Google Sends Lobbyists to Washington
With Congress rewriting telecommunications laws, Google faces ever-mounting challenges on the privacy front and is sending lobbyists to Washington to fight their case. “It is quite clear that there are enough issues in the policy space that impact our users and our company that we need to have a full-time presence in Washington,” says Google lobbyist Alan Davidson. If you are interested in politics and/or Google this article by Jonathan Berr is a must read.
Google is working to prevent Internet service providers from being able to choose what content is sent over their networks, or from cutting deals with companies to give them faster Net access than their rivals, according to McLaughlin. The company also supports the protection of copyrighted material while maintaining “strong, viable fair-use rights,” he said. This issue has come up in the controversy over Google Print, the company’s initiative to scan books from some libraries and archives so that they can be searched on the Internet. The Authors Guild has filed suit to stop the program, claiming it violates copyrights. Google disagrees. Rival Yahoo! is backing a rival digitization effort that will seek permission from copyright owners before using their material.
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