The FCC’s indecency rules are too vague to survive court challenges or provide a clear definition of what constitutes a violation, said a host of filings from trade associations, broadcasters, affiliates and public interest groups on Wednesday,the deadline for comments on the commission’s indecency public notice. The Family Research Council said the commission has never defined “egregious,” while the Radio Television Digital News Association said the commission’s indecency policy is “unknown and unknowable to broadcasters, journalists, and program producers alike.” The commission must “step back from substituting its own editorial and artistic judgment for that of broadcasters and the creative community,” NAB said. “The Commission should decline to act absent a significant abuse of discretion."

FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said the commission should use its authority under Section 6(b) of the FTC Act to investigate the business practices of patent assertion entities (PAEs) to examine whether those practices harm competition and consumer interests. Section 6(b) of the FTC Act gives the agency the authority to do a full investigation of an industry’s business practices, including issuing subpoenas, and report their findings to Congress and the public. Ramirez said at a Thursday joint Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and American Antitrust Institute (AAI) event that she supports conducting an investigation, but did not say she would formally ask the commission to vote to start one.

U.S. radio stations, starting to seek to test all-digital AM broadcasts, have also been adopting the type of HD Radio broadcasts that already are authorized by the FCC as some in the industry and at the commission seek to revitalize the band, said industry officials in interviews Thursday. Beasley Broadcast Group sought experimental authority from the agency to run WNCT(AM) Greenville, N.C., in “all digital transmission mode,” it said in a Tuesday letter. It said NAB would participate in the test, and industry officials told us they believe another broadcaster had also done such tests with help from the association.

But several stakeholders expressed concern that utilities don’t have their own dedicated spectrum throughout the meeting. Utilities do not have access and “future situations must change,” UTC CEO Connie Durcsak said. Pepco Holdings desires exclusive networks in order to ensure secure communication for its crews but “what we found very quickly was there was not one block of spectrum available to PHI or any utility in the United States,” said Communications and Network Systems Engineering Manager Russ Ehrlich. After Superstorm Sandy, crews struggled to communicate and used devices that couldn’t easily interconnect, said PSEG Lead Senior Consultant Jeffrey Katz, who said the amount of spectrum available to utilities is “absolutely none.” Commercial networks failed, he added. “We have no access to broadband spectrum,” said Great River Energy Principal Telecom Engineer Kathleen Nelson. “Yet somehow we utilities are expected to operate our critical infrastructure under these circumstances.”

Wireless carriers are asking that customer proprietary network information requirements only apply to mobile devices “if a carrier directed or caused CPNI to be on a mobile device and ... the carrier has access to that CPNI,” said an FCC filing. Commissioner Ajit Pai, meanwhile, has indicated he will dissent unless major changes are made to the CPNI order before Thursday’s meeting where it’s scheduled for a vote, industry and agency officials said.

The White House said it will pursue voluntary incentives to reduce the infringement of online intellectual property in its annual IP report released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/11OIqwc). The shift towards a more industry-based approach to curbing online piracy and IP theft marks a departure from the administration’s 2012 report, which scolded Congress for making little headway on new IP legislation (CD April 2/12 p6). Lawmakers failed to approve online copyright legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act, PROTECT IP Act and the OPEN Act in the last session of Congress due to public opposition drummed up by coordinated website blackouts (CD Jan 19/12 p4).

The U.S. thinks multistakeholder governance offers a clear alternative to more ITU and government oversight of the Internet, as embraced by many nations at last year’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT), said NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling Thursday at a forum sponsored by the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. The U.S. has two “enduring values” for Internet governance, “inclusion and participation,” and “it has been the steadfast policy of the United States government to promote these values … through our support for the multistakeholder process,” Strickling said.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s Arlington ruling won’t have as strong an effect on court challenges to the authority of government agencies as expected, said several former FCC attorneys at an FCBA event on administrative law Wednesday. Last month’s ruling (CD May 24 p1) that government agencies should receive deference from courts in interpreting ambiguous laws about their own jurisdiction “won’t have the seismic significance some people give it,” said Wilmer Hale attorney Jonathan Nuecterlein. He was formerly an FCC deputy general counsel and recently named FTC general counsel. While the ruling ostensibly expands the authority of agencies like the FCC, determined courts will be able to work around it, he said. “When courts want to second-guess agencies’ interpretation of their jurisdiction, they're going to."

The scale of the Prism surveillance program shows “how fragile our open Internet is,” said Council of Europe (CoE) Information Society and Action against Crime Director Jan Kleijssen in an interview. While organized crime and terrorism are challenges that must be met, they can’t be allowed to compromise people’s freedoms, he said: Security and human rights “should be mutually reinforcing.” Kleijssen spoke Tuesday before this week’s European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG) in Lisbon, Portugal. He also said the CoE is trying to mend fences with several of its members who signed the new International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) last year when most rejected it. How to keep the Internet open, free and safe remains elusive, speakers said at a Thursday EuroDIG debate.

FCC indecency rules are doomed to be struck down by the Supreme Court, said a group of public interest organizations that often disagree on other policies and their staff in follow-up interviews. Public Knowledge, the Center for Democracy and Technology, Electronic Frontier Foundation and TechFreedom’s filing (http://bit.ly/13TElLx) came Wednesday, when several other organizations also commented on the last day for comments on the commission’s proposed “egregious” standard for enforcing indecency rules (CD April 2 p1). “Anything the FCC does will be tied up in court so long there won’t be any broadcasters by the time it’s done,” said Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom. “Indecency regulations should be something parents do, not the FCC.”