During her impassioned speech at the UN General Assembly, President of Brazil Dilma Rousseff announced that a quick adoption of the “Marco Civil da Internet” will be one of the cornerstones of her domestic Internet strategy. Since then, the Marco Civil has gained widespread international attention because of its provisions designed to control where and…
Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of reddit, was in Washington earlier this month promoting his book about the economic importance of open Internet access for everybody on the planet. Google is investing both in gigabit fiber access in some U.S. cities while launching Project Loon to bring wireless access to remote communities around the globe. Facebook…
In case you went on holiday and missed it: holidays have been cancelled this Summer. Well, if you work on telecomms policy issues in Brussels that is. In February this year the European Commission fired the starting gun on work on a single market for telecommunications. In what is record time for a large organisation such…
Earlier this week, the FCC filed a Court brief in defense of its open Internet rule that has been challenged by Verizon and one small wireless carrier, Metro PCS. Verizon claims to support the Internet remaining “an unrestricted and open platform, where people can access the lawful content, services and applications of their choice.” It simply objects to an…
Notice-and-takedown (NTD) procedures and practices just recently caught renewed attention as a result of two events involving Google and its subsidiary YouTube. First, a video of Curiosity’s Mars landing, posted by NASA, disappeared from YouTube due to a wrongful copyright claim. The takedown was a result of certain imperfections in YouTube’s Content ID system that…
CCIA was pleased to learn senators added provisions to better protect digital goods ahead of the U.S. Senate Finance committee markup a bill today to permanently normalize trade relations (“PNTR”) with the Russian Federation and Moldova. CCIA issed a news release asking for better trade protections online after the Russian parliament’s vote to blacklist websites and allow them to be…
CCIA has grave concerns about legislation passed yesterday by the Russian Parliament that would establish a blacklist of websites that government could shut down, and hopes U.S. trade officials weigh this development. While the legislation is ostensibly targeted at child pornography and sites promoting suicide or substance abuse, the establishment of a government blacklist framework…
All around the world, a debate rages over the protection of users’ actions and information online. In the developed world, this is seen primarily through the lens of personal privacy protections: how and when users’ data on popular services like Google and Facebook may be used commercially. Elsewhere in the world, the issues are often…
The House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance held hearings this week on granting Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to Russia. CCIA sent a letter to both House and Senate committee members urging them to consider the issue of Internet freedom in Russia as part of their discussion of the U.S.-Russia relationship. To extend…