Regulation

Thanks to tech and multimedia companies like Yahoo and the Politico, the traditional grandstanding of the Democratic and Republican conventions will no longer be limited to audiences of political insiders.

The two organizations announced Monday they will be partnering with traditional newspapers to host public forums at both the Democratic National Convention in Colorado and Republican National Convention in Minnesota. Both Yahoo News and Politico will make the forums available online.

There will be eight public breakfast panels, which according to a press release, "will set the tone for each day of the convention." The panels will be … Read more

Mobile devices today are far more capable, and capacious, than the analog bricks of decades past. That also creates new security risks, which the feds are asking the public to address in comments due Friday.

"Mobile devices are expected to continue to become more powerful and communicate at higher speeds, eventually giving people the power and functionality of a full desktop," the National Institute of Standards and Technology says in its draft of Guidelines on Cell Phone and PDA Security. "Besides increasing productivity, such improvements are rapidly turning cell phones into extensive data reservoirs capable of holding … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Transitions between presidential administrations are typically influence-peddling, power-consolidating, appointee-vetting exercises run by Washington insiders. Perhaps that's why the quintessential Washington think tank, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, is trying to insert itself into the process.

The private organization, which has close ties to the U.S. military and counts Henry Kissinger on its payroll, has gathered about 35 people and awarded them the official-sounding title of "Commission on Cyber Security for the 44th Presidency." Adding to the formality are some closed-to-the-public meetings and ex-officio members from federal agencies, congressional offices, and the nebulous "… Read more

The whopping housing bill that President Bush signed into law last week does far more than merely address the nation's real estate woes. Some sections have raised serious privacy concerns.

Tucked in near the end of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act is a requirement that banks and online payment networks annually collect and report to the IRS electronic payments made to online merchants. It takes effect in 2011, and will affect what information companies like PayPal collect from their sellers and could raise privacy and auditing complications.

The housing bill also finalized the SAFE Mortgage Licensing Act. As … Read more

A settlement reached over hidden sexually themed content in the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has been stolen, after a federal judge Wednesday tossed out the deal reached last November between the game maker and plaintiffs' lawyers.

U.S. District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram ruled that "each settlement class member's consumer-protection claims are governed by the law of the state where he purchased," so it cannot be settled in a single federal court proceeding. "Accordingly, the court decertifies the settlement class on the grounds that common issues do not predominate over individualized issues."

Kram … Read more

Federal regulators voted 3-2 on Friday to declare that Comcast's throttling of BitTorrent traffic last year was unlawful, marking the first time that any U.S. broadband provider has ever been found to violate Net neutrality rules.

The Federal Communications Commission handed Comcast a cease-and-desist order and required the company to disclose to subscribers in the future how it plans to manage traffic. Comcast had said that its measures to slow BitTorrent transfers, which it voluntarily ended in March, were necessary to prevent its network from being overrun.

"We need to protect consumers' access, said FCC Chairman Kevin … Read more

Kevin Martin, the Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, is drawing fire from economic conservatives over his plan to declare that Comcast violated the law when throttling BitTorrent last year.

The vote is expected at a FCC meeting (PDF) on Friday morning. It promises to be a landmark one: this would be the first time the commission has ruled on a Net neutrality violation. (An earlier one was settled without a formal ruling.)

Martin's intra-party backlash started on Wednesday with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal that started with this uncomplimentary paragraph: "Bad personnel decisions have … Read more

A California state judge handed down a surprising and oddly reasoned verdict Thursday: Sprint Nextel's early termination fees for cell phone customers are illegal.

My colleague Maggie Reardon wrote an article about the 38-page ruling, which orders Sprint to pay $18.25 million to California customers who were charged termination fees. Customers charged fees who never paid them get a credit of $54.75 million.

You can imagine how much of this will go to the members of the supposed class that was harmed, and how much to the plaintiff's lawyers. In the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas … Read more

It's been nearly 20 years since Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web, and at least a decade since the first blogs appeared. But until now, publicly traded companies have not been able to use the Web or blogs to meet the Feds' disclosure requirements.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this week finally woke up to the fact that the Internet already has become an alternative to the traditional press release, and announced that a company's Web site can qualify for an alternative "channel of distribution."

Companies still must follow certain rules, the details … Read more