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July 2007
  • "Harvard Professor Dale Jorgenson to Offer Keynote Address at Aspen Summit," States News Service, July 30, 2007
    "Dale Jorgenson, The Samuel W. Morris University Professor at Harvard University, will address attendees at the 13th annual Aspen Summit on Monday, August 20th with a keynote address titled, 'Whatever Happened to the New Economy?'"
    "'Dale Jorgenson has conducted groundbreaking research on the relationship between information technology and economic growth and productivity' said Tom Lenard, president of The Progress and Freedom Foundation. 'We are thrilled to welcome him back to the event and look forward once again to his insights.'"
  • "Google, Sprint Pact Could Heat Up Wireless War," CNNmoney.com, July 27, 2007
    "'It looks like they are putting together a pretty formidable team,' said Scott Wallsten, director of communications policy studies at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, a Washington, D.C., free-market think tank. The Sprint-Clearwire-Google alliance appears to be 'trying to develop a new business model that hasn't been tried yet' that could enhance competition and benefit consumers.
    "Wallsten, however, argued it is unclear their network will be truly open. 'It doesn't seem consistent with Google's claims for open access and net neutrality,' he said. 'Clearly Google is going to benefit from this, and it will be easier to use (Google) than Yahoo' or other rival services."
  • "Re-Examining Broadband Using a Democratic Lens," Congressional Quarterly Weekly, July 28, 2007
    "The Democratic efforts [to mandate further broadband policy] already are prompting skeptical reaction and comment from conservatives. Some experts, such as Scott Wallsten, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, question whether there will be widespread demand for 100-megabit connections."
  • "New Aspen Summit Panel Announced: 'Let's Make a Deal: Getting Content and Tech to Table,'" States News Service, July 26, 2007
    "The 13th Annual Aspen Summit hosted by The Progress and Freedom Foundation (PFF) will highlight the challenges that information and media sector providers face in a digital world. A new panel announced today, 'Let's Make a Deal: Getting Content and Tech to the Table,' will explore the sensitive and highly charged copyright issues faced by content creators and distributors."
  • "Using Technology to Protect Your Kids," WorldNetDaily.com, July 26, 2007
    "As a mom trying to raise my teens to be morally strong in a toxic culture, I welcome all the help I can get.
    "Thanks to Adam Thierer – a former Heritage Foundation scholar and currently a senior fellow with The Progress & Freedom Foundation – I've got a handy new guide to essential tools to assist in the battle for my kids' souls. It's called 'Parental Controls and Online Child Protection.'"
    "In his report, Thierer offers guidance with the various other media, from music players to Internet gaming sessions. Each section contains a list of helpful tips and hints. And 'Parental Controls and Online Child Protection' is loaded with footnotes and Web addresses so you can delve deeper into particular technologies or subject areas that interest you.
    "It's important to realize that no single 'fix' can really address your concerns with each technology. In the chapter on Internet use, for example, Thierer covers the importance of using a "layered" approach – using, for example, a Web filter in addition to monitoring and time-management tools, etc. This advice applies to all the media in question.
    "Thierer's 117-page survey is comprehensive enough to cover the parental controls available for a wide variety of media, but it's careful enough to avoid overwhelming busy adults with too much information. It also avoids the confusing techno-speak that plagues many appliance manuals."
  • "Stakeholders, Others Continue to Weight in on FCC's 700 Mhz Band Alternatives," TRDaily, July 24, 2007
    "[Scott] Wallsten, a senior fellow and director-communications policy studies at the market-oriented Progress and Freedom Foundation, also urged Commissioners to strip the open-access conditions from the item, saying they 'represent a big step backwards to policies that are proven failures.'"
  • "Eric Schmidt to Keynote 2007 Aspen Summit; Google Chairman and CEO to Speak at Chairman's Dinner on August 21st," PRNewswire-USNewswire, July 23, 2007
    "The Progress & Freedom Foundation (PFF) will continue its long tradition of distinguished Chairman's Dinner speakers at the 13th Annual Aspen Summit when Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt will address attendees on Tuesday, August 21st.
