Letting radio and TV stations list contest rules online, instead of requiring on-air disclosure, was backed by all comments to the FCC in RM-11684 (http://xrl.us/bn7heu). Owners of a few thousand stations and their associations and programmers agreed with a request by Entercom to revisit 1976 rules, just as with early-filed comments (CD Dec 20 p20). Although unanimous industry support had been expected (CD Jan 27 p7), it spurred optimism by the lawyer who made the request that the agency will move to change the rules.

The updated Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act rule could violate the First Amendment, the rule’s critics said. The update (CD Dec 20 p10), scheduled to go into effect July 1, allows a website that is considered directed to children but does “not target children as its primary audience” to screen users for age before any personal information is collected. Websites would then treat those users under 13 in accordance with COPPA. Free speech and privacy advocates are taking issue with the provision that provides age-screening as an option.

Congress approved a bill last week to permit online video users to share their consumption habits over social networking sites. On Thursday night, the Senate cleared the House-passed HR-6671, which modernizes the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), a 1988 bill which prohibits video service providers from sharing consumer video viewing practices on an ongoing basis with third parties. The videotape-era law has prevented video streaming companies like Netflix and Hulu from allowing their users to engage in frictionless sharing -- or sharing that requires one-time informed, written consent -- with social media sites like Facebook. A Netflix spokesman said Friday that once the president signs the bill the company will introduce new social features for its U.S. members in 2013 that give consumers “more freedom to share with friends when they want.”

Colorado has adopted “a pretty arbitrary method” of determining high-cost support for telcos, said Pete Kirchhof, executive vice president of the Colorado Telecommunications Association (CTA), which represents 25 small companies. The Colorado Public Utilities Commission adopted a new set of telecom rules last Monday after months of deliberation (CD Dec 18 p9). They've already provoked concern from CenturyLink, smaller telcos and a 911 authority. The order, effective this Monday, will kill retail regulation in regions deemed effectively competitive, cap the state’s high-cost USF and assert that Internet Protocol-enabled service falls outside the PUC’s jurisdiction except in emergency communications. The order is “what we feared, to be honest,” Kirchhof told us, citing telcos’ worries about lower levels of support and burdensome processes of appealing effective competition rulings.

The FCC countered arguments by Arlington, Texas, and other parties seeking to overturn a decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upholding the commission’s 2009 wireless zoning shot-clock decision. The agency said the Supreme Court should follow precedent and not chip away at doctrine dating to a 1984 case, Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, which requires federal courts to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute, as long as that interpretation is deemed “reasonable."

Amazon delayed captioning several dozen terrestrial TV shows once they became available to view online for an average of a few days, research by seven groups representing the hearing-impaired said they found. An FCC complaint seeks the maximum fine, a commission injunction requiring the rules be followed and per-day forfeitures for future violations by the video service. Those groups, in a non-random survey of major video programming distributors, found most other VPDs met FCC Internet Protocol captioning rules (CD Jan 17 p3). There was an overall 82 percent compliance rate for non-live programs, which VPDs and some other companies were required by the FCC to caption starting Sept. 30, when it aired after then.

Arris’s agreement to buy Motorola Mobility’s home division from Google probably won’t change Motorola’s policy positions much or have much effect on their cable operator customers, industry officials said Thursday. Arris and Google announced Wednesday night that Arris agreed to buy the home division, which includes its cable set-top box and network equipment businesses, for about $2.35 billion in cash and stock. The deal also includes about 1,000 patents as well as perpetual license agreements for other Motorola Mobility patents, executives said during a teleconference Wednesday.

A request by Deutsche Telekom for regulatory permission to use vectoring on its copper network to make high-speed broadband available more quickly has encountered opposition from alternative providers and from fiber-to-the-home proponents worried about its impact on local loop unbundling. DT’s application to regulator BNetzA sparked an outcry earlier this month from three German telecom organizations, apparently leading the incumbent to offer concessions Wednesday. Advocates of vectoring say the technology, although transitional, may be the best solution for Europe, which has been slow to roll out fiber networks. Fiber proponents, however, say vectoring won’t offer the high broadband speeds promised and could hamper investment in new networks.

The FCC is weighing options on how a reverse auction of broadcast licenses will work as part of an eventual incentive auction, though a “descending clock” format may have the upper hand. That’s based on a presentation Wednesday by Rebecca Hanson, a senior FCC adviser on broadcast spectrum. Hanson and other experts spoke at a conference sponsored by Crossfire Media. A goal of the agency is keeping things simple once the auction gets under way, Hanson said. “We want as many broadcasters to participate as possible and we believe that the simpler participation is, the more broadcasters we'll get to participate."

The revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that emerged last week from the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) may have contained “poison pills” on the Internet and other controversial issues, but that does not mean the U.S. should stop advocating for its vision on such issues, said Terry Kramer, head of the U.S. WCIT delegation, Wednesday during an Internet Society event. “There’s a bigger discussion here about the benefits of the Internet that will carry the day I believe fundamentally,” he said in his first public comments since WCIT concluded Friday. “It is a long game that has to be played. We need to see the commercial benefits, the human benefits, et cetera."