April 2007

The Supreme Court handed down two major patent-related opinions on Monday -- KSR International v. Teleflex and Microsoft v. AT&T. Technology Daily's PM edition has one story on the rulings and another with reaction from the high-tech sector and attorneys.

But here's what more court watchers had to say…

Solveig Singleton of the Progress & Freedom Foundation said the court, which ruled in favor of KSR, "reached the right result." "The case is on the right track in paving the road for a more stringent standard of non-obviousness," she said.

Congress should exercise caution in the wake of the decision, Singleton said. "Rather than tackling the statutory standard of obviousness directly, address the better-understood institutional and legal process issues," she said. More circuit courts should hear patent appeals to give the U.S. Appeals Court for the Federal Circuit some feedback, she said.

The Computer and Communications Industry Association also hailed the KSR ruling. The "non-obviousness" standard had been eroded by lower courts and, as a result, "junk patents" thrive, the group said. According to CCIA President Ed Black, the ruling reaffirms what his group has long insisted -- that "the patent system’s purpose is to promote innovation, not patents."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released its annual review of other countries' success in protecting intellectual property. U.S. trading partners placed on the list, known as Special 301, can risk losing trade privileges if they fail to make enforcement progress.

This year, nations placed on the priority watch list include: China, Russia, Venezuela, and the Ukraine, among others. For more information on the report, see Technology Daily’s PM edition. -- Winter Casey

A mouse may be a small creature, but successfully simulating a significant portion of a rodent’s brain on a supercomputer is a big achievement for U.S. scientists.

IBM researchers have designed and "implemented a massively parallel cortical simulator" of a mouse's brain. The researchers believe that "neurobiologically realistic, large-scale cortical and sub-cortical simulations are bound to play a key role in computational neuroscience and its applications to cognitive computing."

The researchers said that "modeling at this scale imposes tremendous constraints on computation, communication, and memory capacity of any computing platform." The simulator was deployed on a BlueGene/L supercomputer.

The researchers said in a short report that the future goal is to "continually refine the computational architecture and to add neurobiological details." Co-author Dharmendra Modha said in a blog post last week that he believes "such cortical simulators are the linear accelerators of neuroscience." -- Winter Casey

Yale University's Access-To-Knowledge (A2K) conference is going on this weekend and unfortunately, I'm not there. About 300 leading scholars and activists from more than 40 countries attended last year's summit.

This year, organizers want to build on that momentum to help "set the agenda for access to knowledge policy and advocacy, and deepen the understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of access to knowledge issues," the conference's site said. The chief topic is mobilizing the private sector, governments, technologists and civil society around A2K issues.

Those of us who were not fortunate enough to attend can keep up to speed with the project by reading the A2K conference Wiki here.

A jury decided Friday in Internet portal Yahoo's favor, ending a six-year legal battle in which Sony-BMG Music and the recording industry had sought damages of more than $1 billion. They claimed that Yahoo Radio was an interactive service and therefore was infringing sound recording copyrights.

Digital Media Association Executive Director Jonathan Potter called the ruling "a huge win for music innovators and listeners." "Consumer-influenced radio is a fabulous marriage of music, technology and fans," he said in a statement. DiMA represents Yahoo and other online content providers in Washington.

Meanwhile, a Bridge Ratings study released earlier in the week showed the most popular Internet radio service was America Online's, with those surveyed spending 15.25 hours per week listening to the service. Yahoo and Live 365 were the runners-up with 10.25 and 10.6 hours respectively.

According to the study, the number of monthly Web radio listeners jumped 26 percent last year bringing the average monthly listening audience to 72 million in 2006, up from 45 million in 2005.

The latest installment of C-SPAN's "The Communicators" series features Rep. Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. The show premieres on Saturday at 6:30 p.m. ET on C-SPAN with an encore presentation on Monday at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET on C-SPAN2. Goodlatte, a leader on Internet and other technology related topics, is co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and chairman of the House Republican High-Tech Working Group.

A sneak peak of the show reveals that Goodlatte talks about congressional attempts to crack down on secretly installed computer spyware; network neutrality, the concept of mandating an open Internet architecture; the Internet tax moratorium; intellectual property piracy in China and more.

MSNBC's effervescent Alison Stewart has joined National Public Radio as co-host (along with Luke Burbank) of the network's forthcoming morning show aimed at a younger, hipper demographic. Stewart has been anchor of MSNBC's "The Most," a daily show that reports on the most popular news on the Internet and in pop culture (a favorite in our newsroom).

NPR's new drive-time show, geared toward adults 25-44, will premiere in September, according to a press release. It will be available through terrestrial, digital and satellite radio; free streaming online audio at station Web sites; as a podcast and via mobile devices on-demand. You can read more about the show, code-named The Bryant Park project here.

To welcome Stewart to the NPR family, the staff put together this witty little video and shared it with the world via Jumpcut, an online video editing and sharing site. The background music for their photo montage is Elvis Costello's "Alison."

Carnegie Mellon University researchers announced this week that thanks to Internet technology they have developed robots they consider simple enough for almost anyone to build. With a wireless link to the Internet, users can control and monitor a robot's action from any Internet-connected computer in the world.

Carnegie Mellon associate professor of robotics Illah Nourbakhsh and members of his Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment Lab developed the machines with the goal of making robots accessible and affordable to college and pre-college students. The robots use off-the-shelf parts and “the Internet to provide telepresence on a routine basis.”

"The Internet connection means the robots are much more global," Nourbakhsh said. -- Winter Casey

India may be considering providing free high-speed broadband access by 2009 to all residents, according to news reports. Two pieces from the Indiatimes are offering their two-cents worth on the possible plan.

First, an editorial in the Indiatimes writes that "government’s reported proposal to provide free broadband access is a good idea" and would enhance economic activity and boost productivity.” However, it must "simultaneously speed-up 3G rollout and facilitate convergence, enabling telecom companies to provide value-added services to make up for the loss of conventional Internet and voice business ..."

A separate column from the news source warns that "the move holds the potential to kill the telecom business as we know it." -- Winter Casey

Jack Valenti, the former White House aide and film industry lobbyist who instituted the modern movie ratings system and guided Hollywood to the digital age as head of the Motion Picture Association of America, died Thursday at age 85.

Dan Glickman, Valenti's successor at MPAA, said he was "the ultimate leading man." "Jack was a showman, a gentleman, an orator, and a passionate champion of this country, its movies, and the enduring freedoms that made both so important to this world," he said in a statement.

Hilary Rosen, former chief of the Recording Industry Association of America, said on HuffingtonPost.com that Valenti "had the talent -- that rare and fantastically elusive talent possessed by very few people in this world -- Jackie Kennedy and Bill Clinton come to mind -- of making you feel like the most important person in the world when he was talking to you. I feel so lucky to know this first hand."

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn, who opposed Valenti and the MPAA on nearly every digital copyright policy issue, said that regardless of their differing views, "there was no one in Washington I respected more for his intelligence, his commitment, his integrity and his ability to work across party lines."

Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro called Valenti "a true hero -- in war, in politics and in his nearly four decades of tireless work on behalf of the motion picture industry he loved so much."

Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., said Valenti was "the personification of the motion picture industry in Washington" but was much more than a lobbyist. "He had an intense interest in public policy and a wisdom about him that made him an extraordinarily valuable counselor to presidents, to congressmen and senators and to his peers and colleagues."

Republican Rep. Ted Poe of Texas, a legend in the American court system, shared his thoughts with us on Wednesday evening about the ongoing congressional debate over what to do to fight Internet-based child predators. Poe, a former felony court judge from Houston, gained national notoriety for his "shame punishment" of criminals -- and his tough-as-nails beliefs carry over into this arena.

