Regulation

The outgoing chairman of a House of Representatives panel responsible for U.S. copyright law conceived the memorable Stop Online Piracy Act. Its next chairman happens to be even more enthusiastic about expanding digital copyright law.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte was elected head of the House Judiciary committee today, much to the dismay of advocacy groups that had doggedly worked to defeat SOPA and Protect IP a year ago.

The Virginia Republican has long been a steadfast ally of Hollywood and other large copyright holders, saying as recently as two months ago that "I remain committed to enacting strong copyright … Read more

President Obama opposes an immigration reform bill backed by companies including Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe that would let U.S.-educated computer programmers and engineers remain in the country, the White House said today.

The surprise announcement comes in advance of a House of Representatives vote scheduled for Friday on the Republican-backed STEM Jobs Act of 2012, which would make up to 55,000 visas available to foreigners who earned a master's or doctoral degree in certain science or technology area from a U.S. university. Those visas would only be available if immigration authorities certify that no American … Read more

A new proposal would temporarily stop the federal government from pushing through bills and regulations on the Internet's content.

Recent attempts to regulate the Internet -- in the form of SOPA, PIPA, and CISPA -- are all dead in the water after failing in Congress. But the potential of poorly thought-out changes remains a reality.

U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) released a draft of the proposed bill, dubbed the "Internet American Moratorium Act 2012," to Project Madison on Monday. The crowdsourcing platform allows people to read and amend draft bills online, striking through text and adding … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--A United Nations summit next week could imperil Internet freedom and lead to a deluge of intrusive new national regulations, Google and a member of the U.S. delegation warned.

"We want to maintain a platform of a free and open Internet as a platform for free expression," Patrick Ryan, an attorney at Google, said at a forum organized by Stanford Law School here yesterday afternoon. Google has organized a new campaign to draw attention to the summit, saying some governments "are trying to use a closed-door meeting in December to regulate the Internet.&… Read more

Peter Swire, an Ohio State law professor and privacy expert who has worked with the Obama administration, is stepping into a contentious process to create a standard way to let people stop Web sites from tracking their online behavior.

Aleecia M. McDonald announced today she's stepping down as co-chair of the Do Not Track standardization effort at the World Wide Web Consortium. She previously worked for Firefox maker Mozilla, which launched the current DNT technology after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sought a mechanism to block online tracking, but she currently works for a program within Stanford University'… Read more

Samsung is up against a slew of labor abuse accusations in China, according to a report from China Labor Watch.

An investigation conducted by the watchdog group in October and November uncovered worker violations at several factories, those owned directly by Samsung as well as by its suppliers.

The report is in contrast to the one that Samsung itself released this week. Samsung's own internal audit of suppliers found no child labor violations, a key concern among watchdog groups and Samsung itself. However, Samsung's own audit did discover other issues at supplier factories in China, including overtime hours … Read more

The Federal Communications Commission plans to hold a series of hearings over the next few months to discuss ways to avoid losing communications during and after disasters such as superstorm Sandy.

FCC chairman Julius Genachowski today said the agency would look at the challenges facing communications networks and offer recommendations for improving the resiliency of these networks. The first set of hearings will begin in early 2013 in New York City, one of the areas hardest hit by the storm. Additional hearings will follow in other parts of the country.

"This unprecedented storm has revealed new challenges that will … Read more

The Federal Trade Commission may not have enough evidence of harm to consumers to proceed with an antitrust claim against the heart of Google's business, search, Bloomberg reported.

Google faces antitrust investigations from the U.S. FTC and from the European Commission, both going on for many months and both carrying the potential to wreak havoc with Google's search business. At the heart of the issue is whether Google gives unfair prominence to its own properties -- YouTube, Google Flight Search, Google Images, Google Shopping, Google Maps, and more -- at the expense of other businesses.

Regulators aren'… Read more

The Russian Federation has revised a controversial proposal to turn Internet governance over to the U.N.'s International Telecommunications Union, CNET has learned.

The revised proposal tones down some of the anti-Internet rhetoric of the original, but still calls on the UN to help member states seize control of key Internet engineering assets, including domain names, addresses and numbering.

Both the original proposal (PDF) and Saturday's revised version (PDF) have now been posted on WCITLeaks, a Web site operated by researchers at George Mason University.

On Friday, CNET was first to report on the original proposal, which leaked … Read more