• "Wireless Industry Praised for Employing Content Controls," TR Daily, March 30, 2007
  "The wireless industry has done a good job of proactively ensuring that children are protected from objectionable wireless content, a scholar at the Progress and Freedom Foundation said today during a session at CTIA’s Wireless 2007 show here.
  "'I have to applaud the wireless industry,' said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at PFF and director of its Center for Digital Media Freedom. 'I think the wireless industry is doing a better job than just about anybody else.'"
• "The Post Advertising Age," Advertising Age, March 26, 2007
  "'It's a very different kind of world,' says Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and author of "Media Myths: Making Sense of the Debate Over Media Ownership." 'The problem is, the expectations are there to capture that mass audience that long ago disappeared. We are witnessing the gradual death of the [advertising] business models that thrived in that age of scarcity.'"
• "Age Validation Ineffective for Social Networking Websites, Say Experts," Cybercast News Service, March 26, 2007
  "'Officials at both the federal and state level[s] have proposed legislation to address what they feel are the dangers associated with social networking sites,' said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, at a [PFF] Capitol Hill news conference on Friday.
  "Thierer said one proposed solution is for sites to validate the ages of those using their service."
• "FCC Adopts NOI Regarding Broadband Market Practices," Tech Law Journal, March 22, 2007
  "The Progress and Freedom Foundation's (PFF) Scott Wallsten stated in a release that 'I am hopeful that a careful review of the network neutrality issue -- including the unimpressive history of price regulations in telecom -- will help convince the FCC that conduct should remain under the watchful eye of antitrust authorities. Subjecting the Internet to precautionary regulations could prove quite costly to the economy and could ultimately be harmful to consumers.'"
• "Judge rules Against Online Porn Law," InfoWorld, March 22, 2007
  "[The federal judge's] decision 'perpetuates the unbroken chain of Internet censorship cases that the government has lost" in the last 10 years, said Adam Thierer, director of the Center for Digital Media Freedom at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank. In 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Communications Decency Act, an earlier attempt to regulate Internet speech.
  "Thierer, writing on his blog, said the U.S. government should focus instead on educating Internet users about pornography and other dangers. Filtering programs are a better alternative to a law attempting to protect children from pornography, he and other COPA critics have said.
  "'Untold millions have been spent by the government litigating this decision, and they may not be done yet,' he wrote. 'If all the money that has been spent litigating this case had instead been spent on media literacy and online safety campaigns, it could have produced concrete, lasting results. But our government appears obsessed with pursuing regulatory mandates and legal appeals instead.'"
• "The Switch To Digital," Forbes.com, March 20, 2007
  "In a ruling last week, the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration adopted regulations that will provide eligible households with up to two $40 coupons to offset the purchase of converter boxes that will allow people to watch digital TV on their old analog sets."
  "Scott Wallsten, a senior fellow and director of policy studies at Washington's Progress and Freedom Foundation, a tech-minded think tank, says the subsidies have little to do with the consumer because the government plans to provide coupons instead of cash to offset the price of converter boxes.
  "Instead, it's more of an effort to appease those who might disagree with the switch. 'There are always obstacles to good reforms,' he says. 'Sometimes the way to get past those obstacles is to buy them off. And that's what this is.'"
• "Corporate-Welfare Queens (and Kings) - Google, American Express, Dollar Tree," National Review, March 19, 2007
  "Public officials have long believed that with the right kind of industrial policy they can take credit for igniting technology booms. Yet as Scott Wallsten of the Progress and Freedom Foundation has demonstrated in his county-by-county research, the efforts to create biotech hubs and research parks haven't paid off. 'They make great press releases,' he says. 'On average, however, they don't contribute to a region's economic growth.'"
• "Media Lawyers, Consultants Question Online Copyright Model," Washington Internet Daily, March 19, 2007
  "Copyright enforcement online is flawed under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), panelists at a Progress & Freedom Foundation lunch said Fri., without agreeing how to fix the rules. It's unclear where cost burdens for enforcement should fall. Programmers want to push the burden onto service providers -- an impulse acted on in Viacom's $1 billion lawsuit against Google's YouTube. But a balance must be struck between content owners and distributors over who's responsible for protecting the programming, said PFF's Solvieg Singleton: 'We don't want to exclude content owners from taking preventative measures on their own side.'"
