Thursday, November 29, 2012

Internet Regulation Bill

CNN.com is carrying an story this morning (Nov. 28) about Rep. Darrell Issa, a Republican from California proposing a two-year ban on all new federal legislation regulating the Internet.

Issa, an advocate for Internet freedoms, posted a draft of his bill, the Internet American Moratorium Act of 2012, online last Nov. 26 on Project Madison a crowd-sourcing platform that allows citizens to amend individual passages of legislation by adding or striking language. On Nov. 27th., he posted a link to the bill on Reddit, the social news site, inviting users to suggest changes to the proposed legislation, saying he would begin taking questions from users as of the morning of Nov. 28th..

CNN also reported that "it was not immediately clear whether Issa's proposed moratorium would apply to his own Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade (OPEN) Act, introduced last January, which would seek to protect U.S. copyrights and trademarks from infringement by foreign websites, and that the immediate reaction on Reddit was mixed with some users confused about what point Issa was trying to make, while others saw it as a stunt." Issa's bill was referred to the House Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet.

Senate Bill 2029, by the same name, was introduced last December by Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance.

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