Archive | Tag: advertising

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The Department of Justice has opened an inquiry into the settlement,
according to three people who have spoken with investigators. Such
inquiries don’t necessarily turn into formal investigations, though
some advocates are pressing the government to get involved. "We’d like to have them intervene and delay the settlement until the
antitrust issues get fixed," said John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog, a
nonprofit group that contacted the Justice Department about the
settlement a month ago.

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Earlier this month, Consumer Watchdog sent a letter to Attorney General
Eric Holder arguing that the deal between Google and the Author’s Guild
raises antitrust concerns and hasn’t been adequately scrutinized with
the public’s interest in mind. Consumer Watchdog objected to two components of the deal, arguing they
create barriers to entry for potential Google competitors, thereby
giving Google an unfair advantage in the nascent marketplace for
digital books.

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The Justice Department has begun an inquiry into
the antitrust implications of Google’s settlement with authors and
publishers over its Google Book Search service, two people briefed on
the matter said Tuesday. Lawyers for the Justice Department have been in conversations in recent
weeks with various groups opposed to the settlement, including the
Internet Archive and Consumer Watchdog.

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According to first quarter federal reports, Google
participated in lobbying efforts aimed at allowing the sale of
electronic medical records in the economic stimulus legislation. This contradicts the Internet giant’s earlier response to Consumer
Watchdog, a California-based, non-profit consumer education and
advocacy organization, that their claims against Google were "100
percent false."

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Google’s recent and far-flung attempt to digitize the world’s "orphan"
books, or out-of-print tomes that remain under copyright but whose
rights-holders cannot be found, may soon hit a roadblock in the form of
the U.S. Department of Justice, at least if a consumer group gets its
wish. John Simpson, a consumer advocate for Consumer Watchdog, a nonprofit
consumer advocacy organization, wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney General
Eric Holder asking the government to intervene in Google’s recent
settlement with The Authors Guild and the Association of American
Publishers (AAP).

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No
one knows more about us—our ailments, significant others, favorite
music, what we’re thinking about buying, and how much we spend—than our
search engines. Virtually all search engines gather information about
how searchers query, what they click, and where they wind up. This
personal information (i.e., IP addresses, cookies, session IDs) is
stored alongside queries for anywhere between 90 days and forever. "I
think most users simply don’t realize the amount of personal
information they provide," says John M. Simpson, a consumer policy
advocate with the nonprofit group Consumer Watchdog.

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Consumer advocacy groups, such as Patient Privacy Rights (PPR) and
Consumer Watchdog, warn that such online records could pose a threat to
patients’ health privacy rights. PPR says the most recent health IT
portion of the Senate version of the economic stimulus bill intoduces
loopholes that allow the sale and misuse of personal health information.

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