Tag: REGULATION

House Republicans are moving forward with their plan to repeal the FCC's new net neutrality regulations. Yesterday, the GOP-controlled House Commerce Committee voted to overturn the rules by a 30-23 vote that split along party lines. The vote comes less than a week after a House Subcommittee approved the measure by a similarly partisan vote. The FCC is also facing legal challenges from Verizon and ...

Three years ago, some of the world's leading tech companies agreed to participate in the Global Network Initiative (GNI) -- a code of conduct designed to protect online speech and privacy around the world. The initiative was originally launched in response to brewing tensions in China, where some Internet companies were accused of complying with government censorship policies in order to pursue ...

Facebook has issued a lengthy response to the Federal Trade Commission's plan to protect online privacy, outlining the social network's long-term philosophy on the issue and its plans for the future. In its response, Facebook admitted that the government should play a role in protecting user information on the Web, but argued that online companies should be allowed some freedom to regulate ...

The House of Representatives has voted to overturn a controversial FCC ruling on net neutrality, though it's not clear whether or not the resolution will advance much further. In December, the FCC voted to prohibit Internet service providers from blocking legal content on their networks, while allowing them to restrict access according to bandwidth use. The 3-2 ruling elicited uproars from free ...

Al Franken thinks Net neutrality is "the most important free speech issue of our time," and he seems determined to fight for it. On Saturday, the Democratic senator delivered a blistering floor speech, in which he criticized the new online regulations proposed by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. On Tuesday, the FCC will vote on both the regulations and a proposed merger between NBC and Comcast. ...

The Obama administration is pushing for the creation of a new 'Privacy Policy Office,' which would be charged with the task of putting together an online "privacy bill of rights" for all Americans. The proposals were outlined in a report from the Department of Commerce, which called for the development of a new "framework" to protect consumers from data-gathering, third-party companies. The ...

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Transportation proposed a new set of rules that would require all future cars to come equipped with rearview video cameras. The cameras, according to governmental officials, could greatly increase rear visibility, thereby decreasing the risk of running over toddlers or elderly pedestrians when backing up. As the AP reports, only about 20-percent of all 2010 model ...

Apple turned a lot of heads this morning when it unexpectedly opened the App Store to apps created with third-party development programs -- including, apparently, those using Adobe Flash. In a news release posted on its site, Apple declared that it would be "relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code." The ...

Improving national broadband accessibility and speed has been high on the FCC's agenda for a while, now. And yesterday, the Commission issued the first regulatory vollies in what many are expecting to be a public-private sector showdown. The Commission has proposed three separate plans for public comment, including something known as 'the third way.' According to the BBC, the plan, supported by ...

Share For the better part of the last decade, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has maintained a relatively laissez-faire approach to the Internet. In recent years, though, Internet titans like Google and Amazon have more vocally implored the FCC to implement hard regulation requiring broadband providers to guarantee access to all Web sites. Now, FCC Chairman Julius Genchowski is ...

The Department of Justice approved the controversial merger between Sirius and XM Satellite radio yesterday. Now it's the FCC's turn to take a shot at the only two satellite radio providers in the country, which aim to become one monopolistic company. Clear Channel is taking the unprecedented step of pressuring the FCC for stricter enforcement of decency standards, specifically making them ...