Forty-five public interest groups sent a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee opposing two bills that would severely limit the FCC's ability to promote competition, innovation and access to communications services. The two bills, under the guise of "reforming the FCC," would put the very companies the FCC is tasked with regulating in control of the agency. The letter urges lawmakers to adopt more sensible reforms that would better protect consumers and promote economic development.

Bills by two legislators to end all state appropriations would have a major impact on the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority. OETA most likely would have to reduce its statewide coverage and local programming. These cutbacks would indirectly hinder state goals of improving education and increasing the number of college graduates.

When it comes to copyright enforcement, American content companies are already armed to the teeth, yet they persist in using secretly negotiated trade agreements to further their agenda.

To most people that know him, Max Schrems is a typical law student from Austria. To Facebook, he is a massive pain in the ass. Outsmarting their attorneys, bombarding them with legal complaints and forming activist groups, he plans to transform Facebook's privacy policy in Europe.

The city of Tyler, Texas, is better known as the nation's "rose capital" than as a hotspot of the technology industry. It's a quiet, conservative city of about 100,000, full of wide streets and big trucks. This week, though, Tyler is the site of a remarkable battle over the history of the World Wide Web — a trial that could affect the future of e-commerce. The federal courthouse downtown is packed to the brim with dozens of lawyers representing the world's biggest Internet companies, including Yahoo, Amazon, Google and YouTube.

The Justice Department is poised to clear Google's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility as early as next week, giving Google a powerful armory of technology patents to deploy in the smartphone wars.

Fearing that AT&T and Verizon will gobble up the entire wireless spectrum in an auction, a group of competitors sent a letter to the Congressional Conference Committee considering spectrum auction legislation as one of the "pay-fors" in the payroll tax cut extension.

Broadcasters are attracting record political advertising from the Republican presidential primaries, a Super-PAC-driven windfall for television stations that promises to grow even larger in the general election. The biggest winner may be Lin TV. The Providence, R.I.-based owner of 17 stations in the 12 closely divided swing states may see revenue rise 12 percent to a record $457 million this year.

Satellite telephones, which are employed by military and emergency relief organizations, and used in places where mobile phone service is not available, have until now been considered secure from eavesdropping. They are not, say two researchers who cracked the security used in some satellite phone systems.

Congress failed to pass a new federal law last year requiring the litany of companies affected by data breaches to notify consumers. But now some lawmakers believe they have a new route for passage: the Senate's upcoming cybersecurity reform bill.