Zack Whittaker and Carly Page report via TechCrunch: Microsoft has resolved a security lapse that exposed internal company files and credentials to the open internet. Security researchers Can Yoleri, Murat Ozfidan and Egemen Kochisarli with SOCRadar, a cybersecurity company that helps organizations find security weaknesses, discovered an open and public storage server hosted on Microsoft's Azure cloud service that was storing internal information relating to Microsoft's Bing search engine. The Azure storage server housed code, scripts and configuration files containing passwords, keys and credentials used by the Microsoft employees for accessing other internal databases and systems. But the storage server itself was not protected with a password and could be accessed by anyone on the internet.

Yoleri told TechCrunch that the exposed data could potentially help malicious actors identify or access other places where Microsoft stores its internal files. Identifying those storage locations "could result in more significant data leaks and possibly compromise the services in use," Yoleri said. The researchers notified Microsoft of the security lapse on February 6, and Microsoft secured the spilling files on March 5. It's not known for how long the cloud server was exposed to the internet, or if anyone other than SOCRadar discovered the exposed data inside.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Starting today, home Internet and mobile broadband providers in the US are required to display consumer labels with information on prices, speeds, and data allowances. "Today's nationwide launch of the Broadband Consumer Labels means internet service providers are now required to display consumer-friendly labels at the point of sale," the Federal Communications Commission said (PDF). "Labels are required for all standalone home or fixed Internet service or mobile broadband plans. Providers must display the label -- not simply an icon or link to the label -- in close proximity to an associated plan's advertisement."

The labels are required now for providers with at least 100,000 subscribers, while ISPs with fewer customers have until October 10, 2024, to comply. "If a provider is not displaying their labels or has posted inaccurate information about its fees or service plans, consumers can file a complaint with the FCC Consumer Complaint Center," an agency webpage says. The October 10 date will also bring an additional requirement that providers "make the labels machine-readable to enable third parties to more easily collect and aggregate data for the purpose of creating comparison-shopping tools for consumers," the FCC said.

The FCC issued a consumer advisory telling broadband users what to look for in the labels. Labels should include the monthly price, state whether it is an introductory rate, the amount of time that an introductory rate applies, and the price after any introductory rate expires. The labels must include any additional monthly charges, one-time fees, early termination fees, and taxes. Speed information should include typical download speed, upload speed, and latency. For data caps, the labels should state how much data is included with the monthly price and how much consumers have to pay for additional usage. Labels should also include links to information on discounts and service bundles, network management practices, and privacy policies.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Independent browser companies in the European Union are seeing a spike in users in the first month after EU legislation forced Alphabet's Google, Microsoft and Apple to make it easier for users to switch to rivals, according to data provided to Reuters by six companies. The early results come after the EU's sweeping Digital Markets Act, which aims to remove unfair competition, took effect on March 7, forcing big tech companies to offer mobile users the ability to select from a list of available web browsers from a "choice screen." [...]

Cyprus-based Aloha Browser said users in the EU jumped 250% in March -- one of the first companies to give monthly growth numbers since the new regulations came in. Founded in 2016, Aloha, which markets itself as a privacy focused alternative to browsers owned by big tech, has 10 million monthly average users and earns money through paid subscriptions, rather than selling ads by tracking users. "Before, EU was our number four market, right now it's number two," Aloha CEO Andrew Frost Moroz said in an interview. Norway's Vivaldi, Germany's Ecosia and U.S.-based Brave have also seen user numbers rise following the new regulation. U.S.-based DuckDuckGo, which has about 100 million users, and its bigger rival, Norway-based Opera (OPRA.O), opens new tab are also seeing growth in users, but said the choice screen rollout is still not complete. "We are experiencing record user numbers in the EU right now," said Jan Standal, vice president at Opera, which counts over 324 million global users.

