Participants in a Do Not Track working group, convened by the World Wide Web Consortium, overwhelmingly rejected the W3C’s current proposed plan, with many pushing to have the group disbanded or for it to focus on technical specifications over compliance issues, according to responses submitted to a poll that closed Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1bcePE0). The group’s chairs will meet Friday to discuss how the poll’s results will inform the group’s future direction, said co-Chair Justin Brookman, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Project on Consumer Privacy. Respondents generally assumed the group would continue its discussions in some fashion regardless of the poll results.

A Massachusetts district court decision denying a Hearst station a preliminary injunction against Aereo may not have much bearing for pending cases involving Aereo or FilmOn X, said media attorneys. WCVB-TV Boston alleged that Aereo infringed on its rights under the Copyright Act by retransmitting its programs over the Internet without compensating WCVB. This decision, issued in the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts, follows a similar initial ruling made in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York (CD April 2 p8). In another case, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered a nearly nationwide preliminary injunction against FilmOn X, another streaming TV retransmission service (CD Sept 9 p18). The varying decisions will probably result in an ultimate decision made in the Supreme Court, said the attorneys.

European Parliament members (MEPs) are grappling with whether to recommend suspension of the EU-U.S. Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) over allegations the National Security Agency accesses personal banking data held in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) database in Europe. In what one lawmaker termed a “truculent” plenary debate in Strasbourg Wednesday, which was webcast, MEPs said the situation needs further investigation but argued over whether the agreement should be suspended or even terminated now. Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmström said that although the U.S. has assured her that the TFTP hasn’t been breached, she’s pressing officials for all the evidence as soon as possible.

Ongoing FTC litigation might be delayed or dismissed and industries could be permanently altered if the government shutdown drags on beyond a month, said lawyers, advocates and a former FTC chief of staff in interviews this week. The unavailability of the agency’s website (CD Oct 2 p8) has already caused a commotion in the app developer community, said an industry representative.

Fewer regulations are needed by states and the FCC to promote competition and to move the IP transition forward, said speakers at the Telecommunications Summit at Murray State University in Kentucky Wednesday. The deregulation of telecommunications services by the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission helped to spread investment and innovation in the state by AT&T and Comcast, said Commissioner Larry Landis. State commissions have the opportunity to work with the FCC to change policies in the states, said Landis: “States have a unique perspective to bring to the process, and they understand the need to share a vision as well as each having their own.”

AT&T and T-Mobile executives are frustrated by government shutdown, now well into its second week, they said at the Telecommunications Industry Association conference. The FCC’s work on spectrum auctions, getting spectrum from the Department of Defense, the broadcaster incentive auction -- “all that work has stopped,” said Thomas Sugrue, senior vice president-government affairs for T-Mobile. “One week? Sure, we can all make that up,” he said. “But once it gets a second week, and if we're talking about a third, there could be some real negative impacts on the timing of that.” T-Mobile is “fortunate that we don’t have an intensive, major deal pending,” like AT&T’s bid to acquire Leap Wireless, Sugrue said.

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- Spectrum sharing between commercial and federal users is critical, but the big emerging theme is that industry needs “certainty” and more work must be done on licensed sharing, said spectrum panelists from high-technology companies at the Telecommunications Industry Association’s annual show Wednesday. Sharing has been the Obama administration’s big spectrum focus.

Hosted satellite payloads provide an opportunity to meet communication and capacity needs in emerging markets, said industry executives. As hosted payload deployments increase, the commercial satellite industry must determine the path forward to ensure efficiency, they said Wednesday at the Hosted Payload Summit in Washington. Low infrastructure, fiber connectivity, GSM backhauling and other benefits are driving the interest in hosted payloads for emerging markets, said Mazen Nassar, CEO of Mena Nets, a satellite system integrator. Hosted payloads are a proper solution for such markets, particularly in areas of new application, said Steven Kaufman, a Hogan Lovells attorney. “They can provide the exact application that’s being requested at a much lower invested cost” and they can work with lower capacity systems, he said.

The inability to file documents with the FCC or see others’ filings because of the partial government shutdown is making it hard for companies, law firms and public interest groups in the communications sphere to know where they stand, they said. Not being able to file ex partes, along with limited access to commission staff, make it difficult to know what’s happening, said Sinclair Broadcast Vice President-Advanced Technology Mark Aitken. Others who lobby the FCC agreed, and said problems have also bedeviled law firms (CD Oct 7 p1).

Lawmakers outlined potential fixes to allegedly overbroad surveillance activities of the U.S. government, speaking during a Cato Institute event Wednesday. They said they object to intelligence agencies’ bulk collection of phone metadata and alleged broad lack of transparency and accountability. The members of Congress focused on a new piece of legislation pending introduction -- the USA Freedom Act, which would end bulk collection of phone metadata, among other changes (CD Oct 4 p10), and is to be sponsored by House Judiciary Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and House Judiciary Committee ranking member John Conyers, D-Mich.