Pandora reached a licensing agreement with international music rights management company BMG, said a Pandora news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1rOh8DH). The deal lets Pandora access BMG’s complete catalog of works under performing rights organizations the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc., it said.

ICANN’s Public Experts Group for its accountability process extended its deadline to choose seven advisers for the process (http://bit.ly/1vdRn3j) from Sept. 10 to Sept. 30, it said in a Wednesday news release (http://bit.ly/1mZr3EP). ICANN cited the recent comment period on ICANN accountability, which ends Sept. 27 (http://bit.ly/1qA0RFZ), as the reason for the extension. NTIA Administrator Larry Strickling is one four members on the Public Experts Group, which is asking for community input on the seven advisers, it said. ICANN’s Cross Community Group for the accountability process will have an informational call Monday (http://bit.ly/1ot0wjO).

A request for proposals (RFP) (http://bit.ly/WJWITF) and “suggested” Internet Assigned Numbers (IANA) transition timeline (http://bit.ly/1qFoBbw) were released by the IANA Coordination Group (ICG) Wednesday (http://bit.ly/1rIur8L). The RFPs are primarily for the ICANN communities with “direct operational or service relationships with the IANA functions operator,” which are the names, numbers and protocol parameters communities, it said. Proposals are due Jan. 15, it said. The ICG will develop draft responses to the proposals from Jan. 15 to March 13, said the timeline. The draft process will be reviewed from March 13 to May 15, it said. Testing and review of the final IANA transition proposal will take place from March 13 to July 17. The proposal will be submitted to NTIA sometime between July 17 and July 31; NTIA will have until Sept. 30, 2015, to approve the proposal, it said. The tentative timeline said NTIA has not offered any guidance on the time necessary for it to approve the transition. The ICG also released Wednesday an RFP to select a contractor to perform the group’s secretariat function (http://bit.ly/WK0VH4). Submissions for the secretariat are due Monday, it said.

The Internet economy -- including the information, communications and technology sector -- accounted for 20 percent of U.S. economic growth between 1997 and 2002 and 10 percent of growth between 2002 and 2007, said a Hudson Institute report released Monday (http://bit.ly/1roaWIg). It cited Department of Commerce data. “These contributions to economic growth are above the level of economic activity that would have occurred had economic factors remained constant,” said the report. The government, the report said, has never tried to pinpoint the exact contribution of the Internet economy to the overall U.S. economy. In total, the Internet economy contributed $922 billion in 2013 dollars from 1997 to 2007, it concluded.

Six major app developers signed on to build connected car apps through the AT&T Drive platform. The developers are AccuWeather, Glympse, iHeartRadio, Stitcher, Streetline and Tribune Digital Ventures, AT&T said Friday in a news release (http://soc.att.com/1pwJbpt). The platform allows automakers and developers to implement their own innovative and customized connected car systems, it said. Apps include one from AccuWeather that warns against inclement conditions, and another from Glympse that allows connected car drivers “to share their dynamic location in real-time with anyone,” AT&T said.

ICANN confirmed it received a follow-up letter Wednesday from its major constituencies and stakeholder groups with 20 questions, many with amended sub-questions, on ICANN’s accountability process (CD Aug 28 p14), a spokesman said. ICANN received a letter from the groups Aug. 26 questioning its accountability process released Aug. 14 (http://bit.ly/1vdRn3j) (CD Aug 27 p9). “Why is the Cross Community Group not also encouraged to recommend solutions to the Coordination Group?” one of the sub-questions inquired. The letter also asked whether the final recommendations of the Coordination Group -- to be approved by the ICANN board -- would be submitted to ICANN’s supporting organizations and advisory committees before being finalized. ICANN should initiate a 21-day public comment period on the accountability process, it said. ICANN didn’t commit Tuesday to holding a public comment period on the accountability process, during an Internet Governance Forum session (CD Sept 3 p15).

Institute for Policy Innovation President Tom Giovanetti urged the FCC to reject the municipal broadband petitions filed by the Electric Power Board in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the city of Wilson, North Carolina, saying in a Thursday blog post that “the power to regulate state affairs belongs to the states” (http://bit.ly/1unQ5CM). IPI recently filed comments on the Wilson petition, docket 14-115, opposing both petitions because a state has a constitutional right to use its prerogative as a state to restrict municipal broadband (http://bit.ly/1ryXsr6). States “have the power to limit and regulate municipal entry into broadband provision, and their concerns are just and legitimate,” Giovanetti said in the blog post. The 10th Amendment gives states “the power to regulate their internal matters, including that of whether the state will allow municipalities to build broadband systems subjecting all citizens of the state to the risk of failure,” he said.

Marketing analytics companies comScore and Neustar are partnering to bring comScore’s “accredited metrics” to Neustar’s PlatformOne, which measures digital marketing efforts, a Thursday news release said (http://bit.ly/1c1GjxB). “Our partnership with comScore is one of many important alliances we have made, and will continue to make, to ensure that PlatformOne is at the forefront of helping marketers drive ROI [return on investment] in an increasingly complex digital marketing ecosystem,” said Ted Prince, Neustar senior vice president-information services.

Local Corp. settled its patent infringement case against Fry’s Electronics, Local said in a news release Wednesday (http://bit.ly/Z7oU4w). The terms of the settlement are confidential, it said. Local Corp. sued Fry’s in 2012 for its alleged infringement of Local’s U.S. Patent No. 7,062,453, which covers “'methods and systems for dynamic networked commerce architecture,'” it said. The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court of Central California, said a Local Corp. spokeswoman. “We are very pleased with the outcome of this settlement, and we believe this further validates the significant unlocked value of our robust patent portfolio,” Local Corp. CEO Fred Thiel said. Fry’s didn’t comment.

Solon Barocas, a Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy postdoctoral research associate, and three FTC officials will give the two presentations at the agency’s Sept. 15 daylong workshop on big data (http://1.usa.gov/1nXij2k). FTC officials will also speak, while privacy advocates, data de-identification researchers and industry representatives will fill out the four panels on big data: Its technology, current uses, potential for harm and policy ramifications. FTC officials Chief Technologist Latanya Sweeney and Technology and Data Governance Research Fellow Jinyan Zan will give a presentation on “Digging into the Data.” Sweeney is widely considered to be one of the most prominent data de-identification researchers. Barocas will present his research on “the novel challenges that data mining poses to fairness and privacy,” said his personal website. “I've looked at the use of predictive analytics for counterterrorism, voter microtargeting in political campaigns, the impact of data mining techniques on model-building in economics and finance and the integration of evidence-based medicine with clinical decision support systems.” Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Commissioner Julie Brill and Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich will also speak.