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The time has come for Congress to pass strong Internet consumer privacy legislation that provides clear rules of the road for businesses and consumers while preserving the innovation and free flow of information that are hallmarks of the Internet economy.
Consumer privacy legislation should have the following elements:
- First, the bill should include the concept of a “consumer privacy bill of rights” based on comprehensive, widely accepted Fair Information Practice Principles. These consumer data privacy protections should be legally enforceable and broad and flexible enough to allow consumer privacy protection and business practices to adapt as new technologies and services emerge. Any legislation should avoid duplicating or conflicting with the requirements of existing sector-specific data privacy laws and regulations.
- Second, any legislation should recognize that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) plays a vital role as the nation’s independent consumer privacy enforcement authority. The Administration recommends granting the FTC explicit authority to enforce any consumer privacy bill of rights with an eye towards appreciating that any standards should evolve and adapt to a rapidly evolving digital marketplace.
- Third, the Administration will work to promote global interoperability with our allies and trading partners. The legislative approach that we recommend could help to reduce the multiple compliance burdens that companies currently face and provide consumers with more consistent cross-border data protections.
- And finally, consistent with existing Federal requirements and ongoing Administration policy development in this area, the Administration recommends adoption of a Federal consumer data security breach notification law that sets national standards, reconciles inconsistent State laws, and authorizes enforcement by State authorities.
Protecting Consumers & Promoting Innovation Online: A Call for Baseline Privacy Legislation
The Obama Administration made official its call for a comprehensive privacy law today, and there are signals that industry support for such a move might be broader than expected.
To start with, a privacy official from Microsoft, a key industry player, voiced the company’s support for new federal legislation, saying that the current patchwork of industry-by-industry privacy rules is too cumbersome. The government’s proposal, which was laid out to a Senate committee today by Commerce Department official Larry Strickling, will provide a “baseline” of privacy protections. Strickling didn't define exactly what those are, but said that the administration is ready to work with Congress and hammer out the details. And Microsoft wasn't the only company in the somewhat unusual position of asking for more regulation. “If this collection of data is allowed to continue unchecked, then capitalism will build what the government never could—a complete surveillance state online,” said Barbara Lawler, Chief Privacy Officer for Intuit, which makes TurboTax and other software.
Some Companies Actually Want More Privacy Regulation Privacy Measure Draws Support (Wall Street Journal)
Extrabux, a comparison shopping website, analyzed three factors -- sales tax rates, shipping time and shipping costs -- to build out a list of the five best states to live for online shoppers. And the five worst.
In determining shipping transit time, Nobbs and his team looked at the placement of some of the largest online retailers' shipping distribution centers around the country. Shipping cost was calculated using a large sample set of popular products and averaging the cost to ship to one location in each of the 50 states. Sales tax was clearly the most difficult to calculate. Because taxes vary from city to city (and it matters: in Fredonia, Arizona, sales tax is 11.725%), Nobbs averaged the total sales tax of every major city in each state. Online retailers, though, only charge sales tax if they have a physical presence (warehouse, headquarters, etc.) in the state you're purchasing from. Looking at Extrabux's 1,500 retailers, Nobbs multiplied each state's average sales tax by the percentage of online retailers that charge sales tax in that state to find what he calls a "standardized sales tax rate." So... the best: Delaware, Mississippi, New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Oregon. And the worst... Washington, New York, California, Alaska, and Hawaii.
The Best (and Worst) States to Live for Online Shoppers
[Commentary] Today we all deal with an unprecedented amount of information. We have websites, company intranets, e-mails and files. Even when we leave our computer we still have the ever-present stream of texts, alerts and updates. There is a simple premise we rarely follow, especially when we are, say, more technically inclined and wired. That is: "Some information needs to be discarded and some needs to be remembered. Keep and pay attention to only what is relevant.
Hayduk divides some common tools into two basic categories to provide some guidance:
- Flow tools are inherently communicative and collaborative. For example: Twitter, e-mail, IM, phone calls, text messages, Facebook, etc.
- Capture tools enable you to store content for later reuse or retrieval and reflect on ideas. Capture tools include: mind maps, note-taking software, folder directories, task management, knowledge management software, and information portals.
Now here's where the key to maintaining sanity comes in. Just remember, information that flows needs to flow. You should be able to jump in and out of the flow as your time permits with full knowledge and comfort of the fact that the flow will always be there. It rarely goes away. There is no beginning and no end to people's Facebook status updates, tweets or Google news alerts. Sure, when you stop you might miss a few birthdays or Conan O'Brien's latest joke. Get comfortable with the fact that information is always out there and you can get to it when you need it.
Digital capture or knowledge management preserves our ideas and enables you to move above the fray of information. If done correctly, your capture tool can become a part of your digital identity, personally or as an organization collectively. It's your digital memory or the place to store stuff when you want to remember it.
The Secret to Digital Sanity
Social learning platform Xplana has been analyzing the digital textbook market, and has concluded that in the US the education publishing market is reaching a tipping point: Within seven years, digital textbooks will dominate over print.
