The FCC’s rules contemplated waivers extending, at most, for two years. Those two years are just about up. With December just around the corner, full power TV licensees and MVPDs should probably be checking their compliance with our old friend, t...
Low-profile Inspector General Report includes recommendation with potentially serious budgetary repercussions. Noncommercial (NCE) stations that receive grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) should pay attention to a recommendation ...
On Friday, the US District Court in the Southern District of NY found that there is a public performance right in pre-1972 sound recordings in that state, following two decisions from California finding a similar right under California law (though on different grounds). Like the first decision in California (about which we wrote here), this … Continue Reading
As we reported just about a year ago, the FCC adopted a number of rules to address the problem of rural call completion or, more accurately, rural call non-completion. Many calls placed to numbers served by small rural telephone companies don’t s...
Last month we reported that most of the rules adopted back in August to make text-to-911 service generally available took effect in October. As often happens, though, a small number of the new rules couldn’t kick in until the Office of Management...
Even though the election is over, political broadcasting issues have not stopped. Yesterday, the same groups (the Campaign Legal Center, Common Cause, and the Sunlight Foundation) that had previously objected to the sponsorship identification of issue ads funded by PACs with a limited donor base have struck again. This time, they have filed a complaint with … Continue Reading
Sirius XM loses another ruling in California litigation about digital performance of pre-1972 recordings. As I reported in September, Sirius XM (and, by extension, just about any other provider of streamed digital music) suffered a setback in a Federal...
A recent notice about DTV construction permit applications got us thinking about our old friend, the PRA. Has the FCC changed the process for applying for DTV construction permits? Probably not, but a recent notice in the Federal Register seemed to sug...
Noncommercial webcasters are often forgotten in the discussion of the current proceeding to set Internet radio sound recording royalties. But, along with the royalties for commercial webcasters (we wrote about the proposed commercial rates here), the current Copyright Royalty Board proceeding will also set the rates for noncommercial webcasters. Various proposals for noncommercial royalties have … Continue Reading