Tech Daily Dose

Jon McLaughlin Takes On 'Industry' At RIAA HQ

[This post is slightly off-topic for Tech Daily Dose, but it is Friday and I'm throwing caution to the wind. The text does, however, involve the Recording Industry Association of America, whose anti-piracy efforts I cover regularly, so perhaps it is slightly relevant.]

If you haven’t heard of singer-songwriter Jon McLaughlin and you live in Washington, D.C., cancel your plans tonight and see him at the 9:30 Club. You can also visit his Web site to hear a few tracks from his forthcoming album.

One song, which he performed at an intimate invite-only gathering at RIAA's headquarters this afternoon, might have hit the wrong chord had he not explained its true meaning. He told us that "Industry" is an angst-filled walk down memory lane -- not a ditty criticizing major music labels, as one might infer by listening to the lyrics.

When he croons "I've been beat by an industry I've never seen," he's talking about an early encounter with a local music producer, not his current deal with Island Records. "It's not about you guys," he assured the roomful of RIAA lobbyists and assorted staffers.

On a related note, this post would not be complete without mentioning RIAA's snazzy new downtown digs. The top-floor suite is decorated like a modern, minimalist boutique hotel. A bevy of brightly colored walls are interspersed with floor-to-ceiling glass. Flowing white drapes, sleek furnishings and high-end lighting fixtures transform the group's central conference room into a stellar performance space for special guests like McLaughlin.

As I toured the facility, I couldn’t help but notice that RIAA chieftains Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman have some of the best views in the city from their offices and an adjoining executive lounge. Top lobbyist Mitch Glazier's space is also worth noting because you can gaze out at the tip of the Washington Monument.

Furthermore RIAA HQ has an expansive outdoor area, perfect for summertime BBQs and watching fireworks on the Fourth of July (hint, hint).

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ICANN: .XXX Rejected

A divided ICANN board voted against a proposed .xxx ending for domain names that publish pornography on Friday. Nine board members, including Chairman Vint Cerf, voted to reject ICM Registry's latest offer, and five members voted for it. ICANN President Paul Twomey abstained from the roll-call vote. Read the full story in Technology Daily's PM edition.

Reactions were plentiful and a number of perspectives did not make it into the story, so here are a few:

Internet Commerce Association counsel Phil Corwin lauded ICANN's action. He told us immediately after the board's vote that his group opposed the deal because it would inevitably involve ICANN in "content regulation and other public policy responsibilities far beyond its narrow technical mandate."

Lauren Weinstein, co-founder of People For Internet Responsibility, strongly endorsed the decision to reject the top-level domain and commended ICANN for its work on the issue. Weinstein added that "controversies regarding 'adult entertainment' content on the Internet aren't going to vanish as a result of this vote."

Focus on the Family analyst Daniel Weiss cheered the board's decision. He said rejecting .xxx is "great news for families around the world." "This idea held out false hope for parents concerned with filth on the Internet," he said. "It's a strange notion to suggest that we can help kids by sanctioning, endorsing and proliferating the very material that threatens them."

The nonprofit Family Online Safety Institute was disappointed with the result. According to the organization, whose mission is to promote best practices, tools and methods for family online safety, the ruling "represents a step in the wrong direction and fails to offer the additional protection children need online."

FOSI CEO Stephen Balkam said the ICANN resolution erroneously asserted that .xxx "avoids the protection of vulnerable members of the community." He said the proposal was actually an important self-regulatory effort in the field of Web safety and "passing it up only hurts parents and children."

Meanwhile, ICANN board member Susan Crawford posted her vigorous dissent to the majority's decision on her blog. It's definitely worth checking out.

High-tech attorney Wendy Seltzer said she never thought .xxx was a good idea, but believes even more strongly "that ICANN shouldn't be in the business of judging 'good ideas' or making content-based judgments" about new TLDs. ICM's scheme would not cause technical problems in the root zone, and so should be entitled to its domain, she said on her blog.

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ICANN: Tech Daily 'Overdose' On .XXX

The group that oversees the Internet-addressing system has been meeting in Lisbon, Portugal this week on a variety of interesting issues but the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers has saved the hottest topic for the last day of the conference.

The ICANN board on Friday plans to decide the fate of a proposed .xxx ending for Web addresses that publish pornography. On Thursday, the organization held a public forum where fans and foes of the plan spoke out.

Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Diane Duke skewered ICM Registry and its president Stuart Lawley, who first proposed the domain suffix in 2000. She said the adult entertainment community, whom FSC represents, not only opposes ICM's plan "but it actively opposes the creation of a .xxx top-level domain."

ICANN board member Peter Dengate Thrush asked why members of the adult content sector who want to be a part of .xxx form a subset of FSC's community. Duke said she has not yet found anyone in her constituency who favors the virtual red-light district.

ICM outside counsel Robert Corn-Revere said FSC cannot be compared to other trade groups, like the Motion Picture Association of America, because it is a small California-based operation that got its start as a legal defense fund. "Their work in this area is valuable but it hardly qualifies them as the only trade association in the area," he said.

Lawley responded to criticism at the forum, saying ICM has demonstrated that .xxx will "bring concrete new value to the global name space and the Internet community as a whole by facilitating badly needed voluntary industry self-regulation." ICM has already received more than 77,000 pre-registrations for the .xxx domain.

Pre-registration has continued as ICM awaited the ICANN board's vote, with hundreds of requests coming in daily, he said. "This demonstrated support far outweighs the opposition generated by webmasters who are potentially not part of the defined community," he said.

Meanwhile, Phil Corwin, who represents the Internet Commerce Association, said his group does not have a position for or against the creation of the adults-only domain -- as long as it remains voluntary. The group does, however, object to contract terms that it feels would place ICANN in a position removed from its technical management role.

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ICANN: One World Trust Report

As reported in Monday’s Technology Daily PM edition, ICANN hired London-based consultancy One World Trust to conduct an independent review of the organization’s accountability and transparency. The trust’s report, which was released Thursday, concludes that ICANN is “very transparent” -- probably more so than any other global entity.

