Parents have a desire, and congressionally mandated claim, to help their children use the Internet safely, said FTC Commissioner Julie Brill at a Family Online Safety Institute (FOSI) conference Thursday. Since the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act took effect in 2000, the FTC has brought 20 enforcement actions resulting in $7.6 million in civil penalties, she said. Those actions were “to ensure that parents were empowered, just as Congress had intended, about which online and mobile entities can collect information about their kids,” Brill said. With recent changes to the online landscape, including the rise of social networks and mobile apps, COPPA “clearly, needs an update” to keep parents empowered, she said.

TV programmers won’t fully invest in developing 4K content until production equipment costs are within 10 percent of those for HD, which won’t occur for several years, HBO Chief Technology Officer Robert Zitter told us at the Content and Communications World Conference in New York. To fully appreciate 4K and the difference between it and 1080p, consumers also will likely need 60-inch and larger TVs, but their high price tags could further limit the market, Zitter said.

In the aftermath of Sandy, Verizon has replaced much of the older copper infrastructure hit by the superstorm with fiber, which the company said is much more resilient to sea water. Some federal regulators and industry observers worry that in the move to fiber and all Internet Protocol networks, the next phone system might lose the 99.999 percent reliability that’s characterized the copper public switched telephone network (PSTN) since the 1930s. AT&T’s announcement that it will upgrade its wireline network and replace its rural copper lines with wireless (CD Nov 8 p11) could bring the issue to the forefront, observers say. Hank Hultquist, AT&T vice president-regulatory affairs, says it’s “too late” to save independent line powering: “The horse has left the barn."

A Dec. 1 FCC deadline for set-top boxes to include new standard home-networking outputs will probably be temporarily waived, lawyers for cable and consumer electronics companies predicted. The Media Bureau is reviewing a request by TiVo to be let out from the requirement, and is expected to act soon, they said. “I think they realize nobody is going to comply [by Dec. 1] and they haven’t been very clear about what they want people to do,” said a lawyer.

TV stations that have joint sales agreements with rivals within a market would see those JSAs attributable under FCC ownership rules, while a limit on common ownership of a radio station and daily newspaper in the same geographic area would end under a draft order, agency officials said. Those are the mandates in a Media Bureau order that were not proposed but were asked about in a December rulemaking notice. The draft order FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski circulated as expected Wednesday for a vote (CD Nov 13 p1) otherwise mostly follows what was proposed in the notice, agency officials said.

If portions of the revised International Telecommunication Regulations (ITRs) that come out of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) next month prove objectionable to the U.S., there’s no chance the Senate would vote to ratify the revisions to the treaty-level document and make it a part of U.S. law, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said Wednesday. But McDowell and others at an American Enterprise Institute event said they believed a worst-case scenario coming out of WCIT could result in a “balkanization” that would disrupt the growth of the Internet. The U.S. delegation to WCIT sees controversial proposals that would expand the ITRs into the realm of Internet governance -- including cybersecurity and Internet traffic compensation -- as “non-negotiable” items, said U.S. delegation head Terry Kramer. That makes it all the more critical that the delegation focus on outreach efforts to wavering delegations in the weeks before WCIT convenes in Dubai Dec. 3, he said.

NEW YORK -- The very small aperture terminal (VSAT) industry expects current initiatives to help mitigate interference and resolve interference instances quickly, VSAT industry executives said Wednesday at the Content and Communications World SATCON conference in New York. The rapid and successful deployment of VSAT units worldwide has created a need for better interference mitigation, and better training is needed for personnel who install the terminals, they said.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., sought to invoke cloture on the Cybersecurity Act (S-3414) Wednesday and asked Republicans to offer proposals to improve the bill. This summer, lawmakers failed to compromise on the provisions of S-3414 primarily due to opposition from Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which said the legislation would create new and costly mandates for businesses (CD Aug 3 p3). Separately, the White House said President Barack Obama signed a presidential directive last month aimed at clarifying how law enforcement agencies and the military should react to cybersecurity attacks.

NEW YORK -- Satellite communications are expected to play a role in the changing approach to disaster and emergency situations, satellite industry executives said Wednesday at the Content and Communications World SATCON conference in New York. The performance of the satellite industry during Superstorm Sandy “provides us with an acid test of how we're doing,” said David Hartshorn, Global VSAT Forum secretary general. The Red Cross workers were moving their sites about every two days to where they could be of more help, said Justin Luczyk, a Tactical SATCOM Networks director for ViaSat. Satellite technology could enable them to “bring their communications further and further into the disaster area,” which was critically important, he said.

The National Weather Service issued 17 wireless emergency alerts (WEA) during superstorm Sandy, and one NWS/National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration official said Wednesday that feedback from East Coast residents who received the text alert messages on their mobile phones was mostly positive. “We've had numerous reports of messages being sent within seconds, and only one or two reports of delays,” said Michael Gerber, NWS/NOAA Emerging Dissemination Technology Program Lead. The WEA broadcast system will need improvement in other areas of the country, particularly the West, but results on the East Coast are positive, he said during a FEMA webinar on its Internet-based integrated public alert and warning system (IPAWS).