July 30th 2008
FCC Prepares to Punish Comcast A majority of members of the Federal Communications Commission have cast votes in favor of punishing Comcast Corp. for blocking subscribers’ Internet traffic, an agency official said Friday. ISP Ad Networking Scheme May Violate Wiretap Laws The Center for Democracy & Technology has advanced a legal theory that the practice […]
July 29th 2008
This week I participated in a the wrap-up panel discussion at Boston stop of the Online Marketing Summit. My co-panelists were Blake Coyle, a sales exec from Google, Paul Hyland, Executive Producer, edweek.org, and Theresa Regli, Principal, CMS Watch. As usual, I’m injecting personal observations along with what happened. If you were there too, please […]
July 26th 2008
Raising concerns about student privacy, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that legislation renewing the Higher Education Act contains language that may bring video surveillance or biometric testing into the homes of students participating in distance learning. The paragraph is actually about clamping down on cheating. It says that an institution that offers an online program […]
July 24th 2008
Slydial is a free voice message service that directly connects you to someone else’s mobile voicemail. Their phone never rings, and you get to leave a message without actually speaking with them. (Wait for the legal angle; it’s coming.) Their wonderfully written weasely website spells it right out. There are people you must phone: bosses, significant others, […]
July 17th 2008
You have about a 1 in 5,000 chance of hitting a hole in one in golf. That’s not a very good chance, especially when we’re talking about my game. But that’s about the same odds as being on the US terror list. From an AFP article: The Center “had over 700,000 names in its database […]
July 16th 2008
The Iranian parliament is moving toward enforcing the death penalty as a punishment for blogging that encourages “corruption, prostitution or apostasy.” As I wrote last month, there are about 40 bloggers imprisoned worldwide. Blogs are filtered, and bloggers are deterred, but this is the first law that would try to eliminate bloggers altogether. Iranian President […]
July 13th 2008
Its not web law, but still, news of humorous, ill-conceived policies sometimes just deserves posting. According to an article by Jeffrey Denning in the Washington Times, a senior official at the DHS is interested in a “safety bracelet” for air passengers that would serve as a boarding pass, GPS-enabled locator and, yes, STUN DEVICE. The […]
July 11th 2008
The Massachusetts House entertained debate of H-4822, which would force third-party ad networks that track visitor behavior between sites to allow visitors to opt out of receiving customized ads. The Cape Code Times provides details. Internet giants such as AOL and Google were represented by the Network Advertising Initiative. Attorney Justin Weiss argued that the […]
July 10th 2008
Two hundred million Americans carry cell phones, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU want to know how and when the federal government uses cell-based location services to track people. On July 1, 2008, the EFF and the ACLU sued the government in federal court in Washington under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) […]
July 9th 2008
The Wall Street Journal apparently set journalistic duties aside today, and simply reprinted the Republican National Committee’s gleeful take on Obama’s reversal on a promise to oppose telecom immunity. The Journal‘s Marketwatch literally stated, “here’s was the RNC has distributed” and then apparently quoted verbatim the entirety of an RNC statement. Marketwatch classified this post […]
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