Regulating Online Ads – today on the Hill
| If you are around DC today, join us for what I hope will be an exciting panel!Some advance thoughts — I suspect that I am personally far less allergic to legislation than some of my colleagues on today’s PFF Regulating Online Advertising Panel. I do think that effective legislation here will be very difficult, but I think that the Hill staff and FTC staff have done a great deal in the last 2 years to really get up to speed on the technologies, business models, consumer issues and the big picture of the economy and internet eco-system. I think industry claims that requiring greater control or transparency will break business models, eliminate free content and generally wreak havoc ring hollow. On the other hand, efforts (legislative or self-regulatory) that focus solely on behavioral ads, deep packet inspection, or specific technologies could easily miss the mark, as business models already using a much wider range of data. And a great deal of confusion continues to exist, even within the ‘expert” circles about how the relevant technologies are used and I do certainly worry about proposals that would do more harm than good.
Anyway, looking forward to participating with the wise heads listed below and continuing to think this issue through. Today on Capitol Hill |
| Regulating Online Advertising:
What Will it Mean for Consumers, Culture & Journalism? |
|
A PFF Congressional Seminar July 10, 2009 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. Room SVC-208 Capitol Visitor Center 1st Street and East Capitol Street, NE, Washington DC, 20002
Proposals to regulate advertising and data collection on the Internet, mobile phones, and interactive television, hold the promise of enhancing consumer privacy. On the other hand, “smart advertising” allows more relevant advertising to be targeted directly to individual consumers, making markets more competitive, significantly increasing the funding available for creating free content and services, and increasing the effectiveness of all forms of free speech. So what would regulation cost consumers, and how will it impact journalism and other non-commercial content, which stands to gain the most from better targeting? What First Amendment questions would regulation raise about the future of culture and political discourse? These and other pressing questions will be discussed at “Regulating Online Advertising: What Will it Mean for Consumers, Culture & Journalism?,” a congressional seminar hosted by The Progress & Freedom Foundation. Sign up! http://www.pff.org/events/upcomingevents/071009-regulating-online-advertising.asp |
