Dotgay criticized the ICANN board Tuesday for tabling its expected decision earlier this month on considering the Board Governance Committee's rejection of dotgay's appeals of Economist Intelligence Unit evaluations of the registry's application to have the .gay generic top-level domain designated as a community gTLD. The board removed consideration of the .gay issue from its agenda for its Aug. 9 meeting. The ICANN board is to meet again Sept. 17. Board consideration of the BGC's review of dotgay's case was seen as a necessary precursor to board consideration of now-former ICANN Ombudsman Chris LaHatte's report urging ICANN to designate .gay as a community gTLD (see 1608010063). “Ever since the collective gay community has stood up and asked for their own piece of the Internet with .GAY, every conceivable argument has been used to deny their efforts,” dotgay said in a news release. “The approach being used is divisive and contrary to the goals of ICANN's new gTLD program and aspirations of the LGBTQIA effort behind creating a community-operated .GAY.” Dotgay noted the similarity between its case and an independent review panel's recent finding that ICANN's accountability process in its consideration of gTLD applications by the Dot Registry amounted to a “rubber-stamp.” The Dot Registry case vindicates dotgay's “claims that the Economist Intelligence Unit's purportedly independent community priority evaluation reports were flawed, applied unequal standards and that dotgay's application has never been given appropriate consideration,” dotgay said. ICANN didn't comment.

The FTC detailed the agenda for a Sept. 15 event on how company disclosures to consumers about advertising claims, privacy practices and other information are tested and evaluated. In a Monday news release, the commission said it's "especially interested in learning about the costs and benefits of disclosure testing methods in the digital age." Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Chief Technologist Lorrie Cranor and Consumer Protection Bureau Director Jessica Rich will speak at the daylong workshop, which will feature academics, other FTC staff and representatives from technology companies. Twenty-two presentations will focus on cognitive models on how consumers process disclosures, methods and procedures to assess the effectiveness of such disclosures, whether people pay attention to various types of disclosures, how well they understand the disclosures and how disclosures affect consumers' decision-making processes. The event will also look at future research and case studies. The 9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. workshop, which will be webcast live, will be at FTC's Constitution Center auditorium, 400 7th St. SW.

Many consumers are financially cautious, which may mean "lukewarm holiday sales," but a plurality of those who are buying online are spending more, Berkeley Research Group reported. Fifty-seven percent of the 1,026 adults online the researcher polled in late June said they plan to spend about the same as last year on holiday gift-giving, 19 percent less and 15 percent more, the group said Thursday. Of the 90 percent of adults across all age groups who said they made at least one online purchase in the past year, 42 percent said their online spending increased from a year earlier, compared with 13 percent who said they spent less.

Backpage.com CEO Carl Ferrer, who has avoided handing over documents in a congressional inquiry into illegal online sex trafficking, "has no First Amendment right to ignore a subpoena for documents" about the classified online advertiser's business practices and should be denied a stay, said (in Pacer) the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Friday in a filing and addendum with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. The Senate panel has been tussling with Backpage for more than year to get documents about methods the company uses to screen out illegal sex trafficking on its website. After a U.S. District Court judge recently ordered Backpage to hand over documents, enforcing the panel's Oct. 1 subpoena, the company appealed to the D.C. Circuit, saying the subpoena endangered its First Amendment rights. The D.C. Circuit issued an administrative stay Aug. 12 temporarily blocking the subpoena without ruling on the merits of the case (see 1608170007). In its response in D.C. Circuit docket 16-5232, which was due Friday, the Senate panel said Ferrer has identified his First Amendment interests only "in sweeping generalities" and hasn't shown they outweigh the government's interests. "Merely affixing the 'editorial' label to Backpage's business practices does not imbue them with constitutional protection," it said. "In any case, evidence suggests ... that Backpage's editing practices -- for example, editing out incriminating material from advertisements for illegal transactions -- enjoys no constitutional protection." The panel said Ferrer's chances of prevailing on appeal are "remote." The CEO also hasn't established "any actual and non-theoretical irreparable injury likely to result" from producing the documents, the panel's response said. If the subpoena isn't enforced, it would hamper the panel's ability to complete its investigation and undermine the public interest, the filing said. Lawyers for Backpage didn't comment.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation lauded California Assembly Banking and Finance Committee Chairman Matt Dababneh's withdrawal of AB-1326, which would have altered the state's regulation of bitcoin and other currencies. The bill, which included amendments seen as requiring a wide swath of digital currency users to register with state agencies, “does not meet the objectives to create a lasting regulatory framework that protects and allows this industry to thrive in our state,” said Dababneh, a Democrat, in a statement. “More time is needed and these conversations must continue in order for California to be at the forefront of this effort.” Dababneh previously withdrew AB-1326 from consideration at the close of last year's legislative session, during which EFF first opposed the bill (see 1508180057). The group is “grateful” that Dababneh “recognized there were problems with the legislation and put the brakes on sending it through the legislature as its session winds down,” said legal fellow Aaron Mackey in a blog post Thursday. “The bill demonstrates that there are still too many technical and policy gaps in the current thinking about digital currencies and the need for regulation.” EFF “continues to believe that before lawmakers anywhere consider legislation regulating digital currencies, they need to better understand the technology at issue as well as demonstrating how the legislation actually benefits consumers,” Mackey said.