"We ought to be relentless in tracking and finding [online predators and pedophiles] and bringing them to court," said Poe, who was a featured guest at a Capitol Hill reception for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. The problem "is only going to get worse" as Web technology evolves, he added.

Helping parents educate their children so they do not become victims of online crimes is paramount, Poe said, especially since "predators can probably work around almost any type of control put on a [social-networking] site." While some have called for instituting age-verification mechanisms (like credit-card authentication) on sites like MySpace and Facebook, Poe worries about the potential privacy implications of such proposals.

RAINN, whose representatives lobbied on Capitol Hill earlier in the day, runs a national sexual assault hotline in partnership with more than 1,000 local rape crisis centers across the country. The group also recently launched an online hotline that offers real-time help via Web chat.

Elfin actress Christina Ricci provided the star power for RAINN's lobbying blitz. She most recently played a sexual assault victim in the film "Black Snake Moan." During Hill visits, Ricci asked legislators to fully fund the Justice for All Act, which could help solve rape cases through DNA evidence, and the Adam Walsh Act, which creates stricter requirements for sex offender registration.

Our older, wiser sister blog, Beltway Blogroll, reports that the Library of Congress has joined us in the ever-expanding blogosphere. The library blog's author, Matt Raymond, said in his introductory post that the archive "was producing electronic content long before the Web even existed, so it's fitting today that we become one of a (surprisingly) small handful of federal agencies with a bona fide blog."

Raymond said his musings will keep with the spirit of the library's mission as a whole: "To make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people, and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations." I'm not sure how that jives with his Friday morning post about a Dilbert cartoon, but it's entertaining nonetheless.

The formal launch of a trade group committed to "ending the systemic domain name abuses that plague the Internet" is nearing, officials told us on Wednesday. The Coalition Against Domain Name Abuse is planning its first general meeting for sometime in May.

CADNA held a preliminary call with founding members earlier in the day to discuss its anti-cybersquatting action timetable. Online opportunists have taken the practice to new heights recently, the group says. Domain name "tasting" and "kiting" are on the rise and have proven costly and disruptive to brand owners (Learn more about this lingo in Technology Daily's PM edition).

The group, which is run by the Internet consulting firm FairWinds Partners, has not unveiled its backers but the roster is expected to include major high-tech firms. Technology Daily was among the first to write about CADNA's formation earlier this year.

[Where's Heidi Klum when you need her? It would be more fitting for the German-accented Project Runway host to guest-blog this post, but you're stuck with me.]

Reps. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., and Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., introduced legislation on Wednesday to provide copyright protections to fashion designs. Most industrialized nations provide legal safeguards for designers' work but in the U.S., they are not protected by traditional intellectual property law.

Copyrights are not granted to apparel because articles of clothing, which are both creative and functional, are considered “useful articles,” as opposed to works of art, according to a press release from Goodlatte's office. Design patents are intended to protect ornamental designs, but clothing rarely meets the criteria of patentability.

The measure would amend the Copyright Act to also include protections for fashion designs. Since the life cycle for designs is so short, the bill would protect them for three years. The bill further establishes damages for infringing a fashion design at about $5 per copy.

“Fashion design is a $350 billion American industry. It is the only growth area in apparel manufacturing,” Goodlatte said in a statement. "By protecting a designer’s original work we are also protecting the many jobs that support that design.”

Tomorrow is World Intellectual Property Day. I checked and unfortunately Hallmark doesn’t make a greeting card for that occasion. But if you're interested in celebrating, the Institute for Policy Innovation will be holding a forum exploring IP issues in America and across the globe. Look for coverage in tomorrow's Technology Daily.

Later in the day, George Washington University's Creative and Innovative Economy Center will host an event on Capitol Hill. The Congressional Caucus on IP Promotion and the Prevention of Piracy will showcase creative work by representatives of industry and by students in the Washington area. Other events are happening all over the world. Click here to see what's going on.

If the term "Y2K" has been erased from your memory bank for years, as it has mine, you may be interested to know that some on Capitol Hill are still talking about it. Sen. Robert Bennett told a lengthy story at a Wednesday briefing about his late 1990s campaign to protect the country against what could have been a computer catastrophe.

The Utah Republican told the audience, who came to learn about the perils of "botnets," that Y2K is what got him interested in Internet-related issues. Following a slew of hearings and billions of dollars spent by industry, the world was safe when the new millennium dawned.

Bennett said that when the debate over Y2K was winding down, he began thinking about what would happen if all the computers in the world failed on purpose, perhaps at the hands of a masterful hacker, rather than by accident.

The good news, he said, is that the U.S. is "several generations ahead" of the rest of the world when it comes to innovation. The bad news is that "we're enormously vulnerable if we don’t get the firewalls and patches right" to thwart cyber attacks. The "survival of Western civilization" depends on it, he added.

Read more about the botnet briefing, sponsored by Microsoft and the Association for Computing Machinery, in Technology Daily's PM edition.

Internet telephone firm Vonage launched a national campaign on Wednesday to educate consumers about preserving the freedom to choose their phone service provider. The "Free to Compete" initiative comes as the company tries to appeal a district court's ruling that it infringed on Verizon Communications' patents for Web-based telephony.

On Tuesday, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals decided to give Vonage a full stay of the lower court's order, allowing the firm to keep adding new customers as it works on its appeal (See Technology Daily's PM edition).

Verizon has pursued the litigation "in an effort to achieve in court what it cannot achieve in the marketplace," Vonage said in a press release. The issue warrants national attention because "when competition is stifled, consumers literally pay the price," Vonage Chairman Jeffrey Citron said. He vowed to continue fighting Verizon in the marketplace and in court.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Tuesday blasted a bogus patent that the group said threatens innovative technologies that enhance consumer awareness. The high-tech watchdog has requested a re-examination by the Patent and Trademark Office.

NeoMedia Technologies claims to own rights to all systems that provide information over computer networks using database-like lookup procedures that rely on scanned inputs, such as a barcode, EFF said in a press release. The firm has reportedly threatened innovators and intimidated administrators of awareness campaigns aimed at educating consumers about the social and environmental impact of the products they buy.

"NeoMedia should not be allowed to use this bogus patent to inhibit consumer awareness, education, or research into the impact of information on consumer choice," EFF Staff Attorney Jason Schultz said. "This is the opposite of 'progress,' something the patent laws are supposed to promote." NeoMedia did not respond to a request for comment.

Miss America Lauren Nelson is more than just a pretty face. She will appear on America's Most Wanted this Saturday to help host John Walsh and a team of specially-trained cops bust accused online predators trying to rendezvous with a teenage girl. The 20-year-old Oklahoman has dedicated her reign to promoting Web safety for kids.

Working with the Suffolk County, N.Y. Computer Crimes Unit, Nelson took part in a hidden camera sting operation -- the type popularized by the NBC "Dateline" series "To Catch a Predator." Using photos of her as a teenager for bait, investigators lured men online who initiated sexual chats and tried to set up in-person encounters.

Tech Daily Dose previously wrote about Nelson after she received in-depth training at the Virginia Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force Center and was sworn in as an Honorary Deputy Sheriff in the city of Bedford (a distinction also held by NBA star Shaquille O'Neal).

The 463 Blog reports that Santa Clara University cyber-law expert Eric Goldman has come up with a list of the 10 worst U.S. Internet laws on the books. Here's a quick rundown of the most egregious offenders (in his opinion, of course). Click here to read his detailed explanations. Do you agree? Disagree? Post a comment!

