May 31, 2019 – Verizon Wireless’ slowdown of the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s data plan had a “significant impact” on the department’s ability to respond to last year’s wildfires, according to testimony by Fire Chief Anthony Bowden that featured prominently in a Thursday discussion at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. The incident… Keep Reading
BROADBAND BREAKFAST INSIGHT: California, and many other states, have muscled their way onto the national broadband stage. They've done this through legislation that would either require net neutrality protections that the Federal Communications Commission removed in December 2017, or use state purchase power to require that selected Internet Service Providers commit to neutrality principles, or… Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, November 13, 2014 – Net neutrality has been the hottest topic in tech policy for months. Politicians on the left say their opponents stand foursquare against the tenets of a free and open internet. Politicians on the right that their adversaries are trying to apply outmoded and outdated legislation to cripple the innovative essence… Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, September 12, 2014 - In what would have seemed highly unlikely just a few months ago, growing support for public utility regulation is emerging. Tech companies, politicians, internet service providers, and component makers have started to outline their views regarding their policy approach to the issue of net neutrality. In order to understand the… Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, May 22, 2014 - The House of Representatives passed the USA Freedom Act on Thursday in a 303 to 121 vote, according to Ars Technica, instituting changes to the National Security Agency's bulk collection of American phone records. The goal is to end the practice of gathering records of meta-data about the individuals to which and… Keep Reading
LAS VEGAS, January 8, 2013 - One of the biggest public policy challenges facing the information technology industry is the ability for patent holders to sue entrepreneurs, according to a panel on "patent trolls" here at the Consumer Electronics Show. A panel of entrepreneurs, non-profit groups and attorneys for major technology companies and Rep. Peter… Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, June 6, 2011 – The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of opinion and expression, Frank La Rue, presented his report on freedom of expression and the Internet to the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Friday, concluding that Internet access is a basic human right. In what was hailed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a ‘landmark report,’ La Rue’s report also declared that disconnecting individuals from the Internet goes against international law. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, October 12, 2010 - The Intellectual Property Breakfast Club on Tuesday, focusing on "Finding Solutions to the Problems of Copyright Infringement," may well focus on S. 3804, the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA), introduced late last month by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, January 15, 2010 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation is, unsurprisingly, in support of Net neutrality rules. They feel that if given the chance, internet service providers will act as content discriminators. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, December 7, 2009 - While Yahoo and Microsoft announced Friday they remain hopeful they will be able to conclude a deal that would allow Microsoft to power Yahoo search and Yahoo to take over search advertising sales for both companies, Google said Friday it is making a number of enhancements to its search engine including personalizing the search experience. ComScore, a digital marketing intelligence company, found in September 2009 that Google sites led the U.S. core search market with 64.9 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo sites nabbing 18.8 percent, Microsoft sites with 9.4 percent, Ask Network and AOL each capturing between 3 and 4 percent of the market. Keep Reading
SAN FRANCISCO, December 2, 2009 - The phenomenal growth of online social networks is finally moving the decades-long debate over the nature of privacy in the digital world forward, said legal experts at an annual conference on innovation in San Francisco on Tuesday. Congress has threatened to enact and revamp consumer privacy laws for decades, but the complexity of the task has generally stumped the body, except for the areas of finance and health. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, November 4, 2009 – While representatives of countries were scheduled to begin meeting today in Seoul, South Korea, to negotiate a confidential international anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, some public interest and consumer groups continue to press for more transparency of the negotiations. On November 3 a number of groups signed a letter addressed to President Obama and carbon copied to other key administration officials calling for greater transparency of the talks. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, January 19, 2009 - The Wall Street Journal gave a little attention to a do-it-yourself network test, the "Switzerland" software suite of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I offered a comment and a link to the Broadband Census and speed test. Keep Reading
WASHINGTON, July 31 – Combatants on the subject of Net Neutrality debate took aim at each other on Thursday, with House Minority Leader John Boehner blasting FCC Chairman Kevin Martin in advance of a Federal Communications Commission meeting on Friday. Keep Reading
June 14 - Critics and proponents of Network Neutrality squaring off on the topic on Friday agreed that recent actions by both cable and wireless providers had had re-vivified the debate about the topic. Keep Reading