Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., cast doubt on Congress’s efforts to pass privacy legislation in 2012. “Do-not-track does not rank very high on the scale of decisions the [Senate majority] leader has to make, and I understand that,” Rockefeller said after his committee had a hearing Thursday. “This is probably a next year thing, but when I say that I am in no way discouraged.” Lawmakers, the FTC and the White House have called for legislation to offer consumers greater choice and control over how their online data are collected and used by ad companies and third-party data brokers.

Comcast agreed to sell unbundled broadband service for a fourth year because it faced allegations it violated conditions of the FCC’s OK of the cable ISP’s purchase of control in NBCUniversal by not telling customers widely enough about the naked cable modem service. The naked broadband condition was extended to Feb. 21, 2015, in an Enforcement Bureau consent decree where Comcast also agreed to voluntarily pay $800,000 to the U.S. Treasury and train employees so they know about the product that costs almost $50 monthly. It’s a “historic settlement,” said Bureau Chief Michele Ellison, who signed the decree (http://xrl.us/bnc4p3) that was released late Wednesday.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday asked the FCC’s Technology Advisory Committee to start work on a report on the future of band planning, especially in light of a pending auction of broadcast TV spectrum. Genachowski said during a speech at CTIA last month he would ask TAC “to convene a forum on the future of band plans to inform the incentive auctions and other upcoming auctions.” Genachowski spoke to the TAC Wednesday, then stuck around for more than three hours to hear reports from the various working groups (http://xrl.us/bnc4g3).

The New Mexico Public Regulation Commission denied state USF money to Sacred Wind Communications in a 5-0 vote Tuesday. Sacred Wind had applied as a means to fund “the extension of high-speed telecom and Internet capabilities to underserved areas,” specifically in the rural Navajo Nation land, but the Commission said it was concerned these USF funds “might be used for things like investor profits instead of consumer benefits.” Sacred Wind “lacked the proof necessary to show that underserved consumers will be connected,” said Commissioner Theresa Becenti-Aguilar in prepared remarks. The commission held an extended hearing on the case in February. Sacred Wind serves “approximately 2,200 residential customers spread over 3,600 square miles of Navajo Reservation and near-reservation lands in remote, rural areas of New Mexico,” the company said earlier this year(http://xrl.us/bnc4pg).

The FCC’s recent revision of its program carriage rules was consistent with the First Amendment, the Cable Act and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), attorneys for the commission said in a brief filed this week with U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (http://xrl.us/bnc4pn). The commission is defending the rules against a petition from the NCTA and Time Warner Cable.

Threats to Internet freedom are “real” and must be taken seriously, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said in a speech in Rome to the Associazione EGO and Puntoit. The comments are some of the strongest yet from McDowell, who has long warned about creeping regulation of the Internet. McDowell cautioned companies about the dangers of using intergovernmental bodies to regulate their rivals.

Members of the House Communications Subcommittee said there’s a need to update the regulatory structure that governs the video market. The comments came during a hearing held Wednesday. NCTA defended its use of broadband data caps, and the debate over retransmission consent boiled over as broadcasters defended their statutory right to control the use of their signals.

The Supreme Court’s Jones decision has left the law in disarray concerning warrantless government access to information from cell-site tracking, email, cloud computing and Web surfing, legal experts said Wednesday. “The law is really up in the air and uncertain at this point,” said Hanni Fakhoury, an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer. Susan Axelrod, senior appellate counsel at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, said that “for a prosecutor, it’s very frustrating” trying to deal with the questions opened by the case.

China and India have room for improvement in intellectual property (IP) rights enforcement, though China demonstrates progress, said Teresa Rea, deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) before the House IP Subcommittee Wednesday.

GENEVA -- Submissions in advance of a July ITU Council meeting suggested the organization’s work on international Internet-related public policy matters should move toward a “cybersecurity convention,” that a working group on the issues should be opened up to those with a stake, or that participants meet certain criteria to participate only in consultations to be developed by the working group of member government officials. A long-time ITU participant leading cybersecurity work in the organization said the idea of conceptualizing the global Internet as a “common heritage of humankind” isn’t a new one. The concept in the past has been used to extend jurisdiction by a global intergovernmental organization, he said.