Author Neil Gaiman said in an interview this week that the media industry is trying to “put genies back in bottles” with laws like SOPA and PIPA, and the Internet has fundamentally changed the landscape, just as Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press did. Read More »
Tech
If you’re just hearing about SOPA and PIPA, the complexity of these controversial bills can seem daunting. Here’s your quick guide to the proposed pieces of legislation and a one-stop shop of resources that can help you learn much, much more. Read More »
New laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act threaten to give new powers to Congress and to content companies, and have serious implications for the web — they make it clear that content companies are in many ways fundamentally opposed to the way the internet… Read More »
A new copyright bill proposed in the House would give governments and private corporations unprecedented powers to remove websites from the internet completely, on the flimsiest of grounds, and would also force internet service providers to play the role of copyright police or face penalties. Read More »
Is Google evil? Members of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights tried to decide that today in a hearing on Google’s market power. The end result was the Senators requested Google make voluntary changes to its search ranking. Read More »
After years of finger-pointing by competitors, Google is finally coming under the scrutiny of federal antitrust regulators. But just like a similar investigation into Microsoft a decade ago, a federal inquiry into whether Google’s behavior is illegal is likely to be a giant waste of time. Read More »
In the latest salvo of privacy-related criticism to be directed at the social network, a group of four senators have sent a letter to Facebook asking the company to change some of its new information-sharing settings, and to stop enabling its sharing features by default. Read More »
The House and Senate held a pre-Valentine’s Day love fest last night and produced a compromise stimulus package; the two houses must now approve the conference bill, after which it would be sent to the president. For details on the full $789 billion plan, you can… Read More »
The recent bill dedicated to improving the nation’s broadband profile has passed the Senate — albeit with a few changes to render it less problematic for telecom companies. The modified version of the Broadband Data Improvement Act that is now before President Bush is… Read More »
The Senate on Friday passed a bill aimed at improving information about broadband competitiveness — or lack thereof. Following similar legislation that passed the House last fall, the Broadband Data Improvement Act act was passed in the Senate. Now the two sides must hash… Read More »
Today saw the first of at least two Congressional hearings concerning managing privacy on the web in relation to online advertising. The hearing today involved executives from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and startup NebuAd as well as the Federal Trade Commission and two public policy groups.… Read More »
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