• "The Quest To Redefine Copyright Fairness," Tech Daily, March 16, 2007
  "The 21st-century copyright fight between the content and high-tech industries would benefit from a mechanism by which parties could arrive at intellectual property fairness 'fast-food style,' an expert on the issue said at a Capitol Hill luncheon on Friday.
  "The Progress and Freedom Foundation's Solveig Singleton said theories of liability under the Supreme Court's 2005 landmark MGM v. Grokster ruling on file-sharing and a 1998 copyright law do not jive with the 'almost total uselessness' of traditional enforcement methods.
  "The old IP protection regime is tied to 'a very slow, very expensive court system,' she said. Grokster and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which grants Internet providers liability for copyright infringement by third parties if the providers remove the content, arose after "an almost total collapse of traditional copyright enforcement.
  "PFF senior fellow James DeLong, a known copyright hawk, noted that the view of groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation was not represented on the panel.
  "DeLong said they think that content should go online and be freely transferred, and that content providers 'should find out some way of making money out of it.' He said he disagrees with that stance because it has yet to yield a sustainable business model."
• "Is Google Changing Its Position on Net Neutrality?," GigaOM, March 13, 2007
  "What [a Senior Policy Counsel] said next got many bloggers talking:
  "'Cutting the FCC out the picture would probably be a smart move. It is much better to think of this as an FTC or unfair competition type of problem.'
  "That would be the [FTC], the new kid on the net neutrality block. Promoting the authority of the FTC, and constricting the Bell-friendly [FCC], has been a pet project the market-oriented Progress and Freedom Foundation think tank."
• "All This Technology And No Power Outlet In Sight," Tech Daily, March 9, 2007
  "Even at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual summit in Aspen, Colo., with the world's 'most prominent business leaders, probing thinkers and influential policymakers' likely carrying the latest in technology, power remains a 'big, big issue,' said Jane Creel, PFF's director of finance and operations.
  "Creel said all of the conference's classrooms are set up on risers with electrical outlets strategically placed so people can use their laptops without the fear of the blinking battery lights warning of blank, black screens. Creel noted that in her airport travels, she has sat on the floor to connect to a wall outlet.
  "Other tech challenges at conferences include the lack of wireless Internet access and cellular telephone coverage in the rooms where events are held, according to conference attendees.
  "At the St. Regis hotel in Aspen, home to the PFF event, no wireless access is offered on the underground ballroom level, Creel noted."
• "Expanding Access," DiverseEducation.com, March 8, 2007
  "'My perspective is that [the M2z spectrum application] is not a good proposal. We should be moving in the direction of a property rights regime. This is kind of a throwback to the administrative allocation of spectrum that prevailed in the early days of radio and TV,' says Dr. Thomas Lenard, the senior vice president for research at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a market-oriented think tank in Washington, D.C. Lenard says the government can provide direct assistance to Americans who cannot afford broadband rather than granting what would be considered a subsidy to a company offering the service for free.
  "'If the government wants to provide a particular good, it shouldn’t choose one technology over another,' he says."
• "F2C: Thierer Warns Of Web Regulations," Tech Daily Dose, March 6, 2007
  "The Progress and Freedom Foundation's Adam Thierer spoke to the Freedom to Connect conference on Tuesday about the dangers of government-imposed data retention and age-verification mandates.
  "Thierer said he spends much of his time "trying to fend off one bad regulatory proposal after another." Pitches for government restrictions have been made for videogames, social-networking sites, cellular phones and just about every type of Internet-enabled technology, he said.
  "There is a 'real chance' that some type of data retention requirement for Internet service providers will come out of the 110th Congress, Thierer said. The Bush administration has been lobbying for such a mandate since last year. He also noted that state attorneys general may successfully impose age-verification rules in some states.
  "Thierer called both initiatives a 'threat to online speech and communication.' 'We've been relying on the courts to hold the line,' but the environment soon may change drastically, he said."
• "Patent Office Criticizes 'Unintended File-Sharing,'" TR Daily, March 5, 2007
  "Progress and Freedom Foundation senior fellow Jim DeLong pointed to a number of stories in recent years about unauthorized peer-to-peer programs 'gulling users into becoming inadvertent sharers of not only copyrighted materials but their own personal information.' The PTO study shows the reports are 'not urban legends but real and serious problems.'
  "The 'evil impact' of the services on the content industries is only part of the problem, DeLong said. He said he hopes that enforcement agencies like the Justice Department, FTC and state attorneys general are 'paying attention.'"

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