Politics and Law

It looks like development of Do Not Track, an effort to create a standard that'll let people tell Web sites not to track their online behavior, has resumed after a months-long logjam.

Peter Swire, the newly appointed leader of the World Wide Web Consortium's work on Do Not Track, has been attempting to find common ground among very different constituencies including privacy advocates and advertisers. But there's been progress, he said in a blog post.

"Over the past two days, the group has successfully managed to identify a path toward fulfilling our W3C charter: we now … Read more

President Obama invoked the pageantry of his State of the Union address this evening to announce a long-anticipated executive order on cybersecurity, a move that caps months of discussions with technology companies and could reduce pressure on Congress to move forward with controversial new legislation.

The order will "strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy," Obama said.

Obama's executive order doesn't propose new and potentially onerous regulations targeting private businesses, which Democrats had proposed in their unsuccessful legislation last year. It also … Read more

A hefty chunk of taxpayer dollars spent by the government on mobile phone service for low-income Americans may have been wasted.

A federal program called Lifeline provides hefty discounts on mobile phone service to qualifying low-income households. The goal is to ensure that they can connect with families, employers, and emergency services.

How many of those households should actually have been receiving the discount?

Last year, the Federal Communications Commission started forcing mobile carriers to confirm the eligibility of their Lifelife subscribers. The agency figured that around 15 percent of users would be determined ineligible, but the tighter rules discovered … Read more

Adobe Systems has trimmed the cost of its Creative Cloud suite in Australia following complaints that it's been overcharging customers there.

In a statement seen by The Australian Financial Review, Adobe said it has slashed the monthly and annual subscription costs of Creative Cloud to match the prices paid by U.S. consumers. The company's Australian Web site shows the new prices already in effect.

New and current customers in Australia will pay 49.99 Australian dollars (U.S. $51.55) per month for an annual subscription, compared with 62.99 Australian dollars previously. Those who subscribe on … Read more

An administrative law judge for the U.S. International Trade Commission has dismissed one of Nokia's nine patent infringement claims against HTC, patents blog Foss Patents reported today.

HTC argued that the patent, which deals with routing data to an app, is a standards-essential patent. ITC Administrative Law Judge Thomas B. Pender agreed, dismissing the one complaint.

Standards-essential patents are ones that companies must offer to other companies on a fair, reasonable, and nondiscriminatory (FRAND) basis. The idea is that fair licensing of intellectual property is needed for devices from different manufactures to work together properly. Most of the … Read more

Amazon and Overstock are duking it out with New York state in a court battle over the issue of collecting sales tax.

In a case being heard by the State of New York Court of Appeals, attorneys for both retailers claimed yesterday that a 2008 New York law requiring them to collect sales tax on online purchases is unconstitutional, as reported by Reuters.

A 1992 Supreme Court decision found that retailers can't be forced to collect sales tax on out-of-state purchases unless they have a physical presence in those states. But the New York law skirted that decision. The … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission held the first of several planned field hearings today in Hoboken, N.J., to review what went wrong with the nation's communications network during Superstorm Sandy.

The storm, which was one of the worst to hit the East Coast of the United States, knocked out about 25 percent of all cell sites and cable service in the 10 states affected by the storm. Of course, in certain regions where the storm hit the hardest, such as New York and New Jersey, these figures were much greater.

In Long Beach, N.Y., on Long Island, every … Read more

A coalition of privacy groups has written to leading U.S. politicians to seek assurances that policymakers "advance the aim of privacy" in Europe, rather than hinder the development of new European data protection and privacy laws.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and more than a dozen other groups are seeking to meet with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and U.S. Acting Secretary of Commerce Rebecca Blank, to ensure that new European data law proposals are bolstered … Read more

A couple of senators in Washington want to make sure people in the U.S. never have to pay taxes for Internet access.

Passed in 1998, the Internet Tax Freedom Act prevents federal, state, and local governments from collecting sales taxes on the use of e-mail and other types of Internet access. The bill is due to expire November of next year.

New legislation introduced yesterday by Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Dean Heller (Nev.) is designed to extend the ban indefinitely. The Permanent Internet Tax Freedom Act would stop governments from imposing new taxes on Internet access.… Read more