October 2008

With four days left until Americans head to the polls, Nielsen Online on Friday provided some highlights of the final weeks and days of the online presidential campaign, including online advertising, Web traffic, online video viewing and candidate buzz. Unique visitors to BarackObama.com outpaced those to JohnMcCain.com nearly 2 to 1 in September, the company said in a press release, with BarackObama.com's share increasing from 6.1 million in August to 7.9 million last month. Unique visitors to JohnMcCain.com grew from 2.7 million to 4.2 million.

Meanwhile, online video proved to be a strength for the McCain campaign in September. Growing 175 percent month over month, total streams at JohnMcCain.com increased from 1.2 million to 3.2 million. Unique viewers at the site also increased 175 percent during the month, growing from 475,000 to 1.3 million. The number of video streams at BarackObama.com increased 60 percent month over month, from 1.3 million total streams in August to 2.0 million streams in September. Unique viewers at the site also increased, growing 35 percent in September from 824,000 to 1.1 million.

From the Nov. 1 issue of National Journal magazine:

A-list music stars usually don't care much about the workings of Washington -- except when you mess with their mikes. The rock band Maroon 5, pop princess Miley Cyrus, country crooners the Dixie Chicks, and "American Idol" contestants Clay Aiken and David Archuleta are among the more than 100 musicians urging the Federal Communications Commission to tread cautiously ahead of a Tuesday vote that the entertainers fear could impair their ability to deliver state-of-the-art live performances.

The FCC has been pressured by companies such as Google and Microsoft to open vacant portions of the television spectrum to unlicensed wireless devices after February's nationwide transition to digital TV, but performers worry that such a move could interfere with wireless microphones at concerts. High-tech firms want to use the airwaves, called "white space," for new wireless Internet services.

Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said that the 20,000 Americans who have petitioned the FCC to open the airwaves "may not be regulars in the pages of Us Weekly, but when it comes to expanding broadband access ... it's consumers who are the experts, not celebrities."

The Technology CEO Council and the Digital Energy Solutions Campaign unveiled BehindTheGreen.org this week -- an online forum to learn about and explore how green technologies are helping to improve energy efficiency in the United States and beyond. The Web site comes on the heels of the group's introduction of Greenville, a virtual green community that exemplifies what can (and in some places already is being done) to go green at home, at work and elsewhere.

"From higher energy and consumer expenses to global climate change, Americans are increasingly aware that our ever-increasing demand for energy has very real consequences for our economy," Council Executive Director Bruce Mehlman said in a blog post on the site. "The desire to 'go green' is urgent, and people want to learn more about how they can help." "The good news: there's a lot we can do -- right now -- if we act together," he said. The group is backed by the chief executives of Dell, IBM, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and a handful of other companies.

The Patent and Trademark Office unveiled a blueprint Friday for work-sharing among five major intellectual property offices to address the common challenges they are currently facing. The heads of the agencies met in Jeju, Korea, Oct. 27-28 to discuss a unified vision for work sharing and collaboration.

The meeting, which was chaired Jung-Sik Koh, commissioner of the Korean IP office, was attended by PTO Director Jon Dudas; European Patent Office chief Alison Brimelow; Takashi Suzuki of the Japan Patent Office; and Tian Lipu of China's IP office. Their joint vision: “The elimination of unnecessary duplication of work among the offices, enhancement of patent examination efficiency and quality, and guarantee of the stability of patent right.”

The offices established a cooperative framework of 10 projects devised to harmonize the search and examination environment of each office and to standardize the information-sharing process. The projects are expected to facilitate the work-sharing initiative by enhancing the quality of patent searches and examinations and building mutual trust in each other’s work, PTO said. Each office will oversee two projects and agreed that by the end of April 2009, they would exchange detailed proposals on the initiatives.

The Justice Department will require Verizon Communications to divest assets in 100 areas in 22 states in order to proceed with its $28 billion buyout of Alltel Corp., the agency announced Thursday. The department said the transaction as originally proposed would have substantially lessened competition to the detriment of consumers of mobile wireless telecommunications services in those areas, and likely would result in higher prices, lower quality and reduced network investments.

The divestitures cover the entire states of North Dakota and South Dakota; swaths of the states of Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Montana, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming; and portions of the states of Alabama, Arizona, California, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia, a DOJ press release said. The agency's antitrust division, along with attorneys general for several states filed a civil suit in a Washington, D.C. federal court to block the deal and offered a proposed settlement that, if approved by the court, would resolve competitive concerns.

According to the complaint, Verizon and Alltel are rivals and each is the other’s closest competitor for a significant set of customers in 94 cellular marketing areas, as defined by the FCC. The complaint alleges that the proposed transaction would substantially reduce competition for wireless services in each of those areas. The proposed settlement requires divestitures in these 94 areas to eliminate the competitive concerns. Proposed modifications to two existing consent decrees would require Verizon to divest businesses in six additional areas, officials said.

Surrogates for Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., made their final arguments to high-tech stakeholders today with a pair of debates that contrasted the presidential nominees' positions on taxes, trade, technology and telecommunications policy. At one event, Larry Irving, who served in the Commerce Department under former President Bill Clinton, spoke in support of the Obama campaign while conservative activist Grover Norquist represented McCain.

Norquist, who is president of Americans for Tax Reform, warned that if Obama wins, he will sign whatever bills Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi send him. "You're not buying a vision, you're buying a signature," he said. Later in the day, former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt spoke on behalf of Obama's campaign at a separate event. McCain adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin was slated to appear but cancelled.

Hundt, who led the FCC under Clinton, joked that "Doug had something better to do than come and answer my questions about the Blackberry." Holtz-Eakin told reporters last month that McCain helped invent the device as Senate Commerce Committee chairman. His remark, which sent ripples of ridicule through the blogosphere, came on the heels McCain telling the New York Times that he carries a BlackBerry but does not use e-mail. Read more in CongressDaily's PM edition.

