Politics

Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Microsoft try not to let copyright-infringing Web sites sign up. Their advertising network contracts currently prohibit it.

But that isn't stopping the White House from pressuring those four companies to do more to satisfy Hollywood and other copyright holders who are peeved about online piracy -- in this case, that presumably means addressing piratical Web sites that cover their bandwidth costs through ad revenue.

A White House report (PDF) released today singles out those four companies by name, arguing that they and others should "act as checkpoints for infringing activity and reduce the distribution … Read more

Only weeks after protests over two digital copyright bills demonstrated the political muscle of Internet users, the White House is publicly endorsing new copyright legislation that also would target suspected pirate Web sites.

After the unprecedented outcry against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act -- designed to target offshore copyright-infringing Web sites -- supporters of the bills on Capitol Hill backed down and moved on to other topics.

But the White House today reignited the congressional debate by throwing its weight behind legislation targeting offshore Web sites. "We believe that new legislative and non-legislative tools … Read more

The controversial -- if not exactly common -- practice of requiring job applicants to disclose their Facebook passwords briefly became ammunition for an unsuccessful Democratic effort to block an unrelated regulatory reform plan.

During the House of Representatives floor debate yesterday over a proposal (PDF) to reform the Federal Communications Commission, Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Colorado Democrat, proposed that the bill be sent back to committee.

Then, Perlmutter proposed, the committee would be directed to send the bill back with a one-paragraph amendment allowing the FCC to prohibit telecommunications companies from requiring Facebook logins of prospective job applicants.

"If … Read more

Foes of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate requiring Americans to buy health insurance have long argued that if the law is constitutional, a federal law forcing everyone to eat broccoli would be permitted as well.

During today's oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices instead asked a lawyer for the Obama administration this: Could Congress constitutionally require Americans to buy cell phones?

In other words, if Obamacare, as critics have labeled the Act, can require Americans to engage in commerce merely because they're breathing -- which is unprecedented in the history of the United States … Read more

analysis President Bill Clinton's 1997 electronic embargo against Iran, which curbed its citizens' access to U.S.-based software and Web sites, continues to create legal hassles for American Web companies.

In August 1997, Clinton signed an executive order saying U.S. companies and individuals could not provide "goods, technology, or services to Iran" -- a decree that led to unintended consequences such as Utah-based Bluehost giving the boot to Iranian bloggers and opensource software site SourceForge.net denying access to Iranians.

The U.S. Department of the Treasury's announcement yesterday, which was designed to complement … Read more

AUSTIN, Texas--Representatives from opposite sides in the "big data" privacy debate tangled Sunday over whether a proposed White House "privacy bill of rights" is necessary to keep Americans safe online.

During a "big data" panel sponsored by CNET at South by Southwest, Berin Szoka, president of the non-partisan, non-profit, tech policy think tank TechFreedom, argued that states and the federal government might have better results providing privacy protections for Americans by enforcing existing laws than they would if they adopted new regulations.

"We have a difference of opinion of when government should get … Read more

Rep. Lamar Smith could pay a steep political price for authoring two bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act and an online surveillance measure, that have become loathed by millions of Internet users.

He's facing an unexpected primary challenge from an ex-lawman who believes Smith has little regard for the U.S. Constitution--and who plans to use those bills as a lever to pry his opponent out of a congressional seat he's occupied since 1987.

Richard Mack, an Arizona sheriff who retired to Fredericksburg, Texas, is a self-described "constitutional conservative" with a long history of supporting causes … Read more

Hollywood is responding to the defeat of a pair of controversial copyright bills last month with a new strategy: a charm offensive.

Paramount Pictures sent letters last week to universities saying the company was "humbled" by last month's online protests that involved millions of Internet users--and that it now wants to "exchange ideas about content theft" and the best way to thwart it.

The letters were signed by Alfred Perry, Paramount's vice president for worldwide content and outreach. Paramount is a subsidiary of Viacom and one of the members of the Motion Picture Association of America, … Read more

It took an Internet-wide outcry from millions of voters to prompt Rep. Lamar Smith, author of the Stop Online Piracy Act, to postpone a vote on the controversial Hollywood-backed bill.

Now Smith, a conservative Texas Republican, is being targeted a second time: for championing legislation that would require Internet service providers to keep track of their customers, in case police want to review those logs in the future. His bill is called H.R. 1981.

The latest campaign is designed to build on last month's remarkable protests, which included Wikipedia going dark for a day and Google and Amazon.… Read more