October 2007

Hundreds of members of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers community celebrated the tenure of longtime chairman Vint Cerf on Tuesday night at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles. Cerf, who also serves as Google's chief Internet evangelist, leaves his ICANN post later this week.

"Vint was very much a part of the ICANN model's creation. No individual, no country, no company controls the Internet. Instead, it is the Internet community that drives the ICANN agenda," ICANN President Paul Twomey said.

"People may not realize that Vint, like all members of the ICANN board, serve the ICANN community as volunteers. It's an incredible sacrifice made in the name of a stronger and better single globally interoperable Internet. That model works," he added.

Twomey led a series of tributes at the gala, which included speeches from Ira Magaziner, who oversaw the Clinton White House policy on the Internet that led to the creation of ICANN, and Steve Crocker, chair of ICANN's Security and Stability Advisory Committee and Cerf's life-long friend.

Read more about Cerf's time at ICANN in Technology Daily's "Issue of the Week" on Monday.

President Bush is expected to sign a bill that would extend the moratorium on Internet taxes until 2014, and The Club For Growth no doubt thinks that's a good idea on the off chance that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee becomes president.

Huckabee currently ranks low among the Republican presidential candidates but has been gaining ground in some polls and has been the subject of favorable media coverage lately. Today, Club For Growth President Pat Toomey, a former House Republican from Pennsylvania, issued a "memo to the media" designed to remind people of Huckabee's record, and Internet taxes is one item in the memo.

This is the last item on the list, but it's there nonetheless: "Internet Taxes, 2004: Huckabee opposed a congressional moratorium on state taxation of Internet access (Bond Buyer, 02/24/04)."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' 30th meeting in Los Angeles this week drew a broad cross-section of stakeholders from the United States and around the world -- and apparently a fictional storybook character or two.

A quick scan of ICANN's published list of 623 pre-registered attendees, which the group posted on its conference Web site, includes an entry for "Harry Potter" from the U.K. whose affiliation is listed as "Hogwarts."

Potter is the main character of a series of fantasy novels written by British author J.K. Rowling that have been remade for the big screen. The stories about the adolescent wizard are largely set at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a school for young wizards and witches.

Oh good, now I can retire.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
From: GNLD SEASONAL PROMOTION
Sent: Tue 30/10/2007 6:22 PM
Subject: NOTIFICATION OF WINNING

Mr. Pedro Williams
GNLD Seasonal Promotion Officer

An ice sculpture of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' logo wowed guests at a Monday night reception. Read more about ICANN's meeting in Technology Daily's PM Edition.

Tuesday is “Constituency Day” where the different elements of ICANN’s supporting organizations hold their own meetings to discuss the latest developments and their positions on matters likely to be raised later in the week. There will be an evening gala at Sony Pictures Studios with a special tribute to outgoing chairman Vint Cerf.

The House on Tuesday cleared to President Bush a bill that would extend the moratorium against taxing Internet access until 2014, capping a flurry of activity on the issue in October.

Under current law, the prohibition is set to expire Thursday. Lawmakers voted 402-0 to add seven years to the moratorium -- more than double the three-year periods approved in 1998, 2001 and 2004 -- and to clarify the services covered under the statute.

The action came five days after the Senate voted to expand the four-year moratorium that the House had passed earlier this month. "It's high time that Congress passes this important legislation and gets it to the president's desk for his signature," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas.

Read this afternoon's edition of Technology Daily for more details on today's debate.

By Mike Platt, Guest Blogger

There are just two days left until the current Internet tax moratorium expires. Collectively, until it is extended, we will all have to endure more bad Halloween jokes predicting the looming specter that awaits us if Congress doesn't complete its work.

But this issue isn’t a joke. Extending the moratorium is a global competitiveness issue. The Internet must remain free of regulatory barriers that could adversely impact our U.S. companies as they try to compete internationally.

The legislation passed by the Senate on Thursday night is an improvement over the previously passed House legislation. First, it's a seven-year extension versus a four-year extension. And second, the Congressional Research Service voiced concerns that the House-passed language didn't adequately exempt certain services, like instant-messaging, from taxation.

The leaders in the Senate, and also Sens. John Sununu, R-N.H., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., are to be commended for bringing this legislation to a vote on Thursday night. Now the House needs to pass this bill and send it to the president.

Platt is the vice president of government and political affairs for TechNet.

If you can't be in Los Angeles in person for the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' meeting, check out our Flickr photostream here. I'll be posting photos for the next few days.

Vint Cerf, the longtime chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers kicked off the group's 30th meeting in Los Angeles on Monday by lauding members of his international community for their continued efforts to engage in a "rich, candid and respectful dialogue."

There is a "great deal of passion and energy to be found" among ICANN's ranks and Cerf said he has "been impressed by the maturing of ICANN dialogue into an increasingly thoughtful and substantive discussion." Cerf will step down from his post at the end of the week-long assembly.

Meanwhile, ICANN President Paul Twomey made the gathering a family affair. During the morning coffee break, I had a quick chat with his father who flew in from Sydney, Australia for the event.

The good-humored elder said that coming to the conference was an intriguing proposition but this would be his "first and last" ICANN meeting. A leg ailment limits his mobility and compulsory sightseeing over the weekend didn’t help the situation much.

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

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers meets in Los Angeles this week. Stay tuned for coverage in Technology Daily and on Tech Daily Dose. For now, enjoy a few scenic photos.

By Jeffrey Arnold, Guest Blogger

The Senate worked its traditional magic of compromise Thursday as it passed legislation to extend the Internet Tax Freedom Act for seven years.

As it did so, it attempted to address the ridiculous assertion of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., that e-mail and like services are likely to come under attack by greedy state and local tax authorities. Okay, a compromise is a compromise, but when you look at the language it may be more restrictive than intended. It's a solution looking for a problem.

Sen. John Sununu, R-N.H., passionately believes that the Internet Tax Freedom Act should be made permanent. On that point we are crystal clear. He was willing to compromise on a seven-year extension to move the matter forward and protect Internet access from taxation. Good for him.

But, a seven-year extension puts the matter squarely in an election-year cycle. Is that a good idea? Shorter is better.

The U.S. House will have to carefully examine the Senate's work and make some choices between the two bills. Local government fully supports the House-passed bill and would like to see that prevail, but this is Washington, D.C., and we all know that something will get worked out.

Hopefully, it's in the best interest of all the people, and the state and local governments that represent them.

Arnold is the deputy legislative director for the National Association of Counties.

Technology Daily on Friday reported on Fox News Channel's copyright complaint against Republican presidential hopeful John McCain, who used a snippet from last week's GOP debate in a campaign advertisement.

The Arizona senator claims that the "fair use" principle of copyright law entitles him to use the video from the Fox-sponsored event and his team said it will not stop running the 30-second spot.

Read more about the controversy in the PM Edition and follow the jump to read the cease-and-desist letter sent to the McCain camp by Fox.

In the latest issue of National Journal magazine, William Powers has an interesting column on one of the Internet's most popular news-breakers and noisemakers -- Matt Drudge. Here are a few snippets:

Read the full story here.

By James L. Gattuso, Guest Blogger

Remember Bill 602b? That legislation, which you probably heard about in a message forwarded to you by a well-meaning relative or friend, would have placed a five-cent tax on e-mails.

It was a hoax, of course. No such bill ever existed. But now comes word that the Internet tax bill just passed by the House actually would allow such taxes to be imposed.

According to a Congressional Research Service memo sent yesterday to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the bill’s definition of "Internet access" would allow taxation of "many more products and services" than the existing moratorium. Including, CRS said, taxes on e-mails.

This story was originally published in Tuesday's PM Edition of Technology Daily.

By Heather Greenfield

A House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee spent Tuesday afternoon reviewing government and private-sector efforts to secure the nation's Internet infrastructure. The House Homeland Security Committee held a similar hearing last week.

The attention comes in part because the Homeland Security Department has declared October as Cyber Security Awareness Month, but the hearings are timelier after a recent video leak to the media. It showed an experiment at one of the national laboratories in which a researcher hacked into a power-plant control system and set fire to it with the click of a mouse.

Getting a grasp of the history of improving cyber security is a challenge in part because the threat has changed. Larry Clinton, president of the Internet Security Alliance, said in prepared testimony that as America has moved from vulnerabilities that might have taken months to exploit to the current era of immediate attacks, "just getting information is no longer nearly enough."

Next week's meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers in Los Angeles will go on as planned, despite the massive wildfires in southern California, officials said this week on the conference Web site.

"These fires are on the outskirts of the city and are distant from the meeting venue. There is no likelihood of an impact," organizers wrote after being contacted by a number of meeting attendees. "We understand the challenges, personal stress, and loss these fires are causing in the region, and our thoughts are with our neighbors."

ICANN's 30th international meeting will take place at the Hilton Los Angeles Airport and I'll be there filing reports for Technology Daily's PM Edition and Tech Daily Dose. Stay tuned...

The digital music royalty collector SoundExchange is making progress in its negotiations with noncommercial Internet music services like National Public Radio, the group's executive director, John Simson, told Tech Daily Dose.

His comments came Wednesday after a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the future of radio. The Copyright Royalty Board's controversial rate hike for webcasters was one of several hot topics discussed by witnesses and lawmakers.

Simson said he expects to have a resolution with NPR and other noncommercial song-streamers by the end of the year. Officials from both sides were expected to meet this week to continue their negotiations.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Potter, whose Digital Media Association represents America Online, Pandora, Yahoo and other large webcasters, said he still awaits details on the rate that SoundExchange wants his members to pay.

