Online Publishers Association taking Boucher bill seriously

Rep. Rick Boucher's recent draft legislation aimed at protecting the public's privacy online may have landed with a thud but at least one influential group thinks Boucher's efforts must be taken seriously: the Online Publishers Association, which boasts over 60 online content companies including Bloomberg, BBC.com and The Huffington Post. OPA President Pam Horan said Tuesday her organization has spent the last three years closely tracking online privacy issues and is extremely interested in Boucher's efforts to limit web companies' use of the personal information and online behavior of their users.

Horan's team is still analyzing Boucher's draft legislation in order to provide feedback on potential consequences, intentional or not. While OPA would ideally prefer that online content providers be allowed to self-regulate, she was confident that the established relationships between the public and member companies like National Public Radio and ESPN.com would enable them to be treated differently than third-party content providers like search engines or social networks.

"Everyone is recognizing they need to be responsive," Horan said, adding that the Federal Trade Commission began a dialogue online privacy last year, making the Boucher bill a natural outgrowth of that effort. "Everyone needs to take this seriously."

Horan said as the original creators of content, online publishers believe they should be allowed to use data on visitors to tailor their user experiences. However, she said her organization believes that authority should only extend to information collected on the publisher's site and should not be shared with other web sites or advertising networks.

"Third parties like advertisers and search engines have a different relationship with consumers," Horan said. "Publishers are in the best position [to navigate the change]. We have an ongoing dialogue with the public, we can tell them how we use their information."

For its part the OPA has stepped up its lobbying presence inside the Beltway in recent years, opening a D.C. office two years ago and staffing it with Vice President for Government Affairs Michael Drobac. Drobac said he spends the majority of his time helping member companies understand and stay abreast of the latest issues, but he also spends a good amount of time educating Hill staff and lawmakers on the nuances of technology policy. Overall the organization has a staff of eight and now boasts almost 100 members, all of which have a vested interest in the publishing of original content online.

Along with privacy the organization is also attempting to grapple with net neutrality, which made headlines again recently when FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski suggested that light regulation may accomplish the goals of net neutrality without the need for a heavy-handed regulatory mechanism. Horan said her organization is open to that line of thought but hasn't taken a firm stance on the issue, partly because the FCC has failed to define what exactly constitutes net neutrality and partly because of the diverging interests of the organization's members.