The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday upheld a decision by the Patent and Trademark Office's appeals board in a high-profile “business methods patent” dispute. At issue was PTO's rejection of an application by inventor Bernard Bilski, who tried to patent what some believe is an abstract idea to reduce risk in buying and selling commodities. The case generated immense interest in the high-tech and intellectual property communities with amicus briefs filed by the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Business Software Alliance, Computer and Communications Industry Association and a number of individual firms.

The 9-3 ruling largely rejected State Street Bank & Trust v. Signature Financial Group, a decade-old case that established a test that helped pave the way for business method patents. Chief Judge Paul Michel, who wrote the majority opinion in the Bilski case, explained that "because the applicable test to determine whether a claim is drawn to a patent-eligible process under § 101 is the machine-or-transformation test set forth by the Supreme Court and clarified herein, and Applicants' claim here plainly fails that test." Michel has repeatedly criticized State Street but court watchers were unsure of which way the wind would blow.

The case has significance far beyond whether the inventor in question ought to be granted a patent, Accenture Intellectual Property Director Wayne Sobon said earlier this year. The judges acknowledged that impact by focusing on the possible effects of "any kind of a bright-line rule on our new economy," which is largely information-driven. At an April briefing, Foley & Lardner attorney Pavan Agarwal predicted the case would be sent to the Supreme Court, regardless of who won since the justices have shown more interest in hearing patent cases in recent years. Read a more detailed analysis on the Patently-O blog.

More than a dozen senators led by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter wrote to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell this week to protest the NFL Network’s exclusive coverage of football games, which precludes many fans from watching their area or local football teams. "That the NFL would choose to have fewer viewers for select games again this year is an indication of its interest in moving toward a pay television model," the lawmakers wrote.

The NFL enjoys an antitrust exemption, conferred by Congress, and members are concerned that the sports league is leveraging the success of its over-the-air broadcasts to move games to pay TV, to the detriment of NFL fans across the country. Last December, the NFL permitted the final game of the season [New England Patriots vs. New York Giants] to be broadcast on free, over-the-air TV. The game, which drew more than 34 million viewers, was a victory for the NFL and for fans, the letter said. The league has announced that it will return to restricting games to the NFL Network beginning Nov. 6.

A federal judge in Los Angeles last week issued a $371,000 judgment against the Web site Pullmylink.com for the infringement of popular copyrighted movies and television shows owned by Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers, two member companies of the Motion Picture Association of America. The judgment "affirms yet again that the legal system will not tolerate these Web sites that focus on linking to stolen content,” MPAA Executive Vice President John Malcolm said in a Wednesday press release.

The court found that the operator of Pullmylink engaged in contributory copyright infringement and inducement of copyright infringement by actively searching for, identifying, collecting, organizing, indexing, and posting on the site links to infringing material, which had been posted on various third party sites, allowing Internet users to easily locate and view the content in one place. The decision bans the Web site from further engaging in any activity that would infringe studios’ copyrighted works. There are more than 275 legal sites that provide high quality, digital content online, MPAA said.

Microsoft, Yahoo, the African Development Bank and Western Union have joined together to combat a growing online menace -- lottery scams, also known as advance fee fraud -- by helping law enforcement agencies around the world gather information and build evidence to identify, locate and prosecute scammers. The schemes are a form of cybercrime in which the victim is deceived into paying money upfront to receive a fictitious gift or cash prize. [Read more about these scams in this FTC briefing paper.]

The Tuesday announcement coincided with the annual German Anti-Spam Summit where Tim Cranton, Microsoft's associate general counsel, said the online threat differs from those that try to exploit software code or attack computers. "Lottery scammers prey not on software, but on the hope of their victims – and with scams that can be so creative and plausible, Internet users simply don’t know who they can believe," he said. International collaboration is necessary because Web shysters typically operate out of several countries at the same time and are truly global in reach, Microsoft said.

From Tuesday's CongressDaily PM edition…

A senior policy adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a conference of health IT stakeholders today to expect "a good Democratic HIT bill" early in 2009, although it remains unknown whether it will be a stand-alone measure or part of a healthcare reform omnibus. A handful of bills introduced this session "didn't really move the ball very far down the court" to health IT overhaul, said aide Wendell Primus, speaking at a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society policy forum.

Legislation aimed at creating a nationwide system of electronic medical records sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell and ranking member Joe Barton passed their panel in July, while House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee Chairman Fortney (Pete) Stark, D-Calif., introduced a version last month that would use Medicare reimbursement to prod physicians and hospitals to adopt new technologies. A similar Senate bill was introduced more than a year ago by Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Edward Kennedy and ranking member Michael Enzi. Read the full story here.

Chris Dawe, a legislative aide for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., also spoke to the group but requested that his comments be off-the-record. A spokeswoman for Kerry summed up his remarks saying the senator "believes that the American people and Congress understand that now more than ever, reforming our fundamentally broken health care system is a national priority." "We cannot have full economic recovery without health care reform that controls skyrocketing health costs and ensures coverage for all Americans," she said.

Google's settlement with a group of authors and publishers regarding the Internet giant's book digitization project was hailed Tuesday as a landmark announcement by the company but Public Knowledge's Sherwin Siy believes that the deal, which still must be approved by a court, might not alter the legal landscape but could impact future digital innovators' efforts. Under the agreement, Google will pay at least $45 million to copyright holders whose works were scanned and displayed without permission.

"Rightsholders and other potential plaintiffs might view this settlement as the model for all future relationships with digitization efforts," he wrote in a blog post. "If Google pays for digitizing, why shouldn’t everyone else? Such a landscape might make a plaintiff more likely to sue, although the results in court, ideally, shouldn’t differ, with or without this settlement in place. Read Siy's lengthy analysis of the arrangement and its potential implications here.

Arts + Labs, a recently launched coalition backed by AT&T, Viacom, NBC Universal and others, also offered comment. The group's co-chairs Mike McCurry and Mark McKinnon issued a statement saying the settlement "shows that creators’ rights and consumer benefit can go hand-in-hand in the Internet age." The arrangement demonstrates that "collaboration between the technology community and the creative community can give consumers access to a wealth of resources while also preserving copyright owners right to control how their work is distributed."