The 68-page document also identifies areas for improvement. All the details are available here. ICANN welcomes comment and feedback on the study via e-mail (transparency-2007@icann.org) or on its blog. The comment period closes April 27, ahead of the group’s June meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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Miss America Touts Web Safety

The newly crowned Miss America is looking to leave her mark on the Internet, just not the kind of mark some of her contemporaries left behind online.

Lauren Nelson is the midst of a nationwide tour to promote her official platform: Internet safety. The campaign took Nelson back to her home state of Oklahoma last week, where she spoke on the floor of the legislature in support of a measure that would prohibit registered sex offenders from accessing social networking sites like MySpace. The Edmond Sun has the scoop on her trip back home to Sooner country.

Nelson also made a pit stop in Virginia this week to promote her cause. She told The Bedford Bulletin she once was a near victim of an online predator during her teens. Now at 20, she's doubling as spokeswoman for the Safe Surfin' Foundation and the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

She's also been named an honorary deputy sheriff in Bedford County. Her fellow Safe Surfin' spokesperson, basketball star Shaquille O'Neal, is an honorary deputy U.S. Marshal. Officer Shaq is thinking about pursuing a full time law enforcement gig after basketball -- and he's pretty sure someone is going to want hire him. -- Michael Martinez

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'Keithies' Unveiled Friday On MSNBC

The announcement of the YouTube video awards prompted MSNBC's "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" to stake its share of the same turf and establish an annual Best of the Stuff We Found on the Internets Awards, affectionately known as The Keithies.

As of Thursday evening, viewers could still watch and vote for the nominees in several categories: Greatest Animal on All the Internets; Internet Superstar (Non-Porn); Everyday Idiot; Stuff That You Missed on the TVs that the Internets Made Famous. Winners will be announced on Friday's show.

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Tech Daily On Facebook

Unless you've been living under a giant, heavy rock for the past few years, you know that social-networking sites are all the rage these days. Our sister publication, The Hotline, started a Facebook group page earlier this year and now Technology Daily has joined the club. We prefer to be leaders, not followers, but whatever.

Our new Facebook group on tech policy and politics can be found here. My editor believes this could be a good way to foster interaction with current readers and potentially attract new ones, and I agree. So please join our merry band of misfits. It could be fun!

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Must See TV On MySpace?

The gals of MTV's "The Hills" had better watch their backs. A new 80-episode series called "Prom Queen" is set to debut on social-networking site MySpace on Sunday night. Each episode of the high school drama, produced by former Disney CEO Michael Eisner's new production company, will be posted on MySpace before appearing elsewhere on the Web.

MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe hopes it will be "a break-out hit" and will lead to other content deals. "Video is a cultural cornerstone for the MySpace community. It's a huge part of how our users express themselves and discover pop culture," he said in a press release.

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ICANN: New RALOs, Rejoice!

Internet users from three of ICANN's five global regions will now have direct input to the organization thanks to the creation of three Regional At-Large Organizations, officials announced Thursday.

Memorandums of understanding creating RALOs for Africa and Europe were signed in a special ceremony at ICANN's meeting in Lisbon, Portugal. The third RALO (for Asia-Australia-Pacific) was announced and will be formally signed later this year.

"The creation of RALOs gives average Internet users the chance to influence decisions that shape the security and stability of the Internet," ICANN President Paul Twomey said in a press release. The first RALO, which encompassed the Latin America-Caribbean region, was created at ICANN's São Paulo meeting in December 2006.

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Private Sector Privacy Stewards Named

What do American Express, Charles Schwab and IBM have in common? They are the top three rated companies for privacy trust in 2007, according to a new study by the Ponemon Institute and TRUSTe.

In last year's evaluation of how consumers perceived entities that collect and manage their personal information, American Express, Amazon.com and Procter & Gamble were the big winners. Previous honorees have included E-Loan, Hewlett-Packard and eBay.

The variety of brands making up the most trusted list demonstrates that, while firms face unique challenges, "the proper focus on policy, training, implementation and awareness can pay off by earning the trust and loyalty of consumers," TRUSTe President Fran Maier said in a press release.

"While we read the bad news in the headlines, it is clear that there are many companies that have put on the mantle of privacy leadership, and that are setting a stellar example for others to follow with their superlative privacy and data security programs," added researcher Larry Ponemon.

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Aides Stop E-mailing After Controversy

Washington Whispers editor Paul Bedard at U.S. News & World Report says the controversy over the firing of federal prosecutors and what administration officials knew about it is renewing concerns among Bush aides about e-mailing.

A week after e-mails in the U.S. attorneys case became a main focus of the probe by congressional Democrats, several staffers said that they stopped using the White House system except for professional correspondence.

"We just got a bit lazy," said one aide. "We knew e-mails could be subpoenaed. We saw that with the Clintons but I don't think anybody saw that we were doing anything wrong." Bedard reported that some aides said they bought private e-mail accounts and are relying on text-messaging on personal cellular phones.

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White House Adds 'Get Well Tony' Web Feature

President Bush's Internet guru David Almacy said in an e-mail to reporters on Wednesday that the West Wing has heard from many people wanting to send get-well notes to press secretary Tony Snow, whose cancer has returned after undergoing surgery and chemotherapy two years ago.

So, a feature on the White House Web site was launched that allows the public to do just that. Internet users can find the "Get Well Tony" tab in the top right-hand corner of the main page. After only a few hours, Almacy told us his office had seen a "steady" flow of electronic well-wishes. As of 2 p.m., nearly 1,000 notes had come in.

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New View On Viacom's Copyright Fight

"The Daily Show" on Comedy Central recently took a moment to explain its parent company's $1 billion lawsuit against Google and YouTube video-sharing subsidiary. Viacom alleges that YouTube posted roughly 160,000 unauthorized clips of content it owns.

In a several-minute segment titled "Professional Important News," comedian and "correspondent" Demetri Martin described the legal battle in layman's terms (sort of). He said: "We're talking about whether it's illegal to watch me discussing the legality of you watching me on 'The Daily Show' if you're watching it on YouTube."

