U.S. District Court Judge Alison Nathan’s ruling slapping a nationwide preliminary injunction on Aereo (see 1410230060) could lead to more litigation for the streaming service, said Fletcher Heald First Amendment attorney Kevin Goldberg in a blog post Wednesday. Aereo could appeal the portion of the injunction limiting it to broadcasting time-delayed content, or broadcasters could appeal that the injunction allows Aereo to provide some form of streaming service. “A time-delayed Aereo is still a competitor in many ways,” said Goldberg. Either side of the case could also choose to let the matter be decided on the merits. “This obviously suits the broadcasters to some extent, since Aereo may not be as attractive to potential subscribers without the live viewing function,” Goldberg said. NAB and Aereo did not comment.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court ruling that Redbox’s sharing of customer service data with Stream Global Services, the company to which it outsources that function, doesn’t violate laws against sharing customer video rental information, in an opinion released Thursday (http://1.usa.gov/ZJTgKc). “Redbox’s actions fall within the statutory exception for disclosures in the ordinary course of business,” said the opinion. Redbox has been sued by two customers who argued that providing the customer service data to a second party violated the Video Privacy Protection Act. “Congress enacted the VPPA in 1988, before the advent of automated kiosks,” and couldn’t have anticipated the need for a separate customer service company to service such kiosks, the opinion said.

Consumer use of digital media and entertainment products in the U.S. is growing, said a Computer & Communications Industry Association-commissioned report released Thursday (http://bit.ly/1se2sx8). The report’s authors used several sources for the report, including the MPAA, the Pew Research Center and BookStats, it said. Music consumers legally bought 118 billion songs in 2013, it said. The video industry, which is “driven by online services,” is projected to exceed $36 billion revenue by 2017, it said. The e-book market grew from a $64 million industry in 2008 to $3 billion in 2012, it said.

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.