DiMA and SoundExchange reached a deal in late August to cap the Internet radio "$500 per channel minimum royalty" at $50,000 per service. The groups also agreed that beginning in six months webcasters will provide SoundExchange with a full census of songs performed.

Thursday is shaping up to be a busy day for lobbyists and spin doctors employed by fans and foes of patent reform legislation. Stakeholders from both sides of the debate have scheduled press briefings on Capitol Hill.

A late morning event includes officials from the venture capital, nanotechnology, biotechnology and medical technology industries, all of whom oppose current versions of S.1145, which awaits a Senate vote and H.R.1908, which already passed the House.

A short time later, the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which supports the legislation, has scheduled a lunchtime gathering for reporters. The general counsels of six member firms will sing the bills' praises. Stay tuned...

The National Association of Broadcasters' campaign to characterize a music industry royalty collection effort as a "performance tax" appears to have hit a snag. At least one member of the powerful trade group's board does not agree with its nomenclature.

After using NAB's wording in his testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, Russell Withers, who owns 30 radio stations and six TV stations, said he believes the verbiage is inaccurate.

"I disagree with 'performance tax.' It's a 'performance fee,'" he said in response to a question from New Hampshire Republican John Sununu. The NAB has released a flurry of documents that portray the campaign to pay musicians for songs played on AM and FM radio as a "tax."

Nevertheless, Withers upheld NAB's argument that radio and record labels have "always enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship -- free music for free promotion." He called the music industry effort an attempt to compensate for "slowing sales and a flawed business model for the digital age."

Read more about the hearing in Technology Daily's PM Edition.

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

DENVER -- New York Sen. Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she could not support a bill to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in its current form and would support a filibuster if changes are not made.

The Senate Intelligence Committee approved the bill last week and has sent it to the Judiciary Committee for consideration. The legislation would allow the government to begin wiretaps of foreign targets before seeking approval from the secret FISA court and would grant immunity to telecommunications providers facing lawsuits for helping the government wiretap terrorism suspects without warrants.

Clinton, currently the leading Democratic presidential contender, said she is "troubled" by reports about the Intelligence Committee's bill.

"I haven’t seen it, so I can’t express an opinion about it, but I don’t trust the Bush administration with our civil rights and liberties," she said at a brief news conference after a rally here. "So I’m going to study it very hard, and as matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forth that would convince me differently." -- Athena Jones

By James L. Gattuso, Guest Blogger

As the days tick down to Halloween -- and the formal expiration of the Internet tax moratorium -- there’s a strong feeling of deja vu in Washington. It’s like we’ve all been through this before.

We have. In 2004. And 2001. The periodic last-minute extension of the moratorium has become a regular feature of Washington’s political life. Which leads many to wonder: Why not just make the tax ban permanent?

The arguments for restrictions on state and local taxes are strong (they are summarized in a new Heritage Foundation paper just released this week). But still, policymakers seem reluctant to take the plunge toward permanence, with the House voting last week for yet another temporary extension.

Opponents -- such as Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander -- have argued strenuously against anything more long-lasting. With the Internet changing so quickly, it doesn’t make sense to write Internet tax policy into stone, they argue.

But it’s hard to believe that many are actually convinced by this. After all, with nine years’ experience with the moratorium, this is hardly an experimental policy. And Congress always keeps the option of changing things if the needs arise. Just look at the amount of tinkering that goes on with the rest of the tax code.

The Senate Commerce Committee was treated to a snippet of a song by legendary crooner Ella Fitzgerald at a future of radio hearing on Wednesday. During his testimony, the founder of online music service Pandora demonstrated a mobile streaming application that his firm rolled out earlier this year.

Lawmakers seemed to be pretty impressed with Tim Westergren's "Pandora On The Go" service, which works with a handful of Sprint handsets. The offering is free for 30 days, then costs $2.99 per month.

At the start of the hearing, Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., admitted that she did not know what Pandora is or what it does. Now, at least she has a bit of an idea. Read more about the hearing in Technology Daily's PM Edition.

NBC News and MSNBC flipped the switch on their new, merged world headquarters on Monday and the place sure is sleek and shiny. The effort took six months and more than 200 miles of cable. The 8,500-square foot space features 280 high-definition monitors and six high-definition projectors.

"NBC News has always been a world-class news organization, and today we cut the ribbon on a world-class facility to match, located in the media capital of the universe," NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker said. "It is, quite literally, the newsroom of the future."

The next phase of the network's facelift includes long-term plans to create a state-of-the-art, high-definition West Coast news center and TV production facility in Los Angeles. That build-out will be modeled after the snazzy 30 Rockefeller Plaza redo. Take a peek at the news operation's new digs here.

Senate leaders on Tuesday got a letter bearing the names of more than 400 organizations and companies that oppose a bill to overhaul the U.S. patent system, which is currently awaiting a vote by the full chamber.

S.1145 already passed the Senate Judiciary Committee and a companion bill was approved by the House -- but resistance to the bill persists. The letter was signed by stakeholders in every U.S. state and the District of Columbia in a variety of fields.

The letter claims the current version of the bill "contains provisions that will create uncertainty and weaken the enforceability of validly issued patents." The criticism comes as executives from major high-tech firms, which support S.1145, arrive in Washington to meet with key senators and their staffs.

Rep. Mary Bono, who co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on Intellectual Property Promotion and Piracy Prevention, has zero-tolerance rule for counterfeit goods -- just ask her staff. The California Republican recently fired one of her aides when she learned that the staffer bought a fake designer purse while visiting China on a work trip.

Bono told the story at a Tuesday briefing on Capitol Hill, where she appeared alongside U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab and a handful of other IP caucus members (Read more about the event in Technology Daily's PM Edition).

Fellow Californian Howard Berman, who chairs the House Judiciary Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee, joked that a forthcoming IP enforcement bill will set an even higher penalty for purchasing a bootlegged Louis Vuitton.

Bono's staffer would not have just lost her job, "she'd be executed," cracked the Democrat who represents Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Berman's staffers better hide their pirated music collections, ASAP.

Update: A spokesman for Bono clarified that the aide in question was not fired for her purchase -- she left "in good graces" to pursue another job. The congresswoman's remark was "just a good punch-line" at the IP event.

The office does, however, have a strict policy when it comes to IP protection. If an employee is found using business resources in an inappropriate way, "that person would be reprimanded," he said. "When it comes to individuals' actions outside of the office, we don’t try to police them. We do not want to play big brother."

Fans of the Colorado Rockies must have expected that scooping up World Series tickets would be difficult. But they may not have thought computer hackers would have much to do with it.

Team officials said Monday that their computerized ticket selling system was whacked by an "external malicious attack," AP reports. Team President Keli McGregor said there were roughly 8.5 million attempts to connect with the system in the first 90 minutes of sales, which forced the organization to shut it down completely. Sales will resume at noon Tuesday.

Red Sox Nation, meanwhile, isn't being forced to break the bank quite as badly as it did for tickets in 2004. The Boston Globe reports the online ticket resellers StubHub.com and AceTicket.com claim prices are down considerably from three years ago, when the Sox snapped their 86-year championship drought.

A StubHub spokesman said the average selling price this year is $1,465, a $300 drop from 2004. That's still a pretty penny. But if you think it's unreasonable, check out how much Hannah Montana tickets are going for these days. -- Michael Martinez

The 463 Blog reports that "in celebration of the Chinese Communist Party's 17th Congress this last week, leaders there apparently decided that preventing people from seeing cats flush toilets would make the choreographed proceedings run all that much smoother." Read more here.

Major high-tech firms represented on Capitol Hill by the Coalition for Patent Fairness will try to drum up more support for a patent overhaul bill this week. The top lawyers for Adobe, Cisco, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others plan to meet Thursday with several senators and their staffers to push for passage of S. 1145.

The coalition will also be sending a letter to each member of the Senate signed by over 100 companies and associations -- representing leading innovators and patent holders -- to reiterate their belief in the importance of passing the measure, the group said Monday.

The House passed its patent bill (H.R. 1908) in September and the Senate version, which was approved by the Judiciary Committee in July, is still "a work in progress," industry stakeholders said at a morning briefing. Pharmaceutical, biotechnology and patent licensing players are providing plenty of pushback.

Read more about the patent reform feud in Technology Daily's PM Edition.

Reprinted from the Oct. 16, 2007 edition of National Journal's Technology Daily

Draft Bill Spurs Talk About Trade-Related Job Aid
By Aliya Sternstein

Draft legislation intended to aid employees left jobless due to international trade has garnered the admiration of the U.S. technology industry but strikes some tech workers as inadequate.

On Friday, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released a discussion draft of a bill that would overhaul the Trade Adjustment Assistance program to, as they say, better meet the needs of those affected by globalization.

The bill would expand coverage to service-sector employees, including workers in the high-tech and telecommunications industries. Today, TAA only offers income support and training to workers who are involved in producing goods. Most programmers and other tech professionals are excluded -- even though some of their jobs also are being moved abroad.

Roger Cochetti, the U.S. policy director of Computing Technology Industry Association, said Tuesday that the bill responds to all the concerns his organization has expressed about assistance for information technology workers in the 21st century.

"The adverse political impact of more open trade in services would be significantly reduced" under the bill, thereby helping the U.S. tech industry grow, he said. And U.S. tech workers would get training to make them more competitive in the job market.

If Judge Randall Rader of the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals ever gets tired of hearing patent cases, he could fall back on a stand-up comedy career. Rader kicked off a luncheon keynote on Friday by telling a few jokes.

Humor that is paraphrased on a blog post is not nearly as gut-busting as hearing Rader's tales at the American Intellectual Property Law Association summit, but I'll give it a shot.