Forget comedian Sarah Silverman and "The Great Schlep" -- Computer and Communications Industry Association chief Ed Black is trying to get Florida voters to cast ballots for Sen. Barack Obama by arguing that the Illinois Democrat is the right leader to spur innovation in the Sunshine State. In a video posted on YouTube on Tuesday, Black -- who is a telecommuting Florida resident -- says it is "is so frustrating to see our state not reach its potential to become a tech powerhouse." High-tech policies in an Obama administration "will stimulate innovation, will increase Internet access and will create the jobs our state needs," he argues. Note: Black was speaking on behalf of CCIA's PAC, not CCIA itself.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin praised Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and others involved in the launch of the Global Network Initiative on Tuesday, saying that the code of conduct the group released is "not perfect [but] is an important step toward promoting freedom of expression and protecting the privacy of Internet users around the world." He said he hoped the deal [see earlier post] will be promptly implemented and its membership expanded. He noted that congressional action may still be needed.

Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee and held a May hearing on the topic, said that while companies operating in Internet-restricting countries have an obligation to respect free expression and user privacy, "governments bear the primary responsibility for protecting human rights." "Congress should follow the lead of the private sector by considering Internet freedom legislation that would complement the code of conduct," he said. Durbin said he looked forward to working with his Capitol Hill colleagues and the new presidential administration on this in 2009.

House Energy and Commerce Committee ranking member Joe Barton wrote to the Justice Department on Tuesday urging antitrust division officials to take a close look at largely unexplored issues of privacy and pricing arising from the pending advertising partnership deal between Yahoo and Google. In the letter, the Texas Republican argues that Yahoo has resisted congressional inquiries about the arrangement, noting that "many of their responses seemed designed to obscure rather than clarify how the Google-Yahoo partnership would work."

Citing more than seven pages of redactions that were sent in response to requests for an eight-page document, Barton added that "it is unclear why Yahoo feels such an acute need to hide its actions from the public." The companies in question have tried mightily to inform the public about what the non-exclusive deal would and would not do, officials have said. Executives have testified on Capitol Hill and discussed the issue at a number of public events. The firms also launched YahooGoogleFacts.com to provide more clarity. DOJ is expected to issue a statement on the deal soon.

Update: Yahoo issued a statement saying that the firm has "cooperated fully" with Barton's staff and will continue to do so. For months, Yahoo has been working with DOJ, members of Congress and others reviewing the proposal. Google and Yahoo have also delayed the ad program's launch to provide regulators with more time and information, officials noted.

High-tech CEOs have joined with executives from a number of industries to encourage their employees to take an hour on Nov. 4 to vote (see video montage above). CEOs involved include Cisco Systems' John Chambers, eBay's John Donahoe, Google's Eric Schmidt, Intel Corp.'s Paul Otellini, Sprint Nextel's Dan Hesse, Symantec's John Thompson, Time Warner's Jeffrey Bewkes and many more. During the 2004 election, 20 percent of eligible voters did not vote because they said they were "too busy" with work or school and never made it to the polls, according to "The Vote Hour."

Internet behemoth Google announced an agreement on Tuesday with a number of authors and publishers and with its library partners, starting a new chapter in its Google Book Search project, which began almost four years ago. The deal will give readers digital access to millions of in-copyright books; create a new market for authors and publishers to sell their works; and further efforts of Google's library partners to preserve and maintain their collections while making books more accessible to students, readers and academic researchers.

The agreement also resolves lawsuits that were brought against Google in 2005 by a group of authors and publishers, along with the Authors Guild and Association of American Publishers. While Google, the Authors Guild and the AAP have disagreed on copyright law, they have always agreed about the importance of creating new ways for users to find books and for authors and publishers to get paid for their works, Google's top lawyer David Drummond said in a blog post.

AAP President Pat Schroeder issued a statement saying her group is "proud to have been a part of the process that has produced this historic, landmark agreement." "This settlement, the product of many years’ hard work, is a great 21st century solution," she said. To date, Google has worked with libraries worldwide to make more than 7 million books searchable "and we're just getting started," Drummond said. "Ultimately we'll provide access to many times that number, and if approved, this agreement will unlock access to millions of these texts." Read more here.

Media watchdog Free Press called on the FCC on Tuesday to require all broadband providers to disclose any practice that monitors or interferes with their customers' Internet use. In addition to transparent "network management" practices, the group wants the commission to require Internet service providers to publicly disclose the minimum broadband speed guaranteed -- not just the maximum potential speed offered. Free Press's filing is available here.

Two recent cases highlight the urgent need for tougher disclosure requirements, Free Press said in a release. Online marketer NebuAd partnered with several broadband firms to monitor and reroute user data into private servers until a congressional inquiry exposed the practice. Comcast also secretly stymied users' access to online applications before an FCC investigation led to an about-face. In light of those instances, Free Press asked the FCC to propose rules that would ensure consumers know what speeds they're getting and how their Internet activities are being handled by broadband providers.

A broad coalition of leading information and communications companies, human rights groups, academics, investors and technology leaders on Tuesday launched its long-awaited effort to protect and advance freedom of expression and privacy on the Internet. The Global Network Initiative, founded on a list of agreed upon principles, will be supported by specific implementation commitments and a framework for accountability and learning that will provide a systematic approach for companies, nonprofits and others to resist efforts by governments that want to enlist high-tech firms in acts of censorship and surveillance.

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin indicated in an August press release that stakeholders, who worked for more than 18 months on the project, had agreed on a voluntary code of conduct. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee said the guidelines would be an important step toward "promoting freedom of expression and protecting the privacy of Internet users around the world." He and Senate Judiciary Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee ranking member Tom Coburn, R-Okla., wrote to the CEOs of Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo in July urging them to act ahead of the Beijing Olympics.

The initiative was launched in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and requires significant new commitments from participating companies, including: establishing greater transparency with users; assessing human rights risk; requesting the legal rationale for government actions and policies; training employees; challenging human rights violations; and providing whistle-blowing mechanisms through which violations of the principles can be reported.