10. E-Sign
9. DMCA Online Safe Harbors
8. Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006
7. Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Anti-Circumvention
6. Electronic Communications Privacy Act
5. Utah Digital Signatures Act
4. Anti-Kid Spam Laws in Utah and Michigan
3. Dot Kids Implementation and Efficiency Act of 2002
2. Utah/Alaska Anti-Adware Laws
1. Communications Decency Act

A Minnesota woman pleaded guilty in federal court earlier this week to copying thousands of songs and selling them online for use in karaoke machines. According to The Star Tribune, Star Music President Tracy Ann Brock is looking at jail time in what federal prosecutors have described as the "first ever criminal conviction related to infringement of copyrighted karaoke music." Federal agents seized the equipment they believed Brock was using to gather and sell the pirated music in a raid of her home in Burnsville, Minn. She told U.S. District Judge David Doty that she loaded as many as 40,000 songs onto hard drives, which she then tried to sell on eBay and other places on the Internet. -- Michael Martinez

In honor of the Global Days for Darfur campaign, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., launched a page on his Web site focusing on Sudan. The Global Days campaign began Monday and runs through April 30. The page includes information on the congressional delegation that Hoyer led to Sudan as well as a video message from him discussing the trip. The House will consider a suspension bill on Wednesday sponsored by Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., that calls on the League of Arab States to acknowledge the genocide in Darfur and to increase their efforts to stop it.

A presidential task force on identity theft released its strategic plan on Monday (see Technology Daily's PM edition for details). The lengthy report makes a number of suggestions for new measures to thwart data thieves but some stakeholders did not sing the panel's praises.

The Consumers Union said more needs to be done to protect citizens' private data. "The task force's recommendation on when consumers should be notified about data security breaches is flawed," Consumers Union attorney Gail Hillebrand said in a press release. "Tying notice of a security breach to an affirmative determination of risk means that consumers won't be told when there is not enough information to determine the risk."

The watchdog group supports notice requirements without triggers, loopholes or exceptions. States like California, New York, Illinois, and Texas require such notice and the Fed should follow their lead, she said.

An unemployed Massachusetts man who clearly has too much time on his hands posted a video on YouTube Friday offering his cell phone number to anyone who wanted to chat. The result, according to The Boston Globe, was more than 5,000 calls and text messages. Ryan Fitzgerald said he planned to take as many calls as possible, but realized early Monday morning that his free T-Mobile weekend minutes were used up. "I haven't quite figured out what I'm going to do about it," he told the newspaper. "But something needs to be done, because I'm going to end up with a $20,000 phone bill."

Update: Fitzgerald reacts to an onslaught of calls. Watch the video here.

Alaska's KTUU-TV reported on Sunday that the jet purchased by former Gov. Frank Murkowski's administration is back on the market for $2.5 million. The state tried to sell the Westwind Two airplane on eBay four times and has now turned to an aircraft broker to help sell the bird. Auctions for the $2.6 million jet maxed out at $2 million. The state will keep making quarterly payments of $62,000 until the jet is sold, KTUU said.

Privacy International Director Simon Davies, a loud critic of Britain's national ID card scheme, isn't confident in identification procedures used by the U.S. government either. During a speech at an FTC conference on Monday, he pointed out flaws in the agency's own security practices.

"I can go to Kinkos and [create an ID with] a picture of a dog and my name on it and it would be perfectly acceptable," he joked. Not wanting to single out the FTC, Davies also told a story about lax ID authentication procedures he experienced during a Department of Homeland Security visit last month.

The two-day FTC meeting was organized as a forum for discussion among public sector, industry and consumer representatives about better ways to authenticate identities of individuals in the U.S. Read more about the conference in Technology Daily's PM edition.

LAS VEGAS -- Reps. Rick Boucher, D-Va., and Greg Walden, R-Ore., will co-chair a new Digital Television Congressional Caucus formed in conjunction with the National Association of Broadcasters.

Boucher unveiled the caucus during a Tuesday speech to the American Cable Association in Washington and described it in a short video on display at the NAB convention on Monday. Both Boucher and Walden sit on the House Energy and Commerce’s Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Boucher is also a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Caucus members plan to educate other lawmakers and the public about the shift to digital TV signals on Feb. 17, 2009. To reach citizens in rural areas, they will conduct town-hall meetings and use the media to spread the word.

Also on Tuesday, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, a Democrat, warned during remarks at the broadcasters' convention that the transition could be a "mess" that leaves some citizens without access to television signals. To address such problems, the caucus will focus on educating both the public and other lawmakers about the switchover and how it will impact Americans.

But the group is not expected to address one of Copps' key concerns -- that funding be boosted for a $1.5 billion federal coupon program designed to ensure that an estimated 20 million Americans can afford equipment needed to keep many older analog sets functioning after the deadline.

In a separate but related development, NAB will brief congressional staffers about the digital transition on April 30, association spokeswoman Shermaze Ingram said.

-- David Hatch

UPDATE/CORRECTION: This entry has been rewritten to reflect information obtained after first posted and to correct the previous reference to the April 30 briefing as a press event about the caucus.

From a post at AirCongress by Technology Daily editor Danny Glover:

It didn’t take long for MoveOn to seize on the “bomb Iran” joke of John McCain as an opportunity to bash both him and President Bush. The liberal activist group already has put together a 30-second video retort to the Arizona Republican and will air it as a television advertisement against McCain in Iowa and New Hampshire through next week. The ad, which replays McCain’s joke and cites it as further evidence that he would be a “reckless president” is available on YouTube. Read more here.

Phil de Vellis, whose anti-Hillary Clinton "1984" mash up video was seen 3 million times on Youtube.com, has released a new parody -- this one of embattled World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz. The new video "The Bank" borrows clips from the TV show "The Office" in its portrayal of Wolfowitz. So far it has more than 10,000 views.

De Vellis was hired as a freelancer by the global online activist group Avaaz.org, which is among those petitioning for Wolfowitz to leave, despite his apology for helping negotiate a job and pay increase for his girlfriend, who also worked for the World Bank.

In an interview with Technology Daily, de Vellis said he got the idea because Wolfowitz reminded him of Steve Carell's character on Office Space Michael Scott. De Vellis said he spent all day working on the video on his laptop and finished it Thursday morning. "It's a moving story. We wanted to get it out there," de Vellis said of the short turn around time on the video.

De Vellis has been weighing various job offers since "resigning" from Blue State Digital, after his identity as the producer of the anti-Hillary video became public. He said he decided to take this on because he believes Wolfowitz can no longer lead an organization dedicated to eliminating world poverty.

"It's sad it has someone at the helm who puts personal and political needs ahead of the organization," de Vellis said.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who took the Senate Judiciary Committee hot seat on Thursday, will be USA Today's guest at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner, Editor & Publisher reports. The Bush administration's top lawyer was questioned about the firings of U.S. attorneys, which critics have claimed were politically motivated.

Gonzales may breathe easier knowing that Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy, who chairs the committee and did much of the grilling, will not be attending the annual dinner. A spokeswoman told us he would be out of town for the weekend.

E&P also reports that other newsmakers expected to attend Saturday's soiree include: Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney (Newsweek); Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (ABC News); Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (The Washington Times); and ousted American Idol contestant Sanjaya Malakar (People Magazine).

The Bush administration's recent announcement that it would begin two new World Trade Organization cases against China was reported on widely by a variety of media outlets, including Technology Daily. The complaints focus on China's weak protection of intellectual property rights and its barriers to legitimate movies, digital videodiscs, music and publications.

