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The giants of the tech industry are at odds over how the government should protect users in the era of “big data.” While some companies are pushing President Barack Obama to propose firm rules for data collection, others say the industry should be trusted to regulate itself.

Microsoft is among those calling for new federal standards, arguing Congress should act to craft “strong, comprehensive privacy legislation.” But the Internet Association -- “the unified voice of the Internet economy,” which includes Facebook, Google and Yahoo -- took a different approach, calling for “a flexible and balanced self-regulatory responsible use framework” that protects consumers while allowing for innovation.

Internet providers and wireless companies are warning lawmakers not to get overly involved in deals over online traffic.

In comments filed to the House Commerce Committee, USTelecom -- which represents Internet providers -- said lawmakers and regulators should stay out of “interconnection” deals, the arrangements Internet providers make with each other and websites to handle online traffic.

Radio and TV broadcasters issued a formal rebuke to the Federal Communications Commission’s restrictions on company ownership. The FCC should “recognize and come to grips” with the changes that have taken place in the media market over the last eight years, the National Association of Broadcasters said.

The Communications Workers of America is calling for the Federal Communications Commission to require radio and TV broadcasters to publicly detail all sharing agreements that they have.

CWA said that broadcasters make deals to share the same news programming or give each other operational support “to evade the Commission’s local television ownership rules and its newspaper/broadcast cross-ownerships rules.”

The FCC should expand an order banning broadcasters from selling at least 15 percent of another’s advertisements to those other sharing arrangement, the union said. That would prevent companies from trying to skim profits by getting rid of employees and degrade “the quality and quantity of locally originated news and public affairs programming at the expense of quality journalism.”

Two Republican lawmakers introduced a privileged resolution criticizing House leadership for changing the text of a bill on cellphone “unlocking” before it hit the floor earlier in 2014.

Reps Walter Jones (R-NC) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) introduced the measure to disapprove of the action from House leaders and the heads of the Judiciary Committee and direct them “to operate in a matter that maximizes transparency and public trust.”

The action is a formal rebuke to House leaders for quietly slipping a controversial measure into the bill that allowed people to switch their cellphone from one network like AT&T or Verizon to another in February. The contested provision banned unlocking for “bulk resale,” which would have prevented people from setting up shop exclusively for unlocking phones and which supporters said was necessary to reduce the incentive for people to steal phones.

In their resolution, the two lawmakers claimed that the change “fundamentally altered the substance of the underlying bill.”

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) called on the Senate to pass a short-term extension of a ban on Internet access taxes.

“Don’t hit the Internet with discriminatory taxation,” Sen Wyden said on the Senate floor. “I hope that the Senate will join me in supporting the temporary extension ... as a bridge to permanent legislation.”

The Internet Tax Freedom Act expires on Nov 1, and Democratic leaders are pushing to extend the moratorium through 2014.

Rep Anna Eshoo (D-CA) is pushing the Federal Communications Commission to consider “data caps” as it rewrites its controversial network neutrality rules.

In a letter to the FCC, Rep Eshoo, the top Democrat on the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, shared the preliminary findings of a Government Accountability Office study about data caps, which she described as “a new threat to the free and open Internet.”

According to Rep Eshoo, the FCC should consider these data cap practices as it rewrites its net neutrality rules, which kept Internet providers from slowing or blocking access to certain websites before they were struck down by a federal court earlier in 2014.

[Commentary] The middle ground is not as safe as it might seem. The three options available to the Federal Communications Commission in the open Internet debate can broadly be characterized as light, medium and heavy regulation.

At least two of the three main provisions of the FCC's "medium" regulation proposal have the potential to be quite harmful. The first involves "transparency." Mandated price disclosure helps facilitate cartel behavior.

Second is the prohibition against "commercially unreasonable" practices. The commercially unreasonable standard, particularly in combination with the detailed disclosure requirements, risks generating a steady stream of complaints from interested parties.

[Lenard is president and senior fellow of the Technology Policy Institute]

A group of California Democrats is calling on the Federal Communications Commission to help resolve a dispute between cable companies over showing Los Angeles Dodgers games on television.

Members of the tech industry and estate lawyers are pushing Congress to tweak an e-mail privacy law to ensure that digital accounts don’t die when their users do.

With pressure building on Congress to update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Communications Act (ECPA), some are asking lawmakers to explicitly allow people to control who can access their online accounts after they die or become incapacitated.