Mediacom urged the FCC to invite interested parties to update the record in the retransmission consent proceeding. The price for retrans keeps rising at extraordinary rates, wrote Mediacom General Counsel Joseph Young in docket 10-71 (http://bit.ly/18H2Rjt). Broadcasters are immune to the price discipline ordinarily imposed by consumers in a truly competitive market, he wrote. Subscribers of multichannel video programming distributors “are the ones who ultimately pay for retransmission consent,” said Young. FCC rules and TV programming owners’ practices “force distributors to offer, and subscribers to buy, programming in bundles over which distributors have little or no control,” he said.

Aereo’s decision not to oppose broadcasters’ attempt to seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court of their case against the streaming TV service increases the possibility that the court will review the case, said Stifel Nicolaus analysts. Broadcasters filed a cert petition asking the high court to overturn a 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that rejected a preliminary injunction against Aereo (CD Oct 15 p15). “We believe the justices are generally reluctant to review appeals of preliminary injunction decisions and so far there is no circuit split, which can invite high court review,” Stifel said in a research note (http://bit.ly/1jY0Hnl). This may change if the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals soon upholds a district court decision to grant broadcasters a preliminary injunction against FilmOn X, an Aereo-like service, said the analysts. These actions could spur retransmission consent changes next year, they said. If the broadcasters don’t shoot down Aereo’s service in court, “they could start to push hard for Congress to write new legislation to ensure they receive Internet video provider payments for their programming,” they said. The “largely-unaddressed ‘copying’ element of broadcasters’ lawsuit makes this case too early-stage for Supreme Court review,” said Guggenheim Partners analyst Paul Gallant. The courts have barely begun addressing broadcasters’ argument that Aereo’s system makes unlawful copies of broadcasters’ shows, he said in a research note. If the Supreme Court is going to rule on Aereo next year, “it probably needs to announce by January that it will hear the case,” he said. If broadcasters win, the Aereo threat is extinguished, he said. “If broadcasters lose, they can seek legislative change by Congress, where they would likely have the upper hand.” FilmOn X asked the 9th Circuit to overturn a preliminary injunction against it (CD Aug 29 p5). A similar appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit also is pending (CD Sept 13 p22). Public Knowledge, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Engine Advocacy urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn a decision by the U.S. District Court in Washington. The law doesn’t grant copyright holders complete control over the distribution and quality of their works, they said in a friend-of-the-court brief (http://bit.ly/1dxK5hx). “Fair use allows the public to make copies of varying quality in many circumstances, including home recordings of TV programs.” The existence of a service like FilmOn X “does not appreciably increase the risk of a broadcast program being redistributed illegally on the Internet by third parties,” it said. In a separate brief, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, Center for Democracy and Technology and other groups asked the court to approach the case in a way that preserves the holding and principles of the Cablevision case, during which an appeals court found that Cablevision doesn’t infringe copyright by launching a DVR service. The court should avoid any legal theories “that would cast a pall over wide swaths of the modern technological landscape, including the burgeoning cloud computing industry,” they said. CTIA, USTelecom and the Internet Infrastructure Coalition filed along with CCIA and CDT. The groups aren’t taking a stance on either party, they said.

T-Mobile filed a report at the FCC making its case for spectrum aggregation limits in the TV incentive auction. Spectrum Aggregation Limits in Auctions with Spectrum below 1 GHz: the European Experience was written by Achim Wambach of the University of Cologne, and economists Stephan Knapek and Vitali Gretschko. The study “examines the use of aggregation limits in European auctions of sub 1 GHz spectrum,” T-Mobile said (http://bit.ly/1csfekv). Researchers found “that every European spectrum auction since 2010 has included limits on spectrum concentration and find no evidence that these limits on market power diminished expected revenue,” T-Mobile said.

The New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute is “reserving judgment” on the White House’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies report on the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs, said OTI Policy Director Kevin Bankston. The report is due this weekend, but The Wall Street Journal (http://on.wsj.com/JesFgv) and The New York Times (http://nyti.ms/1fblhgr) published advance looks at the report Friday. OTI Policy Director Kevin Bankston said in an email statement that the report “recommends some important, common sense reforms, like separating the NSA’s code-making and code-breaking missions to avoid a dangerous conflict of interest, introducing a public advocate into the processes of the secret surveillance court, and establishing some level of privacy rights for people outside the United States.” But the review group “as we feared would be the case ... has urged that the NSA continue with its bulk collection and analysis of American phone records, just with the companies rather than the NSA holding the data,” Bankston said.

Enrollment in the federal Lifeline program is expected to grow among Florida residents based on current economic conditions, said the Public Service Commission in an annual report to the Legislature and governor Friday (http://bit.ly/1cGMqs4). On June 30, more than 918,240 eligible Florida customers participated in the Lifeline program, it said. Many Florida residents qualify for Lifeline through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which grew by 4.8 percent in the 52 weeks to June 30, 2013, said the PSC. Twenty-four telecom companies, including four wireless carriers, participate in the federal Lifeline program in Florida, which offers a discount of at least $9.25 per month or a free Lifeline cellphone and monthly minutes from certain wireless providers, said the PSC.