He said he recently tried a case in Oakland, Calif. and the jury was selected after a "painful process" of listening to excuses from potential jurors as to why they could not participate. An attorney in the case told Rader: "It's hard to be a trial attorney. My client's life and my future depend on 12 people who are not smart enough to avoid jury service."

The judge responded: "I thought you were going to say your future depended on a trial judge who'd never tried a criminal case before." Quickly, the lawyer fired back: "Your honor, if I'd known that, I would have selected a better jury."

A storm is brewing over at George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet's decision to invite telecommunications giant Verizon to engage in a discussion next Friday on broadband deployment.

The think tank got an avalanche of e-mails from folks on its subscription list -- and not all were RSVPs. There were "a number of angry, outraged writers, some of whom question the integrity of IPDI for hosting a big, bad company like Verizon for a discussion about broadband," the group said.

IPDI is answering those complaints individually but also addressed the collective concerns of the e-mails on the blog. The institute said it offers a forum, "open to everyone, regardless of his or her political beliefs, religion, nationality, ethnicity, actions or employer." Last month, IPDI hosted Google and now it's Verizon's turn.

Future events will look at the role of censorship and ways in which the technology community can engage citizens in policy discussions. Excluding Verizon from the conversation would be "anti-intellectual," the group said.

Consumer Electronics Association chief Gary Shapiro has challenged CNN anchor Lou Dobbs to a live debate on the impact of international trade on the U.S. economy. Shapiro wants to go toe-to-toe on Dobbs's program.

CEA launched a free trade initiative earlier this month to push Congress to pass pending free trade agreements. Some see Dobbs as "a chief propagator of unbalanced, ill-informed protectionist sentiments," according to an e-mail from the group.

A recent Zogby poll conducted for CEA indicated that 78 percent of respondents believed a news anchor who speaks out against international trade while his network promotes his show overseas and garners foreign ad revenue can be labeled a "hypocrite."

Oh, man. It's on now. I've seen Dobbs get angry and this could be a biggie. I'm not a betting man, but I know Shapiro is younger, more agile and a really good talker. Then again, Dobbs can steamroll over just about anyone with his heated diatribes.

Will Dobbs accept the challenge? Stay tuned...

If you're in search of cool weekend plans and you happen to be in Washington, head over to the National Mall to ogle at entries in the Solar Decathlon 2007 -- a competition where 20 universities are vying for the most brilliant sun-powered home.

The competition, which ends Saturday, was developed by the Energy Department five years ago and now part of President Bush's 2006 Solar America Initiative. Each team is given $100,000 and two years to design and build their project house.

(Photo Credit: Richard King/Solar Decathlon)

Members of the American Intellectual Property Law Association are in Washington this week for the organization's annual conference and they expect to get down and funky on Friday night. That's when the famed Pointer Sisters will perform for attendees.

The Grammy-winning group is best known for the classic dance song "I'm So Excited." IP lawyers are best known for being insanely smart, subdued and (and in this increasingly litigious, IP fueled economy) busy. This will give them a much-needed opportunity to let their hair down and cut a rug.

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney today launched its first Internet advertisement. Titled "Our Home," the ad features Romney's wife, Ann, talking about raising five sons and her devotion to her family.

"Mitt says there's no work more important than what goes on within the four walls of the American home," Ann Romney says in the ad. "And that's the way it was in our home."

The ad will be featured on AnnTV at AnnRomney.com. "Our Home" also will begin airing as part of the campaign's rotation in Iowa within the next week.

"Our Home" further will be aired on user-generated online video sites. The Boston-area company ScanScout will overlay "Our Home" on relevant videos targeted through real-time content scanning. The Romney campaign is the first to use this new form of contextual video advertising. -- Erin McPike

Shane Berry, a former FBI intellectual property protection official who now heads clothing company Abercrombie & Fitch's brand protection team, told a disheartening tale at the fall meeting of the International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition on Thursday.

He relayed a story about a recent counterfeiting sting in Thailand that involved the mass production of knock-offs of his designer label. After halting the bootleggers, police officers and local media (invited to cover the crackdown) began gobbling up the goods "like it was Christmas morning," he recalled.

"It was the most defeating moment in my job so far to understand the enormity of the problem," Berry said. "It's not just a resource issue in the U.S. government, it's apathy and ignorance on a global level."

Read more about the conference in Technology Daily's PM Edition.

The law firm Fulbright & Jaworski released the findings of its 2007 edition of its litigation trends survey this week. This year's poll notably included a new section on patents and trademarks, Peter Zura pointed out on his blog.

Respondents said that patent infringement claims are rising. Over the last 3 years, more than one-third of U.S. respondents believe patent infringement claims have increased; two-thirds of U.K. respondents agree.

About 68 percent of U.S. companies have not had any patent infringement claims asserted against them over the last three years, the study showed. Nearly 20 percent reported 1-5 claims, 8 percent claimed 6-10, and 5 percent claimed 11-20.

Three industries were identified as those most likely to have received patent claims in the past three years. They include manufacturing, retail/wholesale and technology/communication.

Two-thirds of respondents felt that recent developments in patent law had made no impact on infringement claims. Over the past three years, only 27 percent of U.S. respondents said their firms filed patent infringement claims against others.

The lengthy report is available here.

Remember that competitiveness bill techies have wanted for so long, the one President Bush signed into law a little more than two months ago? Well, it's now part of the checklist of items that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi uses to tout all that is right with the 110th Congress.

You can see the checklist at her blog, The Gavel, where the California Democrat included it in a post that bashed Bush for comments he made in a press conference today. The "innovation agenda promoting 21st-century jobs" is No. 4 on the list.

The competitiveness law also is a talking point in Pelosi's pitch about the "New Direction Congress."

What's a 12-letter word for a purported Sirius-XM "merger advantage for consumers" or the six-letter name of a former FCC chairman that supports the pending deal? How about an 11-letter description of what the National Association of Broadcasters allegedly fears?

Find out by playing "Merger Mania," a new crossword puzzle offered on the companies' merger Web sites -- www.SIRIUSmerger.com and www.XMmerger.com. Hats off to the satellite radio rivals for injecting some "fun" into the increasingly volatile debate.

No word yet on whether anyone at NAB, which opposes the $14 billion pairing, has tried their hand at the game. You can play along here.

Update: NAB Vice President Dennis Wharton told Tech Daily Dose that "it probably won't be long before XM and Sirius are claiming that crossword puzzles and hopscotch serve as competition to satellite radio."

"For the numerous consumer groups and more than 80 member of Congress who oppose this proposed monopoly, merging two fierce competitors with a history of breaking FCC rules is not a game," he added.

[Cross-posted from National Journal's Beltway Blogroll]

The House yesterday passed a bill aimed at shielding journalists and some bloggers from having to disclose their anonymous sources to the government. Technology Daily reported on the development this morning. Here's our summary of the news as reported in other publications:

The House on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed legislation to shield reporters from federal prosecution for refusing to divulge their news sources or information except in a few circumstances. CongressDaily (subscription required), The Washington Post, News.com and the Los Angeles Times report that the vote was 398-21.

Under the bill, journalists engaged in news-gathering activities, including bloggers, still could be compelled to disclose information on sources if needed to prevent an act of terrorism. The House adopted language to let judges consider the public interest in forcing disclosure in cases involving leaks that could be harmful to national security, not just criminal cases.

But the bill has too many restrictions to please Matt Stoller of Open Left. He said the requirement that a "substantial portion" of a blogger's livelihood come from gathering and publishing news will exclude most bloggers, including himself.

The Consumer Electronics Association is gearing up for its annual Las Vegas extravaganza. The trade group announced late Tuesday that Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the One Laptop Per Child project and the MIT Media Lab, will speak at the January conference.

The world’s largest consumer technology tradeshow takes place Jan. 7-10, 2008. Yang will kick off the Consumer Electronics Show's "Industry Insider Series" with an address slated for the first day of the show. Negroponte's address is scheduled for Jan. 9.

For more information on CES, go here. Technology Daily will be there again this year, providing thorough coverage of all the news that's fit to print for the tech policy community. Stay tuned!

The House voted 405-2 on Tuesday on legislation to extend the federal moratorium on Internet access taxes by four years but Tech Daily Dose has learned the tally should have been 406-1.

The bill, H.R. 3678, would bar states and localities from imposing such fees until Nov. 1, 2011. The dissenting votes were cast by Democrat Anna Eshoo of California, who authored a bill for a permanent ban, and Republican Michael Turner of Ohio.

A spokesman for Turner confirmed late in the day that his boss supports the bill and accidentally voted "no" on the legislation. "He has to go to the House floor and correct the record," said the staffer, who called the accident "regrettable."

Turner may have been distracted by a particularly busy day on Capitol Hill. He appeared at a midday ceremony to honor an Eagle Scout, whose flag request led to the Architect of the Capitol reversing his policy and deciding to allow "God" on flag certificates.

Media advocacy group Free Press unveiled a new, politically driven online distraction on Tuesday. It's a game called "Whack-A-Murdoch." The animated novelty came as News Corp., which is run by mogul Rupert Murdoch, launched its new Fox Business Network.

"As Murdoch’s latest venture is making headlines we hope to frame the issue around [media] consolidation and attract a new population of potential activists," Campaign Director Tim Karr said in an e-mail. "Hopefully, this will draw more attention and people to the issue as the FCC is weighing a decision that could further unleash the floodgates to consolidation."

The American Civil Liberties Union, an outspoken opponent of the Bush administration's agenda to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, recently commissioned a poll from the Mellman Group.