From Martin's perspective, media giant Viacom is the underdog in the fight. The plaintiff is only worth about $25 billion whereas Google, he said, is worth "$14 trillion" and "they got their own verb!"

"The real loser in this situation is me," he joked. "Because the only thing I like better than watching a TV show is watching it smaller and blurrier." He then suggested that kids avoid copyright suits by creating their own versions of "The Daily Show."

The clip is available on Comedy Central's Web site (but only until April 22, when the video expires).

Update: A Viacom staffer told us he didn’t know 'The Daily Show' "news" report was coming, but folks at headquarters were buzzing about it the day after it aired and "thought it was pretty damn funny."

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ICANN: Gala Gets High Marks

The Internet Governance Project's Milton Mueller filed an amusing dispatch after ICANN's gala on Tuesday night, a lavish dinner that has become a much anticipated part of the organization's meetings:

"My perspective on this was best encapsulated by a remark made by John Berryhill, a domain name lawyer, at the Marrakesh, Morocco meeting. As we finished a huge meal and moved on to see dozens of Berber horsemen shooting rifles, setting off fireworks and rustling camels he deadpanned, "Yeah. This is the proper way to run a computer addressing system."

Mueller goes on to write that the policy-forming aspect of the Lisbon, Portugal conference "has been anything but fun." Read more here.

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ICANN: Domain Deals - Côte d'Ivoire & Russia

ICANN formalized relationships with country code top level domain (ccTLD) managers for .ci (Côte d'Ivoire) and .ru (Russia) at its meeting in Lisbon, Portugal on Wednesday.

The relationship with Côte d'Ivoire is an accountability framework, while the Russian deal took the form of an exchange of letters, ICANN said. They represent the 20th and 21st formalized relationships between ccTLD managers and ICANN, according to a press release.

Accountability framework and exchange of letters documents can be found here. ICANN signed a similar agreement over the weekend with Libya.

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The SEC's 'Vast Electronic Filing Cabinet'

For Chairman Christopher Cox, moving the Securities and Exchange Commission into the information technology world is a top priority. Taking advantage of modern technology to further the commission's goals was a major theme in the chairman's prepared testimony Tuesday before the House Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee.

Cox said the SEC's current online system, known as EDGAR, is "just a vast electronic filing cabinet" that "doesn't allow you to manage all of that information in ways that investors commonly need."

As a result, financial firms that can afford it get most of their information from middlemen who put the data into more useful forms, he said. The process is expensive, inefficient, creates errors, and "feeds the notion that the rich and the highly sophisticated have a leg up in today's markets," Cox said.

"The SEC expects to rename the EDGAR system in 2007," Cox noted. "In all, the commission is investing $54 million over several years to build the infrastructure to support widespread adoption of interactive data."

The $905.3 million budget request for fiscal 2008 "will allow the SEC to continue its commitment to information technology, which has the potential both to reduce regulatory costs and to give investors vastly more useful information than what they receive today," he added.

Cox said various technology improvements "will make the SEC more productive, and give both investors and taxpayers better value for their money."

He also reiterated his push for interactive data: "In the very near future, investors will be able to easily search through and make sense of the mountains of financial data contained in current company disclosures."

See Technology Daily's PM story for more details on Cox's testimony.

-- Winter Casey

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Leahy Questions Controversial Gag Order

During an FBI oversight hearing on Tuesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy asked agency director Robert Mueller about a high-profile case involving Connecticut librarians who were banned from talking about a secret government effort to obtain user records.

Several librarians received "national security letters" from investigators and were unable to speak out during Congress' debate over the reauthorization of the 2001 anti-terrorism law, which includes the secret subpoena power. Weeks after the USA PATRIOT Act was renewed, the FBI lifted the gag order.

Leahy wondered whether Mueller thought the case involved an abuse of the NSL provision. He said a situation in which someone experiences a "real abuse" of the system and cannot talk about it is "Kafka at the extreme." Mueller said he did not believe the Connecticut case was a misuse of the system.

The Vermont Democrat also asked how many times the FBI had issued NSLs to libraries or educational institutions to date. Mueller did not have the statistics on hand and said he could provide the information by the end of the week.

Read more about the FBI oversight hearing in Technology Daily's PM edition.

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OK Go Trumps Macaca, Series Of Tubes

The big winners of the first YouTube Video Awards were the four members of OK Go, a Chicago-based rock band that rode eight treadmills to Internet stardom last year -- literally. The music video for the band's hit song "Here It Goes Again" took home the trophy in the "Most Creative" category. The video, which featured OK Go performing a dance routine on a fleet of running treadmills, has been viewed more than 13 million times.

To put that in perspective, "Here It Goes Again" has received about 10 million more hits than the original version of the Orwellian "Vote Different" video that shot up the YouTube charts earlier this month. That may be an unfair comparison, because the "Vote Different” spot, which promoted the presidential candidacy of Sen. Barack Obama, has only been online for about three weeks.

So consider this: OK Go's video has been viewed more times than “Vote Different," and all the various remixes of former Sen. George Allen's "macaca moment" combined. Throw in all the mash-ups of Sen. Ted Stevens' "series of tubes" speech last summer, and OK Go still comes out on top.

But "Here It Goes Again" is still more than 30 million hits behind the most popular video in the history of YouTube: "Evolution of Dance." That video reigns supreme with an untouchable 45.1 million hits. -- Michael Martinez

Update: Ask A Ninja also won for "Best Series." The video features an excitable masked warrior who answers e-mails from "viewers." In one episode last year, he humorously described "net neutrality."

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How Do You Spell Controversy?

Two major Hispanic groups have reportedly broken journalism rule #1 -- double-check how names are spelled, especially when the name in question belongs to the man at the center of the Bush administration's biggest batch of controversies in recent memory.

According to the Potomac Flacks blog, the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and the Latino Coalition, which is headed by Hector Barreto (who ran the Small Business Administration during Bush's first term), issued a joint press release backing embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last week.

But Patricia Guadalupe, a reporter for the Washington Hispanic Newspaper, says the groups misspelled the AG's name. Neither organization has the press release (original or corrected) on their Web sites. A quick Google search for Alberto Gonzales (correct spelling) showed 2.9 million hits, PF says. The most common way to misspell his name is "Gonzalez" and a Google search turned up 883,000 hits.