While a voluntary agreement on cellphone unlocking (CD Dec 13 p3) is an important step, more work needs to be done, said Gene Sperling, assistant to the president for economic policy, in a blog post (http://1.usa.gov/1fbV69l). “The FCC and carriers are doing their part,” wrote Sperling, who also directs the White House National Economic Council. “Now it is time for Congress to step up and finish the job by passing the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, which was voted out of the House Judiciary Committee this summer, and its companion in the Senate. We know this is an important issue to many of you. The Administration will continue to watch it closely in the coming months.” Sperling noted that last March more than 114,000 signed an electronic petition on the White House’s “We the People” platform in support of mobile phone unlocking. Fletcher Heald lawyer Mitchell Lazarus said in a blog post Friday the agreement only goes so far. “While a definite improvement, CTIA’s action solves only part of the problem,” Lazarus said (http://bit.ly/IUf6lN). “If I buy a subsidized phone from Carrier A, I certainly owe them two years of payments on the phone. But I should be able to keep up just the phone payments, and stop paying Carrier A for service as well, if I want to take the phone to Carrier B for service. CTIA’s position does not allow this. T-Mobile is the only major company so far that properly separates the phone and service payments. We hope the others follow its lead.” The agreement also must be adopted into the “CTIA Consumer Code for Wireless Service” and doesn’t mean that a subscriber will be able to readily use a phone on a second network, he said. “CTIA’s letter points out the technical limitations on ‘unlocking': ‘[U]locking’ a device will not necessarily make a device interoperable with other networks -- a device designed for one network is not made technologically compatible with another network merely by ‘unlocking’ it. Additionally, unlocking a device may enable some functionality of the device but not all (e.g., an unlocked device may support voice services but not data services when activated on a different network)."

Wireless microphone maker Sennheiser said CTIA is wrong to oppose the company’s request that TV incentive auction winners be required to partially reimburse wireless mic users for the cost of replacing equipment made unusable by reallocation of the 600 MHz band. “At the outset, CTIA has mischaracterized the request,” the company said in a filing at the FCC (http://bit.ly/1dbItJR). “Sennheiser does not seek reimbursement to wireless microphone manufacturers, as CTIA states, but rather to wireless microphone users -- not only professional broadcasters, filmmakers, theaters, and concert promoters, but also churches, schools, community organizations, political groups, and countless others -- people who lack meaningful input to the Commission’s spectrum policies, yet stand to suffer financial damage from the reallocation.” Contrary to CTIA’s characterization, owners of wireless mics are not secondary users of the spectrum, Sennheiser said.

Representatives from about a dozen public interest groups, meeting with FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler and media and wireless and other aides, expressed the need for a diverse agency. Wheeler should “include a wide diversity of backgrounds in FCC staff,” because “at both the FCC and in the media industry, diverse inputs lead to higher quality outcome,” a Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights official told the gathering, an ex parte filing on the gathering said. The meeting included Special Counsel-External Affairs Gigi Sohn, media aide Maria Kirby and wireless aide Renee Gregory. There’s “collective and strong support for the Lifeline program” and backing for the FCC’s enforcement actions this year against carriers from the American Civil Liberties Union, Consumers Union, Free Press, Leadership Conference, National Urban League, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Public Knowledge (headed by Sohn before Wheeler recently hired her), and other groups at the meeting, said the filing posted Friday in docket 09-182 (http://bit.ly/IKdnzY). “Both old and new networks” are important, said an official of the National Urban League, recounted the filing. “The civil rights community is looking for proactive policies to increase diversity in ownership in all technologies.” A “critical barrier to broadband adoption remains cost and education levels,” and Wheeler should expand Lifeline to include broadband to help “address the persistent adoption gap,” the filing recounted the league official saying. Wheeler was said to have shown a direct style in an introductory meeting last month with association officials and another with public interest representatives (CD Nov 22 p4).

The Council of Governments applauded the FCC order to ensure reliable 911 service in a statement Friday (http://bit.ly/1bCrCNK). COG is a nonprofit association that deals with regional issues affecting the Washington, D.C., area. The FCC voted to approve an order Thursday that requires carriers to file annual audits on how they are following best practices for 911 connections (CD Dec 13 p7). The order was influenced by regional studies documenting “significant loss” of 911 service in northern Virginia during the June 2012 derecho storm, COG said. All phone companies that provide 911 service must now certify annually that they have implemented best practices including audits of their circuits, maintenance of central office backup power and reliable network monitoring systems, it said. The FCC proves the “power of regional collaboration,” said COG Executive Director Chuck Bean. “With this new rule, we are securing our infrastructure in metropolitan Washington,” he said. “The success with the FCC was built on solid analytics but the change happened because we spoke with a regional voice."

More than 30 countries, including the U.K., have enacted resale royalty provisions since 1992, said a Copyright Office report released Friday (http://1.usa.gov/1bCreia). “We believe that Congress may want to consider a resale royalty, as well as a number of possible alternative or complementary options for supporting visual artists, within the broader context of industry norms, market practices, and other pertinent data."