A growing number of organizations believe that an information security incident would have a greater impact on reputation and brand than on revenue, with 85 percent of respondents to a new Ernst & Young survey citing damage to reputation and brand as significant, compared with 72 percent for loss of revenue. Regulatory sanction is cited by only 68 percent, the report stated. The survey canvassed nearly 1,400 senior executives in more than 50 countries.

"A good brand and reputation can take years to build but can be severely damaged or even destroyed by a single security incident," Ernst & Young Technology & Security Risk Service chief Paul van Kessel said in a release. For the past few years, most improvements in information security stemmed from regulatory compliance, he said, but now the desire to protect brand is motivating many firms to "do more than just tick regulatory and corporate compliance boxes."

Despite tightening economies, the report indicates that organizations are increasing investments in information security and more are adopting international security standards. About 67 percent of respondents interviewed say they have now implemented controls to protect personal information. Half of respondents are set to increase their budgets for security and only 5 percent plan to decrease money flowing to those accounts, officials said.

Popular conservative blog RedState.com took a huge leap Monday by endorsing Alaska Democrats Mark Begich and Ethan Berkowitz. Begich is the Anchorage mayor running against Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, who was found guilty of hiding more than $250,000 in gifts, including about $200,000 in renovations at his Girdwood, Alaska, home. Berkowitz is challenging Republican Rep. Don Young who is being investigated as part of a corruption probe involving high-ranking Alaskan officials.

The directors of RedState, whose endorsement carried the subhead "Party Loyalty Has Its Limits," wrote: "We stand at a perilous moment in American politics, with the real possibility that the Democrats could get to 60 votes in the Senate. This is no time for litmus tests of party loyalty, for abandoning our own." "Good conscience," the authors said, compelled them to advise Alaskans to vote for the Democratic duo.

"Ted Stevens and Don Young have been a pox on the Republican house for too long -- too addicted to the pork barrel, too fast and loose with ethics," RedState said. Stevens' conviction is the "exclamation point on an era in Republican politics in general and Alaska politics in particular that needs to end (and which Gov. Sarah Palin has been battling to clean up)." The blog added: "Republicans need to clean our own house. Washington cannot too soon see the end of Stevens and Young."

The Progress and Freedom Foundation officially launched its Center for Internet Freedom on Friday to offer "an alternative to the proliferation of advocacy groups calling for government intervention online by offering timely analyses and critiques of proposals that diminish the vital role of free markets, free speech and property rights." The center, which I mentioned in a National Journal article in August, will emphasize "a layered approach of technological innovation, user education, user self-help, industry self-regulation, and the enforcement of existing laws."

Some of the issues the center's director Berin Szoka will be working on with PFF's Adam Thierer, Adam Marcus and adjunct fellows include:
• Defending online advertising as the lifeblood of online content
• Emphasizing market solutions to problems of privacy protection
• Protecting online speech and expression both in the U.S. and abroad
• Defending Section 230 immunity for Internet intermediaries
• Opposing online taxation and legal barriers to e-commerce
• Ensuring that Internet governance remains transparent and accountable

Ten years ago Tuesday, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was signed into law by President Bill Clinton who said in a statement at the time that the legislation carefully balanced the interests of both copyright owners and users. A decade later, some policy watchers beg to differ.

In a report released to mark the anniversary, the Electronic Frontier Foundation documents the ways in which the watchdog group believes the law has harmed "fair use" of copyrighted content, free speech, scientific research and legitimate competition. The paper focuses on the most controversial aspect of the law: its ban on "circumventing" digital rights management and other technical protection measures.

Instead of protecting against copyright infringement, the language has been used to stymie consumers, scientists, and small businesses, EFF argues. To back up its claims, the study describes many problematic episodes including a 2003 case in which Lexmark used the DMCA to block distribution of chips that allow the refilling of laser toner cartridges. Another 2006 case involved university researchers who delayed disclosure of a dangerous hidden program in some Sony CDs due to DMCA liability fears.

Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was convicted Monday on all seven charges that he lied on personal financial disclosure reports when he failed to list more than $250,000 in gifts and house renovations. We offered some "Series of Tubes" comic relief when he was indicted and thought we'd post another remix this time around.

ThinkProgress.org reports…

Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain frequently touts former eBay CEO Meg Whitman as someone he turns to for economic advice, even floating her as a possible Treasury Secretary. In his latest statement on the economy, however, he incorrectly claimed that Whitman was the "founder" of eBay. Watch the clip above.

The Huffington Post notes that Whitman joined eBay as CEO in 1998, three years after it was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a fan of Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama. Just in case it comes up, McCain adviser Carly Fiorina, was chairman and CEO of Hewlett-Packard before being ousted in 2005. HP was founded by William Hewlett and David Packard in 1935.

Just in case politicos need some mood music to accompany their poll-watching and predictions in the eight days left before the presidential election, interactive Internet radio provider Slacker.com has launched a pair of stations tailored for fans of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Supporters of independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader are out of luck.

The stations were programmed using songs from candidate speeches, campaign trail efforts, writings and interviews, including those from Blender Magazine, "Saturday Night Live" and Rolling Stone. The DJs at Slacker also utilized campaign rally music and some of the songs feature samples from McCain and Obama speeches. All songs and artists were selected to suit the politicians' personal music tastes. While Slacker's offering is bipartisan, the start-up's CEO Dennis Mudd donated $2,000 to the failed presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., in 2004, according to FEC filings.

McCain's station includes an eclectic mix of tunes ranging from Elvis Presley and The Beach Boys to Hank Williams Jr. and ABBA. On the Obama station, users can hear songs from artists including Bob Dylan, Stevie Wonder and Sheryl Crow. Click here to listen to McCain Radio and here to listen to Obama Radio.

The top executive for a major performance rights organization said Monday that stakeholders in the digital-age copyright conversation "cannot wait until the next round of congressional hearings or rate proceedings to draft the next big idea." BMI CEO Del Bryant's remarks came at a symposium on digital media and intellectual property at the Library of Congress, which was attended by industry representatives, congressional staffers, copyright attorneys and others.

