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August 2007
  • "Google: Censorship Should Be Trade Barrier," ZDNet UK, August 29, 2007
    "Speaking last week at a conference organised by US think tank the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Eric Schmidt said that to defend freedom of speech, governments should use internet censorship as a non-tariff trade barrier.
    "'The internet has created this remarkable set of free markets and open competitions,' said Schmidt. 'We need to keep it free and open — if it goes the other way then we've got a serious problem.'"
  • "Media Savvy: Parody Maker's Copyright Fight with Media Giants Takes Fair Turn," The Sacramento Bee, August 27, 2007
    "As James DeLong, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation recently told National Public Radio, 'Our concern is that there are elements, largely in universities, which really do not favor intellectual property and would like to see it more or less undermined and destroyed. ... Fair use, to a certain degree, should be constricted rather than expanded.'"
  • "At the Portals," CableFaxDaily, August 23, 2007
    "The FCC is finalizing plans to extend streamlined video franchising rules to cable, said commish Robert McDowell. 'We'll see what the draft says, but I understand the chairman is going to make good on his promise to get a draft circulated soon,' he said, according to Dow Jones, at the Progress & Freedom Foundation's Aspen conference."
  • "Google Will 'Probably' Bid On Airwaves, Schmidt says," Salon, August 23, 2007
    "[Google Inc. CEO Eric] Schmidt's essential message -- delivered to a group assembled by the libertarian Washington think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation -- was that because the Internet is based on compatible standards and interoperability, and because principles of 'openness' are at the heart of its success, we've got to cultivate and protect openness to keep the net functioning well."
  • "DRM Diaries," Post IT (WashingtonPost.com), August 22, 2007
    "While movie studios and recording labels see DRM-like technology as a way to prevent piracy and unauthorized use of copyrighted content, tech companies say it unfairly limits consumers' access to and use of digital content. The two sides have long butted heads to protect their business models, and several representatives of the industries discussed the issue this morning at the Aspen Summit, an event put on by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a Washington think tank."
  • "Google U.S. Mobile Auction Bid Still Probable – CEO," Reuters, August 22, 2007
    "ASPEN, Colorado (Reuters) - Google Inc. is leaning toward bidding in upcoming U.S. mobile phone airwave auctions, despite a partial setback last month from Washington regulators, Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Tuesday"
    "Schmidt made his remark about participating in the mobile auctions following a keynote speech at a conference sponsored by the conservative Progress and Freedom Foundation think tank."
  • "Google 'Probably' Will Bid In 700 MHz Wireless Auction, Schmidt Says," InformationWeek, August 22, 2007
    "Asked by a T-Mobile executive at a conference in Aspen, Colo., whether Google planned to participate in the auction, [Google CEO Eric] Schmidt said, 'probably,' according to published reports. He was a featured speaker at a meeting of regulators and telecom executives sponsored by the Progress and Freedom Foundation think tank."
  • "Parental Controls Touted As Alternative to Government Mandates," TR Daily, August 22, 2007
    "Panel moderator Adam Thierer, senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and director of PFF’s Center for Digital Media Freedom, who is an outspoken opponent of government mandates in the area of protecting children from inappropriate content, pointed out that parental control tools are available for free 'from every carrier.'"
  • "Antitrust," Tech Daily, August 22, 2007
    "Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic told people gathered at the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual summit in Aspen, Colo., that the 'standards for what dominant firms can and can't do is the single-most important issue for the world today.' Kovacic recapped U.S. antitrust history, saying that U.S. policy was 'far more intervention-minded' from 1945-1970 than any the world will ever see."
  • "Internet People," Washington Internet Daily, August 21, 2007
    "Thomas Syndor, ex-Patent & Trademark Office, joins Progress & Freedom Foundation in September as director, Center for the Study of Digital Property."
  • "Gross Points to Democratizing Effects of Telecom, Info Technology Growth," TR Daily, August 21, 2007
    "Delivering the opening keynote address at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit, David Gross, U.S. coordinator-international communications and information policy at the State Department, said that when he first started in that job in 2001 he 'spent a lot of time going around the world explaining' to officials in other countries 'why they should care about the Internet' and other communications issues. He added that he no longer has to do that: 'They all get it.'"
