Lawmakers lament detriment to startups of Trade Rep’s digital trade reversal
After overcoming childhood shyness in the warmth of his local Caribbean-owned barbershop, Royon Jeffrey knows the power of the beauty industry firsthand. He set out to create ListedB, an online marketplace for beauty industry professionals. We spoke to him about the financial opportunity within the industry, navigating capital access and investors, and his desire to empower small businesses owners.
Foreign nations are saddling U.S. companies — including startups — with discriminatory burdens.
MegaMinds was created out of a need to make learning more creative, fun, and hands-on for students. In our conversation with Co-Founder and CEO Eric Tao, we learned about the growing popularity of immersive learning, the tricky regulatory landscape for a product like MegaMinds, and what it’s like for many first-time entrepreneurs to build businesses.
Continuing to Make the Net Neutrality for Startups Case. This week, we filed our reply comments to the FCC on proposal to roll back the net neutrality rules put in place in 2015, a docket that has now seen more than 21 million comments.
Engine looks forward to working with President Trump’s for nominee Andrei Iancu for the position of the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). As a non-profit advocacy and research organization that supports startups, we understand what an important position the Director of the USPTO is to protecting the innovation ecosystem.
Last Day to Vote for SXSW Tech Policy Panels. Voting on SXSW panels ends today, so it’s your last chance to vote for tech policy panels at next year’s SXSW. Get caught up on the offerings with our guide, which includes panels on everything from patent trolls, to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to artificial intelligence.
Trade Talks Should Keep Startups in Mind. Representatives from the U.S., Canada, and Mexico met in D.C. this week to kick off talks to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement. You may think of things like auto manufacturing and government contracts when you hear NAFTA, but it has major implications for U.S. startups that do business abroad or plan to do business abroad.
Tech Community Comes to Section 230’s Defense. Thousands of Internet companies rely on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects platforms from being held legally responsible for what their users say online. That’s why we and more than 30 companies, groups, and organizations—including Copia, Automattic, Cloudflare, GitHub, Medium, Patreon, and Reddit—wrote to two lawmakers looking to narrow Section 230’s protections in the name of curbing sex trafficking. In a letter this week, we reiterated the tech community’s demonstrated commitment to the laudable fight against sex trafficking but explained that the new bill from Sens. Rob Portman and Richard Blumenthal would have unintended devastating consequences for the Internet.
Startups Oppose Senate Bill Creating Exceptions to Bedrock Internet Law. A bipartisan group of Senators introduced legislation this week that would undermine Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), the fundamental intermediary liability law that protects Internet companies from being held legally responsible for what their users say on their platform. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act has the admirable goal of cracking down on sex trafficking online, however, injecting an exception like this in to CDA 230 would create a huge litigation risk for early stage companies that could drastically diminish investment in the sector. While we continue to work with legislators and victims groups to curb the horrific practice of sex trafficking, Engine has opposed this legislation. If you are a startup, sign onto our letter and tell Congress not to undermine the protections that created the Internet. Also, check out our op-ed with the Charles Koch Institute on the importance of CDA 230 to the success and growth of the Internet.
Engine applauds Senators Lee and Leahy for their continued work on updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). The Lee-Leahy bill will modernize the nation’s electronic privacy laws and bring protections against warrantless searches into harmony with the technological realities of today.
Alexa Accelerator Names Nine Startups for Inaugural Amazon and Techstars Program. Amazon, in partnership with Techstars, welcomed the first class of its new Alexa Accelerator. Amazon will incubate nine startups for three months, providing seed money, mentorship opportunities, and access to University of Washington researchers. The Alexa Accelerator is an initiative spun out of the Alexa Fund, and is specifically geared toward incubating startups that work on applying machine learning and artificial intelligence to voice platforms. Amazon’s Alexa product line utilizes voice recognition to allow people to interact with a robot personal assistant, and the company has been heavily investing in technology to help bolster the products.
The First Comment Period for the FCC NPRM on Net Neutrality Closes. Monday was the deadline for the first round of comments to be filed with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regarding its notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that addresses the 2015 Open Internet Order. Engine was one of over 10 million groups and individuals to file comments with the Commission. The deadline for reply comments extends to August 16. In its submission, Engine explained the need for clear regulations to protect startups from threatening behavior by ISPs and incumbents. “The NPRM’s indifference to the ISP abuse of their terminating access monopoly power is incredibly dangerous to entrepreneurship. Without bright line rules banning anti-competitive ISP practices, startups will be put at a structural disadvantage in competing with well-heeled incumbents, causing venture investment to dry up and innovation to suffer,” Executive Director, Evan Engstrom, wrote. The White House, which has been mostly mum on the topic, also weighed in on the debate this week. “The best way to get fair rules for everyone is for Congress to take action and create regulatory and economic certainty,” deputy White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, said in a statement.
Engine Testifies Against Bad Patents at House Judiciary Committee Hearing. On Thursday, Engine’s President, Julie Samuels, testified in front of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet on the impact of bad patents on American businesses. Julie spoke to the weaknesses in the patent system and the progress that has been made to weed out low quality patents by Congress, the courts and the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Patent trolls, armed with low-quality patents, are able to extract settlements from startups and small businesses, adversely impacting the companies that can least afford these threats. Since startups and small businesses are key drivers of innovation and job growth, troll threats against them are particularly stifling to American economic growth and prosperity.
Watch the hearing here. And read Julie’s full testimony here.
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