[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).
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
Reprinted from today's PM Edition
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
By Winter Casey
The FCC process for auctioning spectrum has been the object of some "very sophisticated conspiracies" that have made it unfair, Andrew Schwartzman, president of the Media Access Project, said Thursday.
Schwartzman was one of a number of panelists to raise the subject of the effectiveness of FCC spectrum policies during a Catholic University law school symposium. Schwartzman said there has been an over-reliance on exclusive licensing and auctions for airwaves.
He said there should be less reliance on auctions and putting money into the U.S. treasury. The country would be better off and have more opportunities for startup companies and innovation if it found more ways to devote spectrum to be used as unlicensed spectrum, Schwartzman said.
On the other side of the debate, Kathleen O'Brien Ham of T-Mobile said there is a place for unlicensed spectrum, but the problem is not auctions, which are positive. Rather, it is making sure there is enough spectrum to auction, which will bring down prices.
Ham said thousands of licenses are being distributed, and getting a significant amount of spectrum into the marketplace is a good thing.
The dilemma of providing a platform for free expression without helping escalate the nastiness is one Google considers in coming up with its policies according to Elliot Schrage, vice president of global communications for Google. He spoke at politics online conference Thursday at George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet.
"In the last few years the Internet has experienced more drive by character assassinations of any medium in history," Schrage said. He said Google thought about taking down what he described as a "disturbing video" about the late son of Sen. John Edwards, D-NC, who is running for the Democratic nomination for president. "But we ultimately decided we couldn't," Schrage said.
Schrage said identifying lies on the Internet, like one about Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., attending a madras in Indonesia are getting policed by Internet users much more quickly now. He also said he suspected those purposely putting out false information would face a backlash, but joked Google itself had no backlash staff.
"We're in an awkward situation. We’re not in the business to access truth or falsity. That's a path we don't want to take," Schrage said.
Political strategists are not ready to bury direct mail yet. In a panel discussion this afternoon at the Politics Online conference hosted by George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet, strategists predict direct mail will be around for a few more election cycles.
Michael Turk, who was the e-campaign director for President Bush in 2004 and most recently worked for the Republican National Committee, said the real power of the Internet now is supplementing other communications systems. He said one challenge is bringing the rest of a campaign on board with some of the newer strategies, explaining he faced that problem with some folks at the RNC who wanted every message "to be very scripted."
He said those who most need a conference like this are not the ones here, so he "can't pronounce the medium (direct mail) dead to anyone but the people in the room.
Mike Hare, who used to do communications for the US Chamber of Commerce, said direct mail "isn't completely dead" but it is expensive.
Mike Liddell, online communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said direct mail is "very effective" because it can be used to blast messages to those a campaign has not reached yet. He said "email is a participation based marketing medium," as there are limits to the number of messages sent to people who are not already supporters.
The next great innovation in Internet politics may be born this week, or at least that's the hope of a slew of online politics professionals converging at George Washington University over the next two days. They turn to the annual Politics Online conference to show them how to take advantage of the Web in new and wonderful ways.
The event, hosted by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, regularly attracts more than 400 attendees from around the globe who come to hear from leading figures in the media, politics and the Internet industry.
This year's keynoter is Elliot Schrage, vice president for global communications at Google. Other speakers include WashingtonPost.com Executive Editor Jim Brady; BuzzMachine blogger Jeff Jarvis; Patrick Ruffini, new media strategist for Republican presidential hopeful Rudy Guliani; and Joe Trippi, who managed former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean's Web-savvy bid for the White House.
Technology Daily will have coverage of the conference, so stay tuned.
Despite a $100,000 settlement with the New York Attorney General's Office, Cingular Wireless and Travelocity.com have failed to sever ties with vendors of secretly installed computer spyware, Harvard University researcher Ben Edelman says.
On his Web site, Edelman shows six examples of how the companies continue to receive spyware-originating traffic, including traffic from some of the Internet's "most notorious and most widespread spyware." The companies, along with Priceline.com, settled with the state in January.
While I await reactions from the firms involved, it's probably a good time to mention a House Commerce Committee hearing on the topic of spyware slated for Thursday. Witnesses include: the Center for Democracy and Technology's Ari Schwartz; the Direct Marketing Association's Jerry Cerasale; TACODA founder Dave Morgan; TRUSTe's Fran Maier; and attorney Christine Varney on behalf of Zango.
Update 1: In an e-mailed statement, Travelocity said the company "does not use adware or spyware" and has terms and conditions that specifically prohibit third parties from placing its ads in those channels. When the firm finds out about such ads, it immediately suspends the campaigns identified, officials said. Travelocity is "aggressively investigating" Edelman's claims to determine if a distributor is in the wrong.
Update 2: The spyware hearing was interesting but pretty predictable. The legislation in question has been introduced and passed by the House twice before, so I feel like I've covered the same hearing twice before. The witnesses agreed that something has to be done to stop Web wrongdoers but each expressed concerns with portions of the bill. It will be interesting to see if the measure moves forward as-is or if lawmakers try to appease some folks before asking the Senate to take similar action.
Key leaders in intellectual property and technology commercialization gathered in Washington on Wednesday to discuss the pertinent industry issues and examine new challenges to innovation. The event was sponsored by the nonprofit Licensing Foundation.
Microsoft's Corporate Vice President Marshall Phelps spoke to the group about the need for patent reform legislation. Microsoft is a member of the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which has called for major changes to the U.S. patent system.
Other scheduled speakers included Brian Barret, associate general patent counsel for Eli Lilly and Company; Wes Blakeslee of Johns Hopkins University; Gerald Mossinghoff, a former assistant secretary of commerce; and Donald Ware, a partner at Foley Hoag.
Google will soon blaze new trails to improve its privacy practices, the company told reporters in a background briefing on Wednesday. Unless legally required to retain server log data for longer, the search giant will anonymize them after 18-24 months, privacy counsel Peter Fleischer and deputy general counsel Nicole Wong announced on Google's corporate blog later in the day. Previously, the Web site kept the data "for as long as it was useful," they said.