The survey of 1,000 likely 2008 general election voters showed:

- Sixty-one percent of voters favor requiring the government to get a warrant from a court before wiretapping the conversations U.S. citizens have with people in other countries.
- Fifty-one percent “strongly” support the requirement for warrants.
- Thirty-five percent support warrantless wiretaps of Americans’ international conversations.
- Twenty-four percent strongly support warrantless wiretaps.

"We're hoping that Congress will start listening to its constituents and begin to finally hear something beyond the echo chamber of the Beltway," the ACLU wrote in an e-mail to reporters. "This poll makes it pretty clear that Americans care much more about the Constitution than many of their elected officials would believe."

By Mike Platt, Guest Blogger

Bravo Rep. Anna Eshoo! She was just on the House floor saying that the House of Representatives could do better.

Rep. Eshoo has led the bipartisan charge to permanently extend the Internet tax moratorium on Internet access taxes, and prevent the imposition of duplicative and discriminatory taxes on e-commerce. If this extension were allowed to expire, broadband penetration in the United States would likely suffer.

TechNet member companies know that our country must strive to maintain a competitive landscape that allows their quick response to address global challenges. Keeping the Internet free of regulatory barriers to competition is important for our competitiveness. If Eshoo's bill were to be called up -- which we would strongly support -- it would no doubt pass by huge margins, as it did in previous votes in the House.

That being said, the moratorium expires on November 1. The high-tech sector would rather have an extension than risk the moratorium expiring. The members of the House Judiciary Committee are to be commended for moving this legislation forward.

It is our hope that the U.S. Senate will act quickly on this bill and then send it to the president for his signature before the moratorium expires.

Platt is the vice president of government and political affairs for TechNet.

"The Bryant Park Project," National Public Radio's new morning show for a younger, hipper set recently aired what co-host Luke Burbank said was "possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media."

Since I'm obsessed with BPP these days, I thought I would link to the video of the Q&A with Icelandic band Sigur Ros here. The folks at BPP obviously have a good sense of humor (they blogged about the interview's badness).

Watching it made me feel a little uneasy. We've all had our share of tough interviews. But I think Burbank (who is admittedly a big fan of the band's music) can take comfort that there may be one interview that trumps his.

Yes, that's right everyone. I'm drudging up the ol' Holly Hunter video on ABC News Now. Enjoy!

By Jeffrey Arnold, Guest Blogger

It was interesting to listen to the debate over H.R. 3678 on the House floor this morning because the arguments for a permanent ban on Internet taxes were so shallow and misinformed.

The bill under consideration does three important things: It is clear, it is flexible, and it does no harm. It’s clear because the new definition more accurately reflects the Internet of today, not the Internet of 1998. It is flexible because we cannot predict the Internet of 2011 and we need the ability to review that new world at that time. It does no harm because it does not remove existing taxes that generate millions of dollars for the states that were grandfathered (there are very few local jurisdictions that impose such taxes).

Per the debate this morning, there is no evidence that taxes on Internet access have had any effect on adoption of broadband. Does anyone really believe that an additional dollar on a $30 bill from an Internet access provider is going to keep customers from getting the service?

The world of the Internet is about NOW, and decisions about investment in the Internet or physical plant to provide access, or the services carried over the Internet are not going to be affected by taxes on access even if they were imposed.

State and local government associations have shown a willingness to compromise on this matter and negotiate with telecom interests over the definition of Internet access. They have moved away from an insistence in eliminating the moratorium outright. This bill gives all of us a chance to revisit this in a few years and make better choices for the future.

Arnold is the deputy legislative director for the National Association of Counties.

Earlier today, the House voted overwhelmingly for a bill that would extend the moratorium on taxing Internet access for another four years. We'll have a full story on that in our PM Edition shortly, but the vote also is a great news peg for lauching a new, short-term feature here at Tech Daily Dose.

We're calling the feature Net Tax Talk, and the idea is to engage our audience in a virtual debate about one of the hottest technology-related items on Congress' agenda at the moment.

Consider former Mercury News columnist Dan Gillmor the inspiration for this feature. A few years ago, he wrote a book called "We The Media" and that gave voice to the idea that readers actually know more than we journalists do. That couldn't be more true than at an inside-the-Beltway publication like Technology Daily, where our readers are key players in the stories we write.

That being the case, we have decided to open the blog so those sources can go beyond the snippets of insight and wisdom from them that we are able to share in our regular editions.

The Internet tax moratorium is set to expire Nov. 1, and as Congress debates whether to extend it four, six or eight years, to make it permanent, and to extend or curtail certain exemptions, we will be asking stakeholders in that debate to share their thoughts here.

We've reached out to a few potential guest bloggers already -- the first will go online later today -- but others are welcome. If you are a player in this debate and have some insights or opinions to share, you can contact me at dglover@nationaljournal.com.

We're looking forward to taking this debate about the Internet to the medium that inspired it. -- Danny Glover, Editor

The Senate Judiciary Committee will convene Wednesday for a hearing to consider Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey. The White House's pick to fill the chair vacated by Alberto Gonzales is a less controversial figure, but policy watchers still want some tough questions asked.

Progress and Freedom Foundation Senior Fellow Adam Thierer, for example, wants to know if the former federal judge plans on pursuing aggressive new data retention mandates on communications, cable and Internet service providers. If so, how long would the information be kept, he wonders.

Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller tried to work with Internet firms and privacy advocates on the weighty issue last year but no guidelines for preserving the records were agreed upon.

Fellow PFFer Thomas Sydnor added that he would like to know what Mukasey plans to do to bring " the moral authority and enforcement powers of the Department of Justice to bear on the pervasive Internet piracy that threatens the future of our world-leading creative industries."

For more questions that stakeholders want asked at Wednesday's confirmation hearing, read Technology Daily's PM Edition.

Comedian and game show host Drew Carey has entered the world of journalism by fronting a series of Internet-based documentaries for the Reason Foundation that examine issues like immigration, eminent domain, drug laws and traffic congestion.

"We need Reason to help fight the stupid drug laws, the stupid immigration laws, and stupid big government in general," Carey said in a Monday press release. The foundation's president, David Nott, hopes the former sitcom star's "unique perspective and creativity [will] enliven the country's policy debates."

The videos can be seen on Reason.tv, a new online community. In the first video called "Gridlock," Carey, who recently became the face of "The Price Is Right," investigates the country's traffic problem. The documentary can be viewed here.

As I mentioned here last week, rock band OK Go was not able to make it to the Public Knowledge awards ceremony honoring its members and several other tech crusaders. But thanks to the power of YouTube, you can watch the band's acceptance speech above.

Nearly 16 percent of American households who use the Internet watch television broadcasts online and the number of entire episodes or shows viewed on the Web has doubled in the past year, the Conference Board said Monday.

Nearly 73 percent of online households use the Internet for entertainment purposes on a daily basis and an additional 15 percent search for entertainment several times a week, the board's study found. Viewers polled cited convenience and avoiding commercials as their top reasons for watching Web video.

Four out of five online viewers said watching shows online has not changed their traditional TV viewing habits, but a small percentage said time spent in front of the television has decreased.

Top methods for viewing broadcasts online are streaming and free downloads, officials said. Consumers also enroll in pay-per-download and subscription services, but the practice is less prevalent. About two-thirds stream online content and more than 40 percent download content for free.

The popularity of watching TV online will have "a huge impact on the way brands and advertisers communicate with viewers," said Shari Morwood of market research firm TNS, which helped prepare the report. "If advertisers can effectively leverage the online video platform, we should see much more interactivity and emotional connection between brands and the online TV viewing audience."

Read more about the report here.

Web marketers, statisticians, Internet analysts and other tech-savvy types have convened in Washington this week to discuss the future of doing business effectively online. The four-day eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit kicked off on Sunday.

Conference organizer Jim Sterne posted a video on YouTube letting folks know what they could expect at event. He described it as "an incredible I.Q. minefield that you can wander around in and new ideas go off with every step you take."

Some of the video, which you can watch here, is filmed while Sterne is driving, which I found a bit worrisome, but it's a good way to provide a sneak peek into what promises to be a stimulating series of presentations for Web heads.

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh has turned to the popular eBay auction Web site to sell a letter from Senate Democrats who attacked him for comments he made about "phony soldiers" whom he claims falsified military service.

The letter, signed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and 40 other lawmakers, was delivered to Clear Channel Communications, Limbaugh's syndication partner, and widely quoted in the media.

Proceeds of the auction will be donated to the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation, a charity that provides financial assistance to the children of fallen Marines and federal law enforcement officers. Limbaugh serves on the board of the organization.

According to the auction page, the winning bidder gets the original letter; the Halliburton briefcase in which it has been stored; a personal letter of thanks from Limbaugh; and a photo of him displaying the letter on stage in Philadelphia on Oct. 11.

On Monday morning, the highest bid was $45,000 after having been put online Friday with a starting price of $100. The auction ends in four days.

President Bush's homeland security adviser Frances Townsend on Monday urged Congress to permanently pass controversial foreign intelligence reforms that are set to expire in February.

In a Roll Call editorial, Townsend wrote: "The administration's goal can be summed up easily: We want our intelligence professionals to have the tools and flexibility needed to prevent a terrorist attack, while protecting the rights of Americans here at home."

She said lawmakers must "keep a critical intelligence gap closed" by making the temporary statute permanent and providing "meaningful liability protection" to telecommunications firms that may have helped the government eavesdrop.

Technology Daily's AM Edition reports that the House is scheduled to consider a new Democratic measure this week. Critics believe that version does not provide strong enough protections.

The American Corn Growers Association released a statement on Friday commending the Senate Judiciary Committee's passage of a patent reform bill -- in July. Better late than never, I guess. The full House already passed its version of the bill and a Senate vote is pending.