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ICANN: Question Of The Day - Whois?

A handful of constituency discussions centering on the debate over public databases that store Web address owners' information were scheduled to take place at ICANN's meeting in Lisbon, Portugal on Tuesday. The conversations come on the heels of a recent proposal to cloak "Whois" data, (including names, organizations, postal and e-mail addresses and telephone numbers). Groups representing commercial and business users; Internet service providers; and intellectual property interests were slated to take on the issue (among others). Technology Daily's recent coverage of the Whois debate can be found here.

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'Can You Hear Me Now?' (For $6 Billion)

Verizon Wireless has awarded Alcatel-Lucent a three-year contract worth an estimated $6 billion to supply network equipment, software and services. Under the agreement announced Monday, Alcatel-Lucent will support Verizon Wireless' "ongoing network expansion and continuous improvements."

The contract is also expected to make it possible for Verizon Wireless to increase the coverage and capacity of its broadband access data network based on CDMA2000, a third-generation wireless standard, and to introduce new mobile video telephony and Internet-based telephone technology.

"We will deliver value over fully interoperable IP-services that enhance the lifestyles of our customers -- by offering multimedia services that combine voice, data, and video capabilities," said Dick Lynch, Verizon Wireless's chief technology officer, in a statement. -- Winter Casey

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ICANN: No Hints On .XXX

One of the most anticipated announcements to come out of ICANN's Lisbon meeting may have to wait until the end of the week. ICANN's board will meet Friday to decide the fate of a proposed .xxx ending for Web addresses that publish pornography, ICANN President Paul Twomey told reporters on a Monday teleconference.

The board is divided and he is uncertain how it will rule. Twomey said the issue has been "clearly controversial and clearly polarizing" within the Internet community and the degree of feedback has been "extensive" and overwhelmingly unsupportive of the virtual red-light district.

Board members are still in "active consultation" on the topic that Twomey characterized as "the most excitement we've had at an ICANN board meeting in a little while."

Read more about the ICANN meeting in Technology Daily's PM edition.

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ICANN: Odds & Ends

A few remaining thoughts from ICANN President Paul Twomey's Monday address:

• International domain names laboratory tests have been completed but two ICANN constituencies -- the Country Code Names Supporting Organization (ccNSO) and the Generic Names Supporting Organization (GNSO) -- have raised concerns that need to be addressed. Twomey said he remains hopeful that ICANN can begin deploying the Internet addresses at the end of this year or in early 2008.

• ICANN unveiled a minor redesign of its Web site on Monday. The index page revamp is part of the organization's ongoing effort to improve the online interface based on public comments. Be sure to check out the changes and give ICANN feedback.

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ICANN: New RALO Agreements

This week's ICANN meeting in Lisbon may see the signing of three new agreements with Regional At-Large Organizations to provide Internet users in those geographical areas increased representation, ICANN Paul Twomey said during his plenary speech on Monday. Deals with the African Telecommunications Union, Pacific Islands Telecommunications Association and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia are nearing completion. Those agreements build on the model and the success of the Latin American and Caribbean accords signed at ICANN's last meeting in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

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ICANN: Portuguese IT Minister Speaks

Portuguese IT minister José Mariano Gago on Monday called ICANN an "innovative concept" and lauded the group for being able to facilitate tremendous Internet growth despite numerous technological and administrative challenges. He spoke at the ICANN meeting's opening ceremony in Lisbon.

Gago said the ICANN model "tends to emerge in many other global domains" and has "renewed the international debate on the contribution of the Internet to human and social development." He said Portugal is "fully committed to those goals and values" and supports Web growth as "an urgent national priority."

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ICANN: ITU Chief To Attend

Hamadoun Touré, secretary general of the International Telecommunication Union, will attend ICANN's Lisbon meeting, officials announced Monday. This is the first time that the head of the ITU has attended such a gathering. ICANN President Paul Twomey said he was "delighted" that Touré is reaching out to his group "especially so early in his term."

Touré, who will attend ICANN's meeting on Friday, assumed his position in January after serving as the director of the ITU's telecommunications development bureau. He previously worked for satellite behemoth Intelsat in Washington, D.C. Touré succeeded Yoshio Utsumi, who served two terms as ITU secretary general.

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ICANN: IPv6 - Chicken And Egg Problem

Stakeholders involved in the transition to Internet protocol version 6, or IPv6, have "a chicken and egg problem," ICANN's Leo Vegoda said on Sunday. "There is little motivation or ROI [return-on-investment] for being an early deployer since there are few IPv6 peers to communicate with." Meanwhile, he senses increased interest in the platform, especially since the start of this year.

A couple of factors have informed his belief, he told attendees at an IPv6 tutorial. The first is the recognition that Internet addresses under the current regime (IPv4) will be exhausted soon, he said. Secondly, the U.S. government has required that all federal agencies have operational IPv6 networks by June 2008. A third element is the general availability of Microsoft's new Vista operating system, which is IPv6-enabled out of the box, Vegoda said.

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ICANN: Scenic Sunrise

For those of us who cannot be at ICANN's meeting in person, board member Joi Ito has posted this photo on Flickr of an early morning in Lisbon.

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ICANN: Weekend Round-Up

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers meeting began in Lisbon, Portugal over the weekend. Here are a few noteworthy items:

• ICANN signed an accountability framework with the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) managers for .ly -- Libya. Read more about it here and here.

• ICANN's contractual compliance program has been updated to provide clear, transparent information regarding contractual compliance expectations and concerns.

• The President's Strategy Committee report was released. The advisory group was created after ICANN's December 2005 summit and previously publicized a series of draft recommendations. Learn more about the committee here.

• There were two interesting tutorials on Sunday: (1) How the marketplace for expiring names has changed: Why names aren't released and what is the impact on consumers and other interests? (2) Domain name secondary market: What makes a name worth thousands of dollars and how does this market work? Transcripts are available here and here.

