Several public interests groups asked the FTC to investigate and take enforcement action against The Topps Company for allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, a Center for Digital Democracy news release said Tuesday. Among those joining the CDD complaint were Consumers Union and Consumer Watchdog. The complaint charges that Topps, a candy and trading-card company, violated COPPA with unlawful data collection practices on its Candymania website and a corresponding online contest. “Topps and its partners cynically sought to bypass COPPA’s key safeguard that parents must first be told about a company’s data collection practices before their child’s information is gathered,” CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester said in the release. "This is a textbook study of how online marketers are so eager to use Facebook and other social media to promote their products to friends and even strangers, they ignore this key law designed to protect consumer privacy online,” he said. Topps didn’t comment.
The FCC is listed as the ninth-best mid-sized federal agency to work for in an online list put together by the Partnership for Public Service. Created by polling civil servants, the overall list ranks the FDIC as the best of the 25 agencies in the FCC's size category, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development as the worst. Overall, the survey's findings show “a decline in federal employee satisfaction with their jobs and workplaces for a fourth consecutive year,” said the website. Governmentwide, federal employee job satisfaction and commitment fell 0.9 points to a score of 56.9 out of 100.The FCC's fell 3.9 points, but at 67.4 is still higher than average. The FTC is number four on the list of mid-size agencies.
The FCC should approve the draft order on circulation clarifying that calls originating or terminating over VoIP are subject to the same intercarrier compensation as any other kind of wireline traffic (see 1410280032), Greg Rogers, Bandwidth.com deputy general counsel, and Morgan Lewis’ Tamar Finn told an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn Dec. 3, said an ex parte notice posted Monday in docket 10-90. “Every month of delay in addressing this issue costs Bandwidth time and money in disputed and unpaid access bills, diverting resources from running and growing its business, unlocking IP innovation for well-established and emerging partners on the creative edge of IP user experiences.” Verizon officials, though, told Daniel Alvarez, aide to Chairman Tom Wheeler, Dec. 4 that the agency already has determined in a number of proceedings that an LEC “cannot assess end office switching access charges when it routes over-the-top VoIP traffic over the public Internet,” said an ex parte filing posted Monday. Reversing the determination would “encourage arbitrageurs to use over-the-top VoIP autodialing equipment to collect originating switched access through new robocall schemes,” Verizon’s Kathleen Grillo, senior vice president-federal regulatory affairs, Chris Miller, vice president-regulatory affairs, and Alan Buzacott, executive director-federal regulatory affairs, told Alvarez. If the commission changes course, it would have to adjust rules and apply it prospectively, Verizon said.
Reclassifying broadband under Communications Act Title II would put net neutrality rules on the strongest legal standing, Leigh Freund, AOL global public policy chief counsel, told an aide to Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel Dec. 3, said an FCC ex parte filing posted in docket 14-28 Monday. A firm ban on paid prioritization “should rely on all jurisdictional sources available,” including Title II and Section 706, AOL said.
The FCC doesn't have authority to pre-empt state laws putting up obstacles to municipal broadband projects, and should reject pre-emption petitions from the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina, Brad Ramsay, NARUC general counsel, and officials from ITTA and CenturyLink told FCC General Counsel Jonathan Sallet and a Wireline Bureau official, said an ex parte filing posted Monday in dockets 14-115 and 14-116. Also involved in the Dec. 3 meeting were ITTA's Genny Morelli, president, and Micah Caldwell, vice president-regulatory affairs, and CenturyLink's Jeb Benedict, vice president-federal regulatory affairs.
The FCC should adopt FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s draft order at Thursday's commission meeting to raise E-rate’s spending cap by $1.5 billion (see 1411170042), wrote Kristen Amundson, executive director of the National Association of State Boards of Education, in a Dec. 1 letter to the agency posted Friday in docket 13-184. “Historic education reforms,” including the implementation of college and career standards, “require or benefit significantly, from high capacity broadband,” Amundson wrote. “Unfortunately, far too many schools -- particularly the nation's rural schools -- lack access to broadband at the levels needed to adequately support effective teaching and learning." School district officials have also written the commission supporting the higher cap, according to ex parte filings. The Urban Libraries Council urged the commission to increase the amount of E-rate funding a library can receive, said an ex parte filing posted Friday. Three percent of libraries represent almost a third of all library Wi-Fi users, said a study ULC submitted in the filing. The libraries need more funding than allowed under the commission’s July E-rate modernization order (see 1407140044), wrote ULC President Susan Benton in a Nov. 28 letter, also included in the filing. Allowing the heaviest users to qualify for the funding they need would guarantee that the busiest 7 percent of libraries, with more than 63 percent of public Wi-Fi users, would be eligible for “requisite funding,” Benton wrote.
Mobile Future said the 2007 FCC voice roaming order can in no way be a model for reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service. That analogy misses big differences between automatic voice roaming and broadband Internet access, it said in a filing Friday: “Most importantly, to the extent there is a market for automatic voice roaming, it is a wholesale market involving a discrete set of participants -- namely, mobile wireless voice carriers. In contrast, the broadband Internet access market is a retail market, involving literally hundreds of millions of relationships -- all of which would be dramatically altered by the reclassification of broadband Internet service.” Broadband reclassification “could require a greater degree of forbearance than was required in the voice roaming context -- or, alternatively, could result in a far heavier regulatory burden,” the group said in docket 14-28.
The FCC decline of a GAO recommendation that it step up oversight of usage-based pricing could signal “a strong disinclination by the Chairman toward any new FCC limits on cable broadband pricing,” said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant in an email to investors Wednesday. The FCC’s rejection of GAO’s advice (see 1412020037) makes it seem likely that if the commission bases new net neutrality rules on Communications Act Title II, “the Wheeler-led FCC would do as much as it can to limit the risk of a shift toward greater pricing oversight by a future FCC,” Gallant said. “We continue to believe that reclassification of broadband as a Title 2 service -- should that happen -- would not make it more likely that a future FCC will in fact decide to regulate cable broadband prices.”
Comcast’s “modest gain” in footprint from buying Time Warner Cable won’t increase its incentive “to engage in exclusionary conduct” toward video industry rivals, said Comcast in response to questions from FCC staff. The response was posted online Monday. Those who believe the merger will have anticompetitive consequences believe Comcast would reap “slightly higher proportion of gains from exclusionary conduct if it serves 29% of U.S. MVPD [multichannel video programming distributor] subscribers rather than 22%,” said Comcast. “This theoretical claim finds no support in the documents or historical behavior of Comcast,” said the cable company. Since Comcast has long been the nation’s largest cable company, evidence of such behavior should have already emerged if it were a real concern, Comcast said. The cable company also pointed to merger conditions that keep it from preventing online video distributors from accessing its content. “There is “strong empirical evidence that the immediate harm to Comcast’s programming business from any foreclosure strategy would exceed any purported benefit to its MVPD business,” Comcast said.
New FTC Chief Technology Officer Ashkan Soltani will focus on improving the agency’s tech recruitment, big data initiatives and data security, he said in a blog post Tuesday. “Data security is one of the most important aspects of a functioning marketplace and a critical aspect in consumer protection,” he said. “I hope to expand the agency’s ability to measure big data’s disparate effects in order to ensure that the algorithms that consumers interact with on a daily basis afford them the same rights online as they’re entitled to offline.” Consumer advocates and technologists expect Soltani to put the agency at the forefront of emerging tech issues (see 1410290060).