Group asks FTC chairman to step down from DoubleClick review
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InfoWorld - U.S. Federal Trade Commission Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras is consulting with the agency's ethics officer to see if she should recuse herself from a review ofÂ Google's planned acquisition of online ad network DoubleClick.
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IntercontinentalExchange Inc.  on Thursday urged CBOT Holdings Inc.  shareholders and members to reject the proposed sale of the company to Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings Inc.
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(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.
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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.
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Online rights groups continue to press the FTC to require privacy protections as conditions of Google's acquisition of DoubleClick.
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(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.
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(InfoWorld) - A U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee has opened an investigation into Google'sÂ proposed $3.1 billion acquisitionÂ of online advertising seller DoubleClick. The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection will look into the "far-reaching privacy and competition issues raised by the proposed acquisition," Representative Bobby Rush, the subcommittee chairman, said in a statement. Rush informed the U.S. Federal Trade Commission of the investigation in a letter sent Tuesday. In May, the FTC opened its own investigation into the proposed acquisition. The subcommittee will seek to host a hearing on the acquisition later this year, Rush said in the letter. Consumer groups haveÂ raised concernsÂ that the combined company would be a threat to privacy. In April, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research GroupÂ asked the FTC to blockÂ the merger unless it obtains guarantees from Google and DoubleClick that they will protect Internet users' privacy. The groups want Google to destroy all cookies and other persistent identifiers resulting from Internet searches that are or could be personally identifiable once a user terminates a session with Google. Other groups have raised concerns about the acquisition's effect on competition in the online advertising market. Rush, an Illinois Democrat, shares those concerns, he wrote to the FTC. "The subcommittee takes very seriously the protection of consumer privacy," he added. Google said in a statement issued Thursday that it was confident the FTC will conclude the acquisition "poses no risk to competition." The Senate Judiciary Committee is also planning hearings on the online advertising space, including recent acquisitions by MicrosoftÂ and Yahoo, according to a source familiar with the hearing plans. Â
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Google-DoubleClick probe just the beginning Two weeks after the Federal Trade Commission opened an anti-trust investigation into Googleâs proposed acquisition of online ad company DoubleClick, The Wall Street Journal reports that the FTC plans to examine deals by Microsoft and Yahoo! as well.â¦
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The chairman of a Senate antitrust panel said Thursday that Google Inc.'s proposed $3.1 billion acquisition of online advertising firm DoubleClick Inc. "warrants close examination" by federal regulators.
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DoubleClick's law firm deleted Web pages hinting at a conflict of interest with the head of the Federal Trade Commission, which is reviewing the merger. The law firm says the Web pages were "confusing."
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Despite calls from privacy groups that she recuse herself from an upcoming review of  Google's planned $3.1 billion buyout of DoubleClick, FTC Chairman Deborah Platt Majoras has rejected the idea.
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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.
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CtW Investment Group, a pension fund  advisory group affiliated with seven labor unions, said it sent  a letter to the board of Countrywide Financial Corp ,  urging it to ask for the resignation of Chief Executive Angelo  Mozilo, The Wall Street Journal said.
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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.
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A former senior official at Scottish Enterprise is calling for the agency to be scrapped.
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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.
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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.