But parody news site The Onion offered its own colorful take on the IP piracy issue by creating a fake list of other measures the U.S. has taken to combat the problem. Efforts include: Sending Steven Spielberg on a goodwill mission to explain to average Chinese citizens how piracy hurts his ability to make a living; implementing a new security algorithm on all CDs and DVDs that slows hackers down for up to three hours; and suing the pants off college kids. Read the full list here.

Digital music royalty collector SoundExchange announced Thursday that it is in discussions with some webcasting services, both commercial and non-commercial, following a recent rate-setting decision by the Copyright Royalty Board that angered Internet radio stakeholders. Critics of the ruling, who say it could put many online music services out of business, launched a grassroots effort to get it overturned.

"Our continued outreach reflects our long-standing position that these are two businesses – webcasting and creating music – that are joined at the hip and that need each other,” said SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson. "We recognize that there may be certain needs and expectations, as expressed by webcasters in recent days, that might possibly be addressed through direct discussions."

The group's general counsel, Michael Huppe, said he hoped the dialogue with webcasters could lead to a "business solution that addresses their concerns while still ensuring fair compensation for artists." "It is in the industry’s interest to foster the continued growth of Internet radio, and we stand ready to work towards that goal," he said.

SaveNetRadio spokesman Jake Ward told Technology Daily that his coalition would be "interested to hear any and all suggestions and or compromises" made by SoundExchange. Meanwhile, the campaign continues to reach out to Congress, he said.

In the past three days, the group's Web site has gotten 3 million hits and 278,000 messages have been sent to Capitol Hill using an online template. In addition, 3,500 artists have sent messages to Congress complaining about the CRB ruling, he said.

The Digital Freedom campaign brought a trio of real, live musicians to Capitol Hill on Wednesday for a briefing on music creation and distribution in the Internet age. The initiative, backed the Consumer Electronics Association and others, launched last fall to oppose "crippling restrictions" on consumer rights to use new technology.

Grammy-winning producer Fletch Wiley demonstrated how he has been able to use collaborative software to work with musicians on their songs remotely. Popular children's musician Lisa Matthews gushed about the power of iTunes. Jennifer Hardin, a student at the Berklee College of Music, shared the up-and-coming-artist perspective.

Gigi Sohn, whose advocacy group Public Knowledge also helped start the campaign, said congressional staffers think they know what artists want (because the Recording Industry Association of American tells them). "But there's a big difference between what artists want sometimes and what publishers want," she said.

Technology, Sohn said, is a way for musicians to "free themselves" from their industry "gatekeepers." It is crucial that digital technologies and media that consumers buy are permitted to be used lawfully by them, she said.

The afternoon's comic relief came from Matthews, whose kiddie rock band has gained global exposure (sometimes in potentially controversial ways), thanks to technology. An ad agency in Ireland recently contacted her about licensing her gooey jingle "Bottle of Sunshine" for a client marketing an alcoholic beverage. The spunky singer hasn’t decided whether she will lend the track to the "hard cider" seller.

Longtime Senate intellectual property crusader Orrin Hatch was among those who sponsored a sweeping patent reform bill introduced Wednesday afternoon (see Technology Daily's PM edition for details). But the Utah Republican thinks further refinements are needed as lawmakers consider the bill in the weeks to come.

Hatch feels that omissions and inclusions made as staffers revised the bill he introduced last year "might not have been very helpful" but let sponsors arrive at the new bicameral, bipartisan measure. That was "part of the grand compromise we had to make," he said at a press briefing.

The aggressive attorneys' fees provision included in his legislation from the 109th Congress "was there for the purpose of trying to get rid of frivolous [lawsuits]." The new measure maintains the current rule rather than shifting expenses to the non-prevailing party in litigation.

"Last year, we were nowhere near being able to get both houses to agree," Hatch said, noting the climate is quite different this time around. He believes the bill will have the 60 votes needed to pass the legislation out of the Senate.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.; Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif.; and Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, will unveil long-awaited bipartisan, bicameral patent reform legislation on Wednesday.

An extension of legislation introduced late in the last Congress, the bill "will provide much needed reform for patent seekers and patent holders," a media advisory said. A press conference is scheduled for 2:15 p.m. Technology Daily's PM edition will have details.

A Commerce Department official told a Computer and Communications Industry Association conference on Tuesday that improving the U.S. "deemed export" licensing policy is a "difficult problem" that boils down to answering the broader question of "how to deal with foreigners."

The department's Bureau of Industry and Security created a federal advisory committee to review national security, technology and competitiveness dimensions of the deemed export issue. Assistant Secretary Christopher Padilla said he is eager to hear the panel's recommendations.

"Openness is America's trump card, whether it's trade, foreign investments, people or ideas," he said. If the government does not have a workable deemed export program, companies will simply outsource the work or move overseas, he noted.

Concerns about foreign agents stealing controlled technologies are "very real" but the problem does not threaten all industries. One question the agency has asked the panel to address is whether there is a better way to focus the vetting process.

"We're not as worried about people coming here to work on telecom as we are about people coming here to use a biological fermenter in a lab that can make some sort of evil, nasty technology," Padilla said. The vast majority of licensing done is in the telecom realm, he pointed out.

Arizona Republican Rep. Jeff Flake told members of a high-tech trade group on Tuesday that he believes the private sector is making progress in setting its own guidelines for doing business in countries whose governments suppress Internet free speech rights. Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other U.S. firms came under fire on Capitol Hill in the 109th Congress for their investments in China.

Flake said he trusts the market "more than some might" and recent meetings with representatives from affected corporations show that they are working on the issue. "I don't think you want to wait for government to decide which countries you can operate in," he said at a Computer and Communications Industry Association conference. "I'd rather put our stamp of approval on [an industry-created plan] than try to come up with something ourselves."

He also weighed in on the FBI's improper use of secret subpoenas for electronic records called "national security letters." He said the current standard for how the agency oversees the program is "a little too loosey-goosey." Flake said the government must ensure that its surveillance tools do not overreach.

While he said he wished Republicans still controlled Congress and the White House, Flake noted: "We'll probably strike a better balance given the divided government." Key committees in the Democrat-led House and Senate have already held hearings on the controversial FBI program.

Tuesday's FCC fiscal 2008 budget hearing wasn't as somber as one might have expected. Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., who chairs the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee, admitted to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin that he scours the Internet for Spanish love songs.

The lawmaker from the Bronx noted he would likely experience some hazing from colleagues for the admission. Nevertheless, he proceeded with his story about discovering a Web site over the weekend that allowed him to select songs from a variety of artists to build his own personalized Internet radio station.

Perhaps webcasters, digital music services and independent artists who are fighting a recent royalty rate increase should court Serrano as their champion on Capitol Hill. They argue that a March ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board could kill online radio stations. The group launched an awareness-building campaign on Monday.

Students, teachers, friends and families connected to Virginia Tech have turned their attention to the victims of Monday's tragic shooting spree that killed more than 30 people. Washington's Fox 5 News (WTTG-TV) reports that an overwhelming sense of grief enveloped the campus and some are expressing their thoughts and feelings online. Will Thomas has details in this follow-up to Tech Daily Dose's post on the subject [Click here to watch].

In related news, the university set up a special Web page that has important phone numbers as well as details about memorial services and grief counseling. The site also has a timeline of events from the tragedy.

The Senate Judiciary Committee's grilling of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will have to wait a few days. The highly anticipated Justice Department oversight hearing scheduled for Tuesday morning has been postponed until Thursday due to the tragic shooting spree at Virginia Tech.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania consulted with Gonzales and determined it was appropriate to postpone the hearing, a joint statement released Monday evening said.

The Justice Department announced late Monday that a fifth defendant pleaded guilty in connection with the first criminal enforcement action going after unauthorized file-sharers on a peer-to-peer network using BitTorrent technology.

