Regulation

Telcos: Don't mess up the Internet with regulation

WASHINGTON--Representatives from industry, government, and advocacy groups agreed on Thursday that the Internet needs to be open and widely available throughout the United States. The question is how to get there.

A newly emboldened Democratic Congress is sure to have a long wish list, including new Internet regulations that corporations believe are unwise or unnecessary. Net neutrality regulations are one possibility, as is broadband and spectrum legislation. But it's unclear where the money to pay for sweeping new projects will come from--neither tax increases nor deficit spending on tech seem that likely when a Wall Street and Detroit bailout … Read more

A new Congress, a new approach to technology?

Presidential elections may capture the public's attention, as Barack Obama's victory did last week, but the less glamorous work in the U.S. Congress tends to prove more important for technology topics.

In general, much of today's current congressional leadership will continue unchanged into the next, albeit with some complications such as Obama's departure and some narrow Senate races including Minnesota's. Whatever the outcome, Democrats are likely to be newly emboldened and may be eager to approve legislation that stalled in the 110th Congress, including spyware regulations and a shield law that would protect some … Read more

Site lets users rank priorities for Obama CTO

While the technology pundits are debating the role of an Obama administration CTO, a few programmers in Seattle yesterday decided to do something more useful. Using an application from UserVoice, they launched ObamaCTO.org, a site, unaffiliated with the Obama machine, that allow citizens to list and vote on what should be the top tech priorities for the new administration.

"User voting is an easy way for people to prioritize ideas," said Matt Lerner of Frontseat.org, which created the site. While the voting on this site is more like on Digg than a scientific sampling, and can … Read more

Argentine judge: Google, Yahoo must censor searches

If an Argentine sports fan tried searching Yahoo Argentina for one of his country's most beloved athletes--soccer star Diego Maradona--these days, he'd be out of luck.

Both Yahoo and Google are locked in a legal battle with dozens of fashion models and other public figures like Maradona over whether the Internet companies should have to censor search results relating to those persons' names.

The result so far: since last year, Internet users have been left with abbreviated search results from Yahoo Argentina and Google Argentina, as a result of temporary restraining orders handed down by Argentine judges.

The … Read more

Congressmen look to resolve expected DTV problems

Two congressmen are looking for reassurance that broadcast networks and federal agencies will resolve the lingering problems associated with the digital television transition to take place in February.

Representatives John D. Dingell (D-MI) and Edward Markey (D-MA) on Friday sent separate letters to the Federal Communications Commission, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the National Association of Broadcasters, ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.

The letters noted that the FCC's trial conversion in Wilmington, N.C., this September "revealed many problems related to the transition, including consumers who did not know they needed to rescan their boxes to search … Read more

Obama's CTO: Watch out for the turf wars

Google CEO Eric Schmidt is out of the running for the chief technology officer (CTO) position that the Obama administration is planning to create. In an interview with CNBC's Jim Cramer, Schmidt said, "I love working at Google and I'm very happy to stay at Google, so the answer is no." Schmidt will remain a close adviser to President-elect Barack Obama, but his first call to duty is Google.

Based on the job description below, it could be difficult to find a worthy candidate from the private sector willing to take on a task of such … Read more

Democratic win could herald wireless Net neutrality

SAN JOSE, Calif.--If you thought that federal regulators were upset at Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent, wait until they start scrutinizing what wireless providers are doing.

Comcast's offense was merely to slow or abort some BitTorrent transfers. AT&T Wireless goes much further and flatly bans all "peer-to-peer file sharing" and "downloading movies." Verizon Wireless' terms of service also single out P2P applications.

If those restrictions applied to wired Internet connections, there would have been Federal Communications Commission proceedings, congressional hearings, and plenty of outrage, real or feigned. Wireless providers' network management policies, … Read more

Obama's search for a CTO

By naming some technology executives to his transition team--especially former IAC executive Julius Genachowski--President-elect Barack Obama is signaling that he's likely to follow through with his proposal to appoint a chief technology officer to the White House.

The person in this new position--and possibly a new White House technology office staff--could be given the directive to create new levels of transparency and access to government agencies, or to guide policies that spur innovation and growth. Technology experts within the Beltway warn, however, that a CTO would have to avoid potential pitfalls such as creating new spending for ineffectual projects, … Read more

Dick Armey: Treasury Dept. should not overreact to Net gambling

Occasionally we at CNET News will publish outside opinion articles, such as one on spam co-authored by Sen. Ron Wyden, and another on Net neutrality written by Diana DeGette. The background for this article is that the Treasury Department, in response to a 2006 law, is preparing a slew of anti-Internet gambling regulations that could be released at any time. Read below for a critique by Dick Armey, the economist and onetime House Majority Leader who's now heading the FreedomWorks advocacy group. --Declan McCullagh

The Midnight Regulation Rush is On! By Dick Armey

While most of us are distracted … Read more