The change followed talks with leading privacy stakeholders in the United States and Europe, they said. Google has recently incorporated other privacy features into its products (like Google Talk's “off the record” feature or Google Desktop’s “pause” and “lock search” controls), Fleischer and Wong said.
The new policy strikes the right balance between "continuing to improve Google’s services for you, while providing more transparency and certainty about our retention practices," they said. In the future, it is possible that data retention laws will obligate Internet firms to retain logs for longer periods, they added.
In a media fact sheet, Google emphasized that log anonymization "does not guarantee that the government will not be able to identify a specific computer or user" but it does add another layer of privacy protection to user data.
The anonymization will apply retroactively and Google engineers are working on a solution to allow users to opt-out of the practice. Officials said that the endeavor is a difficult one but Google hopes to have the program in operation "by the end of the year -- but it could take longer."
Update: The Center for Democracy and Technology's Ari Schwartz said the move was "a big step in the right direction." Privacy advocates have urged Google to take steps to safeguard the large amount of information it collects from billions of searches, he said.
The Patent and Trademark Office's second in command, Stephen Pinkos, will leave his job by late March, the PTO confirmed on Wednesday. Technology Daily's PM edition has the details of his departure and his imminent move to the Lone Star State.
PTO Director Jon Dudas called Pinkos "a true leader in the intellectual property world who has earned the respect of members of Congress, international IP policymakers and his colleagues." Pinkos helped achieve record low error rates and the highest level of electronic filing and processing in PTO history, Dudas said in a press release.
Pinkos noted that he had "never seen a government agency so focused on producing real results" and said PTO employees have "great ideas, great enthusiasm and great dedication."
The man behind a series of online copyright complaints has agreed to withdraw the claims, take a copyright law course and apologize for interfering with the free speech rights of Internet magazine 10 Zen Monkeys.
The agreement settles an Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit filed against Michael Crook on behalf of the magazine's editor Jeff Diehl. Under the threat of what EFF calls "meritless" takedown notices from Crook, Diehl modified an article about Crook's behavior in a fake sex-ad scheme.
Crook claimed to be the copyright holder of an image used in the story, which was later found to have come from a Fox News program and legally used as part of commentary. You can see Crook's videotaped apology here.
"Crook's legal threats interfered with legitimate debate about his controversial online behavior," EFF attorney Jason Schultz said in a press release. "Public figures must not be allowed to use bogus copyright claims to squelch speech."
Reprinted from Monday's Technology Daily PM Edition:
More details emerged Monday about a new plan by the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, to greatly expand public access to its catalog of digital video from federal government activities.
The cable industry-financed nonprofit revised its copyright policy last week to allow "non-commercial" copying, sharing and posting of congressional hearings, agency briefings and White House events with attribution -- and more changes are on the way.
Confusion over the network's intellectual property provisions came to a crescendo recently when House Republicans questioned whether House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., had illegally used C-SPAN clips on her Web site. A network spokeswoman insisted that the policy shift was "a year in the making" and was not in response to the flap.
In an interview with Technology Daily, C-SPAN President Rob Kennedy said liberalizing the policy was the first step in an ongoing process. In coming months, he said C-SPAN will "do some things on our site and on the Internet that make our video easier to find and use."
First, the network will open up its 20-year-old vault of digitized recordings so users can search for and stream hundreds of thousands of hours of footage. The streaming video will be technologically protected to prevent viewers from "ripping" directly from the site, Kennedy said.
A decade after Congress enacted Internet age amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, only one in five federal agencies (21 percent) comply with the law, according to a new survey released during Sunshine Week by the National Security Archive. About 6 percent post all 10 elements of essential FOIA guidance; 36 percent provide the required indexes of records; and 26 percent make online forms available for FOIA requests.
In addition, the study showed that many agency Web links are missing or inaccurate (one FOIA fax number checked rang in the maternity ward of a military base hospital). "Federal agencies are flunking the online test and keeping us in the dark," said the Archive's chief Thomas Blanton. "Some government sites just link to each other in an endless empty loop."
Archive General Counsel Meredith Fuchs, AP chief Tom Curley and others will testify on the status of FOIA on Wednesday morning at the Senate Judiciary Committee.
YouTube has become even more popular since the Google-owned video-sharing site took down about 100,000 videos that Viacom claimed infringed on its copyrights last month, according to the search giant's general counsel Kent Walker. "We think that's a testament to the draw of the user-generated content on YouTube," he said in a statement.
As reported in Technology Daily's PM edition, Viacom filed a lawsuit against Google and YouTube in a Manhattan federal court asking for $1 billion in damages and an injunction barring further alleged infringement.
Meanwhile, Google has been successful at forging "thousands of successful partnerships with content owners" like Warner Music, Sony/BMG, Universal Music and others, Walker said. The partnerships offer users access to a wide world of entertainment, sports, politics and news "and we're only getting started," he said.
Update: The 463 Blog has a nice round up of what some in the Internet community are saying about the Viacom-Google lawsuit.
Google Watch: A rundown of Viacom's arguments
Jeff Jarvis: Viacom has an issue with their own viewers
Fred Wilson: Hopes the suit doesn’t settle
TechDirt: Ponders the supposed damage in question
Paid Content: Timeline of Viacom/YouTube interactions
Henry Blodget: It's not a big deal
Mark Cuban: "Gootube" has no idea who their users are
Civil libertarians cheered the introduction of a bill by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on Tuesday aimed at improving transparency and accountability in the federal government. Technology Daily's PM edition has the full story on the measure.
The legislation, which coincides with Washington's annual Sunshine Week, builds on legislative efforts that the Vermont Democrat and Texas Republican John Cornyn began two years ago. The bill would update the four-decade-old Freedom of Information Act for the first time since the 1990s.
Caroline Fredrickson, the American Civil Liberties Union's top lobbyist, criticized the Bush administration as being "the most secretive administration" since Nixon's. "A vibrant democracy depends upon concerned and active people who use tools like FOIA," she said. "We need FOIA to shine light into the darkened corners of government agencies."