Sam Kuonen, 24, of Columbus, Ga., pleaded guilty to a two-count felony charging him with conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement and criminal copyright infringement in violation of the Family Entertainment Copyright Act. He faces up to five years in prison, a fine of $250,000 and three years of supervised release, the agency said.

Four others have been convicted as part of Operation D-Elite, a federal crackdown focusing on leading members of the P2P network known as Elite Torrents. At its prime, the network attracted more than 133,000 members and facilitated the illegal distribution of more than 17,800 movie, software, music and game titles, Justice said.

Federal agents shut down the Elite Torrents network by taking control of its main server in May 2005. Authorities replaced the Web page with a notice that read: "This Site Has Been Permanently Shut Down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)." Within a week, the message was viewed over half a million times, officials said.

After a gunman stormed Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Va. on Monday, killing more than 30 people and injuring dozens of others, some turned to social-networking sites to express their grief and send condolences to those impacted by the tragedy.

A number of Facebook users set up group pages where members of the online community could share their thoughts and feelings about what is being called one of the deadliest gun rampages in U.S. history.

One page, described as "a tribute to those who passed at the Virginia Tech shooting," had more than 6,000 members by mid-afternoon. In addition, more than 1,000 users had posted messages on the page's discussion board. Several similar group pages were set up with hundreds of members belonging to each.

On MySpace, the Virginia Tech group page, which boasts more than 3,000 members, included an array of shooting-related posts from students, alumni and friends.

On a related note, the Web server for the school's student newspaper was down for the entire day. Collegiate Times reporters posted a stream of updates on a makeshift front page at CollegeMedia.com, the website of the paper's parent company.

Virginia Tech administrators also offered updated information for the campus community on its homepage. A warning message, which was posted on the school's main news page at 9:58 a.m. and remained there all day, read: "Emergency! Gunman on campus; Stay indoors and away from windows." The shooting began at around 7:15 a.m.

Update: By 9:40 p.m., membership on the Facebook group page mentioned above had soared to more than 46,000 users.

College coaches versed in the ways of the T-Mobile Sidekick and the Motorola RAZR may not be ahead of their competitors on the recruiting trail for much longer. AP reported Monday that the NCAA is mulling a proposal to ban coaches from using text messages and other electronic tools to contact potential student athletes. Coaches have been using text messages to circumvent rules that prohibit them from initiating direct contact with recruits during the early years of their high school careers.

Kosta Koufos, who is headed to Ohio State on a basketball scholarship, told ESPN last year that college coaches began blasting his cell phone with text messages when he was in 9th grade. NCAA President Myles Brand said the organization also has begun investigating how social networking sites like MySpace might be used to sidestep recruiting rules.

Of course it still takes a lot more than a barrage of flattering text messages to land the most sought-after recruits in high-profile sports like basketball and football. Just ask Southern California basketball coach Tim Floyd, who managed to snag the nation's top recruit in his sport after repeatedly failing to learn his cell phone number. -- Michael Martinez

In anticipation of Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, the Justice Department released Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' written testimony over the weekend. In it, the Bush administration's embattled top lawyer addresses a number of topics of interest to tech policy watchers.

He said the FBI's failure to properly use so-called "national security letters" can "undermine the civil liberties of American citizens and erode public support for these vital antiterrorism measures." Gonzales committed to remedying deficiencies flagged in a recent inspector general report on the secret subpoena power while striking the right balance between preventing terrorist attacks and protecting citizens' civil liberties.

The FBI is conducting a one-time, retrospective audit of the use of NSLs that will examine all 56 field offices nationwide, he said. Results of the study will be available soon and Congress will be briefed on the findings, he said. Regular audits of the program, starting this month, will also take place.

Gonzales also touted his department's child protection efforts. He described measures taken to improve sex offender tracking, notification, investigation, apprehension and prosecution. He also detailed progress made by Project Safe Childhood, which focuses on eliminating online child pornography and preventing sexual predators from finding and contacting kids on the Web.

Several paragraphs on intellectual property protection also appeared in the 25-page document. Justice has made combating IP theft a priority, Gonzales said, by "dedicating more resources than ever before" to fighting piracy and counterfeiting.

Last June, the agency's IP task force announced it had implemented all 31 of its recommendations to improve protection and enforcement in the United States and abroad. In the past two years, the department has expanded the Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property (CHIP) network of federal prosecutors and doubled the number of specialized CHIP units.

Internet search giant Google announced late last week that it plans to acquire digital marketing firm DoubleClick for $3.1 billion. Microsoft was quick to complain that the combination of the two largest online advertising distributors would hurt competition and raises privacy concerns.

Here's what some in the blogosphere had to say:

"The DoubleClick acquisition showed that Google is willing to spend any amount of money to defend its advertising turf," Om Malik of GigaOM said. He called Microsoft's complaint "preposterous… considering that Microsoft had a chance to outbid Google."

Wall Street investors are going to take a second look at aQuantive Inc. as possibly the next acquisition in the Internet marketing and advertising space, Georges Yared at BloggingStocks predicted. Microsoft is now behind the eight ball and aQuantive could be an attractive purchase, he added.

Steve Fox at InfoWorld said Google "already scares the pants off many Web site publishers" and the DoubleClick buy could make things worse. "DoubleClick has a stranglehold on the digital advertising market, just as Google owns the search market," he said. "I smell monopoly here."

NBC's top lawyer spoke to the American Bar Association's annual intellectual property conference on Friday where he suggested a unique government solution for cracking down on piracy and counterfeiting -- a Cabinet-level IP czar. Richard Cotton lauded the work done by the Bush administration's current IP chief, Chris Israel, whose home-base is the Commerce Department.

Naming a senior level official in charge of IP coordination and enforcement "begins to send the message that needs to be sent in terms of the level of resources and leadership required," Cotton said. That commitment needs to be expressed across federal, state and local governments, he said during his luncheon keynote.

Another idea he tossed out is the formation of a federal block grant program for local jurisdictions to develop model IP crime-fighting approaches. The initiative could take the form of a $20 million, five-city pilot project, he said. NBC is already working in communities where it has affiliates to step up local IP enforcement, he noted.

Read more about the ABA IP conference in Technology Daily's PM edition.

A New York techie who documented his journey from Manhattan to Silicon Valley at CanYouTubeHearMe.com e-mailed me late last night with the good news. His goal -- to score a meeting with officials at YouTube HQ in hopes of getting a show he created placed on the video-sharing site -- was met (at least in part).

"I showed them my idea and they loved it," Brandon Fletcher said on his Web site. "The journey isn’t complete since I haven’t met with anyone from the editorial staff. But I think they’ll be more willing to hear me out now since they can see I’m not a psycho," Fletcher said.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said he believes the new Congress is "off to a strong start" in restoring accountability that eroded during what he called a "rubberstamp" Republican-led 109th session. Thursday marked the first 100 days of the 110th Congress.

In a statement, the Vermont Democrat cited his committee's probe of the FBI's improper use of so-called "national security letters" and the dismissal by the Bush administration of U.S. attorneys as examples of progress. He said the "pattern of abuse of authority and mismanagement" makes him wonder whether the FBI and Justice Department have been faithful stewards of American citizens' trust.

Leahy also pointed out that the President Bush's program for warrantless electronic wiretaps has been revised under the "watchful eye" of the new Democratic-led Congress. "We must engage in all surveillance necessary to prevent acts of terrorism, but we can and should do so in ways that protect the basic rights of all Americans," he said.

