The Spartan nature of the FCC’s website post-shutdown caught many off guard when it went up Tuesday. “We regret the disruption, but during the Federal Government-wide shutdown, the FCC is limited to performing duties that are immediately necessary for the safety of life or the protection of property,” the revised site said. “FCC online systems will not be available until further notice.” Other government websites have been also taking themselves down, drawing criticism from some pro-transparency groups (CD Oct 2 p8).

Ongoing censorship of online content that major websites deem unpalatable could stop if Apple, Facebook, Google and other major companies voluntarily adopt the same free-speech principles that the Supreme Court has enshrined in decisions, a group of religious broadcasters plans to say Thursday. “A continuation of this oppressive pattern” of blocking content often aligned with politically conservative causes or views, as shown by the National Religious Broadcasters in previous studies (CD Sept 13/12 p10), was found in NRB’s new report (http://bit.ly/15M7GXn). Based on news stories and other anecdotal evidence, it said, Apple, Facebook and Google are stifling speech.

The federal government urged the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to deny numerous tech companies the right to disclose further information about government surveillance requests, in a filing dated Monday but made public Wednesday (http://1.usa.gov/1hkZum3). For months, five tech and social media giants -- led by Google and Microsoft -- have been arguing the First Amendment gives them the right to disclose the specific number and type of surveillance requests they receive as long as the content or surveillance target is not disclosed. The government called that interpretation “implausible,” saying it “ignores the forest for the trees. It would permit the damaging disclosures that would reveal sources and methods of surveillance potentially nationwide."

The United Kingdom is exploring the use of the TV white spaces for broadband and otherwise looking at many of the same changes already underway in the U.S., Ofcom said Wednesday. Ofcom also launched a consultation to seek comment on U.K. spectrum policy going forward. “Looking forward, a number of important trends that could have a significant impact on spectrum use are emerging, including mobile broadband growth, the emergence of new uses such as machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and increasingly sophisticated techniques for sharing spectrum,” Ofcom said. “Therefore, we believe now is the right time to review our spectrum management strategy and consider major priorities for our work over the next 10 years.” Responses are due Dec. 11 (http://bit.ly/18t8TpG).

Though an FCC rulemaking proposal to eliminate the UHF discount could eventually lead to legal challenges, broadcasters will likely wait for an actual order to be passed before heading to court, several attorneys and a broadcast executive told us in interviews this week. They said broadcasters will wait for an order even though the NPRM proposes applying the new ownership calculation to any new ownership group not in existence or pending by the release of the NPRM, rather than pegging the cutoff to the release of an actual order (CD Sept 27 p1). FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai condemned the timing of the cutoff because it means the proposed law could have real-world effects before going through the full rulemaking process, but broadcasters are still likely to let the NPRM go through the normal commenting process and see what emerges rather than go for an early court challenge, several attorneys said. “I don’t think you'd get much value from a legal challenge” to a law that is still in the proposal stage, said Fletcher Heald broadcast attorney Donald Evans in an interview.

With the shutdown of numerous government websites, public access to government information will be affected in a way it wasn’t during last government shutdown that lasted several weeks in 1995 to ‘96, several experts told us Tuesday. Some significant government resources such as Thomas, the online legislative database of the Library of Congress, pulled about faces Tuesday to stay running, but other major informational sites such as the FTC aren’t accessible. “Times have changed in terms of how agencies communicate with the public, so it is a different ball of wax if a website goes dark than if it had in the ‘90s,” said Lisa Gilbert, director of Public Citizen’s Congress Watch division. “It will have ramifications for consumers and for small businesses."

Education is becoming increasingly digital, and schools need upgraded broadband infrastructure to continue serving students effectively, educators said Wednesday at a Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition event in Washington. On the first day of the federal government shutdown due to a budget impasse, educators from around the country agreed that the E-rate program needs substantially more money. The event’s main government speaker, Tom Power, deputy chief technology officer for telecommunications in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), did not attend.

A report commissioned by the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute argues that “progressives” should wholeheartedly back efforts to solve the problems caused by abusive patent litigation filed by patent assertion entities (http://bit.ly/151Jx1M). PAE lawsuits are “sucking the lifeblood of innovation out of the American economy,” said Shook, Hardy partner Phil Goldberg, the report’s author, during a conference call on the release the report Tuesday. PAE-initiated litigation has “mushroomed” over the past decade amid the “perfect storm” caused by the rising number of patents that resulted from the increasing economic strength of software and consumer electronics companies, Goldberg said in the report. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has seen a rapid rise in the number of patent applications over the past 20 years, and many consumer electronics include technology covered by hundreds of thousands of patents -- an average smartphone may hold technology covered by 250,000 patents, the report said. This convergence of technologies “has created seemingly endless opportunities for patent holders to allege that others’ products are infringing on their patents,” the report said.

AT&T will deploy a gigabit-speed fiber network in Austin, Texas, in December, before Google Fiber’s start there in 2014 (CD April 10 p10). AT&T will use AT&T U-verse with GigaPower to make fast Internet and TV services available to consumers, said the company in a news release Tuesday (http://soc.att.com/1dUEYZF). The December start will initially feature symmetrical speeds of up to 300 Mbps, and customers who sign up for the service will be able upgrade to gigabit speeds in mid-2014 at no extra cost, said the telco ISP.

The partial federal government shutdown may not mean that the Senate won’t act on the nominations of Tom Wheeler as chairman of the FCC and Michael O'Rielly for its open Republican seat, said industry lobbyists in interviews Tuesday. After all, they said that senators will continue to work and draw a salary with few hearings to attend because many hearings were canceled because some government witnesses can’t attend. The level of enmity among senators appears lower than that between Democrats and Republicans in the House.