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NSA TELECOM LAWSUITS SENT TO CALIFORNIA COURT
[SOURCE: Reuters, AUTHOR: Jeremy Pelofsky]
Seventeen lawsuits against U.S. telephone companies for allegedly unlawfully aiding a government spy program have been consolidated into a California federal court, said a ruling made public on Thursday. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation sent the class-action lawsuits filed in 13 district courts across the country into the Northern District of California before Judge Vaughn Walker, who has already been hearing one of the cases. We conclude that the Northern District of California is an appropriate transferee forum in this docket because the district is where the first filed and significantly more advanced action is pending before a judge already well versed in the issues presented by the litigation," the panel said in an August 9 order. The government and telephone companies had sought to move the cases to a Washington, D.C. court while a plaintiff's attorney asked the California judge handle the cases.
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyID...

SMALL BUSINESS AND THE UNIVERSAL SERVICE FUND
[SOURCE: US Small Business Administration, AUTHOR: Thomas M. Sullivan]
The Office of Advocacy of the U. S. Small Business Administration has filed comments in a Federal Communications Commission proceeding concerning modifications for
assessing contributions to the Universal Service Fund. The SBA is concerned about the FCC's decision to raise the fees paid by wireless providers and to extend Universal Service obligations to interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol services. The SBA "is concerned that the imposition of regulatory burdens on a nascent industry
with many, very small businesses in an extremely short period of time will have a significant economic impact. SBA offers the FCC alternative approaches that could minimize the impact on small businesses.
http://www.sba.gov/advo/laws/comments/fcc06_0808.pdf

DIRECTV-ECHOSTAR MERGER?
[SOURCE: TheDeal.com, AUTHOR: Matthew Wurtzel]
[Commentary] DirecTV Group and EchoStar Communications have formed a venture called Wireless DBS reportedly to bid about $1 billion for spectrum. Both are seeking the highly sought after prize to remain competitive with rival cablers and the Bells, who are beginning to roll out TV service. Satellite TV service is a one-way technology preventing the two companies from branching out into broadband Internet or voice communications giving both the cablers and Bells an upper hand. The detente between the two rivals could lead to future discussion of a possible merger. Unlike the last attempt that was thwarted by antitrust concerns, another merger could breeze through the approval process assuming regulators consider the Bells' new TV service as rivals to satellite TV. Obviously, if new subscriptions are already slowing because of cable's phone service push, then the two companies may have a potent new argument to support a merger -- especially if they win enough wireless licenses to offer voice and broadband. Besides, agreeing to merge after winning wireless licenses would mitigate the problem of divvying up the licenses.
http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=6264
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TWO EDITORS RESIGN AT WEB SITE LINKED TO JOURNALISM REVIEW
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Katharine Selye]
The managing editor of CJRDaily.org, an online adjunct of The Columbia Journalism Review, and his deputy both quit yesterday after the dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism told them he was cutting the site’s budget nearly in half. The dean, Nicholas Lemann, said in an interview that the amount of money raised for the Web site could not sustain the online staff, and he was using a portion of the magazine’s discretionary money for a direct-mail campaign to try to increase subscriptions to the print magazine. The journalism review, which comes out six times a year, has a circulation of 20,000. Mr. Lemann said he was faced with the same quandary confronting most news organizations today -- how to pay for an online staff when the site is free to readers. The Web site will soon start to sell advertising, hold conferences and sell archival material, he said, but even that revenue will not support the cost of the staff. He said he had been “out fund-raising every day,” but had not scraped together enough to finance the site at full strength. As a result, he said, he has decided that a campaign to gain subscribers for the print magazine, while expensive, will result in more income, which will help maintain an online staff that he said would still be bigger than that of most other magazines.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/business/media/11mag.html
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