• ICANN Ombudsman Frank Fowlie marveled at the devotion of his organization's staff despite starting off the week in Lisbon with sleeplessness, jet-lag and lost luggage. On Sunday, employees' first meeting started at 7:30 a.m. and the last event of the day ended at 10 p.m. "Long days, dedicated staff, and lots of interesting things going on," he mused on his blog.

• An interesting pre-meeting interview with ICANN President Paul Twomey has been posted on the organization's blog.

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Union Blasts NASA Over Education Budget

Reprinted from today's PM Edition

By Aliya Sternstein

NASA's largest union complained in a March 16 letter to congressional appropriators that the space agency is "shirking its outreach and educational responsibilities."

On Friday, Lee Stone, vice president for legislative affairs at the Ames Research Center chapter of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers, said that as a scientist, he is most concerned about the deterioration of a post-doctoral fellows program that had recruited much of NASA's talent in the past.

"Twenty years ago, people like myself and [many senior staff in his division] were brought in as post-doctoral fellows," said Stone, a human factors researcher. "The funds for that have almost completely dried up." Like interns in medical school, the fellows supplied NASA research centers with extra manpower and gave NASA scientists the chance to tap -- and usually keep -- the talented ones for permanent positions.

The union called on appropriators to give NASA about $1 billion more than President Bush proposed for fiscal 2008, or a total of $18.3 billion.

"Given that the Department of Defense's military space programs have been funded in excess of $20 billion annually and that NASA's exploration activities will likely produce new dual-use capabilities, we recommend that you consider moving some space funding from DOD to NASA to cover the plus-up," the letter said.

On Friday, NASA defended the agency's commitment to education. "Education is and will continue to be a fundamental element of NASA's activities reflecting a diverse portfolio of higher, pre-college and informal education programs," spokesman Bob Jacobs said.

He added that NASA's "primary role in education" is providing U.S. youth opportunities to experience "the kind of exciting programs" that will propel them to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

More money is always welcome but not necessary, Jacobs said. The real challenge is prioritizing available resources in a manner that benefits the students and the taxpayers, he said. "We believe we can do that with the funds provided."

But Keith Cowing, editor of NASAWatch.com and a former NASA scientist, said cuts have prevented the agency from fulfilling its innovative outreach goals.

"Everybody expects every agency to be hip and with it," but that takes time and money, he said. "The real problem is when they try" to meet these expectations, "Congress cuts their budget."

"To their credit, [some officials] are actually getting hip to this," Cowing said. He pointed to NASA's Ames Center, where the agency is sharing computer scientists and office space with Silicon Valley neighbor Google.

House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., noted that NASA's fiscal 2008 request for education is down more than 8 percent from last year's request.

"With respect to outreach, I don't agree that it is a case of NASA shirking its responsibilities; rather, I think that the agency could do a better job utilizing the resources it does have," he said in a statement. "NASA is a well-known and respected 'brand.' It has inspired previous generations, and there is no reason it can't continue to do so."

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Cerf's Up... In December

Recent discussions with folks involved in the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers brought up another interesting issue that may serve as an undercurrent for hallway chatter at ICANN's meeting in Lisbon, Portugal that starts this weekend.

Vint Cerf, who has been called "the father of the Internet," currently serves as chair of the ICANN board but his term expires in December. He has been on the board since 1999. "Of great interest will be who gets elected to the board and who might be seen as possible candidates with experience and leadership that are on the board today," one source said.

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ICANN Has Issues

Susan Crawford, a board member for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is in Lisbon, Portugal for the organization's big meeting that begins this weekend. She made a list of hot-button issues on her blog that are ripe for discussion and I thought I would elaborate.

ICANN board decision on .xxx. ICANN has twice rejected similar proposals to create a virtual red-light district since 2000. They could vote at this meeting on whether to approve the domain name for use by pornography sites.

Domain name system root server attack. A distributed denial-of-service assault in February lasted almost eight hours and targeted six of the 13 root servers that form the backbone of the Internet.

Principles on transparency and accountability. Questions still loom about how ICANN is trying to improve its work in the face of criticism that too much occurs behind closed doors and without enough input from the Internet community.

"Whois" data. The debate over public databases that store Web address owners' information (including names, organizations, postal and e-mail addresses and telephone numbers) is expected to continue.

Other issues up for discussion: Memorandum-of-understanding signings with new "Regional At-Large Organizations," which act as the coordination point in each region for public input to ICANN; a final report from the President’s Strategy Committee; International domain names laboratory tests and next steps; ICANN operating plan; and RegisterFly accreditation termination and the larger issue of ICANN registrar accreditation.

More on accreditation: Some Internet experts have concerns about ICANN's pledge to review its registrar accreditation process in Lisbon. They worry that officials might handle the issue hurriedly, causing more harm than good.

The questions raised by ICANN's leadership are complex "and there is no way that the community can address them intelligently and reach consensus on the best course of action by next week," Internet Commerce Association counsel Phil Corwin said.

A more realistic timetable would be to aim for adoption of new rules at the San Juan, Puerto Rico ICANN meeting in late June, he said. Before changes are made to ICANN policy, "we need to know a lot more about what went wrong with RegisterFly," the company whose customer service failures prompted the ICANN action.

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Qualcomm Founder Got Bad Advice

Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs could have been an innkeeper had he not stayed true to his dream of pursuing a career in computer science. Before giving a speech on patent reform Thursday, a Heritage Foundation audience heard a humorous story about Jacobs' ill-fated encounter with a high school guidance counselor.

The misguided academic adviser told a teenaged Jacobs that "there was no future in math and science and he should go into the hotel business," according to Phillip Truluck, the foundation's executive vice president. So, the cellular phone innovator entered Cornell University as a hotel administration major.

"Your cell phone works today because he didn’t take that advice for too long," Truluck said. Jacobs decided there was a future in science and switched his major to engineering. Later on, he patented code-division multiple access digital technology, which became the second most used wireless protocol in the world, Truluck said.

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Controversial Colbert Video

As reported in Technology Daily on Thursday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued Viacom over what it argues is an inappropriately issued YouTube takedown notice. The film in question, produced by liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org and video producer Brave New Films, is a satire of Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report."

