By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-12-20 Microsoft and the National Association of Broadcasters continue to be poles apart on how much "white space" between TV channels the FCC should open up for unlicensed uses like portable internet access devices. Microsoft told the FCC in comments that while it is not now, nor does [...]
By Mike Brest, Washington Examiner, 5-12-20 The nonprofit organization that filed a lawsuit against Fox News claiming the news outlet violated a Washington state consumer protection statute with its coronavirus coverage said it would not back down following a motion to drop the case. In a court filing submitted to the King County Superior Court [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 5-11-20 Cable operators are using the rise of both over-the-top video and the novel coronavirus in arguments to the Federal Communications Commission for help in deregulating the market for both video and broadband services. It has been a couple of years since video streaming overtook traditional cable and [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-30-20 High-profile Senate Republicans say they plan to introduce a data privacy bill, the COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act, that would hold companies accountable for their use of personal data to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. There are concerns that contact-tracing technology employed by companies including Apple and Google [...]
By Ellen Nakashima, washingtonpost.com, 4-28-20 The public has a right to know a court’s reasons for restraining the government’s power to force a tech company to break its encryption to help law enforcement, the ACLU and The Washington Post told a federal appeals court on Tuesday. But an attorney for the Justice Department argued that [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-27-20 With every pandemic-driven, shelter-in-place day feeling like Groundhog Day, it is appropriate that the deadline for the latest installment of the endless broadcast deregulation saga has come due. The FCC has been trying to come up with a deregulatory regime that passes muster with the Third U.S. [...]
Participated in a letter of support (with four TV network affiliate associations, RTDNA, and SPJ) to WJFW-TV, an NBC affiliate in Rhinelander, Wis. The letter supports the station in its defense of defamation claims raised in a lawsuit by the Trump presidential campaign, which disagreed with a political advertisement broadcast by the station. The [...]
Participated in an application (with the Reporters Committee and other media groups) submitted to the European Court of Human Rights for leave to intervene in Biancardi v. Italy. The case concerns the application of the right to be forgotten against an online newspaper. The applicant in the case (who claims his right to freedom [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-18-20 FCC chairman Ajit Pai has asked the chairman of the House Energy & Commerce Committee to speak out against Free Press's emergency petition to the FCC to stop what that group said was "right-wing personalities" spreading disinformation about the pandemic. Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) had asked Pai [...]
By John Eggerton, Broadcasting & Cable Online, 4-17-20 As expected, broadcasters and newspaper publishers have petitioned the Supreme Court to review the Third Circuit Court of Appeals decision vacating most of the FCC's effort under chairman Ajit Pai to deregulate broadcast ownership, including by eliminating the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules. Echoing the FCC's petition for Supreme [...]