USIPS participates in the federal rulemaking process by submitting public comments on proposed regulations that affect digital rights, financial access, and Internet freedom.
Legislation
H.R. 8250 would force operating system providers to collect every user's date of birth and expose it to any application on the device through a mandatory programmatic interface. The mandate applies to all users, not only minors, and reaches every general-purpose computing device including phones, tablets, consoles, smart TVs, e-readers, and embedded devices.
Our Response
USIPS opposes H.R. 8250 and, as a matter of principle, all legislation imposing age verification on operating systems, devices, app stores, or platforms. The bill industrializes online surveillance by handing date-of-birth โ the single most useful re-identification field โ to every app, with no carve-out for adults, open-source maintainers, or hobbyists. We urge committee members to reject the bill and decline to co-sponsor any successor legislation following the same architecture.
Proposed Rule
Proposed fee adjustments to address the Copyright Office's decline from 60% to 41% cost recovery, including elimination of the Single Application and increases across registration, recordation, and special services.
Our Response
USIPS supports the fee increases and argues they may not go far enough. We urge fees closer to the 60% historical benchmark, flag that IT infrastructure costs will outpace the Office's conservative 3% inflation projection due to AI-driven hardware demand, and recommend a more aggressive cross-subsidy model charging corporate users more to keep individual creator fees low.
Proposed Rule
Proposed rule to remove "reputation risk" from the Board's supervisory framework, acknowledging it has been used to pressure banks into denying services to lawful businesses.
Our Response
USIPS supports the objective but argues the rule is insufficient: it only constrains the Board, not banks themselves. We propose affirmative fair access requirements, mandatory documentation for service denials, and a right of notice and appeal for affected businesses.