Overnight Tech: Comcast cuts deal with Roku — and takes a shot at the FCC

LEDE: Comcast killed two birds with one stone Wednesday, launching a new product and taking a shot at the Federal Communications Commission in a contentious policy fight.

Customers will now be able to use an Xfinity app on their Roku boxes, the company said. That will allow Comcast’s many pay-TV subscribers to watch their cable subscriptions on the streaming boxes. The company is also working with a number of other device manufacturers, like those that make smart TVs, to allow people to watch cable without the need for a set-top box.

{mosads}The announcement gives Comcast and its pay-TV brethren another weapon to use in their fight against FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal to open up the set-top box market. The Comcast application launches in the fall, which will also mark crunch time for the FCC’s proposed rules.

The cable industry’s representatives quickly underscored that in a statement. “Instead of rushing forward with a regulatory proceeding that will upset a marketplace that is undergoing such a dramatic transformation and achieving the goals that it seeks, the FCC should study these developments and reconsider the path it appears to be on,” said NCTA President Michael Powell. The Future of TV Coalition, which is led by cable, said that the announcement “underscores how absurd the arguments for government intervention are.”

VERIZON SAYS PRIVACY RULES COULD HURT WEB AD PLANS: Verizon hinted in a filing that proposed FCC privacy rules could put a damper on its ambitions to grow its share of the web advertising business. “The proposed opt-in requirement — including for the marketing of a provider’s own products and services to its customers and for the internal sharing of customer information with affiliates — would create substantial practical challenges for broadband providers and would make it more difficult for these providers to bring new competition to the market for online advertising,” it said at an April 14 meeting, according to a filing released on Monday. Verizon, of course, is said to be in the bidding for Yahoo’s core web business and already owns AOL. The CEO of the latter company, Tim Armstrong, has suggested he would like to leverage AOL’s ad tech and Verizon’s mobile data to create better advertising products.

GROUP RAISING MONEY TO PRESSURE GOOGLE: The advocacy group Color of Change is blasting out emails to its supporters asking them to donate money to help build a “massive public pressure campaign” to urge Google not to sponsor the GOP convention. The group has been putting pressure on companies over the issue for the past few months. “We’re not going to let Google and other Big Tech companies take our hard earned dollars and use them to fund a candidate running on a platform of hate and violence,” the fundraising email reads.

MICROSOFT PUSHES CONGRESS ON EMAIL PRIVACY: Microsoft sent a letter to leaders in the House urging the full chamber to approve an email privacy bill slated for a vote at the end of the month. Company president Brad Smith said the bill is a “common sense approach that accounts for how technology works today.” The letter did not mention Microsoft’s separate ask for Congress to reform another part of the law dealing with gag orders served to tech companies. The company is currently suing the Justice Department over the issue.

FTC WARNING ON SCAM CHARITIES: The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday sent out an alert warning people to do their research before giving money to an organization seeking donations to help survivors of earthquakes in Ecuador and Japan. The consumer protection agency warned: “Urgent appeals for aid that you get in person, by phone or mail, by e-mail, on websites, or on social networking sites may not be on the up-and-up. Unfortunately, legitimate charities face competition from fraudsters who either solicit for bogus charities or aren’t entirely honest about how a so-called charity will use your contribution.”

UBER PARTNERS WITH ANTI-TRAFFICKING ORGANIZATION: Uber on Wednesday evening will sign a code of conduct created by for tourism and travel companies by ECPAT-USA, an anti-child sex trafficking organization. They will also make resources available to drivers on how to recognize “physical and behavioral indicators of a commercially exploited and trafficked child.”

ON TAP: 

At 10 a.m., NCTA hosts a media briefing with Gibson Dunn partners Ted Olson and Helgi Walker to “highlight the statutory and constitutional shortcomings of the FCC’s proposal.”

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:

Senators in both parties are hoping a high-profile nomination to lead the Library of Congress does not get bogged down in the broader confirmation fight ahead of the 2016 elections.

Republicans are on the offensive over the timing of the announcement of a planned $51 million fine the Federal Communications Commission issued earlier this month.

Europe’s antitrust regulator formally filed charges Wednesday against Google, alleging the country’s Android operating system violates the continent’s competition laws.

Major tech firms are banding together to oppose an encryption bill that would require them to help government investigators decrypt customer data.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) website was filled with traffic Monday, as hundreds of thousands of individuals waited until the deadline to download documents asking for an extension to file their tax returns.

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