The House could make broadcast-quality downloadable video of all hearings and floor debate a reality by the end of the 110th Congress, Internet watchdog Carl Malamud said Tuesday in a new report sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In it, he offers a number of reasons why he thinks Congress should take advantage of the "network effect" of having data available in bulk for others to work with. "Technically speaking, this is a 'no-brainer.' This is simply a matter of will, Malamud said.
His report was issued in the wake of a recent loosening of copyright controls on digital video by the Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, and a controversy involving Pelosi's posting of digital video on her Web site.
The physical infrastructure will soon be in place to provide systematic, comprehensive coverage of each hearing, Malamud said. Plus, government-owned video cameras installed on Capitol Hill are good and there are no technical obstacles to offering better quality, he added.
The following guest entry was written by Julie Barko Germany, deputy director for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. She is attending the South By Southwest festival in Austin.
What's more exciting: the new Apple iPhone or the possibility that 2008 will see the first mobile-powered political movement? Here in Austin at SXSW Interactive, the answer is "both."
I just finished speaking on the Mobile Active panel with Justin Oberman, Roger Desai, Jed Alpert and Doug Busk, where the discussion centered on how advocacy groups can use mobile technology more effectively. During the Q&A session, a member of the audience asked us if the iPhone will change the way Americans use mobile technology.
It will certainly make mobile technology cooler (iTunes! Video! Snappy design!). With a company like Apple backing it, the carriers will certainly listen. And yes, people will probably run over each other to buy one when the iPhone is released later this summer.
For a politically minded techie like me, it has the potential to do something else: change minds about how mobile technology can be used creatively and effectively in the political space to connect people in real time to a political cause and mobilize them to take immediate (and sometimes offline) action.
Text messaging ain't e-mail. And the mobile phone is useful for a heck of a lot more than sending SMS (text message) updates. You just have to look at it differently.
The Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network's recent loosening of its copyright policy for "any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency" was met with cheers from those in the Internet community.
Web watchdog Carl Malamud, who has routinely questioned C-SPAN's intellectual property protections, said the cable industry-financed nonprofit did "a wonderful thing" and "way more than they had to do." A week earlier, he wrote to C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb offering to buy the network's entire collection of congressional hearing videos for the purpose of posting them for public use online.
Malamud said video-related problems remain with Congress. The legislative branch needs to "meet C-SPAN's gift by committing to providing broadcast-quality video from every congressional hearing for download on the Internet," he said. "Anything less just doesn't cut it."
Current webcasting on Capitol Hill is "uniformly awful," Malamud said. He said Democrats and Republicans alike appear to be trying to spin the issue for political advantage. "This is about the public record, not petty partisan bickering."
For the latest news on C-SPAN's digital video plans, read Technology Daily's PM edition.
Oink, oink. Guess what debuted recently? The Congressional Pig Book, an annual compilation of pork-barrel projects in the federal budget. The guide, published by Citizens Against Government Waste, flagged 2,658 projects at a cost of $13.2 billion in the defense and homeland security appropriations bills for fiscal 2007.
Some technology-related spending highlights from CAGW:
• $5 million for science and technology workforce revitalization at Maryland's Energetics Technology Center
• $2 million for math and technology teacher development and "cyber curriculum" to educate children in the military
• $225 million for port security grants to private companies and port authorities
• $12 million for city bus security grants (ticket identification, passenger screening, emergency communication)
• $12 million for trucking security grants related to an ongoing highway safety program
• $1.3 million for a Navy "small business technology and readiness resource" in Missouri
• $1.6 million for a similar program in Florida
• $1.4 million for a Pentagon-wide center for excellence in educational technology
• $3.3 million for a National Guard "advanced technology battery modernization program"
• $2.4 million for the Army's "battery charging technology"
• $3.2 million for "3D advanced battery technology," also for the Army
• $1.5 million for an Army "cyber attack technology" system
• $3.2 million for an Air Force "palmtop emergency action for chemicals" initiative
• $4 million for the Army's "advanced research and technology initiative"
• $1.6 million for "integrated information technology policy analyses research"
• $2.3 million for a Missouri-based "center for micro/nano systems and nanotechnology"
• $3 million for "multifunctional protective packaging technology" in the Army
• $1.6 million for "missile and space modeling and simulation technology"
• $2.4 million for Internet phone software for the Army Reserve
• $1.6 million for the Navy's "magnetic refrigeration technology for naval applications"
• $10 million for Air Force "ballistic missile range safety technology"
• $3 million for Air Force "technology insertion demonstration and evaluation"
• $3.9 million for a Pentagon-wide "next generation manufacturing technology initiative"
The following guest entry was written by Julie Barko Germany, deputy director for the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. She is attending the South By Southwest festival in Austin.
Technology overload. It's not as bad as it sounds. I don't have thumb cramps from using a Blackberry too much. I don't have iPod ears (that slight pain you get from using the standard iPod earphones for longer than an hour a day). I'm midway into my second day at SXSW Interactive, and I have a technology buzz.
With little more than an hour until my panel on mobilizing the masses with mobile technology begins, I'm sitting in the middle of the exhibit hall, I'm afraid of missing something -- talking with the right person, attending the five different panels I want to go to at the same time, getting a Firefox tattoo at the Mozilla exhibit booth.
I attended a panel on the rise of blogebrity (celebrity in the blog- and more recently the vlogosphere) yesterday afternoon. There's nothing too startling in 2007 about the idea that everyday people -- you, me, the teenager down the street, your boss -- can reach an audience of tens, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of people online creating something poignant, startling, or funny.
But what does this mean for politics? This morning over breakfast tacos in a pub, my father asked me if I thought an unknown everyman could ever run -- and succeed at obtaining -- a presidential nomination. An everyman as president? A vlogger as a serious candidate? At a place like SXSW, the idea doesn't seem too far off.
Or maybe that's just the technology buzz talking.
There is no doubt that the annual South By Southwest festival in Austin, Texas is a feast for the senses. The live music smorgasbord has taken place every spring since 1987 and in subsequent years, organizers added interactive and film categories. The gathering has attracted a strong contingent of Web heads and independent moviemakers.
