Delaware has become the first state in the US to enact a law that ensures families’ rights to access the digital assets of loved ones during incapacitation or after death. Last week, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell signed House Bill (HB) 345, "Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets and Digital Accounts Act," which gives "heirs and executors" legal authority to take control of a digital account or device, according to Ars Technica.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said last month that, given the chance, he would take the opportunity to closely examine state laws that prevent communities from owning their own broadband. Now with two complaints filed with the FCC from North Carolina and Kentucky, the FCC has decided to ask the public what it should do with a public comment period.

President Barack Obama will not support the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 (PDF) recently passed by the Senate, according to a senior White House official speaking on background to Information Security Media Group.

A new Senate bill may force lawmakers to agree to expand the reach of sales taxes on out-of-state retailers, or see the end of a law that forbids states and cities from imposing a tax on internet access. As the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, this choice for lawmakers is due to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s handling of a bill called the Internet Tax Freedom Act.

A hearing related to the failed $75 million loan deal for former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's video game company 38 Studios that was supposed to take place yesterday (July 17) has been rescheduled for early August. Some of the key players in the deal were asked to attend, including Curt Schilling, Michael Corso - who represented the company as its legal counsel - and Thomas Zaccagnino, one of the company’s board members.

The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 passed the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 12 to 3 vote yesterday, clearing the way for the successor to CISPA to be put to a vote in the full Senate at some point this year.

In an editorial published in The Huffington Post today, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) put pressure on the FCC to keep Internet service providers from blocking or slowing access to certain websites. In his editorial Leahy said that the Internet needs its own rules to protect liberties much like the Bill of Rights.

Martin Carrier, head of the Canadian video game lobby group Alliance Numérique, says that cuts to tax credits and incentives for the video games industry in Quebec will likely drive companies away from the region to Ontario, The United States, or even Europe.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 293-123 to cut funding for NSA spying programs that are aimed at Americans. Late last night an amendment to a defense appropriations bill put forth by Reps. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), and Thomas Massie (R-KY) passed with wide support, though it still has to get the same approval in the U.S. Senate.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is pushing forward what some are calling a replacement for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act called the "Cybersecurity Information Protection Act" (CIPA). The bill offers many of the same solutions and shortcomings of the CISPA bill that the internet fought so hard to kill last year. The bill written by Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) will be up for consideration before the committee next week, according to Feinstein.

Lawmakers are not happy with the FCC's proposal to allow broadband providers to charge content providers extra money for faster access to their customers. This supposed fast lane approach has rubbed lawmakers the wrong way, according to The Wrap, prompting them to push legislation that bans "paid prioritization."

Game companies in Quebec are about to see their subsidies from the government evaporate. In an effort to get rid of the provincial government's deficit and cut spending, lawmakers in Quebec have decided to cut the generous subsidies they have given companies willing to move to and do business in the region.

According to a report in the French-Canadian publication La Presse, the Quebec government plans to cut as much as $500 million from the incentives it currently offers multinational businesses like Ubisoft. Ubisoft could lose as much as 20 percent of their benefits.

The Rhode Island House passed the $8.7-billion budget early Friday morning after a lengthy and contentious floor debate. The majority of arguments were about allocating a little over $12 million to make a payment on the bonds that funded the $75 million loan to now bankrupt developer 38 Studios. Despite the lengthy debate that kept lawmakers in the chamber after midnight, the budget passed by a vote of 63-12. The budget bill will now go to the Senate for what is expected to be quick approval.

The Rhode Island House is close to voting on an $8.7 billion budget plan that cuts corporate and estate tax, gets rid of the toll on the Sakonnet Bridge (a four-lane bridge spanning the Sakonnet River in eastern Rhode Island), and allocates millions to make the next payment on the 38 Studios bond debt.

Six or so of the missing 38 Studios investor letters have surfaced, according to the Providence Journal. The documents provide new information about all of the different companies and organizations that backed the bonds that funded the $75 million loan to 38 Studios.

Cranston, Rhode Island Mayor and GOP gubernatorial candidate Allan Fung is urging state lawmakers in Providence to pass two bills to prohibit the state from making payment on the failed 38 Studios investment.

During a State House press conference earlier in the week, Fung said that no payments should be made until there is a "thorough investigation" of the issue, including an allegation by one-time GOP congressional candidate Michael Riley that insider trading occurred.

Legislation proposed earlier this year that would prevent Rhode Island from repaying the 38 Studios bonds is finally being taken up by a House committee. House Oversight Chairwoman Karen MacBeth last week blasted Speaker Nicholas Mattiello in a vote for not letting the bill have a proper hearing.