The group's president, Keith Bolin, said farmers are "vulnerable to attack from biotech interests that sue family farmers for allegedly infringing on their patent rights due to actions that are often beyond their control." S.1145 would raise standards for "willfulness" and revise rules to prevent so-called "forum shopping" for courts.

ACGA urged quick passage of the Senate bill, which the association believes would "help level the playing field for family farmers defending themselves against dubious claims of patent infringement." The group represents 14,000 members in 35 states.

The presentation of Thursday night's Public Knowledge IP3 awards was made possible, appropriately enough, by technology. The prizes are given to those who have advanced the public interest in intellectual property, information policy or Internet protocol.

Due to inclement weather, honoree Tim Wu was stranded at the airport in New York City but a quick-thinking partygoer's iPhone saved the day. The Columbia University law professor thanked the crowd for the award via speakerphone.

Members of the band OK Go also could not be present to accept their award but prepared a video that was played for the crowd. The event was held at the historic Sewell-Belmont House on Capitol Hill where guests enjoyed an open bar and seafood hors d' oeuvres.

In other news, PK's Art Brodsky has an interesting blog post about Tuesday night's GOP presidential debate. He writes: "The discussion meandered to and fro on the usual topics -- taxes, trade, immigration, health care. Yet in all of these discussions of 'economic' issues, there is a glaring omission -- the telecommunications/Internet sector of our economy."

Two candidates, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, did get the chance to weigh in on Internet-related issues near the end of the debate. Read this story in Technology Daily's PM Edition to learn more.

From Technology Daily's latest People Column:

Public Knowledge announced the winners of its annual IP3 awards, which are given to individuals who have advanced the public interest in one of three areas: intellectual property, information policy or Internet protocol.

The winners are: activist James Love; Columbia University law professor Tim Wu; Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat Software; and the members of the band OK Go -- Dan Konopka, Damian Kulash, Tim Nordwind and Andy Ross.

Wu was recognized for his work on information policy. He has long been an advocate for a free and open Internet. His book "Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World," written with Jack Goldsmith, looked at the issue on the international level. He is working on a new book about anti-discrimination rules in communications.

American soul singer Isaac Hayes, best known to younger generations as the voice of "Chef" on the animated sitcom "South Park," created a buzz on Thursday at a Capitol Hill intellectual property rights event.

The noontime expo, organized by the recently formed Copyright Alliance, was intended to highlight the work of its members and draw attention to the content industry's push for stronger IP enforcement.

Hayes appeared at the event courtesy of BMI, which represents 300,000 songwriters, composers and publishers. During the event, he chatted with attendees and signed autographs alongside fellow musicians Chuck Brown and David Porter.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., who showed up in uncharacteristically casual garb, spoke about IP but couldn’t resist giving a shout-out to Hayes, whom he called his "main man" and his "sidekicks," Brown and Porter.

California Democrat Howard Berman, who chairs the House Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee and several other lawmakers were also listed on the invitation but did not attend. Many were not on the Hill due to funeral services for Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-Va.

A warning to all the competitive runners out there: technology won’t let you cut corners. Roberto Madrazo, a two-time loser in Mexican presidential elections, just found that out the hard way.

Via AP: "After a humiliating defeat in Mexico's presidential election last year, Roberto Madrazo appeared to be back on top: He'd won the men's age-55 category in the Sept. 30 Berlin marathon with a surprising time of 2:41:12.

According to the chip, Madrazo took only 21 minutes to cover nine miles -- faster than any human can run. "Not even the world record holder can go that fast," race director Mark Milde said."

Photographer Victor Sailer said he didn't need electronic evidence to suspect that Madrazo, who crossed the finish line in a jacket, hat and running pants, tried to pull a fast one:

"It was so obvious to me, if you look at everyone else that's in the picture, everyone's wearing T-shirts and shorts, and the guy's got a jacket on and a hat or whatever," Sailer said. "I looked at it and was like, wait a second."
-- Michael Martinez

Greta Wodele started her Washington reporting career by covering homeland security and other issues for Technology Daily and CongressDaily. She eventually moved up the ladder to cover the Senate for CongressDaily.

We've always admired Greta for the beauty of her reporting and writing talents, but these days, with her being on camera at C-SPAN's "Washington Journal," Greta is getting plenty of attention for her natural beauty, too.

Over the summer, she was a candidate in FishbowlDC's annual "Hottest Media Types" contest. And according to today's "Reliable Source" in The Washington Post, she has earned a mention in Esquire magazine's "Sexiest Woman Alive" contest.

Here's part of the quote the Post pulled from Esquire, which mentioned Greta among the likes of actress and sexiest woman Charlize Theron: "She is not hot; she's beautiful. Her hair, thick and mahogany, shows no trace of having been put through much but a brush. Her dark eyes are moist, her smile prim and pink."

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

MERRIMACK, N.H. -- In a speech here Wednesday kicking off a two-day campaign swing through New Hampshire, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton proposed a plan she called "Connect America" to expand high-speed Internet access to "every corner of our country."

Clinton's broadband plan would extend access to underserved communities and low-income families through tax incentives and public-private partnerships. "The nation that invented the Internet is now ranked about 25th in high-speed access to it," she said. "In the 19th century, we invested in railroads. In the 20th century, we built the interstate highway system. In the 21st century information economy, we need to invest in our information infrastructure."

Clinton also said she wants to strengthen science education and bring more women and minorities into the mathematics, science and engineering fields. The New York senator has been pushing the idea of creating jobs through innovation, especially by investing in scientific research and developing clean-energy technologies. She said doing that will help fight global warming and increase national security by reducing America's dependence on foreign oil. -- Athena Jones

Antitrust officials at the Justice Department launched a new Web site on Wednesday aimed at educating consumers and policymakers about the potential benefits that competition can bring in the arena of real estate brokerage services.

The site includes maps identifying states with real estate laws that can inhibit competitiveness, a calculator to help users tally their potential savings when brokers pursuing new business models compete for their business, and links to additional government resources.

The estimated median commission paid by home sellers in 2006 was $11,672, but new brokerage models have the potential to reduce that by thousands of dollars, officials said. But in a number of states, laws make it illegal for brokers to offer rebates or requiring them to offer services that consumers may not want, the agency said.

A New Jersey hospital suspended more than 20 workers on Wednesday for their role in leaking former "ER" star George Clooney's medical records to the media during his stay there after a recent motorcycle accident.

Employees of the Palisades Medical Center in North Bergen, N.J., were dismissed for a month without pay for violating a federal law on patient confidentiality known as the Health Information Privacy and Portability Act.

"They were severely disciplined," a hospital spokesman told the New York Times. Neither Clooney, nor his riding companion, Sarah Larson, complained about the disclosures of their injuries to reporters. Clooney suffered a rib fracture and Larson suffered multiple foot fractures.

"While I very much believe in a patient’s right to privacy, I would hope that this could be settled without suspending medical workers," Clooney said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the Health Professionals and Allied Employees union, denounced the suspensions as "an overreaction."

The House Judiciary Committee went well into the afternoon on Wednesday marking up legislation to reform the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act but staffers were quick to post video from the hearing online. Technology Daily's PM Edition will have full coverage of the event.

Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., opening statement [watch]
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., opening statement [watch]
Nadler statement on amendment [watch]
Conyers on telecom immunity [watch]
Nadler on telecom immunity #1 [watch]
Nadler on telecom immunity #2 [watch]

YouTube star Chris Crocker, who made national headlines recently with his melodramatic defense of beleaguered pop singer Britney Spears, isn't the only fan recording online videos to protest the unfair treatment of celebrities.

Jack McBrayer, who play a lovable, bumbling NBC page named Kenneth on the network's comedy "30 Rock," posted this plea about CBS News anchor and former "Today Show" host Katie Couric, which is hilariously similar to the one Crocker posted about Spears.

"How dare anyone out there make fun of Katie Couric after all that she's been through. She lost her ratings; she took a $5 million pay cut; she had two adorable kids. Her network turned out to be a user and all you people care about is ratings and making money off her. She's a human! Leave her alone!" he rants.

I love it when art imitates life. Recent "30 Rock" related posts from Tech Daily Dose can be found here and here.

Photo Credit: USC

Researchers at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, one of the birthplaces of the Internet, recently completed a census of the more than 2.8 million allocated addresses on the Internet.

Theirs is the first complete effort of its kind in more than two decades, according to a press release. It took some 62 days to send almost 3 billion Internet "pings" from three machines. A detailed account of John Heidemannn and Yuri Pradkin's research can be found here.

About 60 percent of the pings received no response at all and many others got a "do not disturb" or "no information available" response that many network administrators program into their routers and firewalls. Some non-replies were probably also due to firewalls intentionally blocking the pings, officials said.

The researchers produced a complex color-coded map, providing "a novel census view of the visible Internet." The only other Web census was conducted in 1982 when the Internet consisted of 315 allocated addresses, Heidemannn said.

The census can help illustrate the need to move forward with the next-generation Internet, known as IPv6, he said. Some experts predict that Web addresses in the current system could all be allocated as soon as 2010. The work could also improve Web security, he added.

New Delhi will host a February meeting of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the group announced Tuesday. The body, which administers the Web-addressing system, will first converge later this month in Los Angeles (and yours truly will be on the scene).

"Growth of Internet activity in India is extraordinary so it's fitting that the ICANN community is gathering there to discuss major Internet issues like internationalized domain names and new generic top-level domains," said ICANN Vice President Paul Levins.

ICANN received four bids to host the ICANN meeting slated for the Asia-Pacific region and picked the proposal put forward by India's Department of Information Technology and the National Internet Exchange of India. Australia, Hong Kong, and the United Arab Emirates were also contenders.