On Sunday night, attendees celebrated the 10th Annual SXSW Web Awards ceremony, the centerpiece of the multi-day event. Popular videoblogger Ze Frank was slated to serve as host and emcee.
Other notable Sunday sessions included:
• Every Breath You Take: Identity, Attention, Presence and Reputation
• Blogging Where Speech Isn't Free
• Digital Distribution: The Way of the Future for Gaming
• E-mail Disasters, Large and Small and How to Avoid Them
• Spam of All Kinds: Dealing with Online Abuse
• The Rise of the Blogebrity
One of SXSW Interactive's main events on Monday is a keynote by award-winning television personality Dan Rather. The former CBS anchor will discuss how emerging technology is shaping the news.
Also on Monday…
• User Generated Content: Friend or Foe
• Secrets of Doing More with Less in a Digital World
• Journalism in the Blogosphere: A Legal Guide to Internet "Press"
• What Does the Future Hold for Video on the Internet
And on Tuesday…
• Finding the Next Billion Internet Users
• Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge
• The Future of the Book: Dead or Alive?
• Music From the Masses: The Remix Revolution
• Net Politics: The Internet Can Make You President
• The Technologist Agenda: Political Activism for Geeks
For more about SXSW Interactive programming, click here and read the SXSW Interactive Community Blog here.
Washington's own WTTG-TV is hosting a "Blogapalooza" this Tuesday -- a pretty interesting concept for a local television station to organize. Live reports from Busboys & Poets restaurant start at 6 a.m. on the Fox affiliate's morning news program.
According to MyFoxDC.com, viewers will learn "what the blogging revolution is all about [and] why more and more people are blogging." The station also invited area bloggers to join them on-site and enjoy free coffee until 9 a.m.
WTTG has invested heavily in its Web site in recent months and has an extensive online community where anchors, reporters and viewers can create their own blogs to discuss a variety of topics.
Here are some statistics (courtesy of a Justice Department e-mail) that pertain to Friday's inspector general report on the FBI's use of a special PATRIOT Act subpoena power (national security letters) that allows investigators to access phone, e-mail and financial records without judicial approval. Read the latest news on this topic in Technology Daily's PM edition.
8,500: Number of NSL requests in 2000 (before the Patriot Act)
39,000: Number of requests in 2003
56,000: Number of requests in 2004
47,000: Number of requests in 2005
143,074: Total requests during the three year period covered by the report
26: Number of possible FBI intelligence violations during the audit period
19: Number of violations reported to the intelligence oversight board
22: Number of violations resulting from FBI errors
4: Number of violations caused by mistakes made by NSL recipients
100+: Number of FBI and Justice Department employees interviewed
73: Percent of NSL requests used in counterterrorism probes
26: Percent used in counterintelligence cases
This year's National Journalism Awards, granted annually by the Scripps Howard Foundation, include a few with technology-related angles, including the top award for investigative journalism.
The Wall Street Journal won the investigative prize for its series on employee stock options. We have linked to much of the coverage in the Journal and other publications in our AM Edition because so many of the companies caught up in the scandal over manipulating stock options are in the technology industry.
This week alone, we have cited stories on: the chairman of Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry handheld device, resigning over the options scandal at his firm; option values being manipulated after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to maximize profits; and the dilemma that the Securities and Exchange Commission faces in whether or how to penalize companies for such backdating of options.
The journalism award for the Journal went to James Bandler, Charles Forelle, Mark Maremont and Steve Stecklow.
The award for Web reporting went to washingtonpost.com for its "Being a Black Man" production, which featured videos, Web chats, Web logs, a live webcast and an interactive survey along with the text that was published in the daily newspaper. And WTHR-TV in Indianapolis finished first for excellence in electronic media/TV-cable thanks to "Cause for Alarm," the station's investigation of the failure of the tornado warning systems in Indiana.
One finalist also is worth mentioning to our readers. Laura McGann of AP was the finalist for "distinguished service to the First Amendment" because of her work in uncovering how the Education Department and FBI ran a counter-terrorism data-mining program for five years.
Amid a frenzied few days I neglected to write about Wednesday evening's soiree for the Center for Democracy and Technology. My pal at CNET provides a great round-up of the "news" that was made by Microsoft's Bill Gates and Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The celebration was packed with "celebrities" of the high-tech policy arena, including: FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras and Commissioners Jon Leibowitz and Pamela Jones Harbour; FCC Commissioner Deborah Tate; Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va.; and a handful of state attorneys general who were in town for their annual spring meeting.
During the main course, CDT poked fun of the social networking craze (and itself) by posting slides of an imaginary Web site called "CDTSpace." Profiles of the organization's staff and supporters included childhood photos and humorous quotes.
My favorite slide targeted top Google lobbyist Alan Davidson. The group joked that searches on his own Web site "turned up nothing" about the former CDT associate director so they used competitor Yahoo to compile his profile information.
Even though CDT Executive Director Leslie Harris' page said she was "most likely to be seen hanging out at the corner of a party," she and her staff know how to inspire some serious midweek merrymaking.
Those attending the Visa Security Summit in Washington are learning that there is a big difference between the loss of personal data and actual fraud. Panelists told an audience of mostly bankers and retailers that they don't need to worry much if data is lost, but if it is a targeted attack by hackers -- worry and take action.
But during the questions and answers session, those attending wanted practical advice on how to get the CEO to pay attention to security and invest in better practices before a security breach.
Try this at home says James Lee, chief public affairs officer at ChoicePoint: "Boss, the Associated Press is on the phone."
James Van Dyke, president of Javelin Strategy & Research suggested emphasizing that your brand is all you have and its value is based on trust.
Donovan Neale-May, executive director of the Chief Marketing Officer Council, says to try, "Our competitor has more trust and they're getting more business."
A federal court in New Jersey on Thursday awarded Kevin Medina control of domain name registrar RegisterFly. The ruling resolved a dispute over ownership of the company but did not lessen pressure from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to fix breaches of its accreditation agreement.
The firm, which administers about 2 million domain names, faced criticism after users were unable to transfer their domain names away from RegisterFly to another registrar, ICANN said. The organization is awaiting a meeting with the company's executives to resolve the reported failures.
