Last month, I wrote a blog post about Cablevision seeking to encrypt basic cable in New York City. I wrote about submitting a comment to the FCC about this a couple weeks later, and a review of some of the comments in the Battle for Digital Cable.

The original public notice listed the reply date as November 6th. The public notice also had a section that said,
"Comments and oppositions filed must indicate that they have been served on Petitioner." It provided a physical address for the lawyers for the petitioner and provided no means of serving the comments on the Petitioner electronically.

As I read through the comments, the only comment that indicated that it had been served on the petitioner was in an errata submitted by the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications.

I contacted to the FCC to ask how they would consider the comments that have been submitted without having been physically served on the Petitioner and without notice in the comment that it had been so served.

Friday, I received a message back from the FCC pointing to a Memorandum Opinion and Order. In the order, they waived, sua sponte the requirement that required service on all parties and the indication of such service in the responses. They go on to explain that since this was a docketed proceeding in which all of the comments are available in the Electronic Comment Filing System, the needs to service the petitioner directly is unnecessary. In doing so, they provided Cablevision an extra ten days to provide their response.

Personally, I’m very pleased with the development. It means that important comments will be considered as part of the public record. I would like to see this set as a standard. Any time the public can file comments in the Electronic Comment Filing System there should be no additional requirement for service of comments.