Technology Daily did not publish Tuesday due to an office move but the story below is reprinted from CongressDaily. Look for more coverage of Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta in Wednesday's PM Edition.

Securities Fraud Case Arguments Made To Supreme Court
By Andrew Noyes

Supreme Court justices today heard arguments in what many believe to be the most critical securities fraud case in a decade as they were asked whether defrauded investors can recover money from third parties. In Stoneridge Investment v. Scientific Atlanta, shareholders of cable television provider Charter Communications want to sue business partners Motorola and Scientific Atlanta.

The firms, which manufacture set-top boxes, allegedly engaged in sham transactions that inflated Charter's revenue by $17 million. The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a lower federal court dismissed the claim but stated that Motorola and Scientific Atlanta, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 2005, aided and abetted the fraud.

During oral arguments, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Scientific-Atlanta attorney Stephen Shapiro whether there could be a "middle ground" between one's status as a principal in such a case and a party that aids and abets. Justice David Souter also asked whether there could be "an overlap" between the two camps.

Justice Antonin Scalia questioned Stanley Grossman, who represented the investors, whether any aider and abettor that engages in a deceptive act should be considered a principal in the fraud and therefore be held liable.

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

The campaign of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney on Monday launched its own online social-networking platform dubbed Team Mitt Action Center, a site the campaign called comparable to Facebook and MySpace.

Strategists in the campaign also will host "Ask Team Mitt Anything" online sessions -- similar to the "Ask Mitt Anything" forums the candidate hosts on the trail. Look for Romney campaign manager Beth Myers to kick off the sessions with her 2 p.m. chat today, when she will preview today's GOP debate.

The other mission of the new site is to allow Romney supporters to engage in the campaign and network with each other. -- Erin McPike

David Hatch, Heather Greenfield and Andrew Noyes from National Journal's Technology Daily recently sat down with the Telecommunications Industry Association to talk about important issues that have arisen on Capitol Hill.

The result is a short video posted on the TIA Network. During the Q&A, the trio weighs in on whether the 110th Congress understands the tech sector; the impact of free trade agreements; how presidential hopefuls are (or aren’t) addressing tech policy; and other titillating topics.

In September, TIA asked us about the patent reform battle raging in Congress. That audio interview can be heard here.

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

MANCHESTER, N.H. - Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney isn't a big fan of today's media, but he loves the opportunity that new media give candidates to bypass traditional outlets. That was clear Saturday when a voter in Dover, N.H., asked how Romney would handle liberal media.

Staunch Romney supporter Bill Belles prefaced his question by lamenting that he "watched the current administration go down in flames because it never rebuffs what the media says." He then asked, "How are you as president going to rebuff the media so they don't, in four, five, six, seven years, say, 'Mitt lied'?"

Romney first joked that he had been advised before a speech the previous night: "The only tax increase you'll sign is a tax on newspapers that get stories wrong."

Then he added, "I can tell you this, and that is that there is today not the monopoly in the news that there used to be." He stressed a growing range of outlets and pointed in particular to talk radio, broadcast news and the Internet as avenues to communicate a message. He only mentioned newspapers as an afterthought.

Thursday night's season premiere of "30 Rock" on NBC, which was hyped by network head Jeff Zucker earlier in the week during a speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, dealt with the hilarious issue of digital remixing.

In the episode, NBC executive Jack Donaghy conjures up "SeinfeldVision" -- a plan to inject footage of comedian Jerry Seinfeld into the network's primetime line-up. The star's likeness is worked into the game show "Deal or No Deal," "Law & Order," the fictional "Milf Island" and other shows.

Seinfeld hears about Donaghy's hair-brained scheme and confronts him. "That’s the beauty if it Jerry. It's all done by computer," explains Donaghy, who is played by Alec Baldwin. "What NBC shows do you want to be digitally inserted into?" he asks. "I like 'Lost.' Is that you guys?" Seinfeld retorts. "Lost" is a hit ABC show.

Donaghy insists that SeinfeldVision is "perfectly legal" and Seinfeld threatens to buy NBC and turn it into "the biggest Lane Bryant in Midtown." Perhaps Donaghy will have to consult the Electronic Frontier Foundation to get him out of this mess.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center released its annual privacy and human rights survey on Friday, which examines the state of privacy in over 75 countries around the world. The report outlines legal protections, new challenges, and other important issues relating to privacy.

The study drew special attention to the continued expansion of government surveillance, officials said. Several countries have pursued new data retention schemes, expanded biometric identification requirements, and intensified international data transfers.

The report also found "continuing public opposition to video surveillance, workplace monitoring, and privacy-infringing corporate practices," EPIC said. The latest edition includes new analyses for the Middle East, Latin America and cyberspace as well, the watchdog group said.

The report is available for $75 on Amazon.com.

Staffers over at the Recording Industry Association of America may still be doing a victory dance at their posh downtown Washington headquarters after Thursday's triumph against illegal music-downloading.

A federal jury found a Minnesota woman liable for damages for sharing music online and ordered Jammie Thomas to pay record labels $220,000 -- or $9,250 for each of 24 songs for which the companies sought damages. It was the first file-sharing case to go to trial.

Thomas Sydnor, who heads the Progress and Freedom's Center for the Study of Digital Property, issued a statement saying the jury in Capitol Records v. Thomas "voted in favor of both the plaintiffs and the rule of law."

By rejecting the defendant's "a-neighbor-could-have-done-it defense," the jury indicated that the holder of an Internet account is responsible for illegal uses of their account, he said. By awarding well above the $750-per-song minimum, "the jury spoke to both the illegality and immorality of unauthorized downloading."

The RIAA released a statement welcoming the jury's decision. "The law here is clear, as are the consequences for breaking it. As with all our cases, we seek to resolve them quickly in a fair and reasonable manner." The trade group also pledged to keep filing lawsuits against copyright infringers.

"This program is important to securing a level playing field for legal online music services and helping ensure that record companies are able to invest in new bands of tomorrow," RIAA said.

An attorney involved in an upcoming Supreme Court case involving Charter Communications, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta is reaching out to bloggers, hoping to generate some buzz online before the case is heard on Tuesday.

Ted Frank, director of the Legal Center for the Public Interest at the America Enterprise Institute, was scheduled to speak with Web scribes for an hour on Friday afternoon about Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta, a securities fraud case.

Earlier in the day, Frank and a handful of other legal experts held a briefing at AEI to discuss the potential impact of the case that some have called the Roe v. Wade of securities law. Read Technology Daily's PM Edition for more.

In other Supreme Court news, the Oyez Project just put audio files of all the oral arguments from the October 2006 term online. The files are available at this page under the respective case names in the right-hand column (Thanks SCOTUSblog).

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

If you needed evidence that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was not on his usual stumping grounds Thursday, you could find it in the "Beshear/Mongiado" signs lining the highway, the country and classic rock stations dominating the airwaves, and the buzz about next weekend's Civil War days -- complete with battle re-enactments and a ball.

Edwards spoke at a state park overlooking the Mississippi River outside Columbus, Ky., after residents "demanded" during a summer contest on Eventful.com that he visit there. Columbus, population 229, beat second-place Eureka, Calif. in the contest.

More than 1,200 people showed up for the event, many from out of state, and at least nine yellow school buses were among the vehicles parked on the grass coming into the park. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina, used the opportunity to emphasize his rural upbringing.

"When I went away to college, I thought I was a hick in the big city," he said to laughter. "I thought it because it was true."

Back in January 2006, Technology Daily's editor Danny Glover authored a cover story on "The Rise Of Blogs" for National Journal magazine. In this week's hot-off-the-presses edition of the magazine, Bara Vaida, a former senior writer for TD, follows up with another cover story titled "Blogging On." National Journal Editor Charlie Green has given us permission to reprint it here:

By Bara Vaida

In late July, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., tried a new approach to writing legislation. The 62-year-old majority whip logged on to a computer in his Capitol Hill office and began chatting on the Web about his plan to expand broadband services in rural America.

The standard method for writing a bill would have had Durbin and his aides calling in consumer groups, telecommunications lobbyists and technology experts to hash out the details. Instead, Durbin reached out to the editors of two online political blogs so that he could hear directly from their readers. One was the progressive Open Left, a natural place for the pugnacious liberal to turn. But the other, RedState, caused Durbin some trepidation -- he couldn’t be sure how its conservative subscribers would respond to him.

In a series of evening postings on the two blogs (videotaped by his staff to prove that the senator was indeed doing the typing), Durbin connected with academics, California hip-hop artist Baby D, free-market advocates, rural Internet users, and many others. The conversations yielded more than 500 comments.

The University of California, Berkeley put hundreds of videos of full course lectures and other special events for free on YouTube this week. There are more than 300 hours of videotaped content on the channel.

The videos -- ranging from bioengineering, to peace and conflict studies, to "Physics for Future Presidents," the title of a popular campus course -- are part of the collection, according to a press release.

Berkeley has been a leader in the open-source video movement since 2001 when it launched a site that delivered podcasts and streaming video. YouTube will provide "a public window into university life - academics, events and athletics," said Christina Maslach, the school's vice provost for undergraduate education.

Columbia Law School launched a new Web site last month to educate creators about copyright and contracts, and arm them against "egregious attempts by content owners to take control of artists' creations."

The site, KeepYourCopyrights.org, is the product of the school's Kernochan Center for Law, Media and the Arts and the Program on Law and Technology. The site was unveiled at an event honoring literary agent Morton Janklow, an advocate for authors’ rights long before the advent of digital technology.

Professor Jane Ginsburg worked with fellow copyright professor Tim Wu to design the site as a resource with the latest legal content in language understandable to non-lawyers. The site shows clauses from real contracts and uses pictographs to rate them from an author or creator’s point of view.

