The White House plans to “quickly engage” with federal lawmakers to implement baseline, enforceable data privacy laws, said Danny Weitzner, policy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, at an event Thursday hosted by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Media and Technology Institute. Last month the White House unveiled its proposal for data privacy protections, called the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. The voluntary code of conduct aims to protect privacy rights of online consumers while giving them more control over how their information is handled.

Cisco’s $5 billion purchase of software developer NDS will strengthen and speed deployment of Cisco’s Videoscape cloud-based video platform as North American cable operators increasingly adopt a hybrid QAM/Internet Protocol approach to deliver services, analysts and executives said.

The government’s delay in releasing a report on export control reforms continues to prevent movement on legislation that would relax regulation of satellite components, House Foreign Affairs Committee staffer David Fite told the Satellite 2012 conference late Wednesday. HR-3288, introduced last year by House Foreign Affairs Ranking Member Howard Berman, D-Calif. (CD Nov 3 p13), remains in limbo as a result of the slowness, Fite said. The bill would give the Executive Office of the President authority to remove commercial satellites and components from a munitions list closely regulated by the State Department.

An FCC panel approved plans to create an equal employment opportunity compliance survey. Approval came at the Diversity Federal Advisory Committee’s meeting Wednesday. The commission would need to give $50,000 to $75,000 to the EEO subcommittee, if those funds become available, to do the survey to get information about companies’ attitudes towards compliance responsibilities and best practices, said subcommittee Chairman David Honig. The FCC will continue to work with the subcommittee towards starting that project, said Chief of Office of Communications Business Opportunities Thomas Reed. The Diversity Committee also heard reports from the Wi-Fi Technology and Channels 5 & 6 subcommittees and presentations about updates to the AT&T Aspire program to mentor kids and Comcast’s Internet Essentials broadband service for the poor.

Broadcasters will do OK in getting retransmission consent fees for their stations to be carried by multichannel video programming distributors, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes predicted Wednesday night. “I think they will be fine as long as they don’t give away their programming on the Internet,” he said in a brief interview after speaking to a dinner hosted by the Economic Club of Washington. “Because you can’t ask for retrans if you're giving it away at the same time.” Time Warner’s own initiative for its cable channels to be seen online by video subscribers who buy the company’s channels from their MVPD is going well, Bewkes said of TV Everywhere.

Draft guidelines published by the Food and Drug Administration this week could curb TV ad spending by drugmakers, a lawyer who represents some pharmaceutical marketers said. The FDA proposed a set of guidelines drugmakers should follow for submitting their ads to the agency for review before they run on TV, with five categories of direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads subject to review, including new drugs and those with serious risks relative to benefits (http://xrl.us/bmx227). Although there appears to be a limited set of circumstances that would trigger FDA review of drug ads, in practice the guidance would impose a near-blanket requirement on direct-to-consumer TV drug commercials, said John Kamp of Wiley Rein, who represents the Coalition for Healthcare Communication. That may make drugmakers think twice about buying TV spots, he said.

A deregulation bill (SB 135) in Kentucky faced sharp criticism and even got the state attorney general’s attention, though state regulators were neutral after revisions were made. Meanwhile, while the industry saw another bill (HB 209) in the state that would establish outage reporting requirements as burdensome, supporters said the measure is “modest” and necessary.

The federal government should tread carefully when it comes to using antitrust laws as way to regulate the high-tech sector, a group of antitrust attorneys said Wednesday at a Federalist Society luncheon. “Antitrust authorities ought to be very skeptical about jumping in to start cases against them,” said Ronald Cass, chairman of the Center for the Rule of Law at George Mason University and ex-U.S. International Trade Commission member. Government has “a real problem of foresight” and that’s especially so in high-tech, he said. “The more we do to try to rein in the leaders in the field, the more we discourage investment and innovation, and the more we risk taking steps that harm American consumer health."

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell is questioning whether the time frame for a voluntary incentive auction of broadcast spectrum laid out by a top FCC official last week is realistic. Amy Levine, a senior aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski, predicted an auction would occur in the next 18-24 months (CD March 7 p3). McDowell suspects it could take at least twice as long, given the complexities involved.

House Republican leaders are planning to bring at least four cybersecurity bills to the House floor sometime after the Easter/Passover recess, hill staffers told us. Republican leadership is in the process of scheduling a so-called “cyberweek” where they will bring the various cybersecurity bills to the floor and begin voting on them separately, staffers said.