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The Librarian of Congress has declined to provide an exemption from copyright protections for so-called place-shifting of DVDs to tablets and other devices.

The Librarian did create new classes of exempt circumvention, including to access captioning or audio descriptions on the DVDs, or to excerpt videos for commentary, criticism and educational uses, but on the recommendation of Register of Copyrights Maria Pallante. Librarian James Billington eschewed the time-shifting carve-out, which would have allowed the copying of DVDs so they could be played on tablets or laptops without DVD-playing capability. Public Knowledge had argued that the inability to play lawfully acquired DVDs on the newest platforms adversely affects noninfringing uses, and that it would be reasonable to allow consumers to solve that by making a copy for noncommercial personal use that could be viewed on those devices. Public Knowledge also argued that allowing the copies would not hurt the market or contribute to piracy.

In a speech to the Americas Spectrum Management Conference in Washington, Federal Communications Commission member Mignon Clyburn emphasized that the FCC's upcoming incentive auctions are going to be voluntary, but also suggested there were some volunteers in the wings. "[T]o me, the most important aspect of this auction is that it is voluntary. That means TV broadcasters may, if it is in their interests, choose to submit bids to give up their spectrum rights in exchange for payment...While we don't know exactly how much spectrum incentive auctions will free up, there has been great interest generated from broadcasters and wireless service providers," she said.

A consumer group looking to overturn a $22.5 million Federal Trade Commission fine against Google to settle allegations of violating the terms of a 2011 consent decree is now arguing that Google continues to benefit from data it collected during the violation.

An FTC complaint in August alleged that Google improperly bypassed privacy protections on Apple's Safari browser and placed tracking cookies on users' computers. Google agreed to settle the case, but didn't admit wrongdoing. FTC Commissioner Thomas Rosch dissented from the settlement, arguing that Google should admit wrongdoing and that the fine was small relative to Google's revenues. Consumer Watchdog, a persistent critic of Google, argued just that in its bid to have the settlement tossed out. And in a reply memorandum filed in federal court in California, they're now saying that the settlement "permits Google to continue to profit from its wrongdoing indefinitely." According to the filing, though Google set tracking cookies it placed with the browsers of Safari users to expire, the data generated by those cookies while they were active still reside with Google, and can still be used to serve advertising to those same users.

A new study finds that there is a deep lack of racial diversity among the newspaper journalists writing about some of the biggest political issues of the 2012 campaign.

The 4th Estate, which makes infographics about media trends, looked at 38 different newspaper front pages across the country from January through mid-October of 2012. It found that white journalists dominated when it came to writing feature stories about campaign issues. White reporters wrote 91 percent of stories on the economy, 90.8 percent of stories on social issues and 92.7 percent of stories on foreign policy. Most startlingly, they wrote 98.2 percent of stories on immigration. The topic would seem to call for increased Latino participation, but the study found that Latinos wrote just .2 percent of stories. The organization did a similar study which found that men are overwhelmingly quoted in stories about women's issues.