PBS' first new primetime series in five years, "Wired Science," debuted on Wednesday night. The one-hour show, hosted by Chris Hardwick and Kamala Lopez, presents Wired magazine's coverage of all things techie in a fast-paced, video format.

The show features in-studio content including interviews, how-to segments and demonstrations as well as reports from field correspondents in locations around the world. The first episode had a report from Estonia on a botnet cyber-attack and a look at surgery performed by a "robo" doc.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a national Gallup study at Wednesday's anti-counterfeiting and piracy summit showing that more than one-in-five Americans purchased counterfeit goods in 2006. The report cited the number one reason for purchase was easy availability.

The study also found that less than a third of those questioned were aware that counterfeiting and piracy go well beyond luxury items to dangerous and defective products including tainted toothpaste, fake medicines and medical devices, exploding batteries, and fake auto parts.

"Counterfeiting and piracy are serious problems, with serious implications for jobs, health, and safety," said Caroline Joiner of the chamber's global anti-counterfeiting and piracy initiative. "The problem is real and getting worse and the chamber is not going to sit by idly as the livelihood of citizens and businesses around the world suffer the consequences."

Read more about the event in Technology Daily's PM Edition.

Legislation that would regulate "violent entertainment" shown during airline flights made headlines last week. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., and several others argue that the bill (H.R. 3676) is needed to protect kids from such fare while they are flying.

Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation spoke up about the measure in his latest editorial for the City Journal. He says it would be a mistake to empower federal regulators to become "long-range censors."

He said H.R. 3676 "would spawn a needless and expensive regulatory apparatus, and given the ambiguity surrounding what constitutes 'violent programming,' constitutional challenges would certainly follow, too."

"If we get federal regulators involved in trying to sort these things out, what’s next? Laws for the JumboTron at ballgames and restrictions on TV screens in store windows? We can find ways to fly the friendly skies without unfriendly regulators coming along for the ride," he added.

A grassroots movement is growing in support of the creation of a ".nyc" Web address for New York City, Newsday reported recently. Backers say the domain name would let the city's small businesses distinguish themselves in the crowded online marketplace.

"When Ford introduced their first car 100 years ago, no one thought to start building roads for it," said Tom Lowenhaupt of Connecting.nyc, the group leading the effort. "We ended up having to tear down miles of the Bronx to build freeways to start accommodating them all. It's the same thing now. We have the opportunity now to plan for the future and start organizing ourselves and our resources in a responsible way."

To get a top-level domain, interested parties must apply to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. In 2008, it will for the first time take applications from cities for domain names, the newspaper said.

Given the importance of online video this election cycle, the progressive think tank New Politics Institute has released its new "how to" guide both in http://www.newpolitics.net/files/Reimagine_Video.pdf">text and video forms Wednesday.

Dan Manatt of PoliticsTV explains why video is so critical with examples of video campaign announcements from Sens. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and former vice presidential candidate John Edwards. Manatt outlines basic ways any campaign should be using video -- for a candidate's bio, capturing "gotcha" moments of an opponent and keeping a video blog.

Manatt also offers sample expense sheets to show how cheap it is to buy the equipment for any level campaign.

Billy Tauzin, the president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday that his industry is the "soft underbelly" of the intellectual property infringement problem.

"We're the place where people go if they want to violate IP rights," he said at the business group's annual anti-counterfeiting summit. If the federal government does not stand up to infringers, "IP respect begins to die across the world," the former Louisiana Republican congressman said.

"The skinny is we're in trouble and it's getting worse," Tauzin continued, and PhRMA is pushing for "stronger, not weaker trade pacts" that include IP provisions. Stakeholders must "insist that the rights of Americans who pay for most of this R&D" are better protected, he said. "I can only tell you that it’s a challenge we all face."

Dan Glickman, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, echoed Tauzin's call for bolstered IP policies, saying that in film and television, "we're barely holding our own" against bootleggers. He suggested that various players in the IP space share best practices, since "we all have different ways of dealing with piracy."

Sen. Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican and longstanding supporter of strengthened intellectual property rights, told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce anti-counterfeiting and piracy summit on Wednesday that he finally made some money off his music hobby.

Hatch said he told an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers group that he received a royalty check for $57 and the crowd reportedly erupted into applause. That's because most of them had never gotten a royalty check under the country's current IP regime, he said.

Music was an integral part of Hatch's life at a young age and even though he grew up poor, his parents always let him experiment with different instruments. At age 6, he began taking piano lessons then he advanced to the organ and violin, according to his music Web site.

Hatch's albums, which span patriotic, religious and romantic themes, are available for sale here. You can even listen to a few tracks for free online.

Acting Deputy Attorney General Craig Morford may be new to Washington but he didn’t waste any time finding the right venue to discuss the government's intellectual property protection efforts. Morford, a 20-year veteran of the Justice Department, spoke at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday (Read more in Technology Daily's PM Edition).

Morford, who has spent his career fighting crime in the field, came here from Tennessee where he served as a U.S. attorney. He was appointed in August to replace Paul McNulty, one of a half-dozen Bush administration officials who have departed in recent months.

At the Chamber's annual piracy conference, Morford admitted that he is "still overwhelmed by the rule of law … and the institutions that make the law." He also said he has been wowed by the city's cultural offerings like the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which he visited over the weekend with a friend -- who happens to be a pilot and patent lawyer.

NBC-Universal CEO Jeff Zucker couldn’t help but promote Thursday night's season premiere of the network's critically acclaimed comedy "30 Rock" during his speech at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.

Zucker, who talked mainly about challenges to fighting intellectual property piracy, marveled at how technology has made the show (a favorite of mine) and other NBC programs accessible "wherever and however the consumer wants to consume" them.

Soon after "30 Rock" debuts, Internet users can surf over to NBC's Web site to watch a streaming version of the show or download it for a limited time. On Amazon.com they can buy it for good. Fans in some parts of the country can also watch on-demand and certain cellular telephone providers make the show available on handheld devices.

In a few weeks, "30 Rock" will be available for streaming at Hulu.com, a new Web venture between NBC and News Corp, Zucker said, and old-fashioned types can wait until the end of the season to buy the DVD.

I can tell that stakeholders in the patent reform debate have gotten antsy since the House passed its legislation and the Patent and Trademark Office released new continuation rules. How do I know? Intellectual property blog Phosita has unveiled a poetry contest where readers can submit their own colorful patent prose.

When the five-day competition ends, subscribers will be able to cast their votes to determine which poet will be named winner. Here's the first entry:

Lamentations of the Nonobvious

Sitting, waiting in anticipation,
In the distance, my Outlook® chimes,
Finalized rules on continuations,
Sixteen independents can be a crime.
Fossiled past is now extinct,
For applications once thought united,
Replaced by thoughts of indistinct,
Claims 1 through 12 elect divided.
Voices sound from anxious sighing,
November One on the horizon,
The sounds of money chings from filing,
To keep your specs and claims from dying.
Fini

The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, which features Starbucks' new “Now Playing” service went live in more than 600 coffee shops in New York and Seattle this week. The feature lets customers instantly preview, buy and download tunes currently playing overhead.

Since I'm presently sipping my grande drip at a Washington, D.C. Starbucks, I don’t get to experience that magic yet. But what I did notice while standing in line for my caffeine was a stack of "Song of the Day" cards.

Through Nov. 7 at more than 10,000 Starbucks locations, customers can grab a voucher redeemable on iTunes for a free song. Wednesday's track was "Jokerman" by Bob Dylan. The coffee company will give away 1.5 million downloads per day for a total of more than 50 million free songs.

Starbucks' partnership with Apple lets customers use the T-Mobile HotSpot Wi-Fi Network to wirelessly download music onto their iPhone, iPod touch or laptop with no wireless connection fees or HotSpot login required.

Forthcoming "Song of the Day" artists include Joss Stone, Dave Matthews, John Mayer, Annie Lennox, and more. The iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store is coming soon to Starbucks stores in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and additional markets through late 2008.

Valleywag blogger Paul Boutin spent a half hour speed-dialing Google's new free, telephone directory service [800-GOOG-4110]. The verdict: Its speech-recognition and geo-mapping algorithms outperformed Verizon and AT&T's humans.

According to Boutin, GOOG-411 figured out that "Dover-Foxcroft" was a town in Maine rather than sending him to an operator and it deduced that "H H Brown Shoes" meant a store in nearby Dexter.

The service "let me talk with my mouth full" but "makes an irritatingly un-Googly first impression on callers," he wrote. It answers not with a hello, but with a foreboding "calls recorded for quality" and then plays a randomly-selected voice shouting "GOOG-411!"

Google's technology might be smarter than Sprint's, "but its prerecorded human voice talent makes me want to kill," Boutin said. Plus, on one call, after several seconds of whirring and sputtering, a voice announced: "We're a little swamped right now, but just call back, and we'll try to help you out."

Photo Credit: Win Rosenfeld/BPP

Tech Daily Dose congratulates the amusing and informative gang at "The Bryant Park Project." National Public Radio's new drive-time radio show - blog - podcast launched on Monday after months of preparation and a series of fun downloadable pilot programs.

NPR describes BPP, which is geared toward adults 25-44, as "a morning news show that will change your life, speed up your commute, and jack your test scores 50 points." Hosts Alison Stewart and Luke Burbank "deliver surprising interviews and tasty segments soaked in fully carbonated NPR smarts." So, dig in.

British rock band Radiohead will release its new album online next Wednesday and fans will be able to pay as little or as much as they want for the tracks. "It's up to you," reads a message on the Web page where fans can pre-order the group's seventh album.

