Congressman: FTC May Have Inaccurate View of P2P Dangers
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In a letter issued yesterday to US Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman took issue with the findings of an FTC staff report issued last July, suggesting that P2P file-sharing use may only be as dangerous as any other form of Internet activity.
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Disclosures of bid-rigging within the insurance industry may lead Congress to a &#39;&#39;Pandora&#39;s box&quot; of unethical conduct, a top investigator told Congress
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The US Librarian of Congress is recommending that Congress officially recognize that engineering intended to expose flaws in DRM schemes on audio CDs to be non-infringing. Soon, the type of work engineers like Mark Russinovich and Ed Felten performed to expose DRM flaws, will be protected by law.
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A senior Democratic lawmaker urged  the Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday to either  create a more accurate Web site identifying corporations with  investments in &quot;terrorist-financing states&quot; or pull the plug on  it.
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More data = more damage, when breached Silicon Justice The US Congress is trying to land a one-two sucker punch on internet service providers (ISPs).â¦
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The FTC's peer-to-peer workshop brings opposing sides together, and they agree something should be done, but it's that uncertain something that is causing trouble. Michael Grebb reports from Washington.
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The British Phonographic Industry threatens tough action. &quot;We will get IP addresses and names,&quot; a spokesperson said. &quot;P2P users have a misconception that they are anonymous, but they are not.
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A U.S. House panel is looking into the "far-reaching privacy and competition issues" surrounding the deal.
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Congress may consider a bill that could send thousands of Internet music and movie downloaders to jail, but the legislation faces opposition from groups that say it would unfairly punish consumers. -washingtonpost.com
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We knew P2P would get its day in court, but did we think it would go this far? The key issue to be decided is whether file-sharing networks should be held responsible when their users copy works protected by copyright without permission.
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(InfoWorld) - Timothy Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, advocated that the U.S. Congress protect net neutrality and questioned the value of DRM (digital rights management) Thursday. Berners-Lee, speaking before the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in the U.S. House of Representatives, said it was "very, very important" for lawmakers to protect the ability of users to access the Web content they want regardless of their ISP. Berners-Lee didn't endorse specific net neutrality proposals largely supported by congressional Democrats, but he said the Web as a communications medium deserves "special treatment" to protect its nondiscriminatory approach to content. While he was growing up in the U.K., there were high penalties for interfering with mail delivery because mail was one of the main ways to communicate, Berners-Lee said. Now, the Web is a major communications medium worthy of protections, he said. One company or country shouldn't control access to the Web, he added. "We are a society only in as much as we are individuals communicating," said Berners-Lee, founder of the World Wide Web Consortium and author of the first version of HTML. For the past two years, many e-commerce companies and consumer groups have called on Congress to pass a law prohibiting broadband carriers from blocking or slowing Web content from competitors or from speeding up partners' content. In mid-2005, the U.S. Supreme Court and the Federal Communications Commission freed broadband providers from nondiscriminatory carriage rules, and net neutrality backers say large broadband providersÂ like Verizon and ComcastÂ will now be tempted to provide tiered speeds based on which Internet companies pay them the most. Broadband providers and many Republicans have opposed a net neutrality law, andÂ efforts to pass one failed in a Republican-controlled Congress in 2006. Democrats took over Congress this year. While Berners-Lee didn't hear a lot of opposition to his net neutrality comments at the hearing, Representative Mary Bono, a California Republican, challenged his assertion that DRM copy protections could hinder the growth of some parts of the Web. Berners-Lee called for open standards instead of closed DRM technologies. Instead of DRM, copyright holders should "allow people to do the right thing" by providing the information on how to legally use the material, he said. Bono questioned if his idea would prevent mass stealing of copyright materials. "Is that not the equivalent of having a speed limit but not enforcing the speed limit?" she asked. But Berners-Lee suggested DRM limits the market for digital music downloads, echoing recent statements by AppleÂ CEO Steve Jobs. "What is the enforcement for speeding?" he said. "The enforcement for is not that the car grinds to a halt. [Instead of DRM] I'm inclined to make software to allow people to do the right thing first." But Bono said strong protections for digital content are needed. "With great respect to Steve Jobs, he's trying to sell hardware, first and foremost," she said. "I wonder if he would feel the same way about his patents being on the Internet free of patent protection."
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In comments to the State of the Net conference held in Washington, DC this past week, RIAA president Cary Sherman essentially said he'd support filters and spyware-like applications to prevent piracy.
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The Federal Communications Commission will investigate allegations that Comcast shuts down users' connections when they upload files through P2P (peer-to-peer) programs such as BitTorrent, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said at the Consumer Electronics Show Tuesday.
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The entertainment industry asks the Supreme Court to reverse the Grokster decision, which held that peer-to-peer networks are not liable for copyright abuses of their users. By Michael Grebb.
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The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday urged policymakers to proceed cautiously on any regulation of high-speed Internet traffic.
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WASHINGTON - A complete rewrite of the U.S. copyright system was just one proposal aired Thursday during a contentious series of panel discussions at a U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) workshop on peer-to-peer technology.
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p2pnet.net News:- p2pnet.net News:- The entertainment industry - Hollywood, for short - is calling for the US Supreme Court to overturn the Grokster / Morpheus ruling that says p2p networks aren&#39;t liable for alleged copyright violations committed by users