Xplana's studies suggest that over the next five years, sales of textbooks to students in the U.S. will slowly migrate to the point that 25% of new textbooks sold are digital versions (in the higher education and career education markets). Inside seven years, the trend will progress to the point that the dominant delivery format for educational texts is not paper, but digits. What seems to be the dominant factor that's changing things? The iPad. Last year's calculation was made before the iPad arrived, sold by the tens of million, and changed portable computing. Purists argue that reading books on the iPad screen is not ideal, and other people will claim that devices like the Kno -- with a more precise stylus-based input system -- is a better fit for educational markets. But compared to the Kindle, editing content, recording audio, and accessing rich graphics in textbooks is much more possible on the iPad, and adds genuine educational value to e-textbooks). And unlike the Kno, the iPad is actually available for purchase.
Digital Textbooks Will Dominate Over Paper Ones Soon
Media Access Project (MAP) announced that former FCC Commissioner Tyrone Brown stepped down as MAP’s President following nearly a year of valuable service. During his time at MAP, Mr. Brown made significant contributions to the organization’s structural development, and had a positive impact on MAP’s expanding programmatic interests. Mozelle Thompson, former Federal Trade Commissioner and Chair of MAP’s Governance Committee, will head the search committee for a new President.
Tyrone Brown leaving MAP after One Year
Google launched its Google for Nonprofits program, which provides exclusive product offerings and enhanced online resources, aimed at helping US-based nonprofits reach more donors, improve operations and raise awareness for their cause.
If you work for a nonprofit, this program provides you with several new benefits. Instead of applying to each Google product individually, you can sign up through a one-stop shop application process. If approved, you can access our suite of product offerings designed for nonprofits: up to $10,000 a month in advertising on Google AdWords to reach more donors, free or discounted Google Apps to cut IT costs and operate more efficiently, and premium features for YouTube and our mapping technologies to raise awareness of your cause. Google has also developed other online resources such as educational videos, case studies and better ways for you to connect with other nonprofits.
You're Changing the World. Google Wants to Help. Google (see the video)
March 16 marks the one-year anniversary of the National Broadband Plan, aimed at increasing access and adoption of broadband nationwide. When the broadband plan was released, Chairman Genachowski said, “The costs of digital exclusion grow higher every day... millions and millions are being left behind [and] the status quo is not good enough for America.” Yet while the FCC has issued numerous public notices posing questions about how to achieve the goals set forth in the plan, it has enacted very few changes to its policies and has deferred consideration of many of the proposals opposed by the largest broadband providers.
Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner made the following statement:
"Despite all the fanfare surrounding the National Broadband Plan, so far the FCC has delivered no more than the status quo. Americans are no better off now than they were last year, and the future outlook is not promising. The market is becoming more concentrated; prices are creeping up; and the FCC has shown no signs that it has any interest in improving competition. Instead of working to give people more choice of broadband providers, the FCC continues to rubber-stamp merger after merger. And despite raising concerns about competition in the wireless broadband market, the FCC has failed to act on special access reform or impose data roaming obligations, despite broad public interest and industry support. The Commission's plan for bridging the digital divide for low-income households and communities is not serious, and all indications are that its efforts to reform the Universal Service Fund will simply perpetuate the current system's waste of our public resources. Until Chairman Genachowski shows that he is willing to fight for the public interest, America's broadband problems will only get worse."
The National Broadband Plan, One Year Later -- Despite fanfare, Americans still left with status quo
Problems related to the transmission and completion of calls to rural carriers have become a “nationwide epidemic,” rural telco groups told Federal Communications Commission staff members on March 10. Representatives of the rural telco groups -- including the National Telecommunications Cooperative Association (NTCA), the Organization for the Promotion and Advancement of Small Telecommunications Companies (OPASTCO), the National Exchange Carrier Association (NECA) and the Western Telecommunications Alliance (WTA) -- outlined at least four potential problem scenarios:
- Calls that ring for the calling party, but not at all or on a delayed basis for the customer of the rural carrier
- Calling parties who receive incorrect or misleading message interceptions before the call reaches the rural LEC or the tandem switch through which the rural LEC receives traffic
- Calls that appear to loop between routing providers but never reach the rural carrier or its serving tandem
- Incorrect caller ID that displays to called parties
The rural telco groups urged the FCC to take several steps to address this problem, including:
- Ensuring that providers do not initiate or permit actions that result in calls failing to terminate or to be choked, restricted or disguised
- Affirming that where a provider knows, or should reasonably know, that calls will fail to complete or suffer in delivery, the provider should be responsible for its acts or omissions
Do Rural Markets Have a Call Completion Problem?
Social-networking sites such as Facebook, or search engines such as Google, may face court action if they fail to obey planned EU data privacy rules, European Union justice chief Viviane Reding said.
Reding will propose an overhaul of the EU's 16-year-old laws on data protection in the coming months to enforce more safeguards on how personal information is used. Much of the revamp would target sites such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft or Yahoo, because of rising worries about how they use information they collect about users' personal habits. Reding wants to force companies to allow Internet users to withdraw any data held by the websites, calling it the "right to be forgotten," as well as make the firms provide more information on what data is collected and for what purpose.
EU wants Facebook, Google to comply with new data rules