    "'Google epitomizes the digital revolution and we are very excited to welcome Dr. Schmidt as our Chairman's Dinner speaker,' said PFF President Tom Lenard. 'Google's mission of organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible is revolutionary and would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. That this is now possible shows how far we have come.'"
    "Past Chairman's Dinner speakers at The Aspen Summit have included Jeff Bezos, Carly Fiorina, Scott McNealy, and Tom Perkins. Last year's speaker was Sumner M. Redstone, Executive Chairman and Founder of Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp."
  • "Hiding the Broadband Map," TowardFreedom.com, July 19, 2007
    "'People may be going to pay for broadband and have no options at all,' said Scott Wallsten, senior fellow and director of communications policy studies at the Progress and Freedom Foundation. 'But we don’t really have a way to identify that right now because of the nature of the data.'"
    "Wallsten agreed that there were some proprietary issues to consider. But he said the FCC is 'erring on the side of holding too much secret.'
    "'The question is whether the data the FCC is not giving out would have policy benefits that outweigh any of the costs to competition by releasing it,' Wallsten said. 'It seems to me that more information could be released, and it’s not obvious how that would harm companies.'"
  • "MPAA to FCC: Net Neutrality Could Kill a Cornucopia of Content (Monitoring)," Arstechnica.com, July 18, 2007
    "When it comes to actively stopping such piracy, Solveig Singleton of the Progress & Freedom Foundation agrees with the MPAA; network neutrality 'may hamper efforts to control piracy like spam [i.e., in the manner that spam is controlled], by impeding traffic carried by or through disreputable ports of call.'"
  • "Progress and Freedom Foundation Files Brief vs. Cablevision's Network DVR," Multichannel News, July 13, 2007
    "Cablevision Systems was served its first blow in its efforts to appeal the federal court ruling that quashed its remote-server digital-video-recorder product (RS-DVR) after a nonprofit think tank filed a brief with the appellate court July 12 urging that the original ruling be upheld.
    "In the brief, Progress and Freedom Foundation http://www.pff.org senior adjunct fellow Solveig Singleton argued that Cablevision's contention that the RS-DVR should be treated like existing DVRs or video-cassette recorders within customer homes is unwarranted.
    "'The level of control that Cablevision exercises over the stream of programming and Cablevision's superior understanding of the program's status under license takes this case well out of the realm of cases involving photocopy machines, the VCR and the Internet,' she wrote."
    "'Exemptions from liability thus belong where it is reasonably certain that negotiations are impracticable and will remain so in the near future. That is not the case here,' Singleton wrote."
  • "Free-Market Group Focuses on Global Technology," Tech Daily, July 11, 2007
    "The Progress and Freedom Foundation has gradually turned more of its attention abroad in recent years because high-tech policy issues are becoming a global concern, the group's acting president, Thomas Lenard, said in an interview Monday.
    "The free-market group, known for its annual August conference in Aspen, Colo., and regular Capitol Hill briefings, will co-sponsor the first in a series of information technology policy seminars in Brussels, Belgium, on Wednesday with the Center for European Policy Studies."
    "PFF also has held seminars on intellectual property elsewhere in Europe and in South America, he said. 'We're not doing international issues at expense of domestic issues, but in many cases, the debate occurs simultaneously in various locales,' Lenard said. 'It's occurring in Brussels as well as Washington, and what happens in one place influences the other.'"
  • "FCC Gets Earful On Satellite Radio Merger," BroadcastNewsroom.com, July 10, 2007
    "The Progress and Freedom Foundation, a think tank that ponders digital-related public policy, also gave a nod to the merger by suggesting any antitrust review should look beyond the two satellite players to other digital information providers in deciding whether the resulting company would be a monopoly, saying that market should also include 'services the platforms in question may provide in the future that they do not today.'"