Under the new EU rules, mobile software makers are required to show a choice screen where users can select a browser, search engine and virtual assistant as they set up their phones. Previously, tech companies such as Apple and Google loaded phones with default settings that included their preferred services, such as the voice assistant Siri for iPhones. Changing these settings required a more complicated process. Apple is now showing up to 11 browsers in addition to Safari in the choice screens curated for each of the 27 countries in the EU, and will update those screens once every year for each country. While DuckDuckGo and Opera are offered in Apple's list, opens new tab in all 27 countries, Aloha is in 26 countries, Ecosia is in 13 and Vivaldi in 8. Google is currently showing browser choices on devices made by the company and said new devices made by other companies running Android operating system will also display choice screen in the coming months. A Google spokesperson said they do not have data on choice screens to share yet.

It appears that a nearly eight-year-long battle by the FCC to require internet companies to display information on the costs, fees, and speeds of their broadband services is finally over. From a report: Starting on Wednesday, all but the smallest ISPs will be required to publish broadband "nutrition labels" on all of their plans, the regulator announced. [...] Each label will include monthly broadband prices, introductory rate details, data allowances, broadband speeds, and links to find out about any available discounts or service bundles. Links to network management practices and privacy policies should be listed as well.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: Cox Communications doesn't believe that ISPs should be held liable for the activities of their pirating subscribers. After a disappointing verdict from a Virginia jury and an unsatisfactory outcome at the Court of Appeals, the internet provider now intends to escalate the matter to the Supreme Court. If the present verdict stands, innocent people risk losing their Internet access, the ISP notes. [...] That's notable, as it would be the first time that a "repeat infringer" case ends up at the highest court United States. Cox asked the court of appeals to also stay its mandate pending its Supreme Court application, as this could steer the legal battle in yet another direction.

According to Cox, the Supreme Court has substantial reasons to take on the case. For one, there are currently conflicting court of appeals rulings on the "material contribution" aspect of copyright infringement. The Supreme Court could give more clarity on when a service, with a myriad of lawful uses, can be held liable for infringers. In addition, Cox also cites the recent 'Twitter vs. Taamneh' Supreme Court ruling, which held that social media platforms aren't liable for terrorists who use their network. While that's not a copyright case, it's relevant for the secondary liability question, the ISP argues. "Though Twitter was not a copyright case, it confronted a directly analogous theory of secondary liability: that social-media platforms, including Twitter and YouTube, could be liable for continuing to provide services to those they knew were using them for illegal purposes," Cox writes.

Finally, Cox notes that the Supreme Court should hear the case because it deals with an issue that's 'exceptionally important' to ISPs as well as the public. If the present verdict stands, Internet providers may be much more likely to terminate Internet access, even if the subscriber is innocent. "This Court's material-contribution standard provides powerful incentives for ISPs of all stripes to swiftly terminate internet services that have been used to infringe -- no matter the universe of lawful uses to which those services are put, or the consequences to innocent, non-infringing people who also use those services. "That is why a chorus of amici urged this Court not to adopt this standard at the panel and en banc stages, and will likely urge the Supreme Court to grant review as well," Cox adds, referring to the support it received from third-parties previously. "Cox hasn't filed a writ of certiorari yet and still has time, as it's due June 17, 2024," notes TorrentFreak. "The intention to go to the Supreme Court would be another reason to halt the new damages trial, according to Cox, but the court of appeals rejected the request."

"This means that the new damages trial can start, even if the case is still pending at the Supreme Court. However, it's clear that this legal battle is far from over yet."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Congress may be closer than ever to passing a comprehensive data privacy framework after key House and Senate committee leaders released a new proposal on Sunday. The bipartisan proposal, titled the American Privacy Rights Act, or APRA, would limit the types of consumer data that companies can collect, retain, and use, allowing solely what they'd need to operate their services. Users would also be allowed to opt out of targeted advertising, and have the ability to view, correct, delete, and download their data from online services. The proposal would also create a national registry of data brokers, and force those companies to allow users to opt out of having their data sold. [...] In an interview with The Spokesman Review on Sunday, [Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Energy and Commerce Committee chair] claimed that the draft's language is stronger than any active laws, seemingly as an attempt to assuage the concerns of Democrats who have long fought attempts to preempt preexisting state-level protections. APRA does allow states to pass their own privacy laws related to civil rights and consumer protections, among other exceptions.