The Grammy-winning crooners' "In Rainbows" will be available as a digital download with no set price. The album will be available only from the band and at radiohead.com, its official site, the AP reported.

"This is all anybody is talking about in the music industry today," said Bertis Downs, the longtime manager of R.E.M. "This is the sort of model that people have been talking about doing, but this is the first time an act of this stature has stepped up and done it. . . . They were a band that could go off the grid, and they did it."

Kelly Curtis, who represents Seattle-based Pearl Jam, told the AP he was still trying to process the boldness of Radiohead's leap: "My head is spinning, honestly. It's very cool and very inspiring, really."

Even if everyone who downloads the tracks pays nothing, Radiohead still hopes to make some money. The group's site will also sell a deluxe edition of the album with versions in three formats (CD, vinyl and download) along with eight bonus songs and a hardcover book for about $82.

Radar Magazine has published a scarily fictitious story about Internet search giant Google with this tagline: "Google controls your e-mail, your videos, your calendar, your searches… What if it controlled your life?"

The lengthy tale, which ponders a world in which Google and the Department of Homeland Security merge, is written by Cory Doctorow, a well-known technology journalist and science fiction author who co-edits the popular BoingBoing blog.

An excerpt: "Greg sighed. He knew Google's reach all too well. Recently, the site's search-optimization software had begun using the data to tailor Web searches to individual users. It proved to be a revolutionary tool for advertisers. An authoritarian government would have other purposes in mind."

Radar conjured up some pretty realistic looking photographs that illustrate the imagined new world order. The photos depict airport security and immigration courtesy of Google and Google-sponsored public surveillance cameras.

This is the latest report from the National Journal/NBC reporters embedded with the campaigns of top presidential contenders and in two key states.

The campaign of Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney on Monday announced the launch of a Web site that will track Ann Romney, the former Massachusetts governor's, spouse throughout the season.

Mrs. Romney already is a regular on the campaign's primary Web site through the family's Five Brothers blog, but the new site, AnnRomney.com, will give the campaign's not-so-secret weapon a front-and-center role.

On the stump, Mitt Romney invokes name of Bill Clinton, whose wife Hillary is the Democrats' leading presidential contender, as a seque to mention his spouse, and the new site echoes what is implicit in Romney's remarks: He thinks Mrs. Romney is the strongest antidote to former President Clinton.

Among the categories at AnnRomney.com, "Ann's Recipes" is prominent. There's also an "AnnTV" to compliment "MittTV."

But the campaign calls attention in its release about the site to the most visible section, "Ann's causes." She writes that after having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998, she has "devoted a great deal of time to raising awareness about the disease and am devoted to making a difference in the lives of people who suffer from MS." -- Erin McPike

Unauthorized software on government computers is on the rise. Resisting it is futile but managing it isn't. The latest issue of Government Executive magazine features a column by yours truly that focuses on this "shadow IT" phenomenon.

Here's a snippet from the story:

America Online, eBay, Google, iTunes, MySpace, instant messaging, Yahoo, YouTube. What would life, or work, be like without these and other popular Internet-driven diversions?

The problem is that shadow IT poses security risks. The applications could have vulnerabilities that provide the holes hackers need to access employee computers and government networks and steal information or install malware.

Read the full article here.

I recently had a chance to sit down with Michelle Dennedy, Sun Microsystems' chief privacy officer, to discuss her company's latest venture called the "Network of You." The campaign, launched earlier this summer, is all about privacy protection in an increasingly perilous Web world.

The initiative, inspired by Time magazine's latest person of the year, recognizes the importance of keeping people safe and secure in this tech-fueled age, she said: "It's really an interesting way of looking at the value of human data -- what does the future look like and how does privacy and personal data control factor in?"

Consider this: IDC estimates that by 2010, about 70 percent of the world's digital data will be created by individuals. Meanwhile, 161 billion gigabytes of digital stuff was created globally last year alone. That's like 12 stacks of books that each reach from the Earth to the sun (the fireball in the sky, that is -- not the tech firm's Santa Clara, Calif. headquarters).

"Securing all this information along its lifecycle so it can lead to good business decisions is critical," Dennedy said. Key questions include how the information is stored and how long is it stored. The journey is leading policymakers away from "soil-based decisions," and requires attention from the international community -- not just Capitol Hill, she said.

Former Patent and Trademark Office chief Q. Todd Dickinson, who now heads General Electric's intellectual property shop, told a roomful of lawyers on Monday that the Supreme Court's decision in KSR v. Teleflex suggets that the body has become "much more skeptical of the patent system."

The high court's unanimous ruling last spring found that the so-called "teaching, suggestion and motivation" standard for determining prior art was too rigid and must be applied more flexibly. A conference sponsored by BNA and the American Bar Association examined the rules of the road in the wake of KSR.

Dickinson said it is "too soon to tell what the impact [of KSR] will be on prosecution." The decision will likely lead to fewer filings, which is "not a bad thing," he said. The case could also prompt harder fought PTO actions, more patent rejections and more appeals.

GE, which filed a brief in the KSR case, will not change its legal strategy in the near term, he told the group. The company is going to "wait and see how it plays out," but Dickinson said he will "probably pay more attention to searching [for prior art]."

The Supreme Court's new term began Monday and in honor of the occasion, Tech Daily Dose takes a look back at the technology-oriented cases heard by the justices during their last sitting. The following is reprinted from the July 6, 2007 edition of National Journal's Technology Daily.

High Court Term Sees Wins For Tech Industry
By Andrew Noyes

The Supreme Court finished its first full term under Chief Justice John Roberts last month after having made a handful of rulings in the patent and antitrust arenas of substantial interest to technology policy watchers.

During his short tenure, Roberts has outdone his predecessor, the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, with his focus on industry-oriented cases, despite an ever-shrinking docket, Latham & Watkins partner Maureen Mahoney said at a recent U.S. Chamber of Commerce briefing.

At the same event, Morrison & Foerster attorney Beth Brinkmann pointed to another sign that the court is business-friendly - the fact that there is little division among justices when issuing opinions. In the patent arena, there was "virtual unanimity" and in antitrust, there were "solid victories" as well, she said.

Here is a quick roundup of pertinent cases argued before the court.

--KSR v. Teleflex: The court unanimously found that the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals was wrong to reject a claim by the gas-pedal manufacturer KSR that its product, similar to that of rival Teleflex, was too simple to warrant a patent. The high court said that the so-called "teaching, suggestion and motivation" standard for determining prior art was too rigid and must be applied more flexibly.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Thursday joined the list of politicians who have visited the online fantasy world Second Life. The Georgia Republican talked politics with the virtual audience and even signed a few e-autographs.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Gingrich also got a chance to meet a few of the more eccentric avatars. "…[Upon] arriving in the digital amphitheatre, Gingrich's figure was immediately approached by a lovely young digital lady, who arrived moments before her clothes did."

GamePolitics.com has a short video clip of Gingrich's virtual event. The Click Heard Round The World also reported on Gingrich's remarks. An audio version of his speech is available here.

Update: The Metaverse Mod Squad, which moderated Gingrich's Second Life event, is disputing the Journal-Constitution's account. According to President Twig Tomorrow, Gingrich never encountered a nude avatar.

Tomorrow clarified that one avatar appeared for the event early in a skimpy outfit and complied when an agent requested that she change into something more appropriate. The Metaverse Mod Squad insists that the event was incident-free. -- Michael Martinez

The proliferation of iPods might have triggered a recent surge in crime, according to a new report from the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. The FBI recently released statistics showing that violent crime increased in 2005 and 2006.

"The gadgets are not just entertaining and convenient; their high value, visibility, and versatility make them 'criminogenic' -- or 'crime-creating' … And their power to distract users can give thieves an advantage," authors John Roman and Aaron Chalfin suggest.

The pair notes that robberies were up 3.9 percent in 2005 and 6.8 percent in 2006, while theft overall declined by 6 percent and auto theft fell 5 percent. Youth robbery arrests jumped 11 percent in 2005 and 21 percent in 2006 and adult robbery arrests rose only 1 percent in 2005 and 5 percent the following year.

The popularity of iPods among young people may make it a target for juvenile offenders, they wrote, noting that an outbreak of iPod-targeted muggings would be consistent with statistics. Empirical data in that realm are limited, but anecdotal evidence is mounting.

In the first three months of 2005, major felonies rose 18 percent on New York City's subways; but if iPod and cellular phone thefts are excluded, felonies actually decreased by 3 percent. In Washington, in the first four months of 2007, iPod subway robberies accounted for 4 percent of all robberies citywide, compared with under 1 percent in 2005.

Update: Washington's Fox 5/WTTG picked up this story after Tech Daily Dose [watch video]. Meanwhile, the city's Metro Transit Police released a list of tips to keep commuters safe while enjoying music on buses and trains. Read that list here.

Top brass from Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio paid visits to the FCC last week, according to agency filings (via the Orbitcast blog). The companies are trying to persuade commissioners to approve a pending merger estimated to be worth $13 billion.

Sirius honchos Mel Karmazin, Scott Greenstein, David Frear, Patrick Donnelly and Terry Smith took part in a Thursday meeting. A day earlier, XM's Gary Parsons, Eric Logan, Mark Vendetti and Jeff Blattner made an appearance.

During the meetings, executives discussed various aspects of the satellite radio business, "including the topics of subscribers and service, content and advertising, technical issues, and business relationships with automobile manufacturers and retail outlets."

Meanwhile, the National Association of Broadcasters' opposition to the deal continued. NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton issued a statement last week noting that XM and Sirius are spending millions "trying to bamboozle the Beltway into believing that a monopoly is good for consumers. Never in history has a monopoly served consumers better than competition."