White House to Push for Internet Privacy Laws

The Obama Administration is preparing a stepped-up approach to policing Internet privacy that calls for new laws and the creation of a new position to oversee the effort, according to people familiar with the situation. The strategy is expected to be unveiled in a report being issued by the U.S. Commerce Department in coming weeks, these people said.

Europe Taking Wait-and-See Approach on Net Neutrality

Europe has sufficient legal safeguards in place to prevent the Continent's telephone operators from selectively managing consumer access to the Internet and no new restrictions are needed, the European commissioner responsible for telecommunications said. During a speech in Brussels, Neelie Kroes, the commissioner for the bloc's digital agenda, said that the European Union's executive arm had opted to take a wait-and-see approach on the so-called network neutrality issue, which has become the focus of intense lobbying by operators, online businesses like Google, and free speech advocates on both sides of the Atlantic.

Experts Debate Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

Privacy experts traded barbs during a tense panel discussion on the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which revealed just how difficult legislating privacy issues can be. Disagreement among the speakers and audience members nearly put an end to the discussion, but enough order was restored to shed light on a few important facets of the decade-old COPPA law and how it might be improved upon.

FCC Joins Probes of Google's Street View Collections

The Federal Communications Commission is investigating whether Google Inc. broke federal laws when its street-mapping service collected consumers' personal information, joining a lengthy list of regulators and lawmakers probing what Google says was the inadvertent harvesting of private data sent over wireless networks. Key Republicans and Democrats in Congress have indicated that the privacy issues raised by Google's Street View data collection could be a factor when lawmakers consider new Internet privacy legislation next year.

Data on Federal Workers at Risk After E-mail Incident

The personal information of thousands of federal workers is at risk after a General Services Administration worker mistakenly sent the names and Social Security numbers of all of the agency's 12,000 employees to a private e-mail account. The incident occurred Sept. 16, and GSA security officials learned about it Sept. 22 in a weekly e-mail security report, a spokeswoman said.

Tech Companies Say Data Protection Guards Against Crime

Internet companies need to be more accountable for the mass of personal data collected from users to guard against cybercrime, industry executives said. "Information is the currency of growth, but it's also increasingly become the currency of crime," Peter Cullen, chief privacy strategist for Microsoft Corp, said at the Family Online Safety Institute's annual conference.

Federal Agencies May Disagree on Internet Privacy

Privacy advocates are pushing for a "do not track" feature that would let Internet users tell Web sites to stop surreptitiously tracking their online habits and collecting clues about age, salary, health, location and leisure activities. That proposal and other ideas to protect online privacy are setting up a confrontation among Internet companies, federal regulators, the Obama administration and Congress over how strict any new rules should be.

Company Accused of Illegal Firing for Facebook Post

In what labor officials and lawyers view as a ground-breaking case involving workers and social media, the National Labor Relations Board has accused a company of illegally firing an employee after she criticized her supervisor on her Facebook page. This is the first case in which the labor board has stepped in to argue that workers' criticisms of their bosses or companies on a social networking site are generally a protected activity and that employers would be violating the law by punishing workers for such statements.

Microsoft Sues Motorola Over Royalties on Xbox

Microsoft stepped up its legal battle with Motorola, as the software company accused the phone maker of charging excessive royalties on network technology used in Microsoft's Xbox game system. The suit, filed in federal court in Seattle, comes a month after Microsoft charged that its former ally Motorola infringed a number of its patents in its Android-based smartphones, which run on software built by Google.

Websites Limit Tracking Tools to Avoid Privacy Risks

Major websites are moving to limit the number of tracking technologies like "cookies" spreading on their sites, hoping to keep lucrative data about visitors for themselves -- and avoid privacy risks. More sites are counting the number of tracking tools -- software that can clandestinely monitor people's activities online -- that are being installed on the computers of people who visit the sites.

Facebook Sues Newspaper, Radio Station Over Patents

Facebook Inc., the world's biggest social-networking website, accused the owner of the Boston Phoenix newspaper and WFNX radio station of infringing two patents related to ways to manage information online. Facebook filed the complaint in federal court in Boston against Phoenix Media/Communications Group Inc. and its People2People Group, Tele-Publishing and FNX Broadcasting units.

European Commission Holds Meeting on Net Neutrality

The global debate over how access to the Internet should be determined and paid for has attracted free speech advocates, telephone network operators and big online businesses like Google and Facebook. This week, arguments over so-called network neutrality move to Brussels, where the European Commission and Parliament are holding a daylong meeting that is expected to draw speakers from industry, government and academia.

Digital Divide Still Exists, Commerce Department Says

Millions of Americans signed up for broadband Internet access over the last decade, but "digital divides" persist between different income levels, ethnic groups and geographical areas of the country, according to a new government report. Some 63.5 percent of U.S. households had broadband Internet access at home in 2009, up from just 9.2 percent in 2001, the U.S. Department of Commerce reported.

The GigaLaw Firm helps companies of all sizes protect their brands online, using domain name dispute policies – such as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – and other legal tools available to copyright and trademark owners on the Internet.