In the previous session of Congress, the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committees brokered a deal with Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee, on a bill that would preempt state laws with the exception of the California Consumer Privacy Act and the Biometric Information Privacy Act of Illinois. That measure, titled the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, also created a weaker private right of action than most Democrats were willing to support. Maria Cantwell, Senate Commerce Committee chair, refused to support the measure, instead circulating her own draft legislation. The ADPPA hasn't been reintroduced, but APRA was designed as a compromise. "I think we have threaded a very important needle here," Cantwell told The Spokesman Review. "We are preserving those standards that California and Illinois and Washington have."

APRA includes language from California's landmark privacy law allowing people to sue companies when they are harmed by a data breach. It also provides the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, and private citizens the authority to sue companies when they violate the law. The categories of data that would be impacted by APRA include certain categories of "information that identifies or is linked or reasonably linkable to an individual or device," according to a Senate Commerce Committee summary of the legislation. Small businesses -- those with $40 million or less in annual revenue and limited data collection -- would be exempt under APRA, with enforcement focused on businesses with $250 million or more in yearly revenue. Governments and "entities working on behalf of governments" are excluded under the bill, as are the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and, apart from certain cybersecurity provisions, "fraud-fighting" nonprofits. Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called the draft "very strong" in a Sunday statement, but said he wanted to "strengthen" it with tighter child safety provisions.

We're seeing a boom in journaling apps as safer, easier ways to ease us back into posting everything online. From a report: Last year, Apple released a journal app with iOS 17. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just unveiled a photo app called Shine, which is made to share photos and memories with a select group of people. Today, Retro -- a startup that we called "the new Instagram" -- is launching a feature called Journals within the app, which lets you record both photos and notes for a select group of people.

As a lifelong journaler, it's hard to forget that I already have an intimate, safe space to record my life and share memories. It is a notebook. I don't have to worry about marketers selling my information, because it's not accessible. What if creating a safe space all of your own means just getting off the internet altogether? Most of these apps are based on the central premise that most of us would rather talk to family or close friends than with a pretty stranger shilling snack boxes. As we reported previously, Retro has a few standout features. Once you join the app, you're prompted to select a few pictures to post per week. In order to see your friends' and family's photos, you have to share photos of your own. That keeps people actively participating instead of lurking.

As the moon blocked the view of the sun across parts of Mexico, the United States and Canada on Monday, the celestial event managed another magnificent feat: It got people offline. From a report: According to Cloudflare, a cloud-computing service used by about 20 percent of websites globally, internet traffic dipped along the path of totality as spellbound viewers took a break from their phones and computers to catch a glimpse of the real-life spectacle.

The places with the most dramatic views saw the biggest dips in traffic compared with the previous week. In Vermont, Arkansas, Indiana, Maine, New Hampshire and Ohio -- states that were in the path of totality, meaning the moon completely blocked out the sun -- internet traffic dropped by 40 percent to 60 percent around the time of the eclipse, Cloudflare said. States that had partial views also saw drops in internet activity, but to a much lesser extent. At 3:25 p.m. Eastern time, internet traffic in New York dropped by 29 percent compared with the previous week, Cloudflare found.

The path of totality made up a roughly 110-mile-wide belt that stretched from Mazatlan, Mexico, to Montreal. In the Mexican state of Durango, which was in the eclipse zone, internet traffic measured by Cloudflare dipped 57 percent compared with the previous week, while farther south, in Mexico City, traffic was down 22 percent. The duration of the eclipse's totality varied by location, with some places experiencing it for more than four minutes while for others, it was just one to two minutes.

By becoming the official custodian of an entire nation's history for the first time, the Internet Archive is expanding its already outsize role in preserving the digital world for posterity. From a report: Aruba has long been a special place for Stacy Argondizzo. For years, her family has vacationed on the tiny Caribbean Island every July. More recently it's been more than just a place to take a break from her work as a digital archivist -- becoming wholly a part of that work.

A project Argondizzo galvanized comes to full fruition this week. The Internet Archive is now home to the Aruba Collection, which hosts digitized versions of Aruba's National Library, National Archives, and other institutions including an archaeology museum and the University of Aruba. The collection comprises 101,376 items so far -- roughly one for each person who lives on the Island -- including 40,000 documents, 60,000 images, and seven 3D objects.

The Internet Archive is mostly known for trying to back up online resources like websites that don't have a government body advocating for their posterity. Being tapped to back up an entire nation's history takes the nonprofit into new territory, and it is a striking endorsement of its mission to bring as much information online as possible. "What makes Aruba unique is they have cooperation from all the leading cultural heritage players in the country," says Chris Freeland, the Internet Archive's director of library services. "It's just an awesome statement." The project is funded wholly by the Internet Archive, in line with its policy of generally letting anyone upload content.

The Federal Communications Commission chair decided not to impose Universal Service fees on Internet service, rejecting arguments for new assessments to shore up an FCC fund that subsidizes broadband network expansions and provides discounts to low-income consumers. From a report: The $8 billion-a-year Universal Service Fund (USF) pays for FCC programs such as Lifeline discounts and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund deployment grants for ISPs. Phone companies must pay a percentage of their revenue into the fund, and telcos generally pass those fees on to consumers with a "Universal Service" line item on telephone bills.

Imposing similar assessments on broadband could increase the Universal Service Fund's size and/or reduce the charges on phone service, spreading the burden more evenly across different types of telecommunications services. Some consumer advocates want the FCC to increase the fund in order to replace the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a different government program that gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes but is about to run out of money because of inaction by Congress. The Universal Service funding question is coming up now because, on April 25, the FCC is scheduled to vote on reclassifying broadband as a telecommunications service in order to re-impose the net neutrality rules scrapped during the Trump era. Imposing Universal Service charges on broadband would likely result in ISPs adding those costs to monthly bills and would make the net neutrality proceeding even more of a political minefield than it already is. FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's net neutrality proposal takes the same stance against requiring Universal Service contributions that the FCC took in 2015 when it first imposed the net neutrality rules.

Leaders from two key committees in the U.S. Congress "are nearing an agreement on a national framework aimed at protecting Americans' personal data online," reports the Washington Post.

They call the move "a significant milestone that could put lawmakers closer than ever to passing legislation that has eluded them for decades, according to a person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the talks." The tentative deal is expected to broker a compromise between congressional Democrats and Republicans by preempting state data protection laws and creating a mechanism to let individuals sue companies that violate their privacy, the person said. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the chairs of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Commerce Committee, respectively, are expected to announce the deal next week...

Lawmakers have tried to pass a comprehensive federal privacy law for more than two decades, but negotiations in both chambers have repeatedly broken down amid partisan disputes over the scope of the protections. Those divides have created a vacuum that states have increasingly looked to fill, with more than a dozen passing their own privacy laws... [T]heir expected deal would mark the first time the heads of the two powerful commerce committees, which oversee a broad swath of internet policy, have come to terms on a major consumer privacy bill...

The federal government already has laws safeguarding people's health and financial data, in addition to protections for children's personal data, but there's no overarching standard to regulate the vast majority of the collection, use and sale of data that companies engage in online.

Jon Brodkin reports via Ars Technica: California can keep enforcing its state net neutrality law after the Federal Communications Commission implements its own rules. The FCC could preempt future state laws if they go far beyond the national standard but said that states can "experiment" with different regulations for interconnection payments and zero-rating. The FCC scheduled an April 25 vote on Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel's proposal to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump. The FCC yesterday released the text of the pending order, which could still be changed but isn't likely to get any major overhaul.

State-level enforcement of net neutrality rules can benefit consumers, the FCC said. The order said that "state enforcement generally supports our regulatory efforts by dedicating additional resources to monitoring and enforcement, especially at the local level, and thereby ensuring greater compliance with our requirements." [...] In the order scheduled for an April 25 vote, the FCC said the California law "appears largely to mirror or parallel our federal rules. Thus we see no reason at this time to preempt it." That doesn't mean the rules are exactly the same. Instead of banning certain types of zero-rating entirely, the FCC will judge on a case-by-case basis whether any specific zero-rating program harms consumers and conflicts with the goal of preserving an open Internet. The FCC said it will evaluate sponsored-data "programs based on a totality of the circumstances, including potential benefits."

The FCC order cautions that the agency will take a dimmer view of zero-rating in exchange for payment from a third party or zero-rating that favors an affiliated entity. But those categories will still be judged by the FCC on a case-by-case basis, whereas California bans paid data cap exemptions entirely. Despite that difference, the FCC said it is "not persuaded on the record currently before us that the California law is incompatible with the federal rules." The FCC also found that California's approach to interconnection payments is compatible with the pending federal rule. Interconnection was the subject of a major controversy involving Netflix and big ISPs a decade ago. The FCC said it found no evidence that the California law has "unduly burdened or interfered with interstate communications service." When it comes to zero-rating and interconnection, the FCC said there is "room for states to experiment and explore their own approaches within the bounds of our overarching federal framework." The FCC said it will reconsider preemption of California rules if "California state enforcement authorities or state courts seek to interpret or enforce these requirements in a manner inconsistent with how we intend our rules to apply."

Google has introduced a new JPEG library called Jpegli, which reduces noise and improves image quality over traditional JPEGs. Proponents of the technology said it has the potential to make the Internet faster and more beautiful. InfoWorld reports: Announced April 3 and accessible from GitHub, Jpegli maintains high backward compatibility while offering enhanced capabilities and a 35% compression ratio at high-quality compression settings, Google said. Jpegli works by using new techniques to reduce noise and improve image quality. New or improved features include adaptive quantization heuristics from the JPEG XL reference implementation, improved quantization matrix selection, calculation of intermediate results, and the possibility to use more advanced colorspace.

The library provides an interoperable encoder and decoder complying with the original JPEG standard and its most convenient 8-bit formalism and API/ABI compatibility with libjeg-turbo and MozJPEG. When images are compressed or decompressed through Jpegli, more precise and psycho-visually effective computations are also performed; images will look clearer and have fewer observable artifacts. While improving on the density ratio of image quality and compression, Jpegli's coding speed is comparable to traditional approaches such as MozJPEG, according to Google. Web developers can thus integrate Jpegli into existing workflows without sacrificing coding speed, performance, or memory use.

Jpegli can be encoded with 10-plus bits per component. The 10-bit encoding happens in the original 8-bit formalism and the resulting images are interoperable with 8-bit viewers. The 10-bit dynamics are available as an API extension and application code changes are necessary to apply it. Also, Jpegli compresses images more efficiently than traditional JPEG codecs; this can save bandwidth and storage space and make web pages faster, Google said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Last week, Ernie Smith, the publisher of the website Tedium, got a "copyright infringement notice" from a law firm called Commonwealth Legal: "We're reaching out on behalf of the Intellectual Property division of a notable entity, in relation to an image connected to our client," it read. [...] In this case, though, the email didn't demand that the photo be taken down or specifically threaten a lawsuit. Instead, it demanded that Smith place a "visible and clickable link" beneath the photo in question to a website called "tech4gods" or the law firm would "take action." Smith began looking into the law firm. And he found that Commonwealth Legal is not real, and that the images of its "lawyers" are AI generated.

The threat to "activate the case No. 86342" is obviously nonsense. Beyond that, Commonwealth Legal's website looks generic and is full of stock photos, though I've seen a lot of generic template websites for real law firms. All of its lawyers have vacant, thousand-yard stares that are commonly generated by websites like This Person Does Not Exist, none of them come up in any attorney or LinkedIn searches, and the only reverse image search results for them are for a now-broken website called Generated.Photos, which offered a service to "use AI to generate people online that don't exist, change clothing and modify face and body traits. Download generated people in different postures." "All of the faces scanned were likely AI generated, most likely by a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) model," Ali Shahriyari, cofounder and CTO of the AI detection startup Reality Defender told 404 Media. Commonwealth Legal's listed address is the fourth floor of a one-story building that looks nothing like the image on its website, and both of its phone numbers are disconnected. No one responded to the contact form that I filled out. Smith realized that what's happening here isn't a copyright enforcement or copyright trolling attempt at all. Instead, it's a backlink SEO scam, where a website owner tries to improve their Google ranking by asking, paying, or threatening someone to link to their website.

Tech4Gods.com is a gadget review website run by a man named Daniel Barczak, whose content is "complemented by AI writing assistants." In this case, the photo that Smith had "infringed" was a photo downloaded from the royalty free, free-to-use website Unsplash, which 404 Media also sometimes uses. The image was not taken by Barczak, and has nothing to do with him, he told me in an email: "I certainly don't own any images on the web," he said. The original photographer did not respond to a request for comment sent through Unsplash. Barczak told me that he had been previously buying backlinks to his website for SEO, but said he wasn't aware of who was doing this or why. "I have no idea; it certainly has nothing to do with me," he said. "However, recently, someone has been building spammy links against my site that I have been dealing with." "I have mastered on-page SEO, but unfortunately, I buy links due to a lack of time," he added. "In the past, I had a bad link builder. I wonder if it's him going mad at me for letting him go It's hard to say the web is massive, and everyone can link whenever they want." Link building is an SEO strategy devised to get outside websites to link to your website. He added that "bad links may damage [the site's] profile in Google's eyes." In this case, however, the "lawyers" were threatening a well-established tech blogger, and a link from Tedium would likely be treated as a positive in the search algorithm's eyes.

Microsoft is working on a new feature for its Edge browser that will let you limit the amount of RAM it uses. From a report: Leopeva64, who is one of the best at finding new Edge features, has spotted a new settings section in test builds of the browser that includes a slider so you can limit how much RAM Edge gets access to. The RAM slider appears to be targeted toward PC gamers, as there is a setting in Canary versions of Edge that lets you limit the amount of RAM when you're playing a PC game or all of the time. While the slider lets you pick between just 1GB and 16GB on a system with 16GB of RAM, Microsoft warns that "setting a low limit may impact browser speed."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The George Carlin estate has settled its lawsuit with Dudesy, the podcast that purportedly used a "comedy AI" to produce an hour-long stand-up special in the style and voice of the late comedian. Dudesy's "George Carlin: Dead and Loving It" special, which was first uploaded in early January, gained hundreds of thousands of views and plenty of media attention for its presentation as a creation of an AI that had "listened to all of George Carlin's material... to imitate his voice, cadence and attitude as well as the subject matter I think would have interested him today." But even before the Carlin estate lawsuit was filed, there were numerous signs that the special was not actually written by an AI, as Ars laid out in detail in a feature report.

Shortly after the Carlin estate filed its lawsuit against Dudesy in late January, a representative for Dudesy host Will Sasso told The New York Times that the special had actually been "completely written by [Dudesy co-host] Chad Kultgen." Regardless of the special's actual authorship, though, the lawsuit also took Dudesy to task for "capitaliz[ing] on the name, reputation, and likeness of George Carlin in creating, promoting, and distributing the Dudesy Special and using generated images of Carlin, Carlin's voice, and images designed to evoke Carlin's presence on a stage." The resulting "association" between the real Carlin and this ersatz version put Dudesy in potential legal jeopardy, even if the contentious and unsettled copyright issues regarding AI training and authorship weren't in play.

