Ad networks and plugins would fall under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule enforced by the FTC under its “supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking” published in the Federal Register (http://xrl.us/bniz45) Wednesday. The proposed revisions would also encourage websites with “mixed” audiences to “age-screen” everyone as a means of complying with COPPA and designate persistent identifiers used to communicate with devices as “personal information” in some cases, though fewer than the agency originally proposed. The commission said it received more than 350 comments in response to its original notice of proposed rulemaking on COPPA rule changes nearly a year ago, and that its proposed revisions in response demanded a new comment period.

The New York attorney general’s office has hammered Verizon New York throughout the summer, and on Monday the office asserted that Verizon Communications CEO Lowell McAdam had offered words in a June conference call that “contradict Verizon’s assertions in this proceeding regarding investment in its landline network,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Keith Gordon in a filing with the New York State Public Service Commission (http://xrl.us/bnivxy). Verizon wants to “kill the copper,” according to the McAdam statements Gordon cited. “Verizon’s basic stated intentions to force urban landline customers onto FiOS and rural customers onto wireless plans will put basic voice service beyond the economic reach of a significant portion of the company’s current customers who do not wish to or cannot pay for these services that far exceed current landline voice service,” Gordon wrote Monday.

A planned two-mile Milwaukee streetcar project has upset Wisconsin telcos, they said in a petition filed Monday with the Wisconsin Public Service Commission (http://xrl.us/bniu8f). AT&T Wisconsin, Time Warner Cable, the Wisconsin Cable Communications Association (WCCA), tw telecom and Windstream are objecting to the municipal transportation network’s desire to force utilities to move facilities at their own expense and wants the Wisconsin PSC to declare it unreasonable and unlawful for “the City to require public utilities through any ordinance, resolution, regulation, agreement, requirement or future order to modify or relocate their facilities without compensation from the City to accommodate the Streetcar Project and that any such regulations are unreasonable and void,” the petition said.

David Redl, majority counsel to the House Commerce Committee, questioned Tuesday whether the single-minded focus on sharing in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s (PCAST) controversial report on spectrum could slow getting more spectrum in play rather than speeding the process. Hisccomments came during a panel hosted by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF). CTIA Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe strongly criticized the report for saying far too little about exclusive-use spectrum, while extolling the virtues of sharing.

A compromise among Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Cybersecurity Act (S-3414) failed to materialize Tuesday as the clock ticked down toward the end of the Senate’s work period. Supporters of S-3414 slammed the U.S. Chamber of Commerce for leading the opposition against the bill despite major changes made to appease the business lobby. Tuesday, the Chamber remained unmovable and urged senators to strike the text of S-3414 and replace it with an alternative cybersecurity bill, the SECURE IT Act (S-2151).

LONDON -- The BBC is working with its Japanese counterpart NHK to make the London Olympics a full-scale testbed for Super Hi-Vision, NHK’s system for delivering 16 times the picture quality of HDTV, with 22.2-channel surround audio.

The FCC should not impose additional rules on wireless carriers to protect privacy and security of customer information stored on mobile communications devices, the four major carriers and CTIA said in separate reply comments filed at the FCC. But public interest groups said in joint comments that carriers want the FCC to rely on “opacity and blind faith in voluntary behavior to protect privacy.” The FCC sought comment in a May 25 public notice. FTC staff weighed in, in favor of expanding privacy rules in the initial comment round (CD July 17 p5).

Major U.S. cable operators, looking to make their facilities more energy efficient so it costs less to power them and equipment lasts longer (CD July 24 p12), have two new guides from the industry’s technical consortium for backend facilities. The Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers Tuesday released its first two standards for energy efficiency of hubs and headends which operators use to connect their larger networks and Internet backbones to regional cable systems. SCTE 184 is a recommended practice for how to locate such facilities and keep them running when commercial power goes out, and SCTE 186 is a specification for ventilation of such buildings and data centers, and ways to locate racks of equipment.

The 1974 Privacy Act should be amended to account for the tremendous technological shift in federal data collection practices, members said Tuesday at a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight of Government Management hearing. Chairman Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, advocated his amendment to the Senate Cybersecurity Act (S-3414), which would require federal agencies to implement data privacy policies and require agencies to disclose data breaches that involve citizens’ information. “I think it is critical to make agencies prioritize this before a breach occurs,” he said.

U.K. government thinking on broadband rollout has veered off course because of its focus on “superfast” services and a failure to consider broadband as a “major strategic asset” equal to roads, railways and energy networks, the House of Lords Communications Committee said in a report Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnivqn). It recommended the creation of open-access fiber hubs to drive broadband as close as possible to users. It also said that at some point it may be better to move TV broadcasting to Internet Protocol TV (IPTV), to free spectrum for mobile uses. The government said it’s on the right track. One analyst called the report ambitious but inconsistent, while a former FCC official cheered lawmakers for starting a public debate on the issues.