Earlier this week, ICANN obtained registrant data from RegisterFly but a substantial portion of the records consist of privacy-protected accounts. ICANN has asked RegisterFly how that information can be maintained in the event that RegisterFly loses its accreditation.
Update: In other ICANN news, a fact sheet concerning a February attack on the system that underpins the Internet is now available. The document is intended to "provide an explanation of the attack for a non-technical audience in the hope of enlarging public understanding surrounding this and related issues."
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, which applies to the online collection of personal information from children under age 13, has been "working pretty well" since its enactment in 2000 and is flexible enough to evolve as new technologies are introduced, the IAPP heard Thursday.
Mary Engle, the FTC's associate director for the division of advertising practices, gave social-networking sites as an example. The agency recently settled its first case in that arena which involved Xanga.com. The Web site paid the government a $1 million penalty for collecting and disclosing youngsters' data.
Engle said the FTC will also "take a hard look" at legitimate companies whose online advertisements are being included in unwanted and potentially harmful computer software that is downloaded onto consumers' computers without permission. She said the agency will be sending letters to advertisers that have been flagged during FTC investigations to make sure they are aware of where their ads are appearing.
The mobile device marketplace poses new challenges for enforcing laws aimed at fighting unsolicited e-mail and other Web-based blights, the FTC's Lois Greisman said at the IAPP conference. Cellular phones and handheld computers provide a "tremendous opportunity for different types of consumer experiences" as well as fraud, she said.
Greisman, associate director of the agency's division of marketing practices, said a practice called "cramming" is of particular concern. Cramming is the addition of charges for undesired services to a subscriber's account. There are also "plenty of billing and payment issues" the FTC is tracking, she said. The appropriate inclusion of federally required disclosures on marketing e-mail is also a problem "on a screen that is very tiny."
Sun Microsystems co-founder Scott McNealy delivered a rousing keynote at the IAPP conference on Thursday where he offered attendees a tongue-in-cheek list of the "Top 10 Ways to Make Privacy the Boss's Concern." You can read more about his "don't-try-this-at-home" pointers in the PM edition of Technology Daily.
He was followed by FTC Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras, who spoke about her agency's enforcement actions and internal work to improve data security and privacy. In 2006, she brought the FTC into compliance with the latest privacy guidelines and is expanding the effort this year.
Majoras, who co-chairs an identity theft task force created by President Bush last year, said the group has made interim recommendations and will deliver its final strategic plan to the White House shortly.
What is a privacy professional? About 1,200 attendees at this week's International Association of Privacy Professionals conference know -- but footage of man-on-the-street interviews (played for the crowd on Thursday morning) showed that average Americans do not.
The question garnered blank stares, head-scratching and some pretty funny answers. "Is that like the FBI or CIA?" one interviewee asked. A mailman said: "I don't have a clue." Another guessed that a privacy professional is someone "involved with something deceitful and dishonest." Quite a few people simply said: "I don’t know."
IAPP Executive Director Trevor Hughes admitted that his 3,200-member group has "a bit of a PR problem." "Perhaps I know what you do, you know what you do, our bosses sometimes know what you do," but many people do not, he said. Privacy experts must better explain their role as "guardians of trust" in the digital age, he added.
To that end, the IAPP will soon launch a campaign to educate the public. The group will also begin "delegate tours" later this year to learn from and share experiences with foreign counterparts. IAPP officials will visit London, Paris and Berlin in June, Hughes said.
The Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network, commonly known as C-SPAN, announced on Wednesday that it is liberalizing its copyright policy for "current, future and past coverage of any official events sponsored by Congress and any federal agency -- about half of all programming." The network will permit non-commercial copying, sharing and posting of C-SPAN video on the Internet, with attribution. C-SPAN also plans to expand its capitolhearings.org Web site to make it "a one-stop resource" for congressional webcasts. My editor Danny Glover has more thoughts on the issue at the Beltway Blogroll.
If lawmaking doesn’t pan out for Pennsylvania Democrat Mike Doyle, he could always take his act on the road. During a House Commerce Committee hearing on the future of radio, he told "a little story about a local guy done good."
That guy is Gregg Gillis, who works as a biomedical engineer by day and DJs at night under the name "Girl Talk." His music mash-ups have topped the charts of Rolling Stone and Spin magazines. The man can blend Elton John, Notorious B.I.G. and Destiny's Child all in the span of 30 seconds, Doyle said.
But Gillis' schtick relies on remixing copyrighted material so legitimate audio service eMusic.com took his content offline for possible infringement. Now he's flying all over the world opening concerts and remixing for artists like Beck, Doyle noted.
He said he hoped his fellow congressmen would "take a step back and ask themselves if mash-ups and mix tapes are really different, or if it's the same as Paul McCartney admitting he nicked a Chuck Berry bass riff and used it on the Beatles hit 'I Saw Her Standing There.'"
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said Doyle's remarks were about as clear as mud. He joked that his colleague had given up drinking alcohol for Lent but might want to get back on the sauce because he used to make more sense.
Update: Doyle said later in the hearing that he did not give up alcohol for Lent. He gave up Brussels sprouts.
Radio is, at its essence, a communications tool and is the most democratic of media because it reaches virtually all of the American public, Geoffrey Blackwell told the House Commerce Committee panel on behalf of the Native Public Media and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters.
While commercial radio is fundamentally about getting the largest possible audience, non-commercial programming is a platform for conversation, he said. "This conversation can range from a wide diversity of music to features on local political issues, high school sports to a pow wow," he said.
The dialogue is made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Commerce Department's Public Telecommunications Facilities Program, he said. Both are important programs that "deserve as much support as possible" from Congress.
Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., said at the House Commerce Committee panel hearing that he is skeptical of the proposed merger between satellite radio providers XM and Sirius. "Do we throw anything that makes noise into the world of competition so that we don’t define this merger as a monopoly?" he asked. Some have argued that Internet radio, iPods and terrestrial radio provide plenty of competition in the audio entertainment marketplace.
Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., was "not sure that Congress has a distinct role" in the actual merger approval. "Perhaps our responsibility is more into looking at whether this merger will provide greater localism on a combined service or not," he said. Another question is whether the local, differentiated programming on satellite radio will undermine free, over-the-air radio.
Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., noted the radio market is "not easy to define." While there may be plenty of services that compete for listeners' ears, he is worried that the proposed Sirius-XM union could "start us down a slippery slope" of approving mergers by other players like satellite television providers EchoStar and DirecTV. The FCC denied a request by those two companies to merge several years ago.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., who chairs the House Energy and Commerce's Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, is concerned about the "abysmal lack of broadcast licenses" held by minority- and women-owned businesses. His remarks came at a hearing Wednesday on the future of radio.
While many licenses were given out decades ago, it is important to remember that the country's population is half female and 35 percent minority, he said. Lawmakers and the FCC can find "creative ways" to remedy the situation, Markey added.
Michigan Democrat John Dingell, who chairs the full committee, also tackled the topic. He said minorities own about 4 percent of radio stations nationwide and it may be part of a "downward trend." He called for "full representation of minority broadcasting" on American airwaves and said the law and federal agencies "should encourage that."
I'll be filing a story for Technology Daily's PM edition from Wednesday afternoon's House Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee hearing that examines the future of the radio (hence the Donna Summer song lyrics).
Witnesses include Sirius Satellite Radio CEO Mel Karmazin; Geoffrey Blackwell on behalf of the Native Public Media and the National Federation of Community Broadcasters; Robert Kimball of RealNetworks on behalf of the Digital Media Association; the Consumers Union's Gene Kimmelman; and Greater Media's Peter Smyth on behalf of the National Association of Broadcasters.
While I anticipate that much of the discussion will revolve around the proposed XM-Sirius merger, experts will likely share their thoughts with lawmakers on a host of other issues that are pertinent to 21st century radio. Stay tuned…
The following article was published in Friday's PM Edition of National Journal's Technology Daily:
Internet Watchdog Picks A 'Fair Use' Fight With C-SPAN
by Andrew Noyes
A well-known Internet watchdog wrote to C-SPAN CEO Brian Lamb this week, offering to purchase the network's entire collection of 6,000-plus congressional hearing videos for the purpose of posting them online so anyone could use them.
The proposal, valued at just more than $1 million, was made by Carl Malamud. He is the founder of the Internet Multicasting Service, which is credited with creating the first Web radio station.
Malamud said on Friday that he sent the letter because of the network's "overly aggressive" intellectual property protection. "Saying that you can't use any video at all without prior permission is just wrong; fair use means you don't have to ask," he said.
"We are open to hearing about any ideas that allow the greatest number of people to watch government in action while continuing to explore and develop our own approaches to increasing the public's access to government proceedings," C-SPAN said in a statement.
Malamud's letter came after a claim made last month by the House Republican Study Committee that Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., infringed on C-SPAN's copyrights by posting video of floor proceedings on her Web log, The Gavel.
The network said Pelosi could use that video but later reaffirmed its strict enforcement policies on video of other congressional activities like hearings. C-SPAN asked her to remove footage of her testimony on global warming to the House Science the Technology Committee. Pelosi later reposted the footage via a feed direct from the committee's cameras, according to The New York Times.
The Copyright Royalty Board decision on royalties for Internet radio services is now posted on the panel's Web site (PDF format). Previous coverage of the issue can be found here.
Although Technology Daily ran a story in Monday's PM edition, National Public Radio took a better-late-than-never approach, offering a reaction to the ruling today.
Andi Sporkin, NPR's vice president for communications, said: "NPR is deeply concerned about the CRB decision since it ignores the unique circumstances of public radio, stifles our shared public service mission to bring music and culture to the broadest possible audience and threatens our survival in digital media."
While the CRB decision claims to make an exception for public radio, the loophole is a limited one that "otherwise imposes a commercial-level tax on anything beyond the most basic music programming and the least amount of listeners," she said.
"NPR is consulting with the public radio community to determine what steps must be taken to reverse this decision and its dire consequences on public service media," Sporkin said.
The Progress and Freedom Foundation's Adam Thierer spoke to the Freedom to Connect conference on Tuesday about the dangers of government-imposed data retention and age-verification mandates.
He warned that the country now faces a "serious threat of regulatory convergence" since some on Capitol Hill want to apply "broken regulatory models from the past" that governed broadcasting to "each and every platform or new technology out there."
The old paradigm was based on the scarcity of voices being seen and heard on television and radio, he said. But making that argument in the Internet age is "silly," Thierer said. That cannot be the hook on which the nation hangs its regulatory standards, he said.
Thierer said he spends much of his time "trying to fend off one bad regulatory proposal after another." Pitches for government restrictions have been made for videogames, social-networking sites, cellular phones and just about every type of Internet-enabled technology, he said.
There is a "real chance" that some type of data retention requirement for Internet service providers will come out of the 110th Congress, Thierer said. The Bush administration has been lobbying for such a mandate since last year. He also noted that state attorneys general may successfully impose age-verification rules in some states.
Thierer called both initiatives a "threat to online speech and communication." "We've been relying on the courts to hold the line," but the environment soon may change drastically, he said.
An Internet expert at the Freedom to Connect conference on Tuesday turned the tables on Yale Law School's Yochai Benkler by criticizing his book The Wealth of Networks. Benkler was the summit's cause célèbre the day before.
On Monday, he spoke about his tome, which states that new "networked information economy" allows individuals and groups to be more productive than commercial ventures. A handful of fellow pundits and audience-members cheered him on.
But Peter Swire, an Ohio State University high-tech legal scholar, argued that an "economic-ased objective is pragmatically useful" when analyzing the 21st century marketplace. "There are a thousand things I agree with in the book," but Benkler's chief thesis is not one of them.
The book's assertion that change depends on "social rather than proprietary market relations [is] a big claim," Swire said. He said he believes "the shift to non-market is not proven and likely to be substantially overstated."
Swire gave the domain name system as an example. It began with a collection of hobbyists but gave rise to a powerful commercial vehicle that is administered by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. "It would be very surprising to have the domain name system we have now if individuals were doing it on a volunteer basis," he said.