Here's the video from www.stopthefalsiness.org.

Update: The Colbert video is back online at YouTube. The page used to display a bold, red-lettered notice saying the clip was "no longer available due to a copyright claim by Viacom International Inc."

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Congressman Defends COPA

A federal judge in Philadelphia on Thursday struck down a controversial federal law called the Child Online Protection Act, which was aimed at protecting children on the Internet. Technology Daily's PM edition has details of the court's ruling.

The bill, which made its way through Congress nearly a decade ago, was sponsored by Rep. Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, who has since retired. A number of original cosponsors have also left Capitol Hill in the years since the law began bouncing through the courts.

But Rep. Paul Gillmor, another Ohio Republican, backed the bill in the late 1990s and still supports it today. The lawmaker, a chief proponent of the multiple-year push for a federal sex offender registry, said COPA is critical to keep children safe online.

In an afternoon interview, he called the ruling against COPA "unfortunate" and said he hoped the Justice Department would appeal the decision. "They should try to uphold the law," he said. "The concept behind the law is good and that's their job -- to defend legislation passed by Congress."

"One of biggest dangers to kids now is online predators and online pornography," he said. He discounted claims by COPA critics that the law is too vague and would sweep in non-pornographic sites.

"[It] has to be material that is harmful to minors" to fall under COPA, Gillmor insisted. "If it's truly an educational site, they shouldn't have that kind of material on there." Sites featuring health information or other educational content should be out of COPA's reach, he added.

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COPA Ruling & Age-Verification

Adam Thierer at the Progress and Freedom Foundation has been a blogging machine ever since he got his mitts on the federal court's ruling against the Child Online Protection Act handed down on Thursday morning. Read his posts here here and here.

One of his most interesting musings deals with the decision's implications for age-verification and social networking sites. Several state attorneys general are pushing proposals to mandate age checks for minors before they would be allowed access sites like MySpace and Facebook.

Thierer has a new paper called "Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions" if you want to read more about his detailed thoughts on the matter. He is also moderating a panel on Capitol Hill on Friday that will address the topic.

Scheduled speakers include Jay Chaudhuri, special counsel to North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper; John Cardillo, CEO of Sentinel Tech Holding, an online identification firm; Jeff Schmidt, CEO of Authis, which specializes in data security; Raye Croghan, vice president of IDology, an age verification provider; and Tim Lordan, who runs the Internet Education Foundation.

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Industry Reacts To Music Licensing Hearing

The government's copyright czar, Marybeth Peters told a House Judiciary Committee panel on Thursday that a century-old music-licensing statute must be updated for the online age. Read about her testimony in Technology Daily's PM edition.

Section 115, the provision in question, was the focus of much debate in the 109th Congress as industry players attempted (unsuccessfully) to reach a consensus on how language should change. After her testimony, stakeholders applauded Peters' points and pledged to forge ahead.

Mitch Glazier, a lobbyist for the Recording Industry Association of America, said Peters has done a "good job of identifying a minimum number of key issues that need to be resolved." He said he was encouraged by her recommendations and looks forward to studying a proposal that incorporates her suggestions.

Digital Media Association Executive Director Jonathan Potter said Peters "hit the nail on the head" when she urged Congress to streamline Section 115. "The current licensing system fails the music industry not only because it is antiquated and ambiguous, but also because it gives an indirect advantage to illegal music sources," he said.

David Israelite, president of the National Music Publishers' Association, said some ideas discussed during the hearing would be harmful to songwriters and music publishers but "we remain committed to work with the Congress to reform Section 115 in a way that is respectful to our property rights."

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Techie Is Fired Over 'Vote Different' Ad

In this morning's AM Edition of Technology Daily, we cited and linked to a Huffington Post blog entry by Phillip de Vellis, a worker at the political technology firm Blue State Digital who created the "Vote Different" online video about presidential candidate and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y.

De Vellis said in his post that he resigned his job at Blue State Digital because of the ad. His statement implied that the decision to leave the firm was his. "The company had no idea that I'd created the ad and neither did any of our clients," de Vellis wrote. "But I've decided to resign anyway so as not to harm them, even by implication."

A statement posted on the front page of the company's Web site tells a different story. "Pursuant to company policy regarding outside political work or commentary on behalf of our clients or otherwise," Managing Director Thomas Gensemer said, "Mr. de Vellis has been terminated from Blue State Digital effective immediately."

Gensemer added that the company does software development and Web hosting for the campaign of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, one of Clinton's foes in the Democratic presidential primary and the candidate that de Vellis' "Vote Different" video endorsed.

"Mr. de Vellis created this video on his own time," Gensemer said. "It was done without the knowledge of management, and was in no way tied to his work at the firm or our formal engagement [on technology pursuits] with the Obama campaign."

UPDATE: TechPresident has a "Vote Different" edition that rounds up reactions to the news about the man behind the ad. The roundup includes a link to National Journal's own Hotline On Call, which poses some as yet unanswered questions.

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Privacy Board Blind To NSL Abuse

The White House Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board will be briefed Thursday on a recent report on breakdowns in the FBI's use of a special subpoena power to obtain American citizens' telephone, e-mail and financial records without prior judicial approval, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine said Wednesday.

The five-member board, whose mission is to advise the president and other senior executive branch officials, has been criticized since its inception for reacting slowly or inadequately to emerging privacy problems in the ongoing war on terror.

Fine told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the board did not know about the slew of "national security letters" being inappropriately issued prior to his investigation. "This was a board that was supposed to clear these things in advance," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said. "Clearly, under current law, they are irrelevant."

Read more about the panel's NSL hearing in Technology Daily's PM edition.

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DHS Privacy Panel Meets

The Homeland Security Department's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee convenes for its quarterly meeting on Wednesday. The confab comes on the heels of a report that shows the agency has not built adequate privacy protections into a data-mining program under development.

Government Accountability Office investigators said the lack of safeguards increase the risk that innocent people could be tagged as terrorists. The program, widely known by the acronym ADVISE, is sure to fuel controversy between officials who defend data-mining tactics and privacy advocates who say the government is overreaching, according to Technology Daily's AM edition.

