Website operators who allow the posting of user-generated content on their sites enjoy broad immunity from legal liability. This includes immunity from copyright violations if the site owner registers with the Copyright Office, does not encourage the copyright violations and takes down infringing content upon receiving notice from a copyright owner (see our post here for more information). There is also broad immunity from liability for other legal violations that may occur within user-generated content.

Pity the poor regulator who, someday soon, will be faced with evaluating some proposed combination of all or parts of Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and/or News Corp. (is there anyone else left?). What yardstick would you even apply? Someday, they're all going to be in the same combination of the content creation/distribution business, online advertising, applications development and platforms and social networking anyway. It's really only a question of how they get there and when, not whether or even should they. Trying to come to grips with that through the keyhole of any one deal or company is probably not a formula for a coherent regulatory framework for the future of the digital media industry.

While US webcasters may think that they have legal issues - whether it be the Internet radio music royalties that have been such a concern (see our coverage, here) or the copyright and other liability issues that surround user-generated content on various websites (see our story here), they face nothing like new rules that were recently adopted for webcasters in China. The new rules require government permits from two separate Chinese government agencies before webcasting operations can begin. In addition, the rules appear to require ownership and control of webcasting operations by state-owned companies. A memo on these new rules, prepared by attorneys from Davis Wright Tremaine's Shanghai office, can be found here.

Under the compulsory license for the use of sound recordings - the license which allows Internet radio services to use all legally recorded sound recordings by paying a royalty set by the Copyright Royalty Board - the designated collection agency can, once each year, audit a licensee to assess its compliance with the royalty requirements. Under the law, when the collective decides to audit a company, it must notify the Copyright Royalty Board, who then gives public notice of the fact that an audit is to take place. The Copyright Royalty Board has just announced that SoundExchange has decided to audit Last.FM.

In recent weeks, Low Power Television stations have been the center of attention in Washington in connection with the Digital television transition. While all full-power television stations are set to convert to digital operations less than a year from now, ceasing analog operations at the end of the day on February 17, 2009, there is no specific deadline for LPTV stations to convert to digital. As the NTIA rolls out its coupon program for the purchase of converter boxes that will take digital signals of over-the-air television stations and convert them to analog for those who do not have digital television receivers (see our summary here), LPTV advocates noted that many converters do not pass through analog signals.

Think video is the future of online media? Broadband revolution, right? Apple perfecting the digital video experience? Well, not if everyone decides to embrace that future all at once. Time Warner Cable is experimenting with caps on broadband usage, which means too much movie downloading and suddenly you’re paying $30 per movie.

As 2007 wound to an end, advertising issues figured prominently on the agenda of Washington agencies, including both the FCC and the FTC. While the FCC is looking at specific regulatory requirements governing broadcast advertising, the FTC is investigating the privacy issues raised by advertising conducted by on-line companies. In November, the FTC held a two day set of workshops and panels where interested parties discussed issues of behavioral advertising - advertising that can be targeted to individuals based on their history of Internet use, and whether or not regulation of these practices was necessary.

On the last day of 2007, the FCC released a 108 page order detailing its rules for the final stages of the transition of US full power television stations from analog to digital, a transition that is to be completed in less than 14 months. The Third Periodic Review, as the order is titled, covers in detail the timing of required construction of the final facilities for each full power television station, as well as various details on other transition issues. While we will prepare a more detailed summary of the order, some of the more significant issues that the Commission addressed include the following:

The FCC has released its agenda for its December 18 meeting - and it promises to be one of the most important,and potentially most contentious, in recent memory. On the agenda is the Commission's long awaited decision on the Chairman's broadcast multiple ownership plan relaxing broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership rules (see our summary here).

The FCC's Emergency Alert System ("EAS") is the bane of many broadcasters. Failing to have operational EAS equipment, or otherwise failing to comply with the requirements of the rules, including failures to conduct the mandatory tests of the system, are among the most common causes of a fine following an FCC field inspection. To help ensure compliance with the EAS rules, the FCC has issued a series of booklets outlining the EAS obligations not only for broadcasters, but also for cable systems, satellite radio and wireline video providers.

With a possible decision looming on December 18 on the Chairman's proposal to loosen the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules (see our summary here and here), the FCC this week granted two applications involving the sales of the Tribune Company and of the Clear Channel television stations, where the decisions focused on the application of the multiple ownership rules - and where the Commission granted multiple waivers of various aspects of those rules - some on a permanent basis and many only temporarily. And, in the process, both of the Commission's Democratic Commissioners complained about the apparent prejudgment of the cross-ownership rules and one complained about the role of private equity in broadcast ownership. Both decisions are also interesting in their treatment of complicated ownership structures and, at least under this administration, evidence the Commission's desire to stay out of second guessing these structures.

Facebook Beacon, currently in the process of going down in flames, is a classic case of overreaching. So much has been written about what’s wrong with Beacon — blatant privacy violation, lack of blanket opt-out, failure to make it opt-in, gathering data from non-Facebook users — but I haven’t seen much about WHY they got it so wrong. (Except for Umair, of course, who called Facebook evil back when everyone was still slobbering over them.) The reason why Facebook got it so wrong with Beacon is actually much more interesting and important to the evolution of media, advertising, and technology than the reason why Beacon is imploding.

Facebook has rolled out public stripped down versions of user profiles that are crawlable by search engines, which has lots of upside for Facebook, but raises privacy issues for personal users and has questionable utility for business users. Here’s what I found when I logged into Facebook: