Politics and Law

Christopher Norberg, defendant in a lawsuit accusing him of libel for a negative review he posted on Yelp.

(Credit: Christopher Norberg)

San Franciscan Christopher Norberg went to a chiropractor after being injured in a car accident in 2006. After a disagreement with the chiropractor over billing, he posted a negative review of the business on Yelp suggesting that the doctor was dishonest. Now he is facing a defamation lawsuit that could chill self-expression on the popular gripe Web site.

"If Christopher loses then anyone on Yelp who writes a negative review better be careful," said Michael Blacksburg, an attorney representing Norberg. "This strikes at the heart of Yelp's business model and other Web sites that provide a bulletin board for people to state what they think of businesses in their community."

"This is clearly Christopher Norberg's version of conversations with the doctor relating to a billing dispute and his opinion of how the doctor was behaving," Blacksburg said on Tuesday. "This is clear opinion that falls squarely within constitutionally protected speech."

Eric Nordskog, the attorney for chiropractor Steven Biegel, said the case comes down to whether Norberg's comments are considered statements of fact or opinions.

"Dr. Biegel has no problem with people expressing their views and opinions about his service," Nordskog said. "But there is a line where if someone, even on Yelp or on the Internet, publishes a false statement of fact as opposed to an opinion, then that person can and should be held responsible for their words."

Norberg, a 26-year-old custom-furniture builder, was advised not to discuss the case publicly, but has a Web site with related information. Biegel did not return a call seeking comment.

The two sides are scheduled to sit down for court-required mediation on Friday, but Norberg said he isn't optimistic that the case will be resolved then. A March 2 trial date is on the San Francisco Superior Court calendar.

The lawsuit, filed February 25, 2008, alleges that Biegel has suffered loss of reputation and business as a result of the review and seeks punitive damages. According to the lawsuit, the review allegedly contained false statements and inaccuracies that suggested Biegel was dishonest and accused him of fraudulent billing practices.

Billing dispute at center
Norberg was treated twice by Biegel before a friend of his told him he had had billing problems with Biegel's office, he wrote in his review. Norberg, who said he did not have medical insurance, was not asked to pay for the visits because Biegel's office said it would try to bill his auto insurance company instead, the review said. Even though the insurance company refused to pay, Norberg did not initially receive a bill from Biegel, he said.

In the meantime, Norberg began getting treatment from another chiropractor who suggested he sue the driver of the car that hit him, Norberg's review said. Norberg eventually settled the case, the review said.

After learning that Biegel's bill to the auto insurer was $550 instead of $125, which was the amount quoted for two visits, Norberg called Biegel, his Yelp review said. Norberg said that Biegel demanded he pay $550 during that phone call, but then said he would waive the fee entirely, according to the review. Biegel later called Norberg and explained that his office bills insurers at a higher rate than patients who pay for service directly because of the higher office costs in dealing with the paperwork and delays in receiving payment, court documents said.

Biegel's office then made a call to Norberg's auto insurance company and learned about the settlement and then called Norberg and demanded he pay $125, the lawyers said. Norberg paid the bill and posted a review of Biegel with a one-star rating on Yelp on November 16, 2007.

"I didn't feel comfortable with their tactics," Norberg wrote in his review after earlier writing that the office had been aggressive in trying to get him to come back for treatment before the billing dispute. Biegel "couldn't give me a straight answer as to why the jump in price...He called me back to cover his ass...(and says) he runs a business and would stick it to insurance companies," the review said.

"I don't think good business means charging people whatever you feel like hoping they'll pay without a fuss. Especially considering that I found a much better, honest chiropractor," Norberg wrote at the end of his review.

In a letter sent to Norberg dated December 7, 2007, Biegel asked Norberg to remove the review, saying it "unjustly characterizes me as unethical and dishonest" and attributed the dispute to a misunderstanding of his office procedures.

"I did not do anything unethical or illegal in our entire dealings," Biegel wrote. "It has never been my policy or intention to take advantage of an individual or insurance company."

On January 8, Norberg got a letter from Biegel's lawyer threatening him with a lawsuit over the review and two days later Norberg removed the review and rating from the site. The following month, Biegel sued.

Biegel, who was a "sponsored" advertiser on Yelp and encouraged customers to write reviews on the site, received about as many referrals per month from Yelp while the review was up as before, but fewer after the lawsuit was filed, Blacksburg said, citing Yelp documents.

A Yelp spokeswoman said she did not know of any other cases in which a business sued a Yelp user over a negative review.

"We won't comment on specific litigation, but in general, lawsuits like this are pretty uncommon," Yelp spokeswoman Stephanie Ichinose wrote in an e-mail.

"Most businesses engage constructively with customers who haven't had a good experience," she wrote. "When that doesn't work, they recognize that they can't always make one hundred percent of their customers happy one hundred percent of the time, and don't risk the huge expense and potential negative publicity that comes with suing one of their customers."

Accusing a business owner of unethical conduct would constitute defamation unless it is true, said Aaron Morris, an Internet defamation attorney in Santa Ana, Calif. However, if the defendant can successfully prove that posting the statement was a matter of public good then the plaintiff would have to show malice and that the defendant knew the statement was false or had reason to believe it was false, he added.

"You can have something that would normally constitute defamation but if it's a matter of public interest it is entitled to protected status," Morris said. "Some courts will say that if you are posting it in a forum where people would be interested, they are going to Yelp specifically to find out about the doctor...then it enjoys a heightened level of privilege."

Not much legal precedent has been set on Internet defamation involving consumer review Web sites. Two similar cases decided in August in California had conflicting outcomes. In European Spa v. Kerber, the First District Court of Appeal ruled that negative reviews of a spa posted on Yelp and Yahoo did not meet the public interest element to merit special status in a defamation lawsuit, Morris wrote in an entry on his blog. In a separate case, European Spa v. Kerber, the Second District Court of Appeal granted an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) motion filed by someone who had posted a negative review of a dentist on Citysearch.

"If enough of the cases come back where individual posters are being sued, that could chill the desire of people to go on and post their opinion," Morris said. "But all they have to do to protect themselves is to make sure there is some truth to what they are saying."

Updated 1:40 a.m. PST Jan. 7 with background on other cases.

As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama won applause from legal adversaries of the recording industry. Stanford law professor Larry Lessig, the doyen of the "free culture" movement, endorsed the Illinois senator, as did Google CEO Eric Schmidt and even the Pirate Party.

That was then. As president-elect, one of Obama's first tech-related decisions has been to select the Recording Industry Association of America's favorite lawyer to be the third in command at the Justice Department. And Obama's pick as deputy attorney general, the second most senior position, is the lawyer who oversaw the defense of the Copyright Term Extension Act--the same law that Lessig and his allies unsuccessfully sued to overturn.

Obama made both announcements on Monday, saying that his picks "bring the integrity, depth of experience and tenacity that the Department of Justice demands in these uncertain times." The soon-to-be-appointees: Tom Perrelli for associate attorney general and David Ogden for deputy attorney general.

Tom Perrelli

(Credit: Jenner and Block)

Campaign rhetoric aside, this should be no surprise. Obama's selection of Joe Biden as vice president showed that the presidential hopeful was comfortable with someone with firmly pro-RIAA views. Biden urged the criminal prosecutions of copyright-infringing peer-to-peer users and tried to create a new federal felony involving playing unauthorized music.

Perrelli is currently a partner in the Washington offices of Jenner and Block, where he represented the RIAA in a a slew of cases, including a high-profile bid to unmask file sharers without the requirement of a judge reviewing the evidence first. Verizon initially lost to the RIAA, but eventually prevailed in 2003 when a federal appeals court ruled the record labels' strategy under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was unlawful.

Perrelli has represented the RIAA in other lawsuits against individual file sharers. One filed in Michigan accuses a university student of distributing "hundreds of sound recordings over his system without the authorization of the copyright owners." A lawsuit against a Princeton University student makes similar arguments; Perrelli and his colleagues also tried to force Charter Communications to give up the names of 93 file-trading subscribers.

David Ogden

(Credit: WilmerHale)

A 2004 summary of a Boston lawsuit written by Harvard's Berkman Center--which opposed the RIAA in this and a current case--quotes Perrelli as telling a federal judge that it would be easy to determine who was using a wireless network to share music. "It is correct that the actual downloader may be someone else in the household," he said, but any errors can be determined easily after a "modest amount of discovery."

An article on his law firm's Web site says that Perrelli represented SoundExchange before the Copyright Royalty Board--and obtained a 250 percent increase in the royalty rate for music played over the Internet by companies like AOL and Yahoo. Perrelli previously worked in the Clinton Justice Department.

An article in Legal Times titled "Building an Entertainment Beast in D.C." says that in 2002, Perrelli used Jenner's reputation as an appellate law firm to "get a meeting with officials at the RIAA, at a time when Internet file-sharing entities like Napster were threatening the music business." A year later, in 2003, the law firm recruited Steven Fabrizio, previously the RIAA's senior vice president for business and legal affairs, and business began booming (the RIAA also used the Jenner law firm to write a friend-of-the-court brief in the copyright extension lawsuit).

If confirmed by the Senate, which is unlikely to pose much of a hurdle, Perrelli would oversee the department's civil division, the antitrust division, and the civil rights division.

Obama's choice for deputy attorney general--the second-in-command at Justice--is David Ogden, who's currently a partner at the WilmerHale law firm.

As assistant attorney general for the civil division, Ogden was responsible for organizing the defense of the Child Online Protection Act, or COPA, an antiporn law that has been challenged by the ACLU in court for more than a decade with no resolution. His department also successfully defended the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ogden's biography at Wilmer Hale says only that he represents the "media and Internet industries, as well as major trade and professional associations," without listing details. The Justice Department, barring exceptional cases, has a duty to defend laws enacted by Congress.

Perrelli, on the other hand, went out of his way to recruit the RIAA as a very lucrative client: his law firm bills some partners' time at a princely $1,000 an hour.

During his confirmation hearing, it will be instructive to see if senators ask whether his zealous anti-file sharing advocacy can make him an objective civil servant--especially when these same politicians want the Justice Department to sue peer-to-peer pirates at taxpayer's expense. (Then again, if that proposal becomes law, Perrelli's surely the right man for the job.)

It will also be instructive to see if this week's news prompts some of the RIAA's longtime adversaries to moderate their enthusiasm for Obama's technology policies.

As supporters of President-elect Barack Obama in Washington try to downplay near-term expectations for his administration's chief technology officer, an Obama aide on Tuesday said reports of an imminent announcement are incorrect.

With nearly of all Obama's cabinet named, recent speculation has swirled around whether news about the CTO post would be next, with one report saying to expect an announcement on Wednesday. The member of Obama's transition team, who asked not to be named, said that would not happen.

Still unclear are key details: who will fill the role, and what, exactly, the CTO will be tasked with doing. One possibility is that the CTO could be involved with, or even lead, policy groups handling topics as wide-ranging as Net neutrality, health information technology, and cybersecurity. Another is that the job could be limited to overseeing federal technology efforts--an area that could certainly use some improvement.

Or the position may fall somewhere in between, involving guiding other agencies in their use of technology. Creating an entirely new cabinet position with robust jurisdiction--and addressing consequential challenges such as turf wars, bureaucratic reorganization, and the development of a unique mentality for the office--could be too much to handle while trying to create an economic stimulus package, said Ed Black, president and CEO of the Computer and Communications Industry Association.

"It is not clear to me (that) they may try to do it all at once," Black said. "If they do, I think it can succeed, it will just take a degree of attention and focus that they might not want to dedicate at the outset, with this much going on."

Former InterActiveCorp executive and Obama technology transition team member Julius Genachowski has been considered a strong contender for the CTO role, though he is also seen as a top choice for chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. The Washington Post reported last month that Genachowski may be more interested in the FCC position because of the CTO's limited responsibilities.

"There does seem to be some belief (that) if he wants (the chairmanship), he'll get it," said David Kaut, a telecommunications, media, and tech policy analyst for the firm Stifel Nicolaus, who donated money to Obama. "The FCC is going to be the big player, when it comes to making and implementing policy, but depending on how much weight Obama wants to give the CTO, they could be a player as well."

The FCC may have immediate jurisdiction over issues like broadband deployment, Kaut said. While broadband deployment may not be a part of the stimulus package currently under development, Obama has indicated that it will be part of his plan for economic recovery.

"Technology seems to have fallen down the list of priorities, but I think they see it as a key to long-term competitiveness and growth," Kaut said. "The Democrats and Obama see a need for much more proactive policy to make broadband a driving force of U.S. competitiveness."

Other potential candidates for the CTO position have experience spanning government and industry, including Jeffrey Bezos, Amazon.com's CEO, and Blair Levin, managing director for Stifel Nicolaus, the former chief of staff for the FCC chair in the mid-1990s, and a member of Obama's technology transition team.

The transition team has also brought on Washington, D.C.'s own CTO, Vivek Kundra, as a technology policy adviser, and he's another potential candidate for the national CTO position.

Steve Moore, the president and CEO of the Washington, D.C., Economic Partnership, says Kundra's understanding of technology has been critical to stimulating the city's economic growth.

"The power behind social-networking sites--(Kundra is) taking that and plugging it into business," Moore said. "It's not just a cooler marketing tool; it's a fundamental change in the way you do things. Can that play nationally? I think that's the question all of us are asking."

In what amounts to a thinly veiled legal threat, the Chinese government has intensified its campaign against sexually explicit material online by instructing companies, including Google, to curb the availability of pornography.

Monday's announcement from a collection of seven government agencies singles out 19 sites as unlawfully providing access to "vulgar content." On the list: Google's Web search and image search, Baidu.net and the company's blogging site, and Sohu.net. (Google has denied any wrongdoing.)

The announcement from the State Council Information Office is billed as a "nationwide anti-crime" initiative, and urges the public to report illicit posts and Web sites. The state-controlled China Daily said that the companies named on the list "have been found to spread pornography and threaten youth's morals." It also warns that a regulatory crackdown may be coming.

While politically themed Internet censorship in China has received most of the attention--news sites and human rights sites are frequently restricted--the country's ruling Communist Party has long been interested in stamping out smut too. A CNET News article from as far back as 1996 said that Chinese Internet users were asked to "sign a set of rules that makes it illegal for users to produce or receive pornography."

More recently, the public security ministry said in 2007 that it would target porn, online strip shows, and even erotic stories. Some of the electronic barriers came down during the Olympics last year, only to reappear in the last few weeks.

Along the way, Chinese officials have made some bizarre statements. At an international Internet summit in Athens, a government representative told an incredulous audience: "I've heard people say that the BBC is not available in China or that it's blocked. I'm sure I don't know why people say this kind of thing. We do not have restrictions at all." (That statement would come as a surprise to Falun Gong practitioners.)

If this were simply political speech, no doubt members of the U.S. Congress would be tempted to convene ritual hearings where China, Google, and various other companies could be ceremoniously denounced in front of the cameras. But because we're talking about porn, a Senate resolution applauding China's censorial policies is probably more likely.

Caption: Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman speaks to delegates at Republican convention last year.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET)

Meg Whitman has been talked about as long ago as March 2008 as a candidate for governor of California. Now there's more evidence the former eBay CEO will actually run.

The latest news that's fueling speculation is that Whitman, 52, resigned from the boards of eBay, Procter & Gamble, and Dreamworks SKG. Her spokesman said Monday that the resignation was for personal reasons, and carefully did not confirm--or deny--any gubernatorial ambitions.

Whitman had become an adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign, and enthusiastically endorsed him during the party's convention in St. Paul, Minn., last year. Whitman's message at the time: "Higher taxes encourage wasteful spending, demonstrate government's inability to choose among competing priorities, and destroy your prosperity."

That positions the billionaire executive as one of the better-known, albeit politically untested, Republican candidates who could succeed outgoing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2010. He's scheduled to be retired by term limits.

Possible primary rivals include State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, another Silicon Valley exec who already holds a statewide office. He founded SnapTrack, a cell phone locating company, and sold it to Qualcomm for $1 billion in January 2000, and also worked in the Bush administration's National Security Council. Another GOP rival could be Tom Campbell, a former U.S. congressman and dean of the business school at University of California, Berkeley.

Democrats that could be contenders in the general election include Attorney General Jerry Brown, who was already governor 30 years ago, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. So is current U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, assuming she's not entirely satisfied by her new job as head of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.

Crowd control at President-elect Barack Obama's January 20 inauguration ceremony will present quite a challenge: On top of the 240,000 ticketed guests who will descend upon the National Mall that day, millions more are expected to join. Ten thousand charter buses will converge on the Washington area. Metro riders have been warned to be prepared "to stand in close proximity to several thousand people."

