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Should the FCC change rules that prevent consumers from losing channels during fee disputes between broadcasters and cable operators?

"To stop broadcasters from flexing their muscles, the coalition asked the FCC to mandate that disputes be settled by an arbitrator. They also want regulators to bar stations from withholding their programming, their most potent bargaining chip."

Following the Fox TWC dispute, experts predict more retransmission battles as broadcast networks search desperately for ways to supplement falling advertising revenue.

"The Oscar statuette became a pawn in a public brawl between the Walt Disney Company and Cablevision on Sunday, a dispute that prevented more than three million viewers from watching the beginning of the Academy Awards show until a tentative agreement restored the signal 14 minutes into the telecast."

The University of California at Los Angeles on Wednesday announced that it will continue streaming copyrighted videos in online "virtual classrooms" despite legal objections from an educational media trade group. The university's decision is the latest development in a copyright dispute with the Association for Information and Media Equipment over whether it is legal for the university to convert DVDs from its libraries into a digital format that students can stream from password-protected course Web sites. UCLA considers the practice "essential," since it allows students to watch the videos on their own computers and on their own time, rather than having to gather in a classroom. Many educators at other colleges have watched the case with intent, waiting to see what implications, if any, the spat might have on their own institutions' use of streaming video.

The FCC will address the issue of retransmission at its Jan. 20, 2010 meeting following several recent disputes.

Search engine in China cleared of piracy in dispute with music industry.

Update on the court case between Arbitron radio ratings and Spanish Broadcasting Systems over SBS's refusal to encode their signals so that Arbitron can measure audience. SBS claims that Arbitron's measurment under counts Hispanic listeners and hurts their advertising rates.

"Brian L. Roberts, the chairman and chief executive of Comcast, laid out 17 specific commitments that the company was willing to make to satisfy the concerns of the F.C.C., consumer groups and members of Congress, including a promise to expand the number of independent programmers it carries in each of the next three years. "

Television set-top box maker TiVo Inc. won an federal appeals court ruling expected to force Dish Network and EchoStar corporations to pay at least $300 million in damages for a patent violation.

For more than 70 years, royalty payments for air time have flowed to the songwriters and music publishers but not to the musicians or record companies. Now there is a renewed drive to revisit that arrangement, and in recent weeks the volume of the discussion has increased several decibels.