A major topic for discussion at the meeting is the so-called "REAL ID" requirement that states develop driver's licenses based on nationwide standards. The committee will hear from government experts as well as outside sources from the National Governors Association, American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Democracy and Technology.

Later in the day, the committee is slated to discuss IT initiatives to enhance citizen and immigration services as well as agency-wide data integrity and records retention. DHS Chief Privacy Officer Hugo Teufel and Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker are also scheduled to speak.

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CRB Rehearing Motions Successful

Bellyaching by those unhappy with a recent Copyright Royalty Board decision to hike royalty rates to recording labels and artists has paid off. The three-judge panel swiftly granted all motions for a rehearing on Tuesday, less than 24 hours after reconsideration petitions were due (Read Technology Daily's latest coverage).

Digital music services, Internet webcasters and public radio stations sent the CRB a truckload of complaints about its ruling that set per-performance rates for online radio through 2010. In the CRB's response, Chief Judge James Sledge said he and his fellow judges "desire to hear the positions of each party on each of the issues raised in these motions."

In addition the above parties, collegiate broadcasters as well as royalty collectors SoundExchange and Royalty Logic also took issue with portions of the ruling. Responses to the motions may be filed no later than April 2, Sledge said. On the same date, parties may file written arguments on the issues raised in the motions, he added.

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Karmazin Defends First Amendment

Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin trumpeted his commitment to First Amendment free speech rights at a Tuesday afternoon antitrust hearing on his company's proposed merger with rival XM. His defense was in response to a series of questions from Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

Brownback, a Republican presidential contender for 2008, bemoaned the presence of "pornographic material" on satellite radio at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. He said over-the-air radio is regulated heavily in this regard by the FCC but Sirius and XM have made their unregulated place in the market part of their business model.

"We provide content for a broad spectrum of the American public" and that includes subscribers who wish to receive adult material, Karmazin said. Not all content on satellite radio must be child-friendly because there are ways to block certain stations, he said.

Although Brownback admitted that it had little to do with the antitrust debate, he entered into the committee's record print-outs from several "sizzling" Sirius Web pages for Playboy Radio. He then asked Karmazin if he would agree not to put "pornographic material" on the merged company's channel line-up.

The Sirius chief responded: "I really don’t know what you'd characterize as pornographic material. We are a believer of the First Amendment. I believe that in the area of indecency, there is the ability to disagree over what might be considered indecent." "I just don’t know, sir, what you would call pornographic or what someone else would call pornographic," Karmazin added.

Brownback then rattled off some statistics about the number of Americans that have sexual addictions or compulsions. "We've got a big problem on this in our country. I realize that's not your issue or your problem, but it is mine," he said.

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Questions Arise About FBI, Telecom Firm Contracts

Freshman Democrat Hank Johnson of Georgia demanded details on Tuesday about information-swapping contracts between the FBI and telecommunications companies at a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the agency's use of a special subpoena power to obtain telephone and e-mail records without prior judicial approval.

FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni said her agency maintained contracts with AT&T, Verizon and MCI, which was acquired by Verizon in 2005. Those agreements are still in place through the FBI's communications analysis unit, she said.

Johnson, a former DeKalb County commissioner, wondered whether compensation provided to the companies for their assistance was "merely for expenses, or was there profit involved?" Caproni did not have the answer but offered: "From our perspective, the goal was to get the information in a form that was readily usable."

The lawmaker requested that the amount of money paid to the companies be provided to his office along with copies of the government contracts. Caproni said she will probably receive a number of requests for additional information from members and the agency will "respond appropriately."

Earlier in the hearing, the FBI official said telephone companies were responsible for some errors cited in a recent high-profile report by the Justice Department inspector general that detailed widespread failures in the NSL program. Read more about the hearing in Technology Daily's PM edition.

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Anti-Hillary Ad Goes Viral

In Monday's PM edition, senior writer Heather Greenfield wrote about this mash-up of the Orwellian "1984" Apple Inc. ad that features creepy looking drones watching footage from the presidential campaign site of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y. The video tells Democrats to "Vote Different" -- for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.

The video's creator has not come forward but the big question in my mind is this: Who's going to rip this video off YouTube first? Apple's lawyers or Clinton's? Also, did someone tell Ridley Scott, who directed the original Apple spot, that a retooled version of his ad is sweeping the Web?

In other news, YouTube announced its first-ever awards celebration for user-created content, "established to recognize the creative achievements of the YouTube community."

Categories include: most creative; most inspirational; best series; best comedy; musician of the year; best commentary; and most adorable video ever. The voting period for nominees began Monday and ends Friday. Award winners will be revealed on March 25.

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More CRB Challenges

The deadline for filing reconsideration petitions in the Copyright Royalty Board's Internet radio royalties proceeding was 5 p.m. on Monday. Therefore, our coverage in the PM edition did not include input from two key constituencies who requested that details of their filings be withheld until later in the day.

National Public Radio filed a motion for rehearing with the CRB on behalf of its member stations. "The decision, unless modified, will have crippling effects on the availability of public radio to fulfill its mandate to serve the public interest," the document said.

The CRB-imposed minimum $500 annual fee per NPR station or channel is "arbitrary and insupportable" and makes the "erroneous and extremely prejudicial determination that many NPR stations should be treated no differently than commercial webcasting services."

The public radio community wants a rehearing so the three-judge panel can reconsider its "aggregate tuning hour threshold" (ATH) which, if surpassed by any NPR station, would trigger additional royalty payments on a per-performance basis. At a minimum, the CRB should stay the ATH threshold and per-performance aspects of the decision until NPR can file an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

According to the document, the vast majority of NPR stations cannot track ATH in order to calculate the threshold nor can they keep tabs on the number of copyrighted sound recording performances in order to calculate payments due beyond the ATH threshold.

"The board's decision to dramatically raise public radio stations' rates was based on inaccurate assumptions and lack of understanding of the issues," NPR spokeswoman Andi Sporkin said in a statement. "The new rates inexplicably break with the longstanding tradition of recognizing public radio's noncommercial, nonprofit role."

