Benjamin Franklin was more than just one of the country's Founding Fathers. He was also a blogger. At least that's how Franklin was described this morning during a Senate judiciary committee hearing about whether a reporter's shield law should exclude bloggers, citizen journalists and other nonprofessionals. The committee voted to pass the proposed law after rejecting an amendment proposed by Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) that would have defined journalists as people working for news organizations.

Another privacy policy, another misfire for Facebook. As part of supposed improvements to its service, starting today Facebook is asking all users to review and update their privacy settings. But that's not all that Facebook is doing. The company responsible for Beacon is now making its own privacy recommendations, which will take effect by default unless users change them. And in most cases, the recommendation will be that users over 18 share all information with "everyone" -- Facebook's 350 million users as well as search engines.

Dodging a bullet, Yahoo has convinced a federal district court judge to dismiss a privacy lawsuit brought by Chinese dissidents in exile. The lawsuit, brought last year by Cunzhu Zheng -- one of the leaders of the 1989 Tiannamen Square protests -- along with government critics Liu Guokai and Tao Jun, alleges that Yahoo violated a federal wiretapping law by revealing the identities of email account holders.

The federal judge who presided over the recent file-sharing lawsuit by the record labels against grad student Joel Tenenbaum has joined the roster of critics who are asking Congress to reform copyright law.

With the looming threat of new regulations, industry groups are stepping up attempts to convince officials that ad companies can protect Web users' privacy without government intervention. This week, the Interactive Advertising Bureau launched the "Advertising is creepy" campaign, aimed at educating consumers about online ad targeting. Additionally, the industry-funded think tank Future of Privacy Forum today unveiled potential logos to signify behavioral targeting.

Comcast's announcement this morning that it had agreed to purchase a majority stake in NBC is already raising the hackles of net neutrality advocates.

As promised, Comcast is making available bandwidth meters that will allow subscribers to see how much bandwidth they consume each month. For now, the meters are only available to subscribers in Portland, Ore. on a trial basis.

Count Arianna Huffington among those who doubt that Rupert Murdoch will pull News Corp's articles from Google's search index in favor of giving Bing exclusive access. "I'll gladly wager my share of The Huffington Post that this ain't gonna happen," she said this morning at the Federal Trade Commission workshop "How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age."