"For years preceding this new Congress, accountability has been lacking in this administration. Loyalty to the president has been rewarded over all else," Leahy said. "That lack of accountability, and lack of the checks and balances that fostered it, must end and, I hope, has ended."

As of midday, GOP leaders had not issued a statement on the new Congress's first 100 days. Late last month, the Pew Research Center reported that "pluralities of Americans approve of the way that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are handling their leadership roles."

Taking a page from David Letterman’s top ten list shtick, here are FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s top reasons why the FCC is *not* like the KGB. (Are you listening, Sen. Boxer?)

7 – The KGB knows how to terminate a backlog.
6 – KGB agents speak Russian. Linguists are still unable to determine the language an FCC commissioner speaks.
5 – The KGB can monitor the NSA activities.
4 – KGB officials don’t wait for public hearings to decide things.
3 – The KGB is run efficiently.
2 – The KGB knows how to handle recusals. (This reference to Martin’s controversial handling of negotiations on the AT&T-BellSouth merger prompted several ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ in the crowd)
1 –The highest rank ever achieved in Russian government by a former KGB official: president. The highest rank ever achieved in U.S. government by a former FCC chairman: FCC chairman. -- David Hatch

After being scolded recently by Barbara Boxer for joking at last year’s FCC Chairman’s Dinner that the agency has a KGB-like atmosphere, Kevin Martin turned the tables Tuesday night at this year’s gala with some dark humor. “I do want to try to set the record straight: the FCC is not like the KGB,” he said to the bemusement of telecom attorneys, lobbyists, journalists and other muckety-mucks attending the annual fete hosted by the Federal Communications Bar Association. He then listed seven reasons why the agency is not as oppressive as Russia’s notorious intelligence service (see related item).

Employing more raw humor, Martin, a Republican, joshed that Democratic commissioner Michael Copps would draw bigger crowds “if the FCC were actually going to do anything on media ownership.” Strengthening the rules, now under review, is a top priority for Copps. Regarding network neutrality, Martin highlighted a “terrific” New York Times piece titled “Hey Baby Bells: Information Wants to Be Free.” Then came the punch line (reinforced by a slide of the Time’s website): “Ironically, if you want to read it you’ll have to pay the New York Times three ninety-five.”

Poking fun at his reputation for picking on cable, Martin pledged to demonstrate this is not the case. “I just set up a private meeting for the cable industry leaders with a very senior White House official. That’s right, the hunting trip with the vice president is all arranged.”

Former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia, who now runs a civil-liberties coalition called Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances, told a Senate panel Wednesday afternoon that the Justice Department inspector general's recent report on the FBI's misuse of so-called "national security letters" was "nothing short of a constitutional wake-up call."

Solutions to the problem chronicled in the report "cannot be remedied by simply tweaking the regulations, tweaking the procedures, issuing new guidelines [or] having another training session [for employees]," Barr said. Changes must occur by statute, he told the Senate Judiciary Constitution Subcommittee.

Meaningful standards and court review as well as limitations on data retention and data sharing would help fix the problem with the secret subpoena power authorized by the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act, Barr said. "The sky is not going to fall" if reforms to the program take place, he said. Instead, the letters "will remain a very robust mechanism for the FBI and other federal agencies to employ."

Peter Swire, who served as a privacy adviser to former President Clinton, said the controversial gag order associated with the subpoenas can and should be repealed. Librarian George Christian, who was the recipient of an FBI request that was eventually dropped, agreed. He said the gag order against him was "totally unnecessary."

Suzanne Spaulding, a former assistant general counsel for the CIA, also testified. She suggested that Congress undertake a "comprehensive review of all domestic intelligent collection," including the FBI, Defense Department, National Security Agency, CIA and others. "A joint inquiry or task force could be established by Senate leadership," she said.

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold, who chairs the subcommittee, echoed Spaudling, pointing out that "we can either choose to look at the whole picture to get an understanding or not." Read more on the hearing in Technology Daily's PM edition.

Web addresses patents.com and patents.net are up for sale, popular patent law blogger Dennis Crouch pointed out on his PatentlyO blog. As of Tuesday, the highest offer was $10,000. Bidding for the domain names, which are being sold as a pair, ends June 15. Domain name expert Steve Morsa commented on Crouch's blog that patents.com is worth at least $200,000 by itself and .net is worth $50,000 on its own.

For years, the addresses belonged to Colorado law firm Oppedahl & Larson, which has been disbanded. Patents.com has a storied past, Crouch noted. In 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board's refusal to register "patents.com" to the firm. The court ruled the proposed mark was "merely descriptive" and not eligible for trademark protection.

A new report from American University's Center for Social Media reveals an "astonishing amount" of confusion by college students over how to handle copyright law when creating user-generated content. The study's co-author Pat Aufderheide said that respondents showed a "remarkable desire to comply with whatever they thought copyright might require of them."

More than half of those polled said they combined their own videography with recorded music (52 percent); nearly as many put together moving slide-shows with photos of family and friends (44 percent); and only 20 percent excerpted material from a television show or movie, according to the report.

The creators' motivation is personal and social. The study found: "They are driven in part by the desire to create and maintain their personal identity through location of themselves in a social network. Part of the meaning that fuels their social network is shared experience of popular culture."

Read the full report here. On a related note, AU's Washington College of Law hosted a panel discussion on copyright law and user-generated content on Tuesday. Read all about it in Technology Daily's PM edition.

It was almost a senate debate on the Iraq War, with three senators running for president interviewed in the post intermission round at MoveOn.org's virtual town hall forum on the Iraq War Tuesday evening.

Hillary Clinton said troop withdrawals should start within 90 days, but some troops would need to stay to train Iraqi soldiers, for security missions and to protect the Kurds. Chris Dodd followed adding that it's difficult to convince people the United States is fighting for Democracy when American companies are involved in oil profits. Barack Obama said he is committed to putting as much pressure as possible on President Bush to end the war.

In closing statements, two of the Democratic frontrunners alluded to their relationship with netroots groups. Clinton, who is often a target in liberal blogs, thanked MoveOn.org for helping change American politics for the better. She added she knows some may be "surprised to hear me say it, but I'm grateful for your work." Obama, who is a darling of liberal blogs and netroots activists, said he was "looking forward to a partnership with all of you." And ended his remarks with a casual "Thank you guys."

The Virtual Town Hall is in intermission now for ten minutes to let those attending a little over 1000 different house parties across the country to refill on punch and cookies -- or whatever the offerings are.
After John Edwards, three more Democrats Joseph Biden, Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson answered questions on the quickest way to end the war in Iraq:

Biden, who has been on the Senate Foreign Relations committee for 30 years and now chairs it, has put out his own plan to get out of Iraq and invited people to go to his Web site http//:www.joebiden.com for details. "Any responsible candidate needs a plan not only for getting out of Iraq, but what we're going to leave behind," Biden said.

Kucinich, who has consistently voted against appropriations for the war, said H.R. 1234 outlines his plans to get out of Iraq. He said the insurgency is fueld by the United States occupation. "Once the U.S. declares its intent to withdraw, the U.S. can engage the world community," Kucinich said.

Richardson, who has been Ambassador to the United Nations and former President Clinton's Energy Secretary, said if he was president he would withdraw all troops by the end of the year, and put the three sects in a room to devise a coalition government and split oil revenues. "I may not have the most money, but I believe I have the best vision and the best background for president," Richardson said in his closing statement.

MoveOn executive director Eli Pariser gave a one minute introduction to former vice presidential candidate John Edwards before members posed three questions about the Iraq War, namely having to do with how to end it and how to end corrupt government contracting practices there.

