Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
The Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday released the agenda and speakers for its upcoming workshop, “From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” The workshop has been organized to consider the emerging issues of an increasingly internet oriented society.
As more consumers turn to the internet for news and information, print news organizations have begun to struggle with the declining ad market. Besides the simple economics of the matter, as online news expands many wonder how the two news formats can successfully coexist.
“The workshop will consider a wide range of issues,” stated an FTC news release, “including: the economics of journalism in print and online; the wide variety of new business and non-profit models for journalism online; factors relevant to the new economic realities for news organizations, such as behavioral and other targeted online advertising, online news aggregators, and bloggers; and the ways in which the costs of journalism could be reduced without reducing quality.
The just-released agenda will feature a diverse group of speakers to discuss these topics. These participants include Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and CEO of News Corp. and Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Huffington Post. Other panelists represent groups...
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Friday, October 9th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
The chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission on Friday jointly encouraged the public to take safeguards to protect themselves, their privacy, and their personal information online.
In a joint statement, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowsi and FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz stated that while people nowadays are relying on the Internet to stay in contact with people, education, entertainment and news, they need to be more aware of online fraud.
Developed and managed by the FTC, OnGuardOnline.gov is a joint effort of 12 federal agencies and 18 non-government organizations that have recently partnered with the FCC to help promote online safety and security.
This site provides tips to consumers to be on guard when using the Internet. Also included are tips on how consumers should secure their computers, protect their personal information as well as back-up important digital files.
This site also features information about phishing, social networking, laptop security, and wireless access and protection. This site also has a guide for kids, tweens and teens “about the risks of inappropriate conduct, contact and...
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Monday, October 5th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
The Federal Trade Commission on Monday announced that it has approved final revisions to the guidance it gives to advertisers on how to keep their endorsement and testimonial ads in line with the FTC Act. The notice incorporates several changes to the FTC’s “Guidelines Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” which address endorsements by consumers, experts, organizations, and celebrities, as well as the disclosure of important connections between advertisers and endorsers. The guidelines were last updated in 1980.
Under the revised guidelines, advertisements that feature a consumer and convey his or her experience with a product or service as typical when that is not the case will be required to clearly disclose the results that consumers can generally expect.
The revised guidelines add new examples to illustrate the principle that “material connections” between advertisers and endorsers must be disclosed. These examples address what constitutes an endorsement when the message is conveyed by bloggers or other “word-of-mouth” marketers.
The revised guidelines specify that while decisions will be reached on a case-by-case basis, the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement. Thus, bloggers who make an endorsement...
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Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
By the Staff of BroadbandCensus.com
Notwithstanding a recent proposal by the online advertising industry to strengthen standards governing consumer data collection, some on Capitol Hill still see a need for Congress to enact comprehensive privacy legislation. Indeed, Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Va., has promised to introduce legislation on this subject this fall. Over at the Federal Trade Commission, Chairman Jon Leibowitz has explicitly warned online advertisers that the FTC will take a regulatory approach if industry does not improve its self-policing efforts.
In a webinar scheduled for October 16, Pike & Fischer has gathered key players in the behavioral advertising debate. Moderated by Lydia Parnes, former director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection and partner in the Washington office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, the panel will examine the policy, technical, and legal issues in the debate.
Among the issues to be covered include:
- Which data collection and data retention practices are at issue
- Whether there's a consensus on baseline consumer protections
- What the public interest groups are advocating
- Common misconceptions about data collection
- Whether notice & choice is sufficient
- How transparency is gauged
- The specter of enforcement through litigation
- How the FCC factors into the...
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Saturday, September 12th, 2009
By Drew Clark, Editor, Broadband Census.com
WASHINGTON, September 9, 2009 – The Internet can serve as a means for enhancing consumer protections, provided that government agencies play their appropriate role in regulating and disclosing the practices of broadband providers, according to a several consumer advocates.
Speaking at the September 9 workshop of the Federal Communications Commission, the advocates observed that the FCC and the Federal Trade Commission could each play a significant role in enhancing consumer knowledge about broadband.
Mike Nelson, a visiting professor of communications, culture and technology at Georgetown University, and a former Clinton administration internet official, said that the flowering of the e-commerce in the 1990s owed was “due in large part to the decision [by the government] NOT to regulate.”
“I was involved in the [Ira] Magaziner e-commerce report,” said Nelson. “Almost every page had a promise about what the administration will not do.”
The certainty provided by that report was helpful” because in enabled internet application companies to be free from “having to hire as many lawyers” as they otherwise would have to, he said.
Sascha Meinrath, director of the Open Technology Initiative at the New America Foundation, a “tech tank inside a think that that provide support for open architecture,”...
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009
By Douglas Streeks, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, July 25, 2009 - Advertisers need to consider consumers’ right to privacy when they collect information on individual internet consumers, a panel of academics, non-profits and industry officials agreed on Friday.
The experts spoke during a panel discussion sponsored by the Technology Policy Institute, a market-oriented think tank on technology issues.
Emphasizing the success of the Internet as an unregulated medium, Florida Republican Rep. Cliff Stearns said it is important to treat any such legislation with caution.
Stearns said that “only the consumer” knows how he or she feels about the information being collected about him.
Still, increased transparency and choice would help in resolving the conflict between advertisers’ needs for information and consumers’ privacy.
Any legislation passed should apply the same privacy rules to similar types of companies collecting the same type of information for the same reasons, he said, and parties accountable only for what they know and control.
Besides the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, Stearns suggested that a new agency could be formed for this type of regulation.
During the panel discussion that followed Stearns’ remarks, Alessandro Acquisti, associate professor of information technology and public policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University, said that...
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Thursday, June 18th, 2009
By Tina Nguyen, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 18, 2009 - Time Warner Cable found itself clashing with a member of Congress from its home state on Wednesday as Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., introduced the Broadband Internet Fairness Act, H.R. 2902. If passed, the bill would authorize the Federal Trade Commission to review the fairness of broadband subscription plans based on cost.
Massa doesn't have a problem with Time Warner specifically, he said during a Wednesday media conference call. “I have malice towards no one," he said.
But Massa is "very, very committed" to the reality that access to broadband internet today is equivalent to infrastructure improvements of the 19th and early 20th centuries, including electricity and telephone service.
Earlier this year, Time Warner backed down from plans to cap and meter users' bandwidth after Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., suggested such behavior might attract the attention of his colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Time Warner has since dabbled in experiments with metered and tiered pricing in other markets, but not in New York.
The FTC is the proper agency to delegate authority to because of its successful track record of pro-consumer action, Massa said. And while the bill only had two co-sponsors at deadline, Massa...
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Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
By Ryan Womack, Reporter-Researcher, BroadbandCensus.com
WASHINGTON, June 3, 2009 – Officials from Google and Microsoft denied that they were creating privacy-invading user profiles of internet users, speaking at the 2009 Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference at George Washington University here.
Online advertising and internet “cookies” designed to collect user data were center to this discussion at the conference. Google’s Jane Horvath said that the search engine giant is not “logging… or creating profiles at all,” when asked about data collection.
Mike Hintze of Microsoft said that Microsoft collects “similar data” to Google. When a consumer engages in internet search queries and “interacts with services we offer, ... certain information is collected and certain demographic information is collected.”
But Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy decried the “global system [that] has emerged [and which] is designed to collect this data ...whose goal it is to shape our attitude and behavior.” Chester said that Google and others are promoting and practicing techniques that may “bypass the conscious mind and work on the emotions” as it engages in online advertising.
It “goes back many, many, years before this was a hot issue,” Hintze said of targeted advertising. “It’s happened since catalogues and direct mail. Online is...
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