The FCC Media Bureau extended the comment deadline in a proceeding on requests from programmers and broadcasters to expand protections of highly confidential documents involved in the review of the Comcast/Time Warner Cable deal and AT&T/DirecTV. Comments are due Sept. 29, the bureau said Friday in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1u3pzQu). Comments were originally due Sept. 26, after the bureau issued a public notice Sept. 23. A public interest attorney urged the FCC to reexamine how it handles highly sensitive documents in review of pending transactions. The practices should be reexamined “to insure that all documents considered by the Commission staff are within the direct jurisdiction of the Commission and made part of the record,” said Andrew Jay Schwartzman of the Georgetown University Law Center, in comments filed in dockets 14-90 and 14-57 in his personal capacity. Until the FCC changes the procedures to provide full transparency, interested parties “will not be able to participate fully in the Commission’s review of assignments and transfers, and the Commission runs the risk of judicial reversal in these or other future proceedings,” he said in comments. The FCC’s practice of “making house calls” to the Justice Department to review documents that aren’t included in the record before the agency is “fundamentally unfair and exposes the commission to great jeopardy on judicial review,” he said. There’s no need to adopt the proposed measures to give additional protection to sensitive documents, he said. The FCC has ample authority to modify its ordinary protective order process to impose a higher than usual degree of protection if circumstances arise, Schwartzman said.
FBI Director James Comey is frustrated with Apple and Google over security measures meant to bar law enforcement access to data even with a court order, according to comments made to reporters and later confirmed by a bureau spokesperson. The FBI is meeting with the two companies to discuss the issue, Comey said. “What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to hold themselves beyond the law.” Apple and Google have been public about increased encryption measures they added since revelations about government surveillance programs. Apple also promoted a feature on its recent iOS 8 update that makes the company unable to comply with government requests to turn over user data (WID Sept 19 p9). Apple and Google did not comment.
Recipients of round two of Connect America Fund Phase I support have until Feb. 24 to identify location information, including latitude and longitude, for each location to be counted toward satisfying their deployment obligations, said the FCC Wireline Bureau in a public notice (http://fcc.us/1u355Hx) Thursday. The starting date for deadlines to meet the deployment obligations is when the amount of round two funding was finalized, the PN clarified. Recipients of Phase I round two support must complete deployment of broadband-capable infrastructure to two-thirds of the required number of locations within two years of providing notice of acceptance of funding, and must complete deployment to all required locations within three years, the PN said.
After finding that about half of the roughly 180,000 Connect America Fund, Phase II challenges filed with the FCC were without merit, the Wireline Bureau in a public notice (http://bit.ly/1BhCtul) Friday sought comments on the remaining tens of thousands of challenges over whether Census blocks should be eligible for Connect America Fund, Phase II funds. Responses to the challenges are due in docket 10-90 by Nov. 10. Of the 42,520 challenges that Census blocks deemed unserved by a broadband provider should really be considered served and not be eligible for funding, the bureau said only 24,225 of them made a prima facie case for further consideration, according to FCC figures. Of 135,815 challenges saying an area considered served should be considered unserved and eligible for funds, the bureau found 70,868 met a prima facie standard, the figures said. The challenges were seen as a high-stakes battle in which companies were trying to protect their own turf from competitors, or to be able to tap into the $9 billion pot to move into other areas.
Movie theater subscription service MoviePass raised $2.2 million in a funding round, a company news release said Friday. The financing round was led by Chris Kelly, former Facebook chief privacy officer, and Structure Capital, it said. MoviePass members pay a monthly fee to see movies at partner movie theaters, which have increased their attendance by 60 percent, it said.
Public Knowledge Senior Vice President Harold Feld said the FCC shouldn’t adopt a presumption against unlicensed mobile operations on Channel 37 so that the wireless medical telemetry service (WMTS) is protected. “The Commission should, at this early stage, avoid overly conservative presumptions that would preclude access to necessary spectrum for broadband use -- particularly in urban markets,” Feld said in a filing (http://bit.ly/1pf1Qar) posted Thursday in docket 12-268. The question of how white spaces devices and WMTS “can best share Channel 37 should be resolved by engineering data submitted in the record,” Feld said. GE Healthcare earlier asked the FCC to reconsider its “arbitrary and capricious decision” to allow the unlicensed use of TV Channel 37 (http://bit.ly/1ARjJ4s). GE Healthcare is one of the main companies promoting WMTS. GE, the WMTS Coalition and others also met with FCC officials on the issue in recent days, said an ex parte filing (http://bit.ly/1uKegdP). The main focus was “mathematical and other errors” in FCC analysis of whether unlicensed mobile base stations would cause interference with WMTS if allowed to use Chanel 37, said the WMTS promoters.
Yahoo disclosed content in response to 1,396 of the 6,791 government data requests it received between Jan. 1 and June 30, according to the company’s most recent transparency report, released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1rgdrvA). The company rejected 382 requests. Those statistics show numbers that are roughly equal to the previous six-month period but significantly lower than the first six-month period Yahoo reported on -- January through June 2013. Yahoo said it disclosed content for 4,604 of the government’s 12,444 data requests over that stretch.
The “primary,” and for most end users, the “sole function” of broadband is precisely how telecom service is defined in the Communications Act -- “’the transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received,'” said a NASUCA net neutrality reply (http://bit.ly/1n1jdjK) posted Thursday in docket 14-28. Therefore, net neutrality rules should be based on Title II authority, the organization said in the Sept. 15 reply.
As Yahoo joined the technology company exodus from the American Legislative Exchange Council, ALEC’s state legislator members responded, arguing Google -- which began the parade of announced withdrawals -- misrepresented the council’s positions (http://bit.ly/1v3YxIR). Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt pointed to the council’s climate change denial as the main reason his company decided to cancel its membership, calling the group’s messaging on the topic “literally lying” (WID Sept 23 p10). “Your calculated departure from ALEC is based on misinformation from climate activists who intentionally confuse free market policy perspectives for climate change denial,” the lawmakers said. “ALEC recognizes that climate change is an important issue and just hosted a roundtable conversation for a variety of companies -- including Google -- on this very issue.” ALEC has “no model policy” that denies climate change, they said. Google did not comment on the ALEC letter. Facebook, Yahoo and Yelp -- which have all either left or indicated they likely would leave ALEC -- did not explicitly say the organization’s climate change position drove them away. The letter was signed by 156 state legislators.
Ninety-four percent of 808 “unique” critically acclaimed or high-grossing films were available through at least one online VOD service in the U.S., said an NBCUniversal-commissioned report by KPMG released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1CnwiY5). The report analyzed the availability of 808 critically acclaimed and/or high box office grossing films, 60 independent films and 724 TV shows among 34 online VOD services, like Hulu and Netflix, it said. The data was compiled in December, it said. Eighty-one percent of the top films were available on at least 10 of the 34 VOD services, it said. Ninety-six percent of the 100 most popular TV shows in 2012 were available on at least one VOD service, it said. The growth of VOD services “reinforces and encourages the creativity and hard work of the men and women behind the scenes of the film and television industry,” MPAA CEO Chris Dodd said, in a separate news release Thursday (http://bit.ly/1ysEqbf).