"I voted for the war. I was wrong and I take responsibility for that," Edwards said before answering. He also said the government needs to end no bid contracts and reform the revolving door. He said those leaving government should not go to firms seeking contracts for 12 months.

Edwards praised netroots activists for making the Iraq War a priority and highlighting the need for policy changes. He said Congress needs to find the courage to act. "They'll find it in your letters. They'll find it in your calls. They'll find it in your voice," Edwards said as part of his one minute closing statement.

According to the map on the MoveOn.org website, there are people around the country logged on waiting for the first virtual town hall meeting for the Democratic presidential candidates to start. As the "Move On" theme song plays again and again, I'm ready for the candidates to start answering questions the 3.2 million online members voted on. Well... we just got the 60 second warning it will start...

New 30-second public service announcements designed to inspire children to one day hold their own patents will soon air nationally thanks to the Commerce Department, Patent and Trademark Office and the Ad Council [See the full story in Technology Daily's PM edition].

Here are links to the two ads, guaranteed to make you smile -- and maybe even come up with your own invention. The spots end with the words: "Anything is possible. Keep thinking." There's also a Web site.

0:30 Sec PSA "Cat Magnet" | 0:30 Sec PSA "Bandage Puller"

As reported in Technology Daily's AM edition, a handful of Democratic presidential candidates are booked to participate in a virtual town-hall forum Tuesday night. Joseph Biden, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Christopher Dodd, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Barack Obama and Bill Richardson all are slated to take part in the Web event organized by MoveOn.org. Our own Heather Greenfield will be blogging about the event so stay tuned!

The Apple iPod beats the heck out of the staid, old portable compact-disc player or (reach way back in your memory bank) the all-but-extinct audio-cassette player. So, it came as no surprise to me when the company announced on Monday that the 100 millionth iPod had been sold, making it the fastest selling music device in history.

The first iPod was sold more than five years ago, and since then Apple has introduced more than 10 new models, each one groovier than its predecessor. "iPod has helped millions of people around the world rekindle their passion for music, " Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release that also featured testimonials from hit musicians Mary J. Blige and John Mayer.

Now, please raise your hand if you miss having to rewind the tangled innards of a cassette-tape with the eraser end of a No. 2 pencil just so you can hear Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" one last time before the tape breaks. I thought not. You can thank me for the memories later.

Members of the China Copyright Alliance lauded Monday's announcement by U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab that the U.S. would file two requests for World Trade Organization consultations with China due to the country's lax enforcement of intellectual property rights and barriers it imposes on trade in music, movies and books.

The Alliance consists of the Art Copyright Coalition, Association of American Publishers, Independent Film & Television Alliance, International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America. Technology Daily's PM edition has details of Schwab's announcement.

So what happens now? According to the Jurist, the pair of cases enters a 60-day consultation period during which the U.S. and China will try to resolve their differences through negotiation. If the bilateral negotiations reach an impasse, WTO hearings will decide the outcome.

The China Hearsay blog, written by intellectual property attorney Stan Abrams, offers a detailed review of the WTO complaints and what they mean. Abrams works for Lehman, Lee & Xu, a Chinese law firm in Beijing.

Months after it sealed a deal to continue running Internet addresses that end in .com, VeriSign said it plans to raise registration fees for the popular top-level domain [see story in Technology Daily's PM edition]. The news angered critics like Karl Auerbach, a former member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers board.

The price increase is not justified by the costs of providing the service, although no one outside of VeriSign really knows how much it costs to run .com, he told us in an e-mail. Auerbach's own estimate is 3 cents per domain name -- a far cry from the $6.42 fee that will take effect in October.

"ICANN has not once bothered to wonder, much less to actually inquire, what the actual costs are. Instead ICANN, once again, has let VeriSign have what VeriSign wants, Auerbach said. Meanwhile, VeriSign cites increased Web traffic and security threats as the main reasons for the fee increase. Auerbach said bandwidth capacity is "far less expensive to create than it sounds."

He lauded VeriSign for doing a "first class" job of administering the domain over the life of its contract. "But we should not go agog and fawn over them as if they had just done another moon project or invented anti-gravity and time travel," he said.

Rocker David Byrne has come out against a recent Copyright Royalty Board ruling that would increase fees that Internet radio stations pay to music labels. The legendary Talking Heads frontman said on his blog last week that the decision would impact his own streaming audio service, making this "an issue of personal interest."

Byrne's music channel logs about 40,000 listener hours per month and he pays small mechanical royalty fees to ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Performance royalties get dispersed via SoundExchange and he pays a nominal fee to Live365 for hosting and paperwork.

If the CRB ruling is upheld, it is likely that Byrne's costs would climb by about 20 percent, which he said "is not crippling… but one can see where this road leads." "The door will have been wedged open" and per-play royalty rates will put many webcasters out of business, Byrne argued.

A SoundExchange press release cited several musicians that back the CRB decision. Jody Stephens of Big Star and Golden Smog said: "If music adds commercial value to someone's site, then there is a monetary value due the writers and recording artists." The CRB ruling "helps us afford to continue to add this value."

"Internet radio is nothing without the music provided by the songwriters and performers, so why shouldn't they, who are providing the music that generates the income, be compensated for their efforts and talents?" added dance track diva Kristine W.

Technology Daily will not publish on Friday, April 6. We will resume publication on Monday, April 9. That means Tech Daily Dose is taking a quick break too. Try not to miss us too much.

Talk about a user-generated content crusader! Surf over to CanYouTubeHearMe.com where a New York City techie is documenting his journey from the Big Apple to Silicon Valley in hopes of getting a show he created placed on video-sharing site YouTube's main page. For nearly a month, 20-year old Brandon Fletcher has been trying to get in touch with the Google-owned firm to promote his video. Now he wants a face-to-face meeting. Read more about it here.

The governmental advisory committee for the agency that sets Internet addressing guidelines has taken its online public forum offline. The Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers panel decided to shut down the discussion board "due to obscenity and other abuse," according to a note posted on the site's homepage. ICANN watcher Bret Fausett pointed out the change on his Internet Pro Radio blog earlier this week. There has been no word on whether the forum, which was launched in 2005, will reopen.

As reported in Technology Daily's PM edition, the Embassy of China's intellectual property attaché painted a rosy picture of his nation's IP protection plans at a Center for Strategic and International Studies event on Wednesday.

What I found more interesting than Yang Guohua's familiar pledge that his country (known widely for its piracy prowess) is cracking down on IP infringement, was a comment he made about his officially sanctioned e-mail address, which is surprisingly a free Yahoo.com account.

Quick flashback: Executives from several major of U.S. tech firms, including Yahoo, testified at a high-profile House International Relations Committee hearing a year ago. Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo defended their business dealings in nations like China that oppress, monitor or punish those who speak out on the Internet.

It's worth noting that Yang's e-mail address is affiliated with the American Yahoo and not Yahoo.cn, which is run by Chinese firm Alibaba and is routinely censored by the Communist government.

Now that I think about it, maybe his remarks at CSIS, his Yahoo address and the congressional hearing aren't meaningfully connected. But let's just consider it food for thought on a slow news day.

Since many folks find themselves in need of a mid-afternoon pick-me-up in the form of a Starbucks run, here's some news you can share with your barista while you're waiting for your latte. The World Intellectual Property Organization has given the java giant control of a half-dozen contested Internet addresses that include its name.

Starbucks took its gripe against Longmeadow, Mass.-based Gratefulnet.com to the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, which found in favor of the complainant. The domain names at stake were: starbuckscommunications.com, starbucksentertainment.com, starbucksinternetcafe.com, starbucksinternet.com, starbuckslive.com, starbucksmerchandise.com and starbucksprices.com.

