Group asks FTC chairman to step down from DoubleClick review
14466
U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras is consulting with the agency&#39;s ethics officer to see if she should recuse herself from a review of&#160;Google&#39;s planned acquisition of online ad network DoubleClick.
499033
Two privacy groups are stepping up the pressure on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), saying the agency has an obligation to consider privacy concerns as it prepares to rule on the antitrust implications of&#160;Google&#39;s proposed acquisition of DoubleClick.The executive directors of&#160;the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) repeated their call for the FTC to impose privacy conditions if it approves the merger. It appears that an FTC decision on the $3.1 billion acquisition is &quot;imminent,&quot; said Jeffrey Chester, CDD&#39;s executive director.FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz in October suggested the FTC&#39;s review of the deal had to be about competition questions, not privacy, but Chester disagreed during a press conference on Tuesday. One of the FTC&#39;s main duties is to protect consumer privacy, and the merger of the number one search provider with the number one ad server raises serious privacy questions, he said.Google&#39;s contention that there are no major privacy concerns is &quot;absurd on the face of it,&quot; Chester said. DoubleClick says it serves 8 billion online ads and processes 964GB of Web server log files each day, he said.&quot;It would be a violation of trust, in effect abuse of their own role, in not addressing an issue of such concern as the data-collection apparatus within the ever-growing behemoth,&quot; Chester said. &quot;If they&#39;re really the agency to protect consumer privacy, they will act to protect privacy. If they fail to act to protect privacy, they have basically put up a flag to American consumers saying, &#39;We surrender your data.&#39;&quot;Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich repeated Google&#39;s position that the merger would have positive effects.&quot;This acquisition is good for consumers, advertisers and Web site publishers, and we continue to be confident that it will be approved,&quot; he said. &quot;I would also point out what the FTC itself has said about privacy not playing a role in its review of the deal.&quot;Last week, the two groups&#160;asked FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras to recuse herself from the decision on the merger, saying her husband works for a law firm that is advising DoubleClick on the deal in the U.S.&#160;Majoras declined Monday to recuse herself, saying that her husband isn&#39;t directly involved in the DoubleClick deal and that the Jones Day law firm is advising the company only before European regulators.An FTC spokesman wasn&#39;t immediately available for comment.Chester and EPIC executive director Marc Rotenberg repeated their calls for Majoras to recuse herself. Jones Day&#39;s Web site, until recently, said it was advising DoubleClick on the deal in the U.S. as well as Europe, they said.But the most important step the FTC can take is to impose privacy conditions on the merger, Rotenberg said. The case for a privacy review &quot;is very clear,&quot; he said.Chester agreed. &quot;Are they concerned about Americans&#39; privacy, or are they going to give Google a pass?&quot; he said.
677815
Federal Trade Commission Chair Deborah Platt Majoras is being asked to recuse herself from a review of Google's planned DoubleClick acquisition.
373357
(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC)Â needs to step up its regulation of the telecommunications and broadband industries and reverse its current opposition to net neutrality rules, two consumer groups said Wednesday. Representatives of the Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America criticized the FTC for a lack of focus on telecom and broadband issues while testifying before the U.S. Senate's Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism Subcommittee. The FTC has "failed consumers badly" by insisting there is strong competition in the broadband space and therefore not in need of regulation, said Mark Cooper, director of the Consumer Federation of America. The U.S. has fallen from the world leader in Internet service a decade ago to lagging behind several countries in speed and price, he said. "The cozy [broadband] duopoly in America dribbles out bandwidth at 10 to 20 times what other people pay in the world," Cooper said. "Consumers pay too much for too little in this country." Cooper and Senator Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat and subcommittee chairman, both complained aboutÂ an FTC report in June that questioned the need for net neutrality rulesÂ that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors. Dorgan noted that telecom providers had Internet content nondiscrimination rules in place until the U.S. Federal Communications Commission and the Supreme Court removed them in 2005. Without such rules, large broadband providers could block innovative new companies from reaching customers if they require e-commerce vendors to pay extra fees, he said. "We won't know what we miss, we won't know what we squelch," said Dorgan, who has sponsored a net neutrality bill. "What we built, we built with nondiscrimination regulations." But Deborah Platt Majoras, the FTC's chairwoman, said the Internet is changing so fast that new regulations would have unintended consequences andÂ could stop broadband providers from prioritizing traffic that consumers demand be faster, such as video downloads. The FTC sees little evidence of Web content discrimination occurring, she said. "No way is Verizon or any of these other companies powerful enough to disrupt the amount of consumer-generated content that's out there," Majoras said. "If they suddenly put a stop to that, there will be a hue and cry across this nation like no tomorrow, and they will lose a lot of customers." Majoras called on Congress to wait with net-neutrality regulations until there's a problem with blocked content. Dorgan disagreed. "I think both the lack of informed public policy and the lack of effective competition means we have one-twentieth the speed at twice the price of Internet service that many of our foreign competitors have," he said. "My hope is that you'll agree with me that rather than wait for bad things to happen, we might want to preserve the same nondiscrimination rules that we've always had." In addition to the net-neutrality debate, Chris Murray, senior counsel at Consumers Union, called on the FTC to keep a close eye on advertising for bundled telecom services, such as voice, data, and television service together. In some cases, advertising for bundled services has not reflected the real prices, Murray said. In addition, broadband providers have cut off customers for using too much bandwidth without defining a limit on bandwidth. "If that's not an unfair and deceptive practice, I don't know what is," Murray said.