To manage all of those people, inauguration organizers are turning to text messaging and Twitter.

In an advisory released Monday, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies warned that making calls from cell phones that day may be difficult and that critical messages should be sent via text message.

The organization is also urging inauguration-goers to check out the District of Columbia's inaugural Web site. There visitors can sign up for Alert DC, through which DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management sends text notifications and updates during a major crisis or emergency.

For help navigating the crowded streets of Washington that day--emergency or otherwise--the Presidential Inauguration Committee has set up a Twitter account. It is currently updated with official logistical and scheduling information, and on the day of the ceremony it will be regularly updated with transportation, weather, and event information.

Apple's App Store also boasts at least one iPhone application to help spectators survive the hectic day.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business organizations filed suit against U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff last week, complaining that the Homeland Security Department cannot legally require federal contractors to use its online worker verification database.

Beginning January 15, 2009, the department will require certain federal contractors and subcontractors to use its E-Verify system, an online database run by the Homeland Security Department and the Social Security Administration against which employers can check a person's work status. Use of the system is voluntary, but President George Bush signed an executive order earlier this year requiring federal contractors to electronically verify their workers' employment eligibility.

The lawsuit, filed on December 23 in the U.S. District Court for Maryland's southern division, asks the court to declare the executive order and subsequent rule changes to be illegal and void, since the president's order is in direct contradiction to the law, which says that no person or entity shall be compelled to participate in the E-Verify program. The only exemptions are federal agencies, the legislative branch, and certain immigration law violators.

Along with the chamber, the plaintiffs in the case include the Associated Builders and Contractors, the Society for Human Resource Management, the American Council on International Personnel, and the HR Policy Association.

The rule change will apply to all new hires for federal contractors with projects exceeding $100,000 and for sub-contractors with projects exceeding $3,000. It also will apply to certain existing employees who were hired after November 6, 1986, but the plaintiffs complained the "relative ambiguity" of the new rules will force many companies to electronically verify all of their employees hired after that date.

While Bush's executive order stated that the new requirement was "designed to promote economy and efficiency in federal government procurement," the lawsuit alleges it will create a "significant expense and time burden" on many of the plaintiffs' member companies. It also says the requirement "increases substantially the likelihood that many of plaintiffs' respective members will face expensive and time-consuming lawsuits brought by individuals who believe they have been discriminated against on the basis of race and/or national origin."

"The DHS intends to expand E-Verify on an unprecedented scale in a very short time frame and to impose liability on government contractors who are unable to comply," said Randy Johnson, vice president of Labor, Immigration and Employee Benefits at the U.S. Chamber. "Given the current economy, now is not the time to add more bureaucracy and billions of dollars in compliance costs to America's businesses."

More than 90,000 employers have signed up to use E-Verify, said DHS spokeswoman Laura Keehner, and the DHS' efforts to provide such programs are reflected in lower illegal immigration rates.

With the free system, "there is little excuse for companies to engage in hiring illegal workers," Keehner said. "This is just another delay tactic."

E-Verify, she said, shows "we have taken seriously the charge to gain back the trust of the American people to enforce immigration law."

As Congress and the next administration consider potential investments in a national broadband infrastructure, cable companies and phone companies are at odds over what should be considered high-speed broadband and how the investment should be made, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

Members of Congress are drawing up plans for broadband investment that may include corporate tax credits to build new wireless or landline infrastructure in regions with little or no service, the Journal reports. Cable companies would like to see the Federal Communications Commission define broadband download speed at 5 megabits per second, according to the newspaper, so that they would receive tax credits for increasing their infrastructure in regions of the country where that service of speed isn't yet available. The companies are also pushing for incentives to build out next-generation services, at 40 Mbps to 50 Mbps, in areas with only one broadband provider.

Meanwhile, the Journal reports, the Independent Telephone and Telecommunications Alliance, which represents midsize phone companies, is advocating for broadband download speed to be defined within a range of 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps. The slower standard would benefit phone companies with services slower than cable modems.

Certain wireless providers also stand to gain from a redefining of broadband. Clearwire in particular could benefit if wireless broadband download speed is designated as above 2 Mbps, since its WiMax network will qualify as broadband. Other wireless carriers have not planned major upgrades to their networks for before 2010, the Journal reports.

