EU lawmakers Thursday overwhelmingly approved a measure allowing access to works whose rights owners can’t be found, paving the way for digitization of orphan works. The draft directive, a “trilogue” compromise among the European Commission, European Parliament and Council of Ministers, will help public-service broadcasters, libraries, archives and similar institutions disseminate previously inaccessible content. It proves that copyright and technology can be brought together in the Internet age through working together, said European Health and Consumer Policy Commissioner John Dalli during a pre-vote parliamentary debate. He said the measure gives cultural institutions the legal certainty they need to make content available online. Some legislators and one consumer group called it disappointing.

Verizon is completing power audits of all facilities, a review expected to conclude in the Washington region by the end of October and nationwide by March, Senior Vice President Kyle Malady told House lawmakers Wednesday. The telco will have better monitoring equipment in place by 2013, he said. Verizon understands the need to communicate better with public safety answering points and the public during disasters, he said. The Subcommittee on Emergency Preparedness, Response and Communications held the hearing on the challenges and future of resilient communications, which emphasized the problems of Verizon as well as the new technologies emergency responders are facing. Its prime focus was Verizon’s June 29 failure to maintain power in Northern Virginia during the derecho wind storms and subsequent 911 outages.

Religious content is threatened by censorship on Web-based platforms, like those operated by Google, AT&T and Verizon, the National Religious Broadcasters said in a report released Wednesday. NRB drafted a charter aimed at identifying solutions to policies and practices of these companies that it claims violate free speech on the Internet. Private enterprise, with enormously successful platforms of communication, “is now becoming an engine of constraining speech,” said NRB CEO Frank Wright at the National Press Club.

Sprint Nextel’s conduct in awarding contracts for its wireless backhaul business “conclusively disproves” its claims that there are no alternatives to traditional ILEC special access services, Verizon (NYSE: VZ) argued in a letter to the FCC Wednesday. The data, which Verizon determined by using the latitude and longitude of each cell site, should guide the commission as it prepares its upcoming mandatory data request on the special access market, Verizon said. Special access purchasers criticized Verizon’s data as “backwards looking,” and questioned whether Verizon took into account “competitors” who are merely reselling Verizon circuits.

The “app economy” is growing and creating jobs, witnesses told the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade at a hearing Wednesday. They said there are policy initiatives the government can take to encourage that growth and job creation can continue. Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said the app economy “is one of the most exciting areas of technology, with tremendous growth in recent years -- growth that experts agree we can expect to continue."

California’s VoIP bill has become wrapped up in the larger deregulation push of U.S. telcos. Several industry statements have increasingly worried consumer advocates in recent months. But an AT&T senior vice president argued the transition away from copper is a natural extension of federal policy and promotes deeper conversation on how to develop new, appropriate regulations. The state bill would cause “irreparable harm” if passed into law, The Utility Reform Network (TURN) wrote Gov. Jerry Brown. SB-1161 would prohibit the California Public Utilities Commission from regulating VoIP unless allowed by state or federal statute.

The Communications Security, Reliability and Interoperability Council (CSRIC) approved a report on Domain Name System (DNS) best practices, which summarizes what industry has found to be the best solutions on how to protect the DNS from hacking, insider attacks, account takeovers and other attacks. The report also looks at protecting domain names from hijacking or misconfiguration and how to ensure the resiliency of DNS architecture as a critical infrastructure. The report, described at the CSRIC meeting at the FCC Wednesday, was not immediately available.

Wireless carriers plan to tell lawmakers that their first priority should be to clear more federal spectrum rather than embrace spectrum sharing scenarios, according to prepared remarks that circulated in advance of Thursday’s House Communications Subcommittee spectrum hearing. Representatives from NTIA and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) plan to emphasize the difficulty and cost of clearing federal spectrum and defend reports that call for greater spectrum sharing scenarios.

Opting out of any first-ever ITU Internet regulation may cause as many problems as proposals for Internet Protocol traffic’s cost to be borne by sending parties -- an idea some countries are pursuing at the World Conference on International Telecom, U.S. and industry officials said Wednesday. They discussed a scenario of nations or private parties sitting out International Telecom Regulations to be discussed in December when the update to the 1988 ITR is considered at a WCIT meeting in Dubai. The practical effect of what could amount to a boycott by some players, on the Internet and devices connected to Web networks, would be similar to the negative effect the regulations some developing and European countries are seeking could have on such systems. That’s according to speakers at a Media Institute event in Washington. A scenario where debate on a new ITR sees some countries escape the treaty entirely would “lead to fragmentation,” said Sally Wentworth of the Internet Society, an ITU “sector member."

Verizon’s FiOS remains a fierce competitor for pay-TV subscribers, even though its corporate sibling has cut a marketing deal with some of the largest cable operators and it has seemingly changed its promotional marketing strategy, cable executives said during a Bank of America conference Wednesday. FiOS is one of “the tougher competitors we have out there,” said Irene Esteves, Time Warner Cable (TWC) Chief Financial Officer. The co-marketing agreements TWC has with Verizon Wireless will give TWC an edge if customers decide they want to bundle cellphone service in with broadband and pay-TV, she said. “But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s very, very competitive on the FiOS side of the house,” she said.