The Progress & Freedom Foundation serves to educate Congress, policymakers and the public on policy issues relating to the digital revolution.  PFF regularly receives mention in national news outlets, wire services and trade publications.  A sampling is provided below.

This Month:

• "Marketers Must Prepare for September Enactment of Maine Data Collection Law," BNA's Electronic Commerce & Law Report, August 19, 2009
  "Berin Szoka, senior fellow and director of the center for internet freedom at the Progress & Freedom Foundation in Washington, D.C., said the law may also raise important constitutional questions, and surmised that it is unlikely to survive a constitutional challenge."
  "'While COPPA has never been challenged on constitutional grounds, COPPA 2.0 proposals likely violate the First Amendment because, by expanding the age range covered, they would essentially require age verification of not just kids, but large numbers of adults,' Szoka said. 'The Supreme Court has struck down such broad mandates because they infringe on the rights of adults to anonymous speech.'"
• "FCC Enforcing Imaginary Laws in P2P Ruling, says Comcast," ArsTechnica, August 17, 2009
  "Free market groups like the Progress and Freedom Foundation contend this ancillary authority business is way too vague to be used in something as crucial as regulating network management. PFF calls it a 'standardless discretion' contrary to 'the foundational principle that agencies only have that authority conferred by Congress, which ensures accountability.'"
• "Think Tank Questions FCC's Network Neutrality Authority," eWeek, August 10, 2009
  "In a filing supporting Comcast's appeal of the FCC ruling that Comcast violated the agency's network neutrality principles by throttling peer-to-peer traffic from BitTorrent, the Progress & Freedom Foundation contends the principles are not legally enforceable.
  "The Federal Communications Commission lacks the legal authority to enforce its network neutrality principles approved in 2005, a Washington think tank said. The Progress & Freedom Foundation filed a legal brief supporting Comcast's appeal of the 2008 FCC ruling that the cable giant violated those principles by throttling traffic from peer-to-peer provider BitTorrent."
  "'Congress has not in fact delegated to the FCC any express authority to regulate Internet services. If it had, there would be no need for the Commission to strain the principle of ancillary jurisdiction to support its order,' the PFF said in a friend-of-court filing. 'And its assertion of ancillary jurisdiction is untenable, exceeding any previously recognized scope and boundaries.'
  "The think tank further contended that the FCC's 'expansive theory of its ancillary authority' would grant it 'completely unlimited regulatory powers over information services.' The PFF also claimed there is nothing in the Communications Act that delegates any express authority to the FCC to regulate Internet service. 'If anything, its history indicates Congress's affirmative desire to keep such services unregulated,' the filing said."
• "Towns Wants P2P Software Banned on Federal Computers," Telecommunications Reports, August 11, 2009
  "However, Thomas Sydnor, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and director of PFF's Center for the Study of Digital Property, testified that his tests of the software showed that this was not the case if a computer had previously had an old version of LimeWire running on it, because the older version would leave behind hidden files that would cause the old default settings to be used by the new version."
• "FCC to Apple: iPhone? How about MyPhone!," Reason, August 7, 2009
  "Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation recently pointed out, it's not clear that the agency has any authority to do so. Not that that's stopped it before: As Thierer notes, the FCC has a long history of overreach. This may simply be a way of flexing its regularity muscle as its defines—and perhaps expands—its territory under the Obama administration."
• "P2P Defendant Tenenbaum Hit with $675,000 in Damages," Washington Internet Daily, August 3, 2009
  "The RIAA victory doesn't let copyright supporters off the hook on encouraging 'responsible Internet intermediaries and copyright owners to cooperate in order to ensure that artists need not file lawsuits in order to enforce their federal civil rights,' said Tom Sydnor of the Progress and Freedom Foundation. Sydnor has emerged as the harshest critic of P2P software maker Lime Wire for features he says make inadvertent sharing likely. 'Experience has now proven that targeted measures like graduated response programs and sophisticated filtering technologies can all but eliminate the need' for litigation, he said."
• "FCC iPhone Inquiry: Prelude to Wider Probe?," Internet News, August 3, 2009
  "Barbara Esbin, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a Washington think tank, told InternetNews.com that the inquiry 'indicates that the FCC is taking a serious look into calls for the imposition of wireless Net neutrality mandates and prohibitions on exclusive handset arrangements, and that it considers the two matters to be closely related.'"
• "Taxing the Net," American Chronicle, August 1, 2009
  "Adam Thierer of the promarket Progress and Freedom Foundation has spent years tracking such attempts to impose state taxes on interstate commerce. Those 22 states are 'proposing to abandon true federalism,' he says. 'State and local officials would prefer to create a cozy tax cartel instead of relying on a 'laboratories of democracy' model of competition between the states.'"

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