Davis Wright Tremaine partner Dave Oxenford, who represents a handful of small webcasters (Accuradio, ioMedia, Digitally Imported Radio, 3wk, Radio Paradise and Discombobulated) also petitioned the CRB on behalf of his clients.

The webcasters take issue with portions of the board decision that refused to adopt a definition of "small webcaster" for purposes of determining royalties and established a minimum per-channel fee without adequately defining "channel." They also disagree with the retroactivity of the ruling and the fact that it does not provide an alternative metric for the periods going forward, according to the filing.

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WGBH: 'We're Not Doing Britney Spears Here'

Like many in the public radio community, Bob Lyons, director of new media for Boston's WGBH Radio, is not happy with the recent Copyright Royalty Board decision to increase fees paid to record labels and artists for online music offerings. "In the short term it's bad, in the long term it's worse," he said of the ruling.

If the CRB decision stands, his station will not be able to grow its Internet services and may be forced to "stop much of what we're [currently] doing," he said. Meanwhile, WGBH's "service-oriented" music -- like classical, blues, folk and Celtic -- has attracted a bevy of new listeners online, Lyons said.

He emphasized that public radio's goals are unlike those of commercial stations and shouldn’t be treated as such. "We're not doing Britney Spears here," Lyons said. He believes that WGBH, which was an early adopter of Web streaming, is "getting punished for its success."

Read about new developments in the CRB controversy in Technology Daily's PM edition.

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SCOTUS Update

The Supreme Court on Monday added no new cases to its decision docket for this term, according to SCOTUSblog. In one noteworthy order, the court asked for the federal government's views on a pending antitrust case involving drug companies. Joblove v. Barr Labs, Inc. examines whether it is a violation of the Sherman Act for a brand-name drug manufacturer to share a part of its future profits to induce the maker of a generic substitute to keep its product off store shelves.

Meanwhile, the intellectual property community still awaits a ruling in KSR v. Teleflex. That case was heard by the high court last November after the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the gas-pedal manufacturer KSR International. The firm alleged that its product, which is similar to that of competitor Teleflex, is too simple to warrant an original patent like the one granted to Teleflex.

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ICANN Panel Preps for Lisbon

A group of advisors for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the Web's key oversight agency, met by telephone on Monday morning to discuss strategic issues facing the organization in the 21st century. The briefing came a week before the ICANN community convenes in Lisbon, Portugal for one of several annual meetings.

The President's Strategy Committee, which was created after ICANN's December 2005 summit, resulted from calls for a renewed emphasis on a "bottom-up" ICANN process. The group released a series of draft recommendations in November and plans on furthering the discussion in Lisbon.

On the teleconference, ICANN President Paul Twomey said the panel has been focusing on the following topics:
• Issues pertaining to the legal status and identity of ICANN
• ICANN's ability to respond to a global environment and regional concerns
• Management of the "root zone" of the Internet addressing system
• Linkages to the U.S. government
• Capacity development and outreach issues
• Observations about ICANN internal review processes

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Weaving Message Into Future Web

Campaign strategists and others had a chance to find out more about Web 2.0 technology that will eneable more communication and collaboration on the Internet during a conference hosted by George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.

"The magic of Web 2.0 is the convergence of a lot of different web services just got opened up," said Aaron Welch, who co-founded Advomatic after his work on the 2004 presidential bid for Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean .

David Bennett, a resident at IPDI, said those wanting to use the tools will need to prepare with the right architecture and offered more technical advise on what is needed in a good content management system.

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Scorn Or Tolerence In Cyberspace

The so-called "macaca moment" in which former Sen. George Allen , R-Va., called his opponent's volunteer a name on video was mentioned so many times at an online political conference sponsored by George Washington University's Institute for the Internet, Politics and Democracy that panelists joked they were playing Bingo. A panelist threw the word in out of context during a discussion on campaign databases, saying he was trying to help a friend win the game.

But during an earlier panel, when macaca was mentioned, the deputy editor of Slate. com, David Plotz, said he hoped it would lead to greater tolerance "for people saying something stupid and allowing people to be more human.

Jeff Jarvis, who runs the BuzzMachine and techPresident blogs, said that acceptance can only come if bloggers do not go crazy over macaca moments and fuel them.

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That's One High-Tech Vote Against McCain

National Public Radio aired a piece yesterday on the trend of presidential candidates trolling for votes and money at online social networks, and it cast the social-networking efforts of Sen. John McCain in a positive light.

But David All, a new media adviser for Republicans, questioned that conclusion. He said at techPresident that the McCainSpace online community will be a detriment to the campaign of the Arizona Republican.

McCainSpace is/was/has been/will continue to be a total disaster and continue to drain time, resources, and technology from the online campaign," All wrote. He added: "[Y]ou're too late. And you're trying to add another profile to my life which I have to monitor, update, add pics, find friends, etc."

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Use Your Words

Google gurus offered tips on how to promote websites in Google searches during a morning workshop at an online conference hosted by George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.

Advice to make sites more friendly to the Google algorithm included encouraging others to link to your site, "making suring you're using your words," and that those key words are really readable. Google doesn't pick up a word buried in a graphic like a logo. Another "mistake" is a form requiring a zipcode or other information to get to the site keeps Google from searching there.

To see if Google is seeing your site and what the obstacles are, Google employees suggested a tool at www.google.com/webmasters along with a blog to find out more about making changes.

Posted by Heather at 09:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

NJ Exclusive

The National Journal's online edition capped off the week with this bombshell:

Probe May Have Targeted Gonzales
Had it not been quashed, a Justice Department inquiry into the domestic eavesdropping program likely would have examined Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. The magazine reports that President Bush intervened to sideline the probe. Subscribers can read more here.

Unrelated Shameless Self-Promotion
Just in case you haven’t read enough on this blog and in Technology Daily about the C-SPAN copyright policy flap, don't miss my lengthy story in the new issue of National Journal magazine that serves as an overview for more general audiences who don’t eat, sleep and breathe intellectual property issues. Subscribers can also read it online here.

Posted by Andrew at 08:45 AM |