Court documents note that shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Dudesy had already "taken reasonable steps" to remove the special and any mention of Carlin from all of Dudesy's online accounts. The settlement restrains the Dudesy podcast (and those associated with it) from re-uploading the special anywhere and from "using George Carlin's image, voice, or likeness" in any content posted anywhere on the Internet. Archived copies of the special are still available on the Internet if you know where to look. While the settlement notes that those reposts are also in "violat[ion] of this order," Dudesy will not be held liable for any reuploads made by unrelated third parties.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump. The text of the pending net neutrality order wasn't released today. The FCC press release said it will prohibit broadband providers "from blocking, slowing down, or creating pay-to-play Internet fast lanes" and "bring back a national standard for broadband reliability, security, and consumer protection."

[...] Numerous consumer advocacy groups praised the FCC for its plan today. Lobby groups representing Internet providers expressed their displeasure. While there hasn't been a national standard since then-Chairman Ajit Pai led a repeal in 2017, Internet service providers still have to follow net neutrality rules because California and other states impose their own similar regulations. The broadband industry's attempts to overturn the state net neutrality laws were rejected in court.

Although ISPs seem to have been able to comply with the state laws, they argue that the federal standard will hurt their businesses and consumers. "Reimposing heavy-handed regulation will not just hobble network investment and innovation, it will also seriously jeopardize our nation's collective efforts to build and sustain reliable broadband in rural and unserved communities," cable lobbyist Michael Powell said today. Powell, the CEO of cable lobby group NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, was the FCC chairman under President George W. Bush. Powell said the FCC must "reverse course to avoid years of litigation and uncertainty" in a reference to the inevitable lawsuits that industry groups will file against the agency.

President Joe Biden has become the first sitting U.S. president to post on a decentralized networking protocol. As reported by The Verge, President Biden's Threads account "has begun using Meta's ActivityPub integration," which allows for content, data, and followers to be ported between networks -- the basis that makes up the "fediverse." From the report: The account turning on fediverse posting comes only a couple of weeks after Threads rolled out its beta ActivityPub integration for users in the US, Canada, and Japan. Biden may not be able to see replies and follows as they pour in from the fediverse -- and with some servers blocking connections to Meta, not everyone there will be able to see his posts -- as those features weren't part of Threads' integration when it opened up beta testing last month. But his posts are available, and he'll see likes coming in from there. Or whoever is running the Presidential Threads account will, anyway.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will vote to reinstate landmark net neutrality rules and assume new regulatory oversight of broadband internet that was rescinded under former President Donald Trump, the agency's chair said. The FCC told advocates on Tuesday of the plan to vote on the final rule at its April 25 meeting. The commission voted 3-2 in October on the proposal to reinstate open internet rules adopted in 2015 and re-establish the commission's authority over broadband internet.

Net neutrality refers to the principle that internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites. FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel confirmed the planned commission vote in an interview with Reuters. "The pandemic made clear that broadband is an essential service, that every one of us -- no matter who we are or where we live -- needs it to have a fair shot at success in the digital age," she said. "An essential service requires oversight and in this case we are just putting back in place the rules that have already been court-approved that ensures that broadband access is fast, open and fair."

The White House plans to renew a push in April to convince Congress to extend an internet subsidy program used by 23 million American households just weeks before it runs out of money, officials said. From a report: In October, the White House asked for $6 billion to extend the program through December 2024, but Congress has not funded it, potentially putting millions of households at risk of losing their internet service. Federal Communications Commission Chair Jessica Rosenworcel told lawmakers in a letter that April is the last month participants will get the full subsidy, with partial subsidies in May.

Congress previously allocated $17 billion to help lower-income families and people impacted by COVID-19 gain broadband access through a $30 per month voucher to use toward internet service. "We have come too far to allow this successful effort to promote internet access for all to end," Rosenworcel said on Tuesday. "Despite the breadth of this support and the urgent need to continue this program to ensure millions of households nationwide do not lose essential internet access, no additional funding has yet been appropriated."