Participated in an amicus brief (with the Reporters Committee and other amici) filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in hiQ Labs, Inc. v. LinkedIn Corporation. The brief addresses whether “scraping” a public website for data violates the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). The panel in this case previously [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-16-21 President Joe Biden said July 16 that Facebook was “killing people” by hosting vaccine misinformation on its social media platform. Facebook called the comments unsupported accusations that are a distraction from its effort to save lives. The White House this week has been pushing Big Tech to do [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-13-21 A new bill from Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.), the Don’t Push My Buttons Act, would remove Sec. 230 immunity for social media sites that uses an algorithm – technically any “automated function” – to deliver content based on information collected on a user’s “habits, preferences, or beliefs.” It [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-13-21 Acting FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel would not comment on the degree to which the president’s failure to name a third Democratic commissioner has prevented it from taking action on some big issues – like restoring network neutrality rules – but she suggested the agency has been hard at [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-9-21In a sweeping executive order being signed Friday (July 9), the Biden Administration says it is taking on corporate consolidation that has driven up prices for various goods and services including Internet, arguing that “inadequate competition holds back economic growth and innovation.”Biden, in preparation for signing the order, said consumers [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-9-21 The White House released the competition executive order signed by the President Friday afternoon (July 9) and it does a lot of encouraging of the FCC, an independent agency, to take a number of regulatory actions including restoring net neutrality rules. Acting FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel was at [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-9-21 Washington communications policy players wasted no time weighing in on President Biden’s executive order July 9 taking aim at consolidation via tougher antitrust enforcement and potential regulation and re-regulation, including cable and telecom broadband providers who slammed the order as a misleading mishmash from some other time, and [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-8-21 The White House led off an infrastructure promotion fact sheet distributed to the media July 8 with the impact of a bipartisan framework on high-speed internet, particularly in rural and tribal areas, and President Joe Biden’s pledge to get broadband into every home. The Biden Administration also doubled [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-7-21 Big Tech’s defense of its liability shield for content could become a two-front war. Edge providers already face bipartisan pushback on their Sec. 230 shield from moderation of most third-party content. Now however, two top jurists, both Supreme Court justices, have raised the issue of rethinking the Times [...]
By John Eggerton, Multichannel News, 7-7-21 The Federal Trade Commission has signaled it is rethinking its enforcement principles regarding its Sec. 5 authority to prevent unfair methods of competition, saying under the current FTC guidance, the Commission “has doubled down on the Commission’s longstanding failure to investigate and pursue ‘unfair methods of competition.’” In [...]