Along with tax credits, lawmakers are also considering government-backed grants for companies or local governments to build out broadband networks, according to the Journal.

The Telecommunications Industry Association, which represents equipment makers, is pushing for a $25 billion grant program for Internet service providers, the paper reports. Telecommunications companies would be unlikely to support proposals in which the money would instead go to state or local authorities, which would build broadband networks and open them up to competing service providers.

Some telecommunications firms earlier this month signaled their intent to be involved in shaping a national broadband strategy when they joined with public interest groups and other organizations to draw up goals for such a plan.

TechCrunch suggests that Facebook's chief privacy officer, Chris Kelly, will shortly announce his candidacy to become California's attorney general in 2010. Given how poorly Facebook has handled privacy, it's difficult to see why California voters should assume Kelly would do better in the higher matters of public office.

Specifically, California's attorney general is charged with the following responsibilities:

The attorney general represents the people of California in civil and criminal matters before trial, appellate and the supreme courts of California and the United States. The attorney general also serves as legal counsel to state officers and, with few exceptions, to state agencies, boards and commissions...

The attorney general also assists district attorneys, local law enforcement, and federal and international criminal justice agencies in the administration of justice...

In addition, the attorney general establishes and operates projects and programs to protect Californians from fraudulent, unfair, and illegal activities that victimize consumers or threaten public safety, and enforces laws that safeguard the environment and natural resources.

Kelly is an experienced and competent attorney, having worked at Baker & Mckenzie and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosatti before joining Facebook. But if he's in any way implicated in Facebook's failed foray into consumer privacy (Beacon, anyone?), and he will be by virtue of throwing his hat in the campaign ring, he needs to answer for his involvement in Facebook's privacy faux-pas before California voters should vote him their trust.

He has answered critics before, and it's possible that being on the front line of electronic privacy issues actually makes him a better candidate than most, even despite missteps. But he first needs to demonstrate that he's done more good than harm relative to protecting people from "fraudulent, unfair, and illegal activities" on Facebook before attempting to protect the broader California public as attorney general.

It's very possible that he can, but I've yet to hear that campaign speech.

Broadband development should not be stifled by federal regulation that intends to make networks more "neutral," the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is arguing through two papers released Monday.

The papers, the first in a series of five that will examine the impact of broadband on certain user groups and for certain purposes, argue that the federal government's current loose regulatory structure has enabled broadband to become a "life-altering tool" both for the general population and for senior citizens specifically.

"An estimated $60 billion has been invested in broadband infrastructure by the communications industry this year," William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber's vice president for environment, technology, and regulatory affairs, said in a statement. "Given these turbulent economic times, federal policy must continue to support this high-level of investment. This will spur job growth, innovation, and consumer choice."

The lack of Net neutrality laws or other federally-mandated regulations has spurred telecommunications companies to heavily invest in broadband infrastructure, according to the first paper, "Network Effects: An Introduction to Broadband Technology & Regulation." (PDF)

"Moving away from a pro-investment model would halt this organic progress and would have a devastating effect on the U.S. economy, investment, and innovation," it says. "Moreover, policies aimed at management practices are unnecessary and would serve only to chill innovation at the network level and at its edges, resulting in net consumer welfare losses."

Network owners need to be able to manage content flow in order to prioritize important data like 911 voice over IP calls, according to the paper, authored by Charles Davidson and Michael Santorelli of the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at New York Law School. The need to manage networks will only grow as the amount of services offered online grows, it says.

"A variety of proposals have been put forward to regulate the broadband sector under the guise of making the physical infrastructure more 'neutral' to the data flowing over it," the paper says, but such regulations would lessen incentives for investment in broadband and slow the development of content and applications.

The paper recommends legislators focus on targeting broadband funding in regions where it is most needed, reforming the Universal Service Fund, and embracing public-private partnerships to promote broadband deployment.

The second paper, "The Impact of Broadband on Senior Citizens," (PDF) recommends similar support for broadband deployment as well as educating seniors on the usefulness of broadband and expanding their options for getting online. If obstacles for adoption are removed, the paper says, broadband could transform senior life and senior care, just as the senior population is set to expand significantly.

The chamber will later release papers examining the impact of broadband deployment on telemedicine, education, and people with disabilities.