IP experts as well as technology and content creators must "chip away at the inertia" and "blend the best thinking across all minds" on the topic and find solutions that work for all parties, he said at the summit sponsored by the George Washington University Law School's Creative and Innovative Economy Center. Bryant advocated for "solutions that foster strong, progressive public policy for copyright" in the United States and across the globe. To that end, BMI helped the center launch NewCopyrightEra.org.

"Intellectual property is one of the driving forces of the economy, especially now with the financial troubles on Wall Street," noted Ralph Oman, a former U.S. Register of Copyrights who now teaches at GWU. "Performing rights organizations work. They are the most transparent and most trustworthy solution to create value for and protect the rights of songwriters, composers, and their small businesses by collecting money around the world when their songs are performed," he said.

From NationalJournal.com…

The increasing use of online financial tools, debit cards and prepaid credit cards to make political contributions has created technological loopholes in federal and public oversight of campaign donations. The result has been a recent spate of news stories raising questions about apparently implausible or suspicious donations to the presidential campaigns. Right-of-center activists also claim that Barack Obama's campaign has collected tens of millions of dollars from suspect overseas donors.

Their complaints spurred the Republican National Committee on Oct. 6 to ask the Federal Election Commission for an investigation of the Obama donations. To test the campaigns' practices, this author bought two pre-paid American Express gift cards worth $25 each to donate to the Obama and McCain campaigns online. As required by law, the campaigns' Web sites asked for, and National Journal provided, the donor's correct name, location and employment.

The cards were purchased with cash at a Washington, D.C., drugstore, and the campaigns' Web sites were accessed through a public computer at a library in Fairfax County, Virginia. The Obama campaign's Web site accepted the $25 donation, but the McCain campaign's Web site rejected it. Read Neil Munro's full story here.

Public Knowledge christened a new Web site on Monday dedicated to copyright issues as they affect musicians. The site, NYMusicCopyright.org, is funded by a grant from the New York State Music Fund, which was created when the New York Attorney General's Office resolved investigations against major record labels that had violated "pay for play" activities. The fund has awarded $35 million for 400-plus grants since 2006.

According to the fund, Public Knowledge received $75,000 for the project. On the site, users will find an introduction to copyright as well as sections on music licensing, sampling, alternative methods of distribution, remedies for copyright infringement, device makers and infringement, Internet service providers and infringement, peer-to-peer technologies, digital rights management, and orphan works.

“This new site is dedicated to helping musicians understand a very complicated copyright landscape,” PK President Gigi Sohn said in a press release. “We hope musicians and those interested in the music industry will take advantage of this exciting new resource." The group also used the money to conduct several copyright workshops throughout the state.

A high-tech watchdog group has unveiled OurVoteLive.org, a Web site where reporters, bloggers, and voters across the country can monitor problems at the polls on Election Day. The project was built by the Electronic Frontier Foundation for Election Protection, a national nonpartisan voter protection coalition, which runs the 866-OUR-VOTE hotline. The site will collect and analyze reports to the hotline.

OurVoteLive.org is already documenting over 1,000 examples per day of voters needing information or reporting problems such as registration and ID issues, difficulties with voting machines, and polling place accessibility, EFF said in a press release. At least 200,000 calls are expected to come into the hotline and be documented on OurVoteLive.org through Nov. 4. The site also features maps, nationwide trend information and a blog that will highlight incidents as they develop. (Photo Credit: briancors via Flickr)

As economic woes persist in the United States and around the world, the Consumer Electronics Association last week released a prediction that sales of its industry's products will grow 3.5 percent in the fourth quarter as compared to last year. The bad news is that increase is only half what was seen in 2007. Still, consumer electronics remain "must have" items for many American shoppers and comprise about 40 percent of the items on adults' holiday wish lists.

CEA's holiday trends survey indicated that 87 percent of consumers feel that the U.S. economy is worse then it was at this time last year. About 64 percent of consumers expect to spend money on gifts this year, compared to 74 percent in 2007, the trade group said, noting that a decline in overall spending for the holiday season is expected. That said, the percentage of the U.S. family’s gift budget in 2007 allocated to electronics was 22 percent and in 2008, it jumped to 28 percent. GPS and in-car video, mobile phones and audio/video products are expected to be top sellers.

The Copyright Board of Canada last week issued a decision setting Internet music royalties retroactively for a 10-year period, beginning in 1996 and the board will review rates going forward from 2007 in the near future, officials said. The ruling came as a result of the second part of a proceeding involving the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada. The first decision was issued in October 2007 and dealt exclusively with online music services.

The rate for commercial radio stations' Web sites is set at 1.5 percent of Internet-related revenues for low music use stations and at 4.2 percent for the others. A rate of 1.9 percent of Internet operating costs will apply to non-commercial radio stations, a rate these stations already pay for their conventional operations. Additionally, in recognition that not all pages of a radio station’s site contain sounds, rates will apply to no more than half of a site’s ad revenue or operating costs. Users will be allowed to further reduce the proportion in the event that less than 50 percent of a site’s pages contain sound.

The panel decided not to impose a tariff on a number of disparate sites for which the main activity is not related to music. Those include, for instance, restaurants, hotels, bars and any other business sites that use music. It also includes amateur podcasts, social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace and video sharing sites such as YouTube, as well as sites operated by individuals who use music. Such a tariff, if certified, could potentially target hundreds of thousands of users who either make very limited use of music or attract little or no attention, officials said.

Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for this week's Executive Summary. It's a great cheat sheet for all the news that you should have been paying attention to this week if you weren’t so caught up in Obama/Biden/McCain/Palin madness.

Some highlights:
▪ FCC Looks To NASCAR To Spread DTV Message
▪ ICANN To Unveil Plan For Net Address Expansion
▪ Social Security Numbers Widely Available In E-Records
▪ Pressure For 'Fair Use' Of Campaign Footage Surges
▪ Microsoft Announces Worldwide Anti-Piracy Blitz
▪ Identity Theft Task Force Cites Progress
▪ TSA Issues Final Rule On Taking Over Watch List
▪ Group Urges Greater Info Sharing Between Government, Private Groups
▪ DHS Seeks Court OK On Employment Verification Fix
▪ Microsoft, Net Activists Fueling Democratic Challenger's Campaign
▪ Growth In Tech Spending Expected To Continue

The new Congress should reverse a 2007 Supreme Court decision that overturned nearly 100 years of antitrust precedent in Leegin Creative Leather Products v. PSKS, eBay deputy general counsel Tod Cohen told a high-tech conference on Friday. The 5-4 ruling allows manufacturers to set a minimum price below which a retailer cannot sell a manufacturer's product, which some believe threatens the existence of discounting and discount stores and could lead to higher prices for consumers.

Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl, D-Wis., introduced a bill to restore the ban on so-called vertical price-fixing in the 110th Congress with Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who is now the Democratic vice presidential candidate. At the Computer and Communications Industry Association summit, Susan DeSanti, a former FTC staffer and partner at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, added that Leegin was a "perfect example of a court reaching a decision for presumed inefficiencies or rationales that may or may not apply in particular circumstances."

The event examined the intersection of the high-tech industry and antitrust law with a look at the past, present and future of the field. Other speakers included: the Harvard University Cyberlaw Clinic's Phil Malone; former FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson; Antitrust Modernization Commission member Jon Jacobson; Google competition counsel Dana Wagner and a long list of former federal government officials from the FTC, Justice Department and other agencies.

(Photo Credit: HelpMeVote08.com)

Both presidential candidates -- Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. -- are viewed by the public as below average leaders, according to the latest statistics on HelpMeVote08.com, a leadership analysis tool created by Dr. Tom Heemstra, founder of Mach 5 Leadership Performance. The site gives Obama a slightly higher grade than McCain overall, but neither candidate scores better than "average" on a single leadership characteristic. Obama leads McCain in honesty, fair-mindedness, intelligence, and competence and the political issues of education, healthcare and the environment. McCain leads Obama on national defense and personal courage. Read more here.

Listen up, politicians. Matt Haughey, who runs the MetaFilter community blog has laid out a 10-point plan for winning the nerd vote (thanks to BoingBoing for the tip). A few of his recommendations and explanations:

▪ Broadband everywhere: "I want crazy South Korea/Japan style broadband I've heard about for years: 100Mbps (upload and download) fiber connections for less than $50/month with unlimited bandwidth and the ability to run your own servers."
▪ No federal taxes on Internet purchases: "It's worked out well for over a decade, let's just stick with not charging tax on online shopping."
▪ Revamp copyright/IP law: "Using the internet means you are making a perfect digital copy of everything you ever read, see, and hear, and it doesn't always jibe with existing copyright law. There is lots to say about this, but I wish we were a little more Lessig and a little less Disney when it comes to this realm."
▪ Fund the Patent and Trademark Office so it can do a better job: "Software patents almost universally suck and stifle innovation."
▪ Open government: "Open source voting machines, xml data for every vote on every bill by every legislator. Public domain dumps of every photograph, recording, film, and publication commissioned by the government in an easy to retrieve place."

From NextGov.com:

The Office of Management and Budget on Thursday reported continued progress reducing the number of federal information technology investments deemed high risk due to complexity or cost, and announced the launch of an online investment tracking tool. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, federal agencies decreased the number of risky IT investments by 30 percent, from 477 the previous quarter to 333. OMB places IT projects on the high-risk list if they're costly, have a governmentwide impact or raise management concerns.

Agencies must evaluate and report on the status of these projects quarterly. To calculate the final fiscal 2008 high-risk list, however, OMB had to tack on 216 investments that remained on a separate management watch list at the end of fourth quarter. This brought the total number of high-risk projects in agency portfolios to 549, which still is a drop of 9 percent from the total number of such projects identified when President Bush released his fiscal 2009 budget request in February.

"If an investment on the management watch list has [issues that] an agency has not addressed, it gets moved over to the high-risk list," said Karen Evans, administrator for e-government and IT at OMB. "We were tough about portfolios this year." The issues that most often landed projects on the high-risk list related to cybersecurity and privacy, she said.

Read the full story here.

The Internet is playing a major role in the current presidential campaign, both as a source of information for voters, as a means of communication between voters and political organizations, and among voters themselves, according to a new report by The Pew Research Center For The People & The Press. A majority of voters (59 percent) say they have sought out election content online or had some type of online communication about the campaign, the center said Thursday. Younger voters and Democrats are outpacing older voters and Republicans in using the Web for campaign information and activities.

The use of online video has exploded, and significant numbers of voters have visited candidate Web sites and read blogs about the campaign, the report stated. However, use of social networking sites – such as MySpace or Facebook – for campaign information has not grown much since early in the campaign season. Last December, just 18 percent of voters said they had exchanged emails about the campaign with friends or family; now 37 percent have done so. About a quarter of voters (26 percent) now say they have received an email from one of the political campaigns or from a political group or organization, up from 17 percent in December.

A flurry of new top-level Web domain names expected to be rolled out by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers starting in 2009 will be executed with "a large dose of common sense," the organization's vice president for corporate affairs told CongressDaily on the eve of ICANN's release of draft guidelines for the long-awaited process. Under the plan, any entity could apply for any domain as long as they could pay a hefty registration fee but ICANN wants to make sure that all Internet stakeholders are able to provide their input along the way.

"There are lots of questions about how this is going to be implemented and we're not pretending that we've got everything locked down and agreed upon," Paul Levins said in an interview. "We want to have a really robust debate about it." One area that he hopes will spur a lively conversation is the introduction of geographic domain names like .france, and .germany. "I hope governments will be encouraged to get involved in this discussion," Levins said. ICANN also expects a number of non-English domains to be introduced, particularly from Thailand, Japan, Russia and other countries that don’t use Roman script, he predicted.

Industry representatives and U.S. government officials already have concerns about ICANN's plan. "ICANN's new program is a big undertaking that is fraught with problems from many constituencies," National Telecommunications and Information Administration spokesman Todd Sedmak said. "Based on the information released, we have questions that we will want ICANN to answer before they move forward."