  • "Rules Cited As Opening for Competition," Rocky Mountain News, August 21, 2007
    "At a communications summit here, Robert McDowell, who has a seat on the Federal Communications Commission, referred to 'video franchise relief' that in part enables telcos to put municipalities on a 90-day 'shot clock' to accept or reject a franchise application.
    "'We've tried to clear out unnecessary underbrush . . . without upsetting the local apple cart,' he said at [PFF's] Aspen Summit."
  • "Harvard Economist: Dot-com Crash Won't Repeat," CNET News Blog, August 21, 2007
    "Jorgenson, who gave a morning presentation at this year's Aspen Summit organized by the Progress and Freedom Foundation, displayed a series of graphs showing that while hardware prices have fallen (measured either by computer prices or component prices) in the last few decades, software prices have remained constant when adjusted for inflation."
  • "FCC's McDowell: Video Franchise Rules Extended To Cable Soon," Dow Jones Newswire, August 20, 2007
    "Federal Communications Commission staffers are finalizing plans to streamline the process of applying for a video franchise, in a move that would see the rules extended to incumbent cable companies, FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said Monday.
    "Speaking at a conference hosted by free market think tank the Progress & Freedom Foundation, McDowell said he understood plans were coming together to extend the same relief that was granted to new entrants to the pay-television market earlier this year to incumbent companies"
  • "Lawmakers Pursue More Money to Guard Intellectual Property," Government Executive Magazine, August 15, 2007
    "Solveig Singleton of the Progress and Freedom Foundation said she is concerned that lawmakers are 'throwing money at [IP enforcement] institutions that aren't well-designed.'"
  • "A Left-Right Divide Exists Even on Issues As Wonky as Spectrum," The Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2007
    "'You are virtually certain to get more investment and more innovation when you have as strong a property regime as possible,' says Tom Lenard of the conservative-leaning Progress and Freedom Foundation."
  • "Parental-Controls Measure Clears Senate Commerce Committee," Satellite Week, August 6, 2007
    "The bill would create 'unnecessary regulation where there is no market failure,' said Progress & Freedom Foundation senior fellow Adam Thierer."
  • "Down To Business: The Sky Isn't Falling When It Comes To U.S. Broadband," InformationWeek, August 4, 2007
    "As Scott Wallsten of the Progress and Freedom Foundation noted in recent Senate testimony, those OECD and other international rankings provide little insight into broadband demand in each country, so they don't necessarily identify 'market failures.'"
  • "The Left vs. the First Amendment," Wall Street Journal, August 3, 2007
    "As Adam Thierer notes on the City Journal Web site, an ideological movement, gaining currency on the left, calls for government control over the media."
  • "Sports, Studio Copyright Warnings Spur Complaint," Technology Daily, August 2, 2007
    "Solveig Singleton of the Progress and Freedom Foundation said the industry group's misrepresentation claim is questionable because 'the audience for sports programming is often not the consumer -- it's the distributor who pays for the right to broadcast.'
    "Such an argument also raises concerns about how much government can regulate business communications with the public, she said. 'Content owners are sometimes very conservative in their warnings because they are compensating for a lack of even enforcement in other areas,' Singleton said.
    "Copyright Alliance Executive Director [and former PFF fellow] Patrick Ross said if CCIA is worried about 'fair use' of copyrighted material, 'this is an odd way of showing it.' Fair use could actually be stymied by the action, he said."
  • "Tie Seen Between Rate Deregulation and Number of Special Access Lines," Telecom A.M., August 01, 2007
    "Increases in the number of special access lines at the state level can be tied to FCC rate deregulation, according to a paper by Scott Wallsten, communications policy studies director for the Progress & Freedom Foundation. 'The number of special access lines increases in areas where the ILEC has been granted price flexibility,' Wallsten said. 'The general unavailability of data on actual prices from either the ILEC or competitors, and the lack of any information on special access lines from competitors, however, make it impossible to reach definitive conclusions on the overall effects of special access deregulation.'"
  • "Panel May Order Study Of Parental Control Technology for Video," Congressional Quarterly Today, August 1, 2007
    "[Adam] Thierer, a senior fellow with the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a free-market think tank, warned that the legislation raises First Amendment concerns because it could potentially substitute a government-backed ratings system for existing voluntary industry systems.
    "Thierer also maintained that there is no need for the FCC to study new filtering technologies because there are already many filtering tools on the market."


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