The public discussion about Benkler's book continues on his wiki.
Tech associations are piling on the praise for the America Competes Act introduced Monday in the Senate by a bipartisan group of leaders including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The bill includes education and basic research funding recommendations in recent reports including the National Academies "Rising Above the Gathering Storm.”
"TechNet passionately believes that the most important economic policy issue today is helping our nation remain the global innovation leader," said Lezlee Westine, President and CEO of TechNet.
"The America Competes Act provides a terrific blueprint to ensure our nation remains the world's innovation leader. With Democrats and Republicans from all the relevant committees signed on to this proposal, we are hopeful that the proposal will quickly pass through the Senate. We applaud the authors of this important measure for their strong bipartisan work to keep America the epicenter of cutting edge discovery,” Westine said.
"This new legislation would establish a broad blueprint to strengthen the pillars of American innovation and competitiveness — education, basic research and a business environment to drive innovations,” said Catherine Hunt, president of the American Chemical Society.
As reported in Technology Daily's AM edition, Microsoft's associate general counsel is expected to criticize Google's "cavalier approach to copyright" law in a speech later today at an Association of American Publishers meeting.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft's Thomas Rubin plans to say that Google got "unfettered access" to various libraries for its book-scanning effort then "turned its back on its partners" by making copies of books without obtaining copyright holders' permission.
Ed Black, who heads the Computer and Communications Industry Association, couldn't resist chiming in on the brawl between his members. "I cannot overlook Microsoft's unfortunate mischaracterization of copyright law," he said in a statement.
"Contrary to Microsoft’s suggestion, every unauthorized use of a copyrighted work is not infringement," Black said. "Highly transformative copies, such as those made by search engines like Google and Microsoft’s own MSN, or those made by Microsoft’s software programmers when reverse-engineering competitors’ products, are fair use under copyright law."
Reactions to the FCC's release of its detailed video franchising order were plentiful on Monday afternoon. Here are a handful of supporters' comments:
Robert Quinn, AT&T's senior vice president, applauded the agency's efforts "to promote for consumers alternatives to the incumbent cable companies." The ruling establishes reasonable timeframes for localities to negotiate the terms of competitive entry for new video providers, he said.
Verizon's Marilyn O'Connell said the order removes obstacles to the rollout of the company's all-fiber-optic network and FiOS TV service. "It means that we will be able to reach our goal of rapidly expanding the number of consumers who have a choice of video service providers," she said.
The Fiber-to-the-Home Council said the decision is a "major stride toward competition in multi-channel video distribution and accelerated deployment of next-generation broadband networks."
U.S. Telecom Association President Walter McCormick said the FCC's order is a "critical step forward in bringing consumers greater choices, exciting new services and vibrant video competition."
And, of course, there were opponents…
Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott said he had "serious concerns" about the authority of the FCC to issue the rules. "Why has Congress worked for over a year to address franchise reform if the FCC could do the work of legislators in one fell swoop?" he asked.
Consumers Union Senior Policy Analyst Jeannine Kenney called the policy "unfriendly to consumers." "This order ties the hands of local authorities to protect their most vulnerable constituencies," she said.
U.S. PIRG Staff Attorney Amina Fazlullah said the FCC's order "shows both an obvious ignorance of the limits Congress placed on its authority and a failure to comprehend that the best place to make decisions that affect local viewers is at the local level."
Media Access Project President Andrew Jay Schwartzman said the order will "destroy local control over cable TV services."
Tech Daily Dose made its debut as an Election Night blog last November. Since then, we have resurrected it periodically for covering key events like the Consumer Electronics Show in January and the Tech Policy Summit last month. We've also used the blog to publish news that has occurred off Tech Daily's normal deadlines.
Well, consider that trial period over. Senior Writer Andrew Noyes has done an excellent job of feeding our blog beast and relishes the thought of doing it more often. As of today, Tech Daily Dose is a permanent feature of coverage at National Journal's Technology Daily.
Andrew will be the primary blogger, but other Tech Daily staffers may contribute periodically as well. We're also pondering ways to incorporate ideas from readers into the mix here, so if you have ideas, feel free to e-mail me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.
Danny Glover
Editor
Tomorrow's Freedom to Connect conference speakers include: Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media; blogger Mark Tapscott; Sunlight Foundation's Bill Allison; New America Foundation's Michael Calabrese; Progress and Freedom Foundation's Adam Thierer; cyber security expert Peter Swire and others. FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein is scheduled to keynote at 11 a.m.
Don't let James Salter's southern drawl and sense of comic timing fool you. The Atlantic Engineering founder is serious about pushing for greater U.S. broadband deployment. America will continue to lag behind its competitors and innovation will suffer "until this country gets wired a little better than it is today," he said.
Despite the need for better broadband, the Freedom to Connect speaker was critical of some methods of achieving the goal. Wireless services, copper lines and coaxial cable are all "bad for broadband," he claimed, readily admitting his bias. "I'm a guy that owns a company and I've got an agenda." His firm has connected a dozen cities through fiber-to-the-home technology.
The Copyright Royalty Board, which determines royalties on sound recordings, quietly released a decision on Friday setting the per-performance rates for Internet radio stations through 2010. There's a full story on this in Technology Daily's PM edition.
Small and independent online music providers are not pleased. They wanted royalty rates based on a percentage of revenue but the three-judge panel decided they should pay what larger webcasters and broadcasters pay.
Initial reactions in the blogosphere were pretty nasty. TechDirt called the CRB decision "utterly backwards and damaging to the industry" since webcasting is "a great means of promotion for artists." Corante's CopyFight blog argued those "outside the big media mainstream" are "screwed." Radio Paradise owner Bill Goldsmith wrote on his Save Our Internet Radio blog that the new rate structure is a "death sentence" for his music site.
But SoundExchange, the nonprofit that will administer the royalties, said the CRB weighed evidence presented by over 60 witnesses and examined tens of thousands of pages of testimony to arrive at a fair deal.
