National Religious Broadcasters cautioned against increased government control over speech on the Internet. The U.S. “rightly has made Internet freedom a foreign policy anchor,” NRB President Jerry Johnson said Tuesday in a news release. This follows a statement by Ann Ravel, Federal Election Commission vice chair, who announced last week her intent to re-evaluate FEC policies on political Web ads. The commission specifically exempted certain types of Internet communications from campaign finance regulations, Ravel said in a written statement. In doing so, the FEC “turned a blind eye to the Internet’s growing force in the political arena,” she said. The effort to protect individual bloggers and online commentators “has been stretched to cover slickly-produced ads aired solely on the Internet but paid for by the same organizations and the same large contributors as the actual ads aired on TV,” she said. The Obama administration must be careful “to avoid any action that could, purposefully or not, undermine free speech online,” NRB said.

An open Internet lessens musicians’ dependence on big corporations, said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn in a speech at the Future of Music Coalition Summit Monday. The FCC should determine its net neutrality policy before it focuses on the “the appropriate legal framework to achieve that result,” Clyburn said. “My focus will primarily be on the impact to consumers -- something that I fear has gotten lost in this debate.” Policies that incentivize creative work to be sold digitally are as important to the music industry as copyright laws, Clyburn said. “Without the proper regulatory environment in place, these works may never even get produced, let alone have need for the protection of copyright laws.” Musicians depend on a “level online playing field,” that “does not favor different types of content over another,” Clyburn said.

The number of home broadband subscriptions is expected to surpass the number of home pay-TV subscriptions over the next few months, said a report by The Diffusion Group. While residential broadband penetration will soon top 100 million U.S. households, "legacy pay-TV subscription services have peaked and are in decline," TDG said Tuesday. The report, "Pay-TV Refugees," said 14 percent of adult broadband users don't use a legacy pay-TV service. That's 9 percent higher than the amount in 2011, said TDG. The consumers "provide an excellent opportunity for new video purveyors," like Netflix and direct-to-consumer TV networks, it said.

The Florida Chamber of Commerce backs AT&T's planned buy of DirecTV. Enhanced Internet connectivity "helps to create more opportunities for businesses and families through jobs and economic growth," it said in a letter posted Tuesday in FCC docket 14-90. Too many people don't have access to the speeds and bandwidth needed for today's competitive economy, it said. AT&T is committed to offering new, competitive choices for consumer options upon approval of this deal, it said.

Hulu and Viacom extended their partnership by bringing more Viacom content to the streaming service. Hulu will add top titles from Nickelodeon to Hulu’s kids’ offering, like Drake & Josh and Hey Arnold!, Hulu said Tuesday on its blog. Hulu also will expand its Latino programming for kids by adding some Nickelodeon shows, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in Spanish, it said.

Objections from content companies to outside counsel for Dish Network, Netflix and others accessing confidential documents in the Comcast/Time Warner Cable and AT&T/ DirecTV deals are based on programmers’ disagreement with FCC policy rather than problems with Dish and Netflix filings, the two companies said in separate filings posted in docket 14-57 Monday (see 1410220058). “These Objections are frivolous,” said Dish. “There is no basis for the assertion that Dish’s outside counsel and experts are engaged in Competitive Decision-Making, and the assertion is, in fact, untrue.” The objections are “nothing more than the pretext for a collateral attack” on the FCC modified protective order in the transaction proceedings, Netflix said. Both companies said the objections should be denied, and that their lawyers need access to the contract data at the heart of the dispute. “The Video Programming Confidential Information is essential to the thorough evaluation of arguments made by the Applicants, DISH, and others in these proceedings,” Dish said.

Opposition filings to the more than 30 petitions for reconsideration of the FCC’s incentive auction order are due Nov. 12, said a listing in the Federal Register Monday. Replies to those oppositions are due Nov. 21, the listing said. Once the FCC rules on the petitions, those who filed them will be able to seek judicial review of the order, said a blog post on Fletcher Heald’s website. "If (as may reasonably be expected) this leads to more appeals on the spectrum auction front, there's no telling what impact that might have on the start date of the auctions,” the blog post said.

Dish Network again said Comcast's planned buy of Time Warner Cable presents serious competitive concerns for the broadband and video markets and should be denied. The combined company would control half of the broadband pipes in the U.S. that have speeds of at least 25 Mbps, Dish said Thursday in an ex parte filing in docket 14-57. The company also “will be on a path to virtual dominance of the high-speed broadband market” because it will pass close to 70 percent of pay-TV households, it said. If the deal is approved, the company would offer only a single over-the-top service, “or perhaps forego altogether launching a nationwide OTT service, thus depriving consumers of important competitive choices,” it said. No conditions “would remedy the serious competitive harms posed by this merger,” Dish said. The filing pertained to meetings with several FCC staff, including from the Media Bureau, Chairman Tom Wheeler’s office and Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel.

The average U.S. broadband home watches more than 17 hours of nonlinear video per week, compared with 11.5 hours of linear video, according to research from Parks Associates (http://bit.ly/1DEx7fE). Nonlinear video accounts for 49 percent of the video consumed on the TV and is 60 percent of TV video viewed by consumers aged 18-24, said Barbara Kraus, research director. Nearly 40 percent of U.S. broadband households that use a smart TV as their primary connected device spend at least one hour per week using Facebook on the connected TV, she said. The number of hours reflects personal viewing by the head-of-household rather than aggregate viewing for the entire household, a spokeswoman told us.

U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan granted a nationwide preliminary injunction barring Aereo from streaming broadcast content while it's still being aired by broadcasters, in an order released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1yr2szD). Though broadcasters also had requested that the injunction bar Aereo from offering a time-shifted stream of broadcaster content (see 1410150094), Nathan said that at previous stages of the case and before the Supreme Court, the plaintiffs limited their arguments to content that was being rebroadcast live. “Plaintiffs will be held to their earlier decision, strategic or otherwise, to seek a preliminary injunction limited in scope to enjoining retransmission of their copyrighted works while the works are still being broadcast,” the order said. The judge dismissed Aereo’s arguments that it shouldn’t be enjoined because the Supreme Court’s Aereo decision had classified it as a cable system. “While all cable systems may perform publicly, not all entities that perform publicly are necessarily cable systems, and nothing in the Supreme Court's opinion indicates otherwise,” Nathan said. She said the high court’s decision did not contradict the ivi decision that online video providers aren’t multichannel video programming distributors, and the justices' silence on whether Aereo should get a compulsory copyright license showed that Aereo should not. “Within two weeks of this Opinion and Order, the parties shall submit a joint letter outlining how the case should proceed,” Nathan said. “In light of the extensive discovery period that has already taken place, this Court intends to set a rapid schedule for the completion of discovery, so that the case may proceed expeditiously to the final merits stage.”