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This Week in Tech: Door opens for Issa-Wyden online piracy bill
The collapse in support for two anti-piracy bills last week leaves the door ajar for movement on alternative legislation offered by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
The shelving of the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect Intellectual Property Act on Friday after massive online protests might have changed permanently the landscape of lobbying on tech issues.
Hollywood, the recording industry and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — some of K Street’s most prominent interests — were drubbed in the debate by tech companies harnessing the power of Internet users. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was forced to back away from a vote this week, while House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said he would seek wider agreement on his bill.
Issa and Wyden’s OPEN Act, which seeks to stop the transfer of money to foreign websites with a primary purpose of piracy or counterfeiting, is likely to get the full scrutiny of policymakers and the tech world in the coming weeks. Although whether it can move forward remains in serious doubt.
A highlight comes Saturday, with Data Privacy Day, as consumer privacy and security take center stage. The Commerce Department and Federal Trade Commission are likely to release their separate reports on how to improve consumer privacy by the end of the month.
Consumer privacy legislation gained some momentum in the Senate last year but still appears to be a long shot to come to the floor in an election year. The most likely movement in Congress would be on a national data breach notification law to supplant the current patchwork of state regulations.
A December 2010 draft of the FTC staff report pushed browser manufacturers to create an add-on that would allow consumers to opt out of having their actions tracked online. A green paper from Commerce proposed the recognition of a new baseline of consumer privacy rights, as well as a new federal data breach standard. Both stopped short of calling for new consumer privacy laws.
On Thursday, Federal Trade Commission member Julie Brill will headline a day of privacy events at George Washington Law School and deliver a keynote that will likely address the FTC's role as the de facto privacy regulator within the government at present. Also scheduled to appear are Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer; Bob Quinn, AT&T’s chief privacy officer; Rick Buck, head of privacy at eBay; and David Hoffman, Intel’s global privacy officer.
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