Internet Advocacy Group Ranks the Awful

The internet advocacy group NetChoice isn’t afraid to let its policy gripes be known.

Since June of 2009, the group has periodically released a list called iAWFUL  (opens in a new tab), or Internet Advocates’ Watchlist for Ugly Laws, which highlights legislation currently being floated that leaves something of an aftertaste for its members.

The “ugly laws” in question vary in nature, from state bills to overarching federal laws, but the list tends to draw attention to lower-profile measures that may not necessarily get the public’s attention—like, say, the Stop Online Piracy Act once did  (opens in a new tab).

This week, the group added a few new items to its list. Here’s what NetChoice is calling ugly this time around:

Internet sales tax legislation, which, in the U.S. Senate, has been attached  (opens in a new tab) to the renewal of the Internet Tax Freedom Act, a bill that recently passed the House with bipartisan support. “The only thing worse than an unfair bill is an unfair bill shoved through Congress using an unfair process,” NetChoice Executive Director Steve DelBianco said in a news release  (opens in a new tab).

State laws, including one in Delaware  (opens in a new tab), that allow loved ones to access private internet accounts after a person’s death. “The law reduces citizens’ privacy to zero when they die.  It even revokes express privacy choices you made while alive,” according to NetChoice says  (opens in a new tab).

The European Union’s controversial “right to be forgotten” court ruling  (opens in a new tab), which allows people to erase negative Google search results, as well as laws in Germany and Spain that would tax search engines for posting news excerpts. These laws, NetChoice says, should be treated as “barriers to trade” by Congress.

City and state regulations that NetChoice says would unreasonably burden or restrict the “sharing economy,” particularly ride-sharing services like Uber  (opens in a new tab) and vacation-rental services like Airbnb  (opens in a new tab).

The advocacy group, which counts eBay, Google, and Facebook among its members, ranks the legislation on its list by the bill’s level of severity and the likelihood that it will be implemented.

(iStock/Thinkstock)