ABC and Fox, Dish said. The satellite-TV provider reached agreements with Wyomedia, Silverton Broadcasting and Mark III Media. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
CEA became the third to ask the FCC to revisit parts of January’s Internet Protocol captioning order (CD May 1 p10) implementing a 2010 disabilities accessibility law, while the Entertainment Software Association lobbied the commission to waive other disabilities rules for videogames. The agency shouldn’t make removable media players like those that play Blu-ray discs and DVDs apparatus covered by the requirement that traditional TV shows be captioned when delivered by IP, CEA said. It asked the agency “to limit the applicability of the apparatus closed captioning rules to only those devices intended by the manufacturer to receive, play back, or record video programming.” Unneeded “industry compliance costs” would be saved by not requiring DVD players to display captions, with “strong public policy reasons ... because the content on the media that these players need to operate is not required to be closed captioned,” said a petition for reconsideration posted Tuesday in docket 11-154 (http://xrl.us/bm5z4q). The association also asked for a clarification that the Jan. 1, 2014, compliance deadline is for the date of a device’s manufacture. ESA cited “the broad recognition among private and public stakeholders, including other federal agencies” that the types of videogames and services it seeks exemption from advanced communications service accessibility rules “have a primary purpose of playing, enabling or distributing games” and not ACS. The waiver isn’t for “general-purpose products or services” and is “limited to game industry products and services,” the association reported executives told officials of the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau and the Office of Engineering and Technology. An ex parte filing posted Tuesday to docket 10-213 (http://xrl.us/bm5z5v) noted the waivers are sought for products “that may allow consumers to access and use some ACS, but are designed primarily to enable the playing of or access to video games."
The FCC should yank the 27 U.S. TV licenses of News Corp. because of allegations in a U.K. House of Commons committee report that Chairman Rupert Murdoch isn’t fit to run a major international company due to phone hacking by reporters at the company’s British publications, a nonprofit American group said. “While you have stated previously the FCC will not get involved with this matter, further inaction is no longer a viable option,” Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Executive Director Melanie Sloan wrote FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. The group asked the House and Senate Commerce committees to hold hearings on whether Murdoch and his son James meet the FCC’s character standards for broadcast licensees. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., asked the head of a U.K. judicial investigation into the alleged hacking if it found new information suggesting the conduct “involved U.S. citizens or violated U.S. laws,” he said in a news release. Has the probe found the same “unethical and sometimes illegal business practices” in America as allegedly took place in Britain, Rockefeller asked (http://xrl.us/bm52e4) inquiry head Brian Leveson. News Corp.’s board has “full confidence in Rupert Murdoch’s fitness and support for his continuing to lead News Corporation into the future as its Chairman and CEO,” the company said Wednesday after directors met. The board believes Murdoch has “demonstrated resolve to address the mistakes of the Company identified in the Select Committee’s report,” the company said (http://xrl.us/bm5z82). “If the Murdochs don’t meet the British standards of character test, it is hard to see how they can meet the American standard,” Sloan said in a news release (http://xrl.us/bm5zy6). A News Corp. spokesman had no comment. The commission isn’t expected to yank the licenses (CD July 19 p6).
Hogan Lovells started a regulatory blog, Hogan Lovells Focus on Regulation (www.hlregulation.com).
Cutting regulation, making more government spectrum available for commercial use and avoiding limitations on which companies can buy spectrum licenses “will lead to the President’s goal of 98 percent LTE deployment in the United States,” Internet Innovation Alliance officials said at a Capitol Hill event Wednesday. IIA noted that by the FCC’s own estimates, by 2014, mobile data traffic will increase to 35 times 2009 levels, equivalent to a demand for 1,097 MHz of wireless broadband spectrum. “With consumer demand on track to soon outpace supply, the government must move quickly to allocate more airwaves for consumer use in order to keep mobile broadband available, accessible and affordable,” said IIA Co-Chairman Jamal Simmons. “Beyond making additional spectrum available, it’s crucial that policy makers encourage the private investment necessary to deploy these airwaves for the benefit of all Americans.” Policy “successes” that are “pro-Internet” came “when government removed barriers, rather than adding new ones,” said Co-Chairman Bruce Mehlman. “Unfortunately those days may be ending. While there is rare bipartisan agreement that the biggest challenge to broadband-enabled growth is lack of private investment and available spectrum, there is growing disagreement on how to fix it.” The alliance includes the American Conservative Union, Americans for Tax Reform, AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, CompTIA, TechAmerica and the U.S. Internet Industry Association among others.
A letter to the FCC last week from SpectrumCo (CD April 30 p14) questioning T-Mobile in light of its opposition to the sale of AWS licenses from SpectrumCo to Verizon Wireless “reveals the dearth of public interest support for its proposed transaction by engaging in an ad hominem effort against T-Mobile, taking out of context statements made at a different time, in different circumstances, and regarding a very different transaction,” T-Mobile said in a filing. “It would be convenient if SpectrumCo could sweep away the serious problems with its proposed transaction by simply alleging that T-Mobile’s arguments are inconsistent with statements made in connection with its previously proposed transaction with AT&T,” T-Mobile said (http://xrl.us/bm5y8c). “But this is nonsense. Even if true ... SpectrumCo’s jumble of complaints about T-Mobile’s advocacy would do nothing to make its affirmative case that its deeply flawed deal is in the public interest."
The Tennis Channel wants to know if it can “confer” with the FCC Office of General Counsel (OGC) on issues raised in Time Warner Cable and NCTA’s appeal to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals of program carriage rules. The plaintiffs’ First Amendment arguments in the case “are similar to those made by Comcast” in the Tennis Channel’s FCC program carriage complaint against that company, the independent network that alleged the cable operator favored its own programming over the indie said. “It is possible that this client (with or without other parties) will seek to file an amicus curiae brief in support of the Commission’s position in the Time Warner proceeding,” a lawyer for the channel said. “Discussion of the positions taken in the Time Warner proceeding would fall within this exemption” of agency rules barring ex parte lobbying to the OGC on judicial review of something decided by commissioners, the lawyer wrote Tuesday in a filing in docket 10-204 (http://xrl.us/bm5zct). “There is substantial similarity in the arguments raised by the cable parties in the Time Warner and Tennis Channel proceedings."
Raycom rebutted comments to the FCC that the broadcaster’s shared services agreement for Honolulu...
Raycom rebutted comments to the FCC that the broadcaster’s shared services agreement for Honolulu TV stations it owns and one licensed to MCG Capital causes “harm” to consumers. The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists leveled that criticism in the agency’s media ownership rulemaking (http://xrl.us/bm5zap). Raycom’s Hawaii news coverage won three awards this year from the Radio Television Digital News Association, the company said in a filing Tuesday in docket 09-182 (http://xrl.us/bm5zaz).
Correction: Lew Paper works for the Pillsbury law firm (CD May 2 p2).