William Young, the man listed as Gratefulnet.com's administrative and technical contact, proved no match for the Seattle-based behemoth, which operates or licenses some 8,800 retail locations in the United States and Canada. Too bad none of those locations are within a block or two of my office building… An anomaly, I know.

Small commercial webmasters joined National Public Radio and digital music services on Monday in filing a detailed complaint with the Copyright Royalty Board concerning its March ruling to increase royalties paid to music labels for Internet radio.

In addition to reinforcing points raised in their own motion for rehearing, the firms (including Accuradio, ioMedia and Radio Paradise) said the retroactive impact of the board's ruling should be axed. The decision applies to 2006 and lasts until 2010.

The filers also complained that the board failed to adopt a definition of "small webcaster" and took issue with the minimum $500 fee established for each channel or station offered. "The CRB must stay the rate changes it has adopted pending exhaustion of administrative rehearing and judicial review," the group said.

"The board decision is devastating to [small webcasters] as it would require that they pay more than 100 percent of their revenues in most cases, and the application of the new royalties in the manner set out in the board's decision would be inconsistent with the Copyright Act as well," they argued.

In related news, the grassroots campaign Save Net Radio has brought on Qorvis Communications to help spread word of their effort. The coalition of independent webmasters started an online petition urging Congress to take action. So far, more than 37,000 signatures have been collected.

The head of the Coral Consortium, a cross-industry group that promotes interoperability between digital rights management technologies, said he was not surprised when he heard about EMI's Monday announcement that it would strip its digital music repertoire of DRM restrictions for retailers who wish to sell new higher quality tracks [Read the full story in Technology Daily's PM edition].

Coral President Jack Lacey said "the challenge is still in front of us" since EMI's DRM-free model does not work across all platforms. The company, which is part of the consortium, said it would continue to use anti-piracy locks with subscription services where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited music; programs that allows fans to share music; and time-limited downloads.

"Coral has one job -- to make DRM easier to use," he told us. There is still much work to be done to try to understand how interoperable DRM can benefit the consumer media market, he said. "There's lots of room for improvement and that improvement is underway," he said. "We'll keep working at it," he promised.

Coral members include Hewlett-Packard, Intertrust Technologies Corp., Philips Electronics, Panasonic, Samsung, Sony, NBC Universal and others. The group was in Washington last month for one if its regular, closed-door meetings where representatives reportedly made steady progress on creating standards for interoperable DRM.

The National Public Radio affiliate in the nation's capital is weighing in on last month's Copyright Royalty Board ruling on Internet radio. WAMU, like its parent organization, believes the higher Web royalties set by the three-judge panel will have a negative impact on programming.

WAMU is known for its news and talk format, but it also has a 40-year reputation as a source for bluegrass music. The station offers Bluegrass Country, an online program stream for bluegrass fans that could not be subsidized if the CRB ruling stands, spokeswoman Kay Summers said.

The station already subsidizes up to 40 percent of BluegrassCountry.org’s annual operating costs - costs that would immediately increase by an estimated 47 percent should the ruling remain unchallenged, Summers said. The larger concern is the decision's impact on the community of artists whose work doesn't get mainstream commercial media play, she added.

The CRB agreed to let parties from the proceeding who were unhappy with the outcome petition for reconsideration, and possibly a rehearing. Technology Daily's PM edition has latest details. But the big question is this: What are the chances that Chief Judge James Sledge, Stanley Wisniewski or William Roberts are big bluegrass fans?

The newest installment of the "Grand Theft Auto" videogame series already has become a political punching bag in the city that inspired its virtual setting -- and the game isn't even scheduled to hit stores until the fall.

The New York Daily News reported over the weekend that local government officials in New York City erupted after Take-Two Interactive, the label behind "Grand Theft Auto IV," released a trailer for the game last week. The clip contained virtual footage of several Manhattan landmarks, including the Empire State and Chrysler buildings.

City Council Public Safety Committee Chairman Peter Vallone told the newspaper that "setting Grand Theft Auto in the safest big city in America would be like setting Halo in Disneyland." Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said it is "despicable to glamorize violence" in games like “Grand Theft Auto” no matter how far removed their settings are from reality.

Take-Two is currently beating back lawsuits in Florida to block sales of "Grand Theft Auto" and "Manhunt 2" to minors.

The company, which also went through a board room shake-up last month, did not comment in the Daily News’ story – a detail that the Game Politics blog did not let go unnoticed. -- Michael Martinez

Technology Daily's AM edition reported that U.S. trade officials have successfully forged a free trade agreement with South Korea. The deal, which still needs the blessing of lawmakers in both countries, would be the biggest brokered by the U.S. since the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1992.

The agreement will boost high-tech exports by eliminating tariffs on most products, improving access for services, strengthening intellectual property protection and tackling non-tariff regulatory barriers, said William Archey, who heads tech group AeA. In 2006, U.S. high-tech exports to South Korea totaled nearly $11 billion making it the sixth largest market for those exports, AeA said.

The Recording Industry Association of America also weighed in. RIAA Executive Vice President Neil Turkewitz said that Korean copyright legislation and enforcement practices, particularly as they relate to Internet-based theft, are lacking. Korea's broadband penetration is high, which has worsened piracy problems, he said.

"We understand that this agreement will also require Korea to extend the term of protection for sound recordings and performances to 70 years. Achieving global harmonization of the term of protection is increasingly important in a world so interconnected through digital media," he said.

Google is known for its April Fools' Day pranks and this year was no exception. On Sunday, the Internet firm put a link on its home page offering consumers free, high-speed Internet service through their residential plumbing systems. The "Toilet Internet Service Provider" (TiSP) project is a "last hundred smelly yards" solution that takes advantage of preexisting sewage systems and their related hydraulic data-transmission capabilities, according to a fake press release.

TiSP in-home wireless broadband is fast, highly reliable, easy to install, and vacuum-sealed to prevent water damage, Google said. The gag was particularly timely since the company has been a prominent supporter of "network neutrality" rules that would prevent broadband companies from potentially acting as content gatekeepers.

"I couldn't be more excited about, and am only slightly grossed out by, this remarkable new product," said Google Vice President Marissa Mayer said in a spoofed statement. She said she firmly believed that TiSP will be a "breakthrough product," particularly for those users who, like Google co-founder Larry Page himself, "do much of their best thinking in the bathroom."

The search giant's first April Fools' Day joke in 2000 was the roll-out of its MentalPlex search technology that supposedly read the user's mind to determine search criteria, thus eliminating the step of actually typing in the search query. Read more about Google's hoaxes here.

It has the makings of a quiet early April with the House and Senate gone for their annual spring recess -- but last week was pretty lively, especially in the area of new legislation. As reported in Theresa Poulson's Friday bill round-up, a slew of tech measures were introduced. Here are a few:

H.R. 1739 would require the approval of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judge or a U.S. magistrate judge for subpoenas on telephone, e-mail and financial records.
H.R. 1758 would authorize H-1B visas for highly skilled workers at workplaces contributing to college financial aid.
H.R. 1689 aims to combat illegal downloading on college and university campuses.
H.R. 1788 would redirect unused spectrum to promote the deployment of commercial, high-speed Internet technologies for public-safety communications.
H.R. 1694 would give state, local and tribal governments more flexibility in using federal funds for information- and intelligence-sharing activities.
S. 1065 would review and expand telecommunications programs for health and mental health in the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments.
H.R. 1685 seeks to protect consumers from identity theft and require notice of security breaches that could lead to ID theft.
H.R. 1775 would amend the Freedom of Information Act to require the disclosure of certain information related to federal contractors.