The FTC and 24 state agencies on Thursday announced a crackdown on 33 operations that deceptively claim they can remove negative information from consumers' credit reports, even if that data is accurate and timely. In the seven FTC actions unveiled at a press briefing, the Commission seeks to halt defendants' allegedly unlawful business practices, ban further violations, and make them pay consumer redress and give up ill-gotten gains. A number of the schemes flagged operated online.

Some of the sites named include: Clean Credit Report Services, operating at ccrstoday.com; Successful Credit Service Corporation operating at successcreditservices.com and successfulcreditservices.org; Advantage Credit Repair operating at myadvantagecredit.com; RCA Credit Services operating at RCACredit.com; Latrese & Kevin Enterprises operating at hargraveandassociates.com and helpmycreditnow.com; and ACE Group operating at aceintake.com, foryourcredit.com, helpformycredit.com, and helpmycredit.com.

"Companies that promise they are able to scrub your credit reports of accurate, negative information for a fee are lying - plain and simple," FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Lydia Parnes said. "Under federal law, accurate, negative information can be reported for up to seven years, and some bankruptcies can be reported for up to 10 years."

The Internet's key administrative agency on Friday will unveil a blueprint for making sweeping changes to the way top-level domains, such as .biz, .info, and .us, are assigned. Under the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' draft proposal, any entity could apply for any domain as long as they could pay a registration fee of about $190,000. The application process is expected to start in 2009, with the first sites potentially coming online in the last quarter of the year. The scheme, which ICANN says embodies its longtime goal of introducing competition into the domain name space, could spur fierce a lobbying battle. Intellectual property owners are already on the defensive because they fear potential trademark infringement and brand dilution.

The anticipated flare-up over the domain expansion could be bigger than a multi-year campaign by some Internet stakeholders and members of Congress who wanted ICANN to establish a .xxx ending for domain names that publish pornography. ICANN's board voted against the creation of a virtual red-light district last year but Democratic Sens. Max Baucus of Montana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas co-sponsored a bill in the 109th Congress backing .xxx. Pryor's staff is keeping tabs on ICANN's latest proposal and aides for Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, are doing the same. Other House and Senate members who serve on key committees are also expected to track the issue. "This is going to make .xxx look like a warm up act," one international government official told CongressDaily.

ICANN, which will offer a 45-day public comment period on the draft plan, is already bracing for bickering over .xxx and any number of applications for domains that contain expletives and other potentially offensive content, ICANN Vice President Paul Levins said. Anyone can challenge proposed domains, which will be published on ICANN's site, and an independent arbitration panel will hear complaints and decide their fate. ICANN hopes to receive as many as 500 applications in its first round. If all are successful, that would bring in more than $90 million. Annual renewals would cost $75,000, which is on par with the .com domain, Levins said. He also downplayed rumors that the projected financial gain is the chief reason for the expansion. ICANN views the fee as a cost-recovery vehicle since about $13 million has been spent readying the system for the change, he said.

From Tuesday's CongressDaily PM:

Democratic House candidate Darcy Burner is collecting more than twice as much money from Internet activists and officials at Microsoft, where she has worked for eight years, than GOP Rep. Dave Reichert in their battle in Washington's 8th District. According to FEC filings, Burner has received $93,894 from Microsoft and its employees this cycle while Reichert, who is seeking a third term, has gotten a total of $35,750.

It is a rematch from 2006, when Reichert defeated Burner, 51-49 percent. By the end of that cycle, Microsoft, whose headquarters are located in the district, had donated $62,942 to Reichert and $121,400 to Burner. This time around, Microsoft-affiliated contributions to Burner are bested only by the $104,076 in donations received by the end of July through ActBlue, an online PAC that raises money for Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. For Reichert's part, Microsoft-affiliated donations account for the largest single source to his campaign.

Read the full story here.

The Center for Democracy and Technology wrote to the presidential campaigns of Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., on Tuesday arguing that once the election has passed, the presidential camps should publicly expose specific incidents in which overaggressive copyright claims have stifled political expression during the campaign cycle. The request came on the heels of a Monday letter to four major TV networks by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge and others that urged them to stop sending Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests that pertain to short clips of news footage used in election-related videos.

McCain officials recently complained that campaign videos containing less than 10 seconds of broadcast footage have been removed from popular video-sharing site YouTube at the demand of media companies who own the footage. Such "takedown" requests are improper because the use of brief clips of footage in political commentary is generally legal under the "fair use" provision of copyright law, CDT said. The letter from EFF was sent to CBS, the Christian Broadcasting Network, FOX, and NBC.

"The videos at issue include clips of news footage that last only a few seconds, used as part of constitutionally-protected political speech. This is not piracy, but fair use, no different from what Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show do every night," EFF attorney Fred von Lohmann said. "Sending unfounded takedown notices is not only against the law, it also threatens to interfere with the vibrant political debate occurring on community video sites like YouTube."

Commission on Presidential Debates Co-Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf on Tuesday downplayed a crusade by a group of Internet activists and political strategists who have called for sweeping changes made to the way the 20-year-old entity operates or its abolishment altogether. Fahrenkopf, a former Republican National Committee chairman, told CongressDaily that the Open Debate Coalition’s complaints are the latest in a legacy of grievances that confront the commission every presidential election cycle.

“Everyone has got a right to their opinion,” he said, but added he believes his group has worked hard to be accountable. He is the first CPD official to comment publicly on this controversy. Coalition organizer Lawrence Lessig, a Stanford University law professor, wrote to colleagues after the final debate between Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., saying that the “outdated, top-down Commission has got to go -- or be dramatically reformed.” He added that 2008 should be the last year the Commission on Presidential Debates exists, and that voters should “own” debates in the future.

The Open Debate Coalition -- whose backers include conservative activist Grover Norquist; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s advocacy group American Solutions; left-leaning MoveOn.org; the founders of Craigslist and Wikipedia and a handful of Democrat and Republican pundits -- wrote to McCain and Obama asking them to support a number of principles. Lessig said the campaigns responded favorably but the Commission “refused to implement these principles or even engage in dialogue about them.” Fahrenkopf countered that the commission never heard from the group before the debates were planned but he welcomed their future input.