Jon Brien was surprised when Steven Costantino, the chairman of the Rhode Island House Finance Committee asked him on the House floor to if he wanted to co-sponsor a big jobs bill in 2010. Brien, who was a state representative at the time, was on the outs with leadership after voting against House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox in the mid-session election of a new speaker that year. He was on talk radio often, lambasting House Democratic leaders and their allies for alleged "political shenanigans."

Earlier this year, it seemed like the new Rhode Island House Speaker Nicholas Mattiello and new House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Karen MacBeth were on the same page when it came to investigating went happened with the failed $75 million 38 Studios loan deal.

Earlier this week Rep. Bob Latta (R-OH) filed legislation that would prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from attempting to regulate broadband Internet service as a public utility under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. While the legislation is more of a dramatic public show of support for the idea that the FCC should not have the power to regulate anything, it's also interesting because the Congressman is "bankrolled" by lobbyists for the telecommunications industry.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said that time is running out for the Senate to pass its cybersecurity bill. He warned his fellow lawmakers in the chamber that the August recess is fast approaching and that the country needs a law in place as soon as possible.

“If we don’t have something moving by August, I think it gets lost in the haze, and it will be a very long time until we actually get a bill passed that will actually have an impact,” he said at a cybersecurity forum at George Washington University.

The California Senate voted Tuesday in favor of a constitutional amendment that would allow the Legislature to withhold pay from suspended lawmakers. The bill, SCA17, passed Tuesday by a vote of 31-3. The bill is a direct response to several California state lawmakers being indicted (separately in unrelated cases) on federal corruption charges. In March, the Senate voted to suspend Sens. Ron Calderon and Leland Yee (pictured, left), who face federal corruption charges, and Sen. Rod Wright, who was convicted for lying about living in his district.

The US House of Representatives passed a watered down version of the USA Freedom Act today, much to the chagrin of privacy advocate groups that pushed hard for its passage because it had real reforms to the NSA's vast surveillance and information gathering programs. This new version of the bill strips a lot of what was good from the bill and continues to let the NSA conduct business (for the most part) as usual. Rights groups and supporters of the original bill are deeply disappointed with what the House passed today.

East Bay Express has an interesting article on a California Congressional race where votes for the National Security Agency's budget and the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) are taking center stage. Eric Swalwell (pictured, left), the current U.S. Representative of California's 15th District (D), is taking heat from his opponent Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett.

If lawmakers in the state of Rhode Island decide sometime in the future not to pay down the debt associated with the 38 Studios loan, the entire state could end up getting a bad credit rating, which in turn could affect its ability to borrow for important projects.

An independent analyst who looked at the Rhode Island 38 Studios loan repayment plan said that defaulting on the debt related to the $75 million loan plus other penalties and interest would damage Rhode Island's bond rating to junk status and could harm the state's overall business climate.

The report from Minnesota-based SJ Advisors said that defaulting on the loan would bring increased borrowing costs and harm to the state's reputation, and could lead to a "contagion effect impacting other Rhode Island issuers and even taint the business environment."

This week a key House committee approved a package of NSA reforms that would end the spy agency's practice of collecting Americans' phone records. It took lawmakers nearly a year after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden disclosed the program's existence to do something about it.

The House Judiciary Committee voted 32-0 on Wednesday to rein in the NSA with the USA FREEDOM Act. The bill would place new requirements on the government when it comes to gathering, targeting and searching telephone metadata for intelligence purposes.

As expected the failed 38 Studios loan deal is a major issue in Rhode Island's election campaigns and primary challenges. Even as the Secretary of State is making headlines this week for launching an investigation into possible lobbying violations by 38 Studios, critics of Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis and Attorney General Peter Kilmartin on Tuesday jumped on the news by pointing out that both politicians dropped the ball during the loan deal approval timeframe.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is calling on the Internet community to support the USA Freedom Act and oppose other "supposed reform bills." The rights group is calling on the Internet community to strongly oppose reform bills like the FISA Improvements Act, which pretends to fix the problems with the NSA's mass surveillance spying programs but instead gives the agency and the government more power to continue spying (like bills from lawmakers like Representatives Mike Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger, and Senator Dianne Feinstein).

Here's a bizarre bit of polling reported on by the Wall Street Journal about the correlation between tattoos and video gamers. Apparently those who have a tattoo are also more inclined to be video gamers, though the folks responsible for the polling don't really understand why.

Pollsters also found that "Tattooed Americans" are more likely to be uninsured, live in a Republican congressional district, and voted for President Barack Obama in the past. The polling data also showed that there are far more tattooed people than there were 15 years ago.