congress

It looks like some politicians are starting to get the hang of this Internet thing.  Two new YouTube channels have been established, and certain members of the House and Senate intend to use them as communications and outreach tools.

Although this fact isn't likely to earn Yahoo a government bailout, it seems that Flickr can count the Library of Congress among its fans.  An experiment the Library was conducting has turned out far better than anyone expected.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin won’t be leaving his post with his legacy in tact or without a kick to the backside from Congress.

Taken together, three bills in Congress would require online marketplaces and auction sites to secretly police affiliates suspected of selling stolen goods. In addition to requiring extensive record keeping on sellers using the site and turning over that information to authorities upon request, the legislation prohibits resale sites—like eBay or craigslist—from informing suspected sellers they are being investigated.

There is new hope for Pandora and other webcasters, but any deal is far from done.

Though many were disappointed yesterday in Representative John Culberson's (R-TX) partisan scapegoating via Twitter, he did sort of fall backwards over an important issue. The issue wasn't that Democrats were seeking to abridge Congressional freedom of speech as it related to Web 2.0 applications, but that Congressional freedom of speech had already been abridged via previously established draconian gag rules.  

There may be hope yet for the idea that our government actually works for us. Two bills, one in the House, and one in the Senate Judiciary Committee, passed without giving blanket retroactive immunity to telephone companies that willingly aided the Bush Administration in illegally spying on the American people.

Michael Callahan, an executive president and general council at Yahoo has apologized to lawmakers for offering faulty information about the company working with a Chinese government request for user information about a journalist who was later jailed.