Yahoo's Yang Tell Rice It's Her Job to Get Dissidents Released

Article from RedmondMag.com, By Peter Varhol
In a response that has irony written all over it, Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang said in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that it was the State Department's job to pursue the release of two journalists being held in a Chinese prison for allegedly leaking state secrets and political writings. The irony is that it was information provided to the Chinese government by Yahoo that led to these arrests and imprisonments.

Yang claims that the information Yahoo provided was released against company values, and the company has settled a lawsuit by the families involved and established a human rights fund after the fact. However, after a Yahoo official was caught in the act of misleading Congress about the affair, California Rep. Tom Lantos responded, "While technologically and financially you are giants, morally you are pygmies."

It sounds like a cop-out by Yahoo to me. Does no one there recall the courage and conviction of H. Ross Perot as chronicled in "On Wings of Eagles"? Yang wouldn't do that; it's all about dollars and cents to him.

Immigration Laws Should Be Enforced

By The Intelligencer

Throughout the United States on Tuesday, “immigration rights” groups staged demonstrations demanding, in effect, that the nation tell 12 million people who broke our laws that all is forgiven — that they should be given the same rights as citizens who came to this country legally and obeyed its laws before going through naturalization proceedings.
That is objectionable enough to many Americans — but another demand of the protesters this week is even more outrageous, in a way. Along with insisting on citizenship for the estimated 12 million illegal aliens in the United States, many of the demonstrations also demanded an end to enforcement of current immigration laws. Specifically, the protesters want federal agencies to stop conducting raids on businesses that employ large numbers of illegal aliens.

President Bush and some members of Congress have indicated that they indeed do want to offer citizenship to those already in the United States illegally. Public outcry may be the only thing that has prevented such action. But, Bush and most members of Congress, to judge by their actions in providing more tools to enforce current immigration laws, are not in favor of simply throwing our borders open and doing nothing to regulate immigration in the future. In that, they are in agreement with the vast majority of Americans. Many of the protesters on Tuesday made it clear that they do not agree with enforcement — period.

That is unfortunate, but it also indicates that the open borders crowd will be satisfied with nothing less than scrapping each and every law on the books concerning immigration. Citizenship for the 12 million illegal aliens already here might well be a first step toward that — and as such, is not acceptable.

FCC Suggests Framework for Regulating Violence on TV

Article from the AP / FOX News

Congress could regulate violence on cable, satellite and broadcast television without violating the First Amendment, the Federal Communications Commission said in a report released Wednesday. The report, which had been requested by Congress, contains suggestions for action by lawmakers, but it stops short of making specific recommendations.
A correlation exists between bloodshed on television and violence in real life, the commission said. Concluding that "exposure to violent programming can be harmful to children," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wrote in a statement accompanying the report that "Congress could provide parents more tools to limit their children's exposure to violent programming in a constitutional way." Among those tools, Congress could require cable companies to sell their programming on a per-channel or family tier basis, rather than only in pre-bundled packages. As for broadcast television, the report cites Supreme Court precedent to suggest the agency could regulate violent programming much as it regulates sexual content and profanity — by barring it from being aired during hours when children may be watching. Or it could create a family-viewing hour. It also says that technology intended to help parents shield their children from objectionable programming, such as the V-chip, is inadequate.
The report indicates that Congress could develop a definition of excessively violent programming but that such language "needs to be narrowly tailored in conformance with judicial precedent." Martin has been joined in his push for cleaning up the airwaves by Democratic Commissioner Michael Copps, who wrote: "It is not an easy challenge to develop rules that pass constitutional muster, but given what amounts to a public health crisis at hand, I believe it is a challenge that must be met."
Word of the report, which has been circulating around the agency for months, has alarmed executives in the broadcast and cable industries as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Their concern is how the agency would define violent programming and what would qualify for sanction — for example, how violent news programming would be treated. Martin suggested Wednesday there may be a special exception for news, saying the context and content of the message should be considered.
The ACLU had harsh words for the report, calling the FCC's recommendations "political pandering," in a statement attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, the organization's director of its legislative office in Washington. "There are some things the government does well, but deciding what is aired and when on television is not one of them," she said.
Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, while approving the report in part and concurring in part, said he was disappointed with it because of a lack of clarity. "We punted to Congress the difficult questions that Congress asked us to answer," he said, such as coming up with a definition for excessively violent programming.
The report was requested by a bipartisan group of 39 House members nearly three years ago and is well past its Jan. 1, 2005, due date. The lawmakers asked whether the FCC could define "exceedingly violent programming that is harmful to children." It also asked whether the agency could regulate such programming "in a constitutional manner." Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he will file legislation that may incorporate some of the commission's recommendations.

FTC Official: Let's Imprison Spyware Distributors

By Anne Broache / News.com.com

Steep fines are nice, but one of the best weapons against spyware purveyors is locking them up, a federal regulator told senators on Tuesday. At a morning Senate Commerce Committee hearing here, Federal Trade Commissioner William Kovacic said most wrongdoers in the spyware arena "can only be described as vicious organized criminals." "Many of most serious wrongdoers we observed in this area, I believe, are only going to be deterred if their freedom is withdrawn," so it's important for the FTC to collaborate on its cases with criminal law enforcement authorities, Kovacic said.
Kovacic's remarks came in response to a question from Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), who was presiding over Tuesday morning's hearing, about whether the FTC is sufficiently equipped to combat the scourge of software planted surreptitiously on a user's computer. "It's a real source of frustration for my constituents, my family, my office...basically anyone who has a computer," Pryor said. Congress has been trying for years to pass legislation aimed at curbing spyware and adware, but most of that activity so far has occurred in the House of Representatives, as opposed to the Senate.
FTC Commissioner Jon Leibowitz repeated his agency's call for Congress to elevate what it perceives as limited fining powers -- not just in spyware cases, but in other situations within the FTC's enforcement range, such as when a person is caught using false pretenses, or pretexting, to obtain telephone records.
The purpose of Tuesday's hearing -- which lasted about 90 minutes and featured appearances from only four senators on the 22-member committee -- was to allow the FTC commissioners to update the Senate on their progress and to request $240 million for next year's budget--an increase of $17 million from last year. The event marked the first appearance by all five FTC commissioners before the panel since an identity theft hearing in June 2005.