SEC promotes Luis Mejia to chief litigation counsel, Div. of Enforcement… Peter Cohen of Ramius Capital Group joins L-3 Communications board… American Public Communications Council adds Donald Goens, FSH Communications, to its board… Jason Land, ex-Strategic TV Inc., moves to VISTA Satellite Communications as vp- global services… New board members at Affordable Telecommunications: Sutida Suwunnavid, chmn.; Sean Lee, CEO; Kornchaya Manchanda, CFO… Lifetime promotes Renee Presser to vp-standards & practices; Louise Bryson adds role of gen. mgr., Lifetime Movie Network.

New GPS systems, plus Europe’s Galileo equivalent slated to launch in 2008, will permit tighter vertical and horizontal separation between planes, a new ABI Research study said Tues. That means satellite-based navigation systems for aviation and marine markets will be on the rise, as aircraft and vessels crowd air and sea lanes, the report said. ABI analysts said new GPS systems’ enhanced graphical capability, rather than improved accuracy, is driving their adoption, predicting the future will see removable GPS units that can be transferred between boats and cars. The commercial aircraft market and the recreational boat market -- of around 8,000 planes and 17 million vessels -- pale beside the 230 million vehicles on U.S. roads that offer a market for land-based navigation, said ABI.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has issued an updated version of its frequently asked questions (FAQ) and responses on its final rule requiring, among other things, the advance electronic presentation of information for all modes of inbound transportation.

With FCC Chmn. Martin and Comr. Abernathy concurring, the FCC clarified the National Programmatic Agreement (NPA) Thurs., clearing tower notifications referred to the agency by applicants before Sept. 10. Many applications arrived at the FCC when carriers wishing to build towers got no responses from Indian tribes on whether projects would affect historic preservation lands. Carriers can file notification with the FCC after 2 failed attempts to contact a tribe, and hundreds of applications are pending at the agency, slowing siting of new antennas. The FCC clarified Thurs. that a wireless provider or other tower applicant “will have fulfilled its obligations under the NPA” 20 days after the FCC sent a latter or e-mail to the tribe asking if it wanted to participate in the proposed tower review and got no response. “If the Indian tribe or NHO [Native Hawaiian Organization] does not respond within 20 days of the FCC’s letter and/or e-mail, which will be followed up by an attempted FCC telephone contact during the same 20-day period, it will be deemed to have no interest in the review of the proposed facility,” the FCC said. Backing an FCC goal of eliminating “a significant backlog of tower referrals,” Martin and Abernathy concurred with the order. “We continue to believe that siting of towers or antennas is not a federal or federally assisted undertaking, and we would have preferred that the Commission reconsider its decision on that issue,” they said in a joint statement: “We also would have preferred an even more streamlined review process that would have allowed construction to proceed faster.” Martin and Abernathy said they support a CTIA “3-strikes” proposal backed by industry and the United South & Eastern Tribes. “While we concur in today’s ruling, we worry that this process may still add needless layers of bureaucracy to the tower siting process and lead to unnecessary delay,” they said. Comr. Copps said he supports the decision “first and foremost because it maintains the basic procedures adopted in [NPA] and continues the vitally important government-to-government relationship that guides FCC interactions” with Indian tribes and NHOs. Although the decision is “not as perfect or as rigorous as I would have preferred,” Copps said, he is “optimistic” that the new clarification “will enable the timely deployment of communications infrastructure, while, at the same time, allowing us to protect our valuable historic places.” Comr. Adelstein said the order “strikes the right balance between the Commission’s consultation obligations to Indian tribes and [NHOs] under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1996 and the need for certainty when Indian tribes and NHOs” don’t respond to industry and FCC’s requests. “The NPA can and will work,” Adelstein said: “We have taken important steps in this item, and we should continue to improve the consultation process through periodic reviews of the notification provisions of the NPA.”

Universal Home Entertainment said it will release George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead on Universal Media Disc (UMD) for Sony’s PSP Oct. 18 - the same day it releases the movie on DVD and VHS. Each version will cost $29.98. Universal is releasing the movie in its original R-rated theatrical version and in an “Unrated Director’s Cut” on DVD. Only the unrated version will be available on UMD and the R-rated version will be only on VHS. Groove Games also is releasing first person shooter game Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler’s Green, developed by Brainbox Games, the week of Oct. 17 for Xbox at $29.99 and PC at $19.99.

The Wireless Philadelphia panel selected EarthLink to provide service for the city’s Wi-Fi network, city officials said, a major step in developing what remains a disputed municipal service. Watched by large cities around the U.S., the service will involve vouchers for low-income residents. Atlanta-based EarthLink will not only pay for the network and its maintenance but will also contribute to a profit-sharing plan aimed at closing the digital divide in the city, Philadelphia CIO Dianah Neff told Washington Internet Daily.

The FCC is expected as soon as today (Wed.) to release an order that would clear all tower siting applications pending before early Sept., an FCC source said: “The commissioners found the common ground on how to more completely address the backlog.”

As some seek more intellectual property (IP) rights protection, the new Property Rights Alliance (PRA) is stressing the interplay between IP and private property issues like land rights and rent control.

Telecom and media firms were reporting less damage from Hurricane Rita than they had earlier from Hurricane Katrina, in the first days after the storm. Most were reporting some outages, but fewer, and most were optimistic about quicker repairs.

A library participating in the project rose to Google Print’s defense after the Authors Guild sued Google (WID Sept 22 p11). Speaking on behalf of the U. of Mich. library, a Google Print participant, Assoc. Provost James Hilton said those concerned about copyright infringement “cannot lose sight of the tremendous benefits this project will bring for society.” Predicting research and learning largely will move to the digital world, Hilton added: “Material that does not exist in digital form will effectively disappear.” It’s up to libraries to archive the world’s written works, and Google is a partner in that, he said. Fair-use advocates continued to pile on to critics of the project. Creative Commons Chmn. Lawrence Lessig said the suit’s roots date back a century, when farmers sued the then-new airline industry for flying over their land without permission. “Google Print could be the most important contribution to the spread of knowledge since Jefferson dreamed of national libraries,” said Lessig, a law prof. at project participant Stanford U.: “Given the total mess of copyright records, there is absolutely no way to enable this sort of access to our past while asking permission of authors up front… Even if Google could afford that cost, no one else could.” Google could win the suit by arguing the “individualized snippets” in search results are “a fair use because it greatly reduces overall transaction costs in the society,” James DeLong, Progress & Freedom Foundation senior fellow, said. Some writers spoke out. Sci-fi writer and blogger Roger Simon said Google doesn’t make it easy to opt out: “I don’t know whether they plan on scanning any of my books, but they certainly haven’t contacted me -- nor have they, to my knowledge, contacted any other writers… Most of us wouldn’t even know how to contact them.” He continued: “Yahoo, Microsoft and Google act these days almost as transnational online super states with no one to restrict them.”