Ad company Turn said today that it will suspend its controversial practice of re-creating cookies that users have deleted, pending further review. "We have heard the concerns and are actively re-evaluating this method," Turn's general counsel and chief privacy officer Max Ochoa said today in a blog post. He says the company will change its practice by early February.

The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation is urging Verizon Wireless to abandon a tracking technology that enables ad networks to collect data and send targeted ads to mobile users -- even when they try to avoid tracking by shedding their cookies. "It is clear that Verizon does not understand the privacy risks it is imposing on its customers," the EFF says in a blog post this week.

Documents hacked last year from Sony's computer network revealed that the entertainment industry was trying to convince state law enforcement authorities, including Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood, to target Google for allegedly enabling piracy. Shortly after the documents were publicized, Google went to federal court and sought an order banning Hood from enforcing a subpoena for "millions" of documents. Google said the material requested by Hood appears to relate to copyright infringement by third parties -- including YouTube uploaders and Web site operators who appear in the search results.

Treating broadband as a utility "will undoubtedly impede the economic growth and innovation that have resulted in the broadband marketplace absent government interference," the Congressman from Ohio said in a statement issued yesterday, when he reintroduced a bill to define broadband access as an "information" service. Unlike utility services, information services aren't subject to common carrier rules.

President Obama's call for a national data breach notification law is being cheered by the Direct Marketing Association, which has long lobbied for a national standard. "DMA agrees with President Obama that the time has come to replace the patchwork of state laws," Peggy Hudson, DMA's senior vice president of government affairs, said in a statement issued on Monday evening.

The Authors Guild's doomed lawsuit against libraries finally petered out this week, when the writers' organization agreed to end the litigation. The move closes the door on a battle about digital books dating to 2011, when the Authors Guild alleged that universities participating in the HathiTrust (a joint digital book-storage project of 13 universities) infringed copyright by working with Google to digitize books in order to make them searchable.

The Federal Trade Commission hauled AT&T into court last October for throttling the mobile broadband speeds of wireless customers who pay for unlimited data. This week, the telecom fired back by asking for the lawsuit to be dismissed on the grounds that it's a "common carrier" and, therefore, not subject to FTC jurisdiction.

For the second year in a row, two Democratic lawmakers are proposing a net neutrality measure that would prohibit broadband providers from creating paid fast lanes. The Online Competition and Consumer Choice Act of 2015 introduced today by Sen. Patrick Leahy and Rep. Doris Matsui tasks the FCC with crafting regulations that would prohibit broadband providers from charging companies extra fees for faster delivery of their content. The measure also would prohibit Internet service providers from giving preferential treatment to their own material or material provided by their affiliates. Net neutrality advocates like the group Public Knowledge quickly praised the …

The Internet of Things might offer benefits to consumers, but also carries "significant privacy and security implications," Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said today at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Netflix might be paying Internet service providers extra fees to improve the quality of its streams, but the company wants it known that it nonetheless opposes online fast lanes. "If ISPs are allowed to sell fast lanes, competition for various Internet sites and services will become less about the value of what's offered and more about who can pay the most to deliver it faster," Ken Florance, vp, content delivery, writes in a new blog post, which comes as the Federal Communications Commission is preparing to issue a vote on new broadband regulations.