697694
The Center for Digital Democracy and the Electronic Privacy Information Center have jointly renewed their request that the FTC consider privacy issues in its ruling on the antitrust implications of the proposed Google-DoubleClick merger.
182912
FTC shakes down Seismic Entertainment Productions
565975
InfoWorld - European consumer groups warned the European Commission Thursday thatÂ Google's plan to take over the online advertising company DoubleClick, currentlyÂ under investigation, wouldÂ erode consumers' privacyÂ and would push up prices for online goods and services.
727509
Federal Trade Commission has concerns over privacy issues and competition in Google's proposed $3.1 billion purchase of DoubleClick.
460796
The end of the line for an Internet icon? DoubleClick (nasdaq: DCLK - news - people ) on Monday said it has retained Lazard Freres to &quot;explore strategic options,&quot; including the sale of all or part of its business.
495773
Two dozen groups representing some  of the biggest U.S. companies urged the Commerce Department on  Friday to scrap a proposal to tighten national security  controls on exports to China and start over.
536831
Nasdaq stock market chief executive Robert Greifeld said yesterday he has asked regulators to press the rival New York Stock Exchange to move to delist companies more quickly if they are late with securities filings, which could ratchet up pressure on firms that face stock options reviews.
328700
Lord Lang of Monkton, the president of the Board of Trade in the last Conservative government, is under pressure to resign from the board of Marsh &amp; McLennan, the insurance broker accused of corruption.
270215
WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday recommended against additional regulation of high-speed Internet traffic.
258933
La Federal Trade Commission Usa indagherÃ  su eventuali lesioni della concorrenza:con l'acquisizione una quantitÃ  abnorme di dati personali degli utenti                                            Google, la FTC apre un'indagine antitrust sull'accordo annunciato con la DoubleClick
539268
(InfoWorld) - Two consumer protection groups are asking the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate FastMP3Search.com.ar, a Web site that distributes software that can be used to search for digital music on the Web. The FastMP3Search plugin disables the Windows Firewall, installs adware and Trojan horse programs, and generally hobbles the user's PC, said John Palfrey, the Harvard Law School professor who is StopBadware.org's co-director. The software is also virtually impossible to remove once installed, he added. StopBadware.org and the Center for Democracy and Technology plan to file a formal complaint with the FTC on Thursday. "We are asking the FTC to take a close look at an application that we consider to be the worst of the bad applications that we've seen over the course of the last year," Palfrey said. Representatives from FastMP3Search.com.ar could not be reached immediately for comment. The Web site is registered to a company called Direct S.A., based in Buenos Aires, according to the Network Information Center Argentina domain name database. StopBadware.org was also unable to reach representatives from the company before filing its complaint Palfrey said. The company's Web site tells users that the software will provide a fast way to search the Internet for downloadable music files, "in exchange for your agreement to also install our plugin software, which may occasionally display ads on your computer." Although the FTC has sought court orders to shut down Web sites in the past, the fact that FastMP3Search.com.ar appears to be based in Argentina complicates matters, Palfrey admitted. Still the FTC has worked on international efforts to fight spam and online fraud. "When an application is hosted outside of the U.S., but is plainly affecting U.S. consumers, they can coordinate with other governments," Palfrey said. "We would hope that they would start an investigation of this application." FTC representatives could not be reached immediately for comment. Formed earlier this year with funding from Google Inc. Lenovo Group Ltd., and Sun Microsystems Inc., StopBadware.org has issued reports on dozens of software products that engage in questionable or downright malicious behavior. It has exposed problems in everything from Kazaa to the Jessica Simpson Screensaver, to AOL LLC's free client.
508780
Bristol-Myers Squibb  directors  face pressure to fire Chief Executive Peter Dolan and the drug  maker's general counsel when they attend a Tuesday board  meeting after a federal monitor overseeing the company urged  the dismissals on Monday night, according to The Wall Street  Journal.
416765
The Federal Trade Commission has asked Google for more details about its proposed $3.1 billion purchase of online advertising company DoubleClick as part of an investigation into whether the deal raises antitrust concerns, a Google executive said yesterday.