July 2012

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on the current state of industry self-regulation in providing consumers with adequate tools to protect their personal information.

Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said, “I recognize that consumer information is the currency of the web. Thanks to advertising revenue, much of the rich content of the Internet is available to consumers for free. I also understand that advertising is more effective and valuable to companies when it is tailored to match consumers’ individual interests and tastes. But there has to be some balance. Consumers should have some degree of control over their personal, often sensitive, online information.” He added, “I want to hear from our witnesses what consumers should expect when they tell online companies that they do not want their information collected for any purpose other than the functionality of the service. No one wants to ‘break the Internet.’ But what many of us want is an Internet where consumers have some control over their personal information.

Testifying before the Committee, advertisers took aim at Microsoft's decision to make do-not-track a default setting in its new browser. Bob Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers, said in a testimony that the "unilateral decision" by one browser company could cause confusion and would "profoundly, adversely impact the broad array of advertising-supported services they currently widely use." Under pressure from the Administration, the Digital Advertising Alliance - - Liodice was speaking for them at the hearing -- adopted a voluntary opt-in, do-not-track mechanism.

Berin Szoka, president of TechFreedom and an opponent of default do-not-track, answered that it the Federal Trade Commission and the Administration pressure industry to adopt a default mechanism, it could change the how nature of the Internet "from today's low-friction, flat ecosystem of independent sites and services funded by impersonal data collection to one with fewer players who collect more data."

Ohio State Law Professor Peter Swire said that if the U.S. did not protect privacy, it could get locked out of international markets that do have such protections.

Alex Fowler of Mozilla said that he was not ready to say the U.S. should adopt a European-style model, but suggested it already had one since U.S. companies had to respect that regime when interacting with European countries. Liodice said that if the U.S. government extends its do-not-track reach to far through legislation, it could hurt cybersecurity or antifraud efforts by limiting information currently available to law enforcement. Rockefeller countered that that was a red herring.

The Supreme Court has turned down an appeal by media companies of government restrictions on the ownership of a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market, leaving the rules in place and sending the contentious issue once again back to the Federal Communications Commission.

The FCC is in the midst of its periodic review of media ownership rules, which broadcasters and news organizations have argued are outdated in the Internet era. The agency relaxed some of the rules in 2007, after the last review. But an appeals court tossed out the looser regulations, which largely applied to the top 20 U.S. markets, saying the FCC hadn't followed proper procedures in making the changes. The Supreme Court on Friday declined to hear an appeal of that lower court ruling by Media General, the National Association of Broadcasters, Tribune Company (which owns the Los Angeles Times and KTLA-TV Channel 5) and other media companies. Media General, Tribune and the broadcasters said they were disappointed. But both sides in the case had thought it unlikely the high court would accept an appeal that revolved around procedural issues.

Since 1975, the FCC has banned so-called cross-ownership of newspapers and TV and radio stations in the same city. But it frequently has granted waivers. Media companies had argued to the Supreme Court that the rules were no longer needed because people have many more ways to access news. But public interest groups said the increased demand for wireless spectrum by telecommunications companies made media ownership rules important to preserving diverse voices on the public airwaves.

"The public still gives broadcasters exclusive use of this finite and valuable resource free of charge, as well as other important privileges, in exchange for certain, reasonable commitments," said the Prometheus Radio Project and other groups that had challenged the FCC's 2007 loosening of the rules.

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader—about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one.

In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, e-books are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.

Senators are set to tackle legislation to protect the nation’s computer system when the upper chamber returns from its July 4th recess, but the efforts are being hampered by disagreements over the government’s role in overseeing cybersecurity standards.

Senate Majority Leader Harry (D-NV) has repeatedly said he believes cybersecurity legislation is critical, and he is expected to push for a vote in July. "There hasn't been a time that I've talked with [Reid] in the last year where he hasn't talked about the need to get cybersecurity to the floor," Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) told reporters after a Senate hearing last week. "No other subject reigns so supreme."