Communications

The Sixth Circuit Court’s rejection of the FCC's unconstitutional preemption of state laws regulating municipal broadband projects is a win for constitutional federalism and taxpayers. 

"No one has any idea what the Trump campaign's positions are on communications policy," Giovanetti told us. "There's no evidence at this point that there is anything approaching a policy process on the Trump campaign -- which is part of why I thought the platform was more important in this peculiar year."

"We salute the Congressional Republicans who have legislatively impeded [Obama's] plans to turn over the Information Freedom Highway to regulators and tyrants," the platform said. It included language similar to what IPI recommended last week: "We will consistently support internet policies that allow people and private enterprise to thrive, without providing new and expanded government powers to tax and regulate so that the internet does not become the vehicle for a dramatic expansion of government power."

Institute for Policy Innovation President Tom Giovanetti tweeted that the 2016 draft GOP platform's language on "protecting Internet from taxation and regulation is INADEQUATE" and proposed language that IPI would prefer.

If higher taxes were the cure for homelessness, California — and San Francisco, in particular — would have solved its homeless problem years ago. 

The FCC’s regulation of the Internet must be viewed as being in direct contravention of Congress’ deregulatory intent, and as the biggest U.S. re-regulation in decades.

In a statement, IPI president Tom Giovanetti applauded Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) for a move to defend Americans’ Fourth Amendment protections by prohibiting warrantless backdoor searches and upholding robust encryption standards.

If customer feedback leads Facebook to design a more robust and transparent system that ensures fairness to all its users, that is a market success, not a market failure. Let’s let it play out.

Presidential politics means we have only about two months left of useful legislative time, so it’s time for the Senate to get its act together and move the Email Privacy Act.

By a 419-0 vote, the House approved the Email Privacy Act (HR-699), which would protect the content of people's emails and electronic communications (see 1604260014). Approval of the measure, which updates part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986, was hailed by privacy and technology associations, which said ECPA lagged behind the rapid advancement of technologies such as cloud computing.