Uber accelerated its autonomous-vehicle ambitions, partnering with Volvo and acquiring self-driving trucks startup Otto. In a news release Thursday, Volvo announced a partnership with Uber to develop base vehicles incorporating autonomous driving technologies, “up to and including fully autonomous driverless cars.” In a blog post, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick revealed the Otto acquisition, which will see Otto co-founder Anthony Levandowski leading the combined company’s self-driving efforts in Pittsburgh, Palo Alto, California, and San Francisco, he said. The initiative will cover personal transportation, delivery and trucking, Kalanick said.

Twitter has suspended 235,000 accounts over the past six months for violating its policies on promoting terrorism, it said in a Thursday blog post. They're in addition to the 125,000 accounts suspended since mid-2015, for a total of 360,000 accounts suspended, it said. "Daily suspensions are up over 80 percent since last year, with spikes in suspensions immediately following terrorist attacks." The amount of time the accounts were on the site and the number of followers they've attracted "have all decreased dramatically," and Twitter has enhanced its ability to prevent them from returning, it said. The company said it expanded partnerships with nongovernmental organizations to counter violent extremism and used various technologies like spam-fighting tools to identify terrorist content. In a separate post, the company announced new filter and notification features. Its filter feature, the company said, can help users improve the quality of tweets by screening duplicate or automated tweets, but it doesn't filter content from people whom users follow. The company also said users can limit notifications "to only people they follow on mobile and twitter.com."

With autonomous vehicles approaching, the automotive industry needs “a hard reset” on advanced driver assistance systems architectures, said an ABI Research report Wednesday. As vehicles begin to drive and react to traffic on their own, autonomous systems will aggregate and process data from a variety of on-board sensors and connected infrastructure, said ABI. Benefiting will be vendors new to the industry and veterans including Nvidia, NXP and Mobileye, which all have announced centralized autonomous driving platforms, said the industry research firm. It said some platforms can handle up to 12 teraflops of data.

Microsoft's Windows 10 operating system "sends an unprecedented amount of usage data back" to the company, so it could face backlash from users whose privacy is being disregarded, said the Electronic Frontier Foundation in a blog post Wednesday. EFF Intake Coordinator Amul Kalia wrote that some of the information sent back includes location data; text, touch and voice input; visited webpages; and telemetry data such as programs run and for how long. He said Microsoft "claims" the data is used to "'personalize' the software by feeding it to the OS assistant called Cortana." Many users might find that service useful, he said, but many other users would want to opt out to preserve their privacy. "While users can opt-out of some of these settings, it is not a guarantee that your computer will stop talking to Microsoft’s servers," wrote Kalia, saying users can't opt out of providing telemetry data at all. While the company has said the data is aggregated and anonymized, Microsoft doesn't explain how or say how long data will be retained, he said. It needs to offer "real, meaningful opt-outs," among other changes in security updates, he added. If not, "Microsoft may find that it has inadvertently discovered just how far it can push its users before they abandon a once-trusted company for a better, more privacy-protective solution," said Kalia. Microsoft "is committed to customer privacy and ensuring that customers have the information and tools they need to make informed decisions," emailed a spokesman. "We listened to feedback from our customers and evolved our approach to the upgrade process. Windows 10 continues to have the highest satisfaction of any version of Windows."

The FTC approved a final order against Practice Fusion, resolving allegations the electronic health record company misled consumers (see 1606080010) into providing doctor reviews without telling them their feedback and personal information would be publicly posted on the internet, the commission said in a Tuesday news release. The commission, which OK'd the order 3-0, settled with the company in June. The settlement bars Practice Fusion from making deceptive statements in how it "uses, maintains and protects the privacy or confidentiality of the information it collects," FTC said. The company also must inform consumers in a clear way that it wants to make their information publicly available but get their "affirmative express consent" first, the commission said. Practice Fusion also can't publicly display any reviews it collected during the time period covered by the complaint, FTC added. In an updated blog post, the company announced the FTC's approval of the final order.