  • "Courts," Washington Internet Daily, July 9, 2007
    "In an amicus brief filed with the 5th U.S. Court of Appeals, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Progress and Freedom Foundation and others said they 'recognize that child pornography is a scourge and are taking active steps to combat it online. But as with other allegedly harmful content, any imposition of civil liability should be focused on the actual wrongdoers -- that is, the ones who originate the allegedly unlawful content.'"
  • "Charging Up for the Next New Things," Congressional Quarterly Weekly, July 6, 2007
    "In a presidential election year, however, it may be hard to gather enough steam to get the tech agenda moving. 'All of these technology issues get crowded out by other issues. They're not interesting enough or sexy enough,' said Adam Thierer, a senior fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation. 'It's going to be an uphill fight on every front, including things that are good ideas.'"
  • "A Bid to Boost Region's Telecom, Internet Access: Valley Firms to Seek Solutions in Cooperative Efforts," San Jose Mercury News, July 7, 2007
    "Scott Wallsten, director of communications policy studies for the non-profit think tank the Progress and Freedom Foundation in Washington, warns that fears of falling behind may be unfounded.
    "The Bay Area needs to collect evidence that companies need faster Internet connections, he said, adding that he doubted companies such as Google would suffer slow connections.
    "'If there is a problem in the Bay Area, the real question is what is it,' Wallsten said. 'You can have an anecdote for anything.'"
  • GAO: Data Breaches Don't Often Result in ID Theft," Infoworld.com, July 5, 2007
    "The report is important because it gives Congress more information about data breaches, added Thomas Lenard, senior fellow and acting president at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank.
    "'It’s very good to have more data on this issue,' he said. "[The report] reinforces my view that we should only adopt new regulations in this area if it can be shown that their benefits are greater than their costs."
  • "Yahoo's SmartAd Raises Privacy Concerns," ABCnews.com, July 4, 2007
    "But according to Solveig Singleton, a senior adjunct fellow at the Progress and Freedom Foundation, a market-based tech policy think tank, these privacy concerns are overblown. So long as companies like Yahoo and Google continue to keep financial records private, internet users can only benefit from the advance of technology.
    "'There's no reason that this would create any additional security concern,' Singleton said. She disagrees with privacy advocates like Stephens who, she said, 'often overlook that advertising and marketing really do serve consumers. It's not some kind of trickery.'"
  • "FTC's Net Neutrality Conclusion Predictable,"
    Voip-news.com, July 2, 2007
    "One giveaway was the location of that August 21, 2006, announcement: the annual Aspen Summit of the Progress & Freedom Foundation. The PFF bills itself as 'a market-oriented think tank that studies the digital revolution and its implications for public policy. Its mission is to educate policymakers, opinion leaders and the public about issues associated with technological change, based on a philosophy of limited government, free markets and individual sovereignty.'"
    "FCC Opens Inquiries on Broadband," Info Tech & Telecom News, July 1, 2007
    "[Adam] Thierer, senior fellow with the Progress & Freedom Foundation, questions the wisdom of the FCC's opening the net neutrality 'Pandora's box.'
    "Thierer is concerned about how the FCC frames its questions, and particularly about the wide scope of the investigation, which sweeps up nearly all market participants. 'My, oh my, who isn't under the regulatory spotlight here?' he asked, recalling previous industry-watcher jibes about how net neutrality 'would eventually come to cover just about every company under the Internet sun.'"
    "Thierer suggests 'the seeds of a new regulatory regime may have already been planted.' He and others at the Progress & Freedom Foundation maintain the real net neutrality debate is over pricing flexibility versus pricing regulation.
    "Thierer and his colleagues contend broadband service providers will eventually differentiate themselves through price points related to bandwidth usage, finding ways to deal with the small number of heavy-bandwidth users."


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