Several rural organizations asked the FCC for “emergency” clarification of the requirement that rural rate-of-return regulated ILECs submit five-year service quality improvement plans (http://bit.ly/10mQK8F). NTCA, the Eastern Rural Telecom Association, the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, the National Exchange Carrier Association, USTelecom and the Western Telecommunications Alliance all signed the petition, asking that the deadline for submission of the five-year plans be delayed a year, to July 1, 2014.

But the notice isn’t likely to lead to policy change any time soon, Liberman said. He said that’s especially since the notice came a week after FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced his upcoming departure. “It’s a hot potato,” and an interim chairman is unlikely to do anything substantive with the issue, Liberman said. “There are a lot of things that you can do to make it look like you're doing something without doing anything."

"It’s really just a set of high-level requirements,” said a carrier official. “In order to implement something consistent that supports all of the [public safety answering points] and all of the different carriers we normally work from an industry standard.”

Commenters differed on the proper speed proxy the FCC should use to ensure that recipients of Connect America Fund Phase II money provide broadband service of at least 4 Mbps downstream and 1 Mbps upstream. Commenters in WC docket 10-90 were responding to a Wireline Bureau request on how best to identify unserved areas eligible for CAF Phase II funding, and on how to measure broadband speed, latency and other metrics required of funding recipients.

Aereo won a victory over broadcasters at a federal appeals court Monday, but industry officials said the litigation is far from settled. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s decision not to issue an injunction against Aereo while a trial over its right to distribute New York City TV stations’ signals to online subscribers plays out. In a business plan that owes much to Cablevision’s remote-storage DVR litigation that also played out at the 2nd Circuit, Aereo leases small antennas and DVRs to its subscribers who can then access the programming through software on devices such as Apple’s iPad.In a 2-1 opinion, the court suggested the laws covering cable TV and online video may be out of date. “As much as Aereo’s service may resemble a cable system, it also generates transmissions that closely resemble the private transmissions from” devices such as a rooftop antenna, said the opinion by Circuit Judge Christopher Droney and District Judge John Gleeson, who’s sitting on the circuit bench by designation. “Thus unanticipated technological developments have created tension between Congress’s view that retransmission of network programs by cable television systems should be deemed public performances and its intent that some transmission be classified as private,” the opinion said. But the legislative history of the Copyright Act and the statute’s language compel the court to hold that Aereo’s transmissions are not public performances, it said.Judge Denny Chin disagreed. In his dissent he called Aereo’s system of small antennas a sham. “The system is a Rube-Goldberg-like contrivance, over-engineered in an attempt to avoid the reach of the Copyright Act and to take advantage of a perceived loophole in the law,” he wrote. Chin’s analysis was brilliant, said Ralph Oman, a law professor at George Washington University and former U.S. register of copyrights who filed a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the broadcasters. “It was obviously designed not for engineering efficiency but to conform with the Cablevision holding and avoid copyright liability,” he said of Aereo’s technology.It was not a surprise to see Chin dissent, said John Bergmayer, a staff attorney for Public Knowledge, who filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of Aereo. “He was the one who wrote the district court Cablevision decision that was overturned by the Second Circuit,” he said. “We already know he disagrees."Plaintiffs in the case said they're considering their options and preparing to litigate the case on the merits in U.S. District Court, New York. “Today’s decision is a loss for the entire creative community,” said Fox, Univision, Tribune, PBS and WNET-TV New York. “We remain confident that we will ultimately prevail."The most likely next step for the litigation is seeking review by a larger panel of 2nd Circuit judges, Bergmayer said. If Aereo expands its service outside the footprint of the 2nd Circuit, that could prompt further litigation and potentially a circuit split that would entice the Supreme Court to get involved, he said. Other courts around the country would not be bound by the precedent set by the Cablevision ruling in the 2nd Circuit, Stifel Nicolaus analysts Chris King and Dave Kaut wrote in a note to investors. Congress may wait to weigh in until the issue has reached the Supreme Court, Oman told us. “When there’s a possibility the issue is going to be resolved by the Supreme Court, I think there would be a reluctance to jump in and legislate,” he said.Aereo CEO Chet Kanojia said the company was grateful for the court’s decision. “We look forward to continuing to build a successful business that puts consumers first,” he said. An Aereo spokesman declined to discuss a report in the Wall Street Journal that said the company has held talks with pay-TV distributors about potential partnership.

MetroPCS’s board urged shareholders to approve a proposed merger with T-Mobile USA, noting in a letter Monday that there’s “no assurance that MetroPCS will be able to deliver the same or better stockholder value as a stand-alone wireless company in the future.” MetroPCS said it believes merging with T-Mobile “will create the value leader in the U.S. wireless marketplace and provide significantly more value and potential equity upside to MetroPCS stockholders than could be achieved by MetroPCS on a stand-alone basis” (http://bit.ly/XmcELo).

LOS ANGELES -- Gary Shapiro has no doubt that Ultra HD “will be very successful,” though not quite “the total killer” that HDTV was, the CEA chief told last week’s ESCA Digital 2013 conference in a keynote to promote his new book, Ninja Innovation: The Ten Killer Strategies of the World’s Most Successful Businesses.

Viacom has failed to prove that YouTube had sufficient knowledge of clips on the site that infringed Viacom’s copyrights, YouTube said in a motion for summary judgment (http://bit.ly/10aRldq) in U.S. District Court in New York. The case against the Google-owned video site was remanded by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year. According to YouTube’s motion, Viacom issued 100,000 Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices, followed by the lawsuit, after negotiations to acquire or partner with YouTube stalled in 2007. In an opposition to the motion (http://bit.ly/13GvOyr), Viacom said YouTube had a willful blindness to the infringement.

The FCC sought comment on whether it should extend or eliminate a Dec. 31, 2016, deadline requiring 700 MHz public safety narrowband licensees to change over from a 12.5 kilohertz voice efficiency standard to a 6.25 kilohertz standard. The FCC also sought comment on a 2010 National Public Safety Telecommunications Council petition asking the agency to amend its Part 90 rules to allow some air-to-ground communications using 700 MHz interoperability channels on secondary trunking channels. The NPRM was attached to a report and order tweaking the rules for the 700 MHz narrowband spectrum.

The FCC asked if it should stick to what has become an indecency policy of sorts of not fining broadcasters for airing single instances of cursewords or nudity and instead pursuing only what it deems to be more significant cases. A public notice Monday asked whether it should stick with its recent policy of restrained enforcement or instead return to an earlier policy of censuring radio and TV stations for fleeting indecency. The agency has taken the restrained approach under outgoing Chairman Julius Genachowski. FCC officials had said that tack was buttressed by June’s Supreme Court ruling dismissing fines against affiliates of Disney’s ABC for airing in 2003 seven seconds of nudity on NYPD Blue and censuring News Corp.’s Fox for unscripted cursing by Cher and other celebrities on the 2002 and 2003 Billboard Music Awards (CD June 22 p1).