News

WASHINGTON –– On Monday, Free Press, Consumers Union, the New America Foundation and Public Knowledge sent a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee urging it to consider the usage of punitive data caps by broadband providers. The committee is holding a hearing on online video on Tuesday, April 24.

WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, Verizon Wireless announced plans to sell off its 700 MHz A and B licenses if the Federal Communications Commission approves its acquisition of spectrum licenses from SpectrumCo, Cox and Leap Wireless.

WASHINGTON –– On Monday, public interest groups and civil liberties organizations launched a week of Internet-wide protests against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), the controversial cybersecurity legislation that would negate existing privacy laws and allow companies to share user data with the government without a court order.

WASHINGTON –– On Thursday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a ban on political advertising on public television and radio stations. The court said that permitting this type of advertising would not threaten or undermine the educational nature of public broadcast stations. It upheld the ban on advertising by commercial and for-profit companies.

WASHINGTON –– Late Friday night before the holiday weekend, the Federal Communications Commission announced that it plans to vote on an order requiring television broadcasters to put their public inspection files online, including important political advertising records. The item was listed in the agency’s tentative agenda for its April 27th open meeting.

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, the Media Access Project announced that it will suspend operations in May.

WASHINGTON — A House subcommittee is scheduled to vote later today on the Global Online Freedom Act, a bill that seeks to prevent U.S. companies from helping repressive regimes censor and spy on their citizens. The legislation would also require Internet providers and search engines to disclose their policies for cooperating with censorship requests from “Internet restricting countries.”

WASHINGTON — On Tuesday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration released a long-awaited report that explores options to repurpose some frequencies currently used by the government for wireless broadband use.

WASHINGTON — On Monday, Comcast confirmed that it will not count the video content that its customers view through an Xbox 360 against their monthly 250 GB data caps.

WASHINGTON — On Monday, several members of Congress proposed amendments to the so-called FCC Reform Act (H.R. 3309) that is moving through the House of Representatives. All amendments are subject to the House Rules Committee’s approval to determine if they will be attached to the bill. Decisions on the amendments are expected to be made by 5 p.m. today.