Those who "want to frame this as a desire by big, greedy record companies to fatten their bank accounts," are wrong, SoundExchange spokesman Willem Dicke said. Fifty percent of the royalties will go to performing artists and 15-20 percent will be funneled to independent labels. As much as 35 percent of revenue (depending upon the service) will go to major labels, he said.
He complained that the old rate had not increased at all prior to this proceeding and had remained flat for seven years. At the same time, webcasting audiences have increased exponentially and webcasting revenues have soared, Dicke said.
Webcasters paid less than $20 million in royalties to sound recording copyright owners and performers in 2006, based on the old royalty rate, Dicke said. He added that webcasters' warnings that they are going to go out of business "has been heard over and over again and has never materialized."
Update: The Digital Media Association, which represents America Online, Yahoo and other digital music services, also weighed in late Monday. The group's members are "disappointed" in the CRB decision and are "re-evaluating the viability of the Internet radio business,” DiMA Executive Director Jonathan Potter said.
Sanjit Biswas, co-founder of wireless mesh network provider Meraki, made a major announcement at the Freedom to Connect conference this afternoon. His initiative whose mission is to "bring affordable Internet access to the next billion people" will soon establish a pilot project in San Francisco.
The Google-funded start-up was first used in low-income housing communities in the U.S. and has since spread to more than 25 countries. The forthcoming Bay Area project will give 1,000 residents Meraki's cute little mini-repeaters "to see what kind of network they can build," Biswas said.
He hopes the first-of-its-kind grassroots effort will show other communities that the Internet can be deployed easily for free or at a low cost. There are already 15,000 Meraki users worldwide, he said.
Just in case you're wondering, Meraki (may-rah-kee) is a Greek word that means doing something with soul, creativity or love.
The FCC on Monday released the full text of the video franchising order and rulemaking originally adopted at December's commission meeting. You can find all the details here (PDF format).
The order addressed several ways by which the FCC says local franchising authorities have unreasonably refused to award competitive franchises. Local service providers have complained that the agency is being unreasonable by trying to usurp their authority.
The rulemaking, which seeks comment on how the FCC's findings should affect existing franchisees, tentatively concludes that the new rules should apply during the franchise renewal process.
Technology Daily's PM edition will include coverage from the annual Freedom to Connect conference today but, as usual, there's always more to the story. So I'll be posting highlights from the event on the blog. You can find out more about F2C here.
Yale Law School's Yochai Benkler spoke this morning about his book The Wealth of Networks. He said "every connected person on the planet… now has the physical capacity necessary to make and communicate information, knowledge and culture."
That has changed the global marketplace because "most inputs into the core economic activities… are widely distributed in the population," he said. At stake is whether these forms of decentralized production will be sustainable, Benkler added.
Other morning speakers included Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas; Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn; the Consumer Federation of America's Mark Cooper; KC Claffy of the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis; and author and lecturer Elliot Maxwell.
Remarks by VeriSign CEO Stratton Sclavos at the Tech Policy Summit in San Jose this week unsurprisingly rubbed Internet registrars the wrong way. Sclavos estimated that competitors like GoDaddy and Network Solutions spent about $15 million lobbying against his company's continued control of the lucrative .com Internet address.
But a spokeswoman for Network Solutions criticized Sclavos' math, saying her firm and GoDaddy, the only two registrars that spent money on lobbying efforts in 2006, doled out considerably less than his guess.
According to GoDaddy's lobbying disclosures filed with the secretary of the Senate, the company spent about $245,000 on outside consultants last year. The firm's in-house lobbying activity associated with staff salaries amounted to about $460,000. Network Solutions appropriated about $420,000 on consultants and spent no money in-house because the company does not have lobbyists on staff.
Meanwhile, Verisign's outside spending on consultants for 2006 was about $885,000, according to disclosures provided by Network Solutions. The company spent $398,435 in-house through June 2006 (no year end report was filed). It is conceivable that VeriSign spent twice as much throughout the year on in-house salaries related to lobbying, the Network Solutions official said.
Remember a few weeks ago when the Republican Study Committee claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was pirating C-Span content by posting video of floor debate on her blog?
Well, techie Carl Malamud used the uproar as inspiration for a hack that might ruffle some feathers in Washington. According to Malamud, Congress largely offers webcasts that are "live only" and in many cases archives of the stream are not provided. In some instances, committees put a "copyright, all rights reserved" notice on the video.
He considers this "really dumb" and has started ripping all congressional streams starting with the House and posting them in a nonproprietary format for download, tagging, review and annotation on Google Video and placing another copy at the Internet Archive.
Stanford University law professor Lawrence Lessig says the topic raises larger questions. On his blog, Lessig wrote: "As more and more 'notice and take-downs' get directed at people doing political remixes of candidates and their speeches, it's time for a candidate to take the lead to assure that the Web can be used for politics (without the mess of copyright)."
Read more about it in Technology Daily's PM edition on Friday.
Download transmissions are public performances under the Copyright Act and the "plain language" of the law defines the public performance right to encompass the activity, lawyers for the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers told a federal court in New York this week.
Technology Daily ran a story on digital media firms' opposition to ASCAP's claim in Wednesday's PM edition but ASCAP's filing was not made available by our deadline. The Digital Media Association called ASCAP's definition of public performance "a money grab."
In its brief, ASCAP alleges that legislative history also supports the group's conclusion that downloads are public performances. ASCAP cites the Digital Performance in Sound Recordings Act and U.S. adherence to the World Intellectual Property Organization's copyright treaty as proof.
Judicial interpretation of the Copyright Act also supports the claim, ASCAP told the court, adding that "transmissions of copyrighted works are public performances even when the public cannot receive them immediately." "Streams involve the public performance right because they are transmissions of performances," the group alleged. "There is no reason to treat downloads and streams differently."
"The emergence of the digital world is dramatically reshaping the way music is purchased and enjoyed," ASCAP CEO John LoFrumento said in a statement. "We strongly believe that our members are entitled to be compensated for all Internet transmissions of their music to the public – including the public performance that is an essential part of a music download.”
Additional briefs opposing ASCAP were expected from the wireless group CTIA and the Recording Industry Association of America.
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