With more than a decade of service to the online retail community, Scott Silverman will be departing as Executive Director of Shop.org at the end of the week. As he prepares for his new role with an internet start-up company, Scott has spent some time reflecting on the past ten years in the industry. In [...]

With the upcoming August break in the Congressional schedule, NRF/Shop.org is undertaking a number of proactive initiatives to make the most of this time and position itself and our members’ interests for an extended campaign addressing consumer privacy and online marketing legislation this fall and in the next Congress. Updates (Conference call, 3 pm ET, Thursday, August 5) [...]

Privacy is a hot topic in Washington these days.  You might remember that the FTC published “Self-regulatory Principles” for Online behavioral advertising practices in early 2009.  Now Congressman Rick Boucher, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, is circulating draft legislation that adopts many of the concepts of the self-regulatory principles, [...]

Thank you to the many Shop.org members who visited Washington, DC, last week to participate in NRF’s Washington Leadership Conference.  There are important issues facing our industry and nothing speaks louder to lawmakers than seeing members of industry actively involved  in providing input on potential laws and regulations.    The larger context of any issue facing online retailers is [...]

President Obama recently named sitting Federal Trade Commissioner Jon Leibowitz to be the new Chairman of the FTC. As expected, we’re beginning to see the online privacy issue heat up in Washington, DC. We had our first glimpse into what the future of online privacy policy may look like from speeches by Chairman Leibowitz and [...]