Fears about digital piracy and the rights of visually impaired people to access copyrighted works are major opposing considerations as negotiators meet this week in Morocco to conclude a World Intellectual Property Organization-facilitated treaty (http://bit.ly/14GygD9), stakeholders told us. In letters to U.S. officials, organizations representing intellectual property (IP) rightsholders have argued that a weak treaty in this area could set a bad precedent for future negotiations on IP rights, while consumer advocates say those fears are overblown. Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn told us that IP rightsholders “want to make this exception as difficult to use as possible.” Potential provisions in the treaty would “impose greater burdens on those that serve the blind,” said Rashmi Rangnath, director of PK’s Global Knowledge Initiative.

Global satellite industry revenue grew 7 percent in 2012, outpacing both the worldwide economic growth rate (2.3 percent) and U.S. growth (2.2 percent), but well behind telecom sector growth at 14 percent, the Satellite Industry Association said in its annual State of the Satellite Industry Report, released Monday. Worldwide, 2012 revenue totaled $189.5 billion in 2012, up from $177.3 billion the previous year. But industry employment fell by 1 percent through the first three quarters of the year, a loss of 1,407 jobs. In 2011, industry employment fell 2 percent.

Europe is on the “cusp of an amazing transition” but innovations from connected cars to 3D printing rely on fast, pervasive networks, said Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes Monday at a European Commission-hosted conference on a single European telecom market. Just 2 percent of EU homes have broadband speeds above 100 Mbps, and European mobile data speeds are half those of the U.S., she said. Combined, the U.S., Japan and South Korea have 88 percent of the world’s 4G connections, Europe 6 percent, she said. With current trends unsustainable, the EC is preparing to propose a single telecom market. Representatives from the telecom, consumer electronics, financial and consumer sectors agreed such a plan is necessary, but differed over its key elements and feasibility.

Along with more malware, phishing, ransomware and mobile platform malware, cybercops can look forward to more infiltration of large corporations by criminals hacking into the law, accounting and other firms serving them, said Europol Assistant Director Troels Oerting in an interview Monday. The center is also seeing a hike in the volume of mainstream crime by average people who can now easily buy hacking tools, he said. Carrier grade network translation (CGN) on IPv4 networks is one of several challenges to tracking cybercriminals, said Oerting, who heads Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). Other experts have said CGN may hamper investigations (CD June 11 p5).

An FCC reconsideration of IP closed captioning rules released Friday encourages captions for video clips but wouldn’t require them. As expected (CD May 17 p3), it would delay implementing caption rules for DVD or Blu-Ray players. The order was approved by all three commissioners, though Commissioner Ajit Pai approved in part and concurred in part. Pai said the commission should not impose IP closed captioning rules on “removable media.”

The growing furor last week over the implications of National Security Agency surveillance programs that collect phone metadata and data from online services included a growing number of lawsuits aimed at stopping the programs. Although most of the lawsuits targeted the NSA and the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, at least two class-action suits also involved the telecom and Internet companies from which the government collected data. Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman, the lead plaintiff in those lawsuits, claimed the companies are as complicit as the government in violating their subscribers’ constitutional rights. A former federal prosecutor who has handled telecom cases at the federal and state levels told us existing legal precedents will make it difficult for Klayman to prevail over the companies, and are likely to preclude others from bringing similar challenges.

Free Press is so disappointed with the FCC’s circulating order on collection of broadband deployment data that it’s urging the commission to pull the draft so it can be retooled. Research Director Derek Turner “expressed profound disappointment” to agency officials Wednesday about a draft item that “doesn’t adopt any of the recommendations made in the National Broadband Plan or by the Department of Justice” (http://bit.ly/ZPvNV7). An agency official told us it’s “unlikely” that the draft will be pulled at this point. The order is scheduled for a vote at the FCC’s June 27 meeting.

"I do know there are very many larger areas where the PSAPs are not ready to handle that,” said Chris Littlewood, project coordinator at the Allstate Center’s Center for Public Safety Innovation at the National Terrorism Preparedness Institute, of text-to-911. Education and outreach needs “to happen at the PSAP level as well,” he said. “I can tell you that it’s not just rural areas that have no idea that they need to be handling text-to-911 by the beginning of next year. … Are the PSAPs going to be able to handle that?” Different procedures will need to be in place at different levels of the 911 call centers, he said.

The same application of rules to cable as to other industries was sought by two leading executives visiting Washington last week for NCTA’s annual convention. Comcast CEO Brian Roberts mentioned such rules in the context of customer privacy, while Time Warner Cable President Rob Marcus mentioned taxes and issues that also affect satellite. Speaking in separate interviews to have been shown this weekend on C-SPAN, the executives said moving functions from set-top boxes to the cloud, a theme of the Cable Show (CD June 12 p14) , will make it easier for subscribers to do things like search for shows and use apps and other products made by companies beyond the operators.

FCC Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman defended a May 17 public notice seeking more information on a 600 MHz band plan following the incentive auction of broadcast TV spectrum, saying the notice merely explores issues on which the agency needed additional comment. The notice proved controversial and was the hot topic at the CTIA annual meeting held the week after the notice was published (CD May 24 p1).