The Government Accountability Office reported this week that Social Security numbers are widely available in bulk and online records held by government agencies but changes to enhance security are occurring. The agency's letter responded to an inquiry from Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., who chairs the Senate Judiciary's Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. He had asked the GAO to examine who has access to what records that may contain SSNs and for what reasons they were obtained. The GAO surveyed a sample of 247 counties in 45 states and received responses from 89 percent of those queried.

The GAO found that many counties make public records that may contain SSNs available in bulk to businesses and individuals in response to state open records laws, and also because private companies often request access to these records to support their business operations. The watchdog's sample allowed GAO to estimate that 85 percent of the largest counties make records with full or partial SSNs available in bulk or online while smaller counties are less likely to do so (41 percent).

County officials and businesses told GAO that SSNs are generally found in certain types of records such as property liens and appear relatively infrequently. However, because millions of records are available, many SSNs may be displayed. Counties generally do not control how records are used, GAO found. Of those that make records in bulk or online, about 16 percent place restrictions on the types of entities that can obtain them. Title companies are the most frequent recipients, but others such as mortgage companies and data resellers that collect and aggregate personal information often obtain records as well, officials said.

A prominent government transparency watchdog group has launched a bipartisan, collaborative initiative to study the Senate's current information-sharing practices and recommend how to improve public access to the Senate's work on the Internet. The Open Senate Project initiated by the Sunlight Foundation is modeled off of a parallel initiative, the Open House Project, which began in 2007. Read more about that project here.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid endorsed the initiative, saying in a statement that he welcomed ideas how his "can use technology and the Internet to create more transparency [and] bring us closer to our constituents." He said he looks forward to receiving the project's recommendations, which will be presented next spring. In the meantime, open government leaders from inside and outside Congress and citizens alike will develop a game plan for attainable technological reforms through an e-mail list and a blog.

Sunlight's John Wonderlich will lead the effort in collaboration with project coordinators Josh Tauberer, creator of the nonpartisan Web site GovTrack.us, and Jon Henke, a former Senate staffer who now blogs at TheNextRight.com. "We are excited that Senate leaders have recognized the importance of public oversight and evaluation of their online transparency, and we look forward to working with them," Wonderlich said.

High-tech behemoth Microsoft unveiled its Global Anti-Piracy Day on Tuesday, a simultaneous launch of education initiatives and enforcement actions in 49 countries on six continents to combat the sophisticated, illegal trade of pirated and counterfeit software. The programs include intellectual property awareness campaigns, business partnerships, consumer outreach, local law enforcement training, and new legal actions against alleged counterfeiters and pirates.

The anti-piracy day serves as a 24-hour snapshot of the range of initiatives that take place on an ongoing basis around the world, the company said in a press release. For example, in the United States, Microsoft filed 20 civil lawsuits in federal court in nine states against resellers alleged to be distributing computers with preloaded unlicensed and/or counterfeit Microsoft Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office software. In Brazil, Microsoft has partnered with the American Chamber of Commerce to launch an educational blog and in Turkey, Microsoft announced it is providing the government with training sessions on cyber crimes and their impact.

“Software piracy and counterfeiting is a sophisticated, global trade with a damaging impact on consumers, businesses and economies, and Microsoft is committed to working with others around the world to stay a step ahead of this illegal industry,” Microsoft's associate general counsel David Finn said. INTERPOL IP chief John Newton added that transnational criminal organizations are involved in counterfeiting, which is "a global problem with global sources of supply." "This is why we need to work together -- the public and the private sectors -- to stop this trade."

In the six months since intellectual property innovator Lawrence Lessig unveiled his campaign to combat the influence of money in American politics, a handful of current members of Congress -- Reps. Barney Frank, D-Mass., Lynn Woolsey, D-Calif., Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and John Tierney, R-Mass. -- have pledged to support planks in his reform movement, which aims to mobilize candidates, citizens and lawmakers to help curb what he views is a political corruption pandemic. The five are joined by over 200 challengers, which means about a quarter of congressional candidates have taken a stand, Lessig said in an e-mail.

"That's a start. But it's not good enough," the Stanford Law School professor said. In the e-mail he urges recipients to join his Change Congress "pester" campaign, which makes it easy for citizens to write, or call, or e-mail members or candidates who have not yet taken a position. "This should be a simple thing in a democracy: Tell us, candidate, what you believe. It should be a hard thing to hide. Yet in the politics of today, the simple thing is to hide. Help us make the simple hard," he wrote. Lessig himself considered running for the seat of the late Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., and would have made transparency a tenet of the campaign.

It appears that John Hodgman -- best known to some as "PC" in Apple's series of quirky PC vs. Mac advertisements and to others for his hysterically deadpan delivery of satirical news for Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" -- is now going to be a guest blogger for BoingBoing. This makes perfect sense. It's a pairing like peanut butter and jelly and we can't wait to see what this union brings forth. If it's anything like Hodgman's work on the small screen or his tome "The Areas of My Expertise," we're in for a treat.

Hodgman writes in his inaugural post that it was a mention on BoingBoing "which first convinced me to descend from the airy heights of minor television renown and return to my ink-stained former life of writing big books of fake trivia." BoingBoing co-editor Cory Doctrow brought Hodgman's attention to the "completely implausible but distressingly real" product Dick Van Patten's Hobo Chili For Dogs. It was Van Patten's creation that led him to write his latest book "More Information Than You Require," which hits bookstores on Tuesday. (Photo Credit: spi516 via Flickr)

How will our evolving, modern-day electoral map affect elections this year? Will voter registration efforts change the game? What role do pollsters and bloggers play in monitoring (and possibly moving) public opinion this campaign season? Get answers to these questions and many more at a Wednesday evening National Press Club event sponsored by the Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet, Politicker.com, and George Washington University's Graduate School of Political Management.

Panelists include: Anna Greenberg, senior vice president of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner; Maren Hesla of Emily’s List; Michael McDonald, associate professor of government and politics at George Mason University; James Pindell, managing editor of Politicker.com; consultant Phillip Stutts; and Politicker.com editorial cartoonist Rob Tornoe. The moderators are conservative commentator Matt Lewis and Margie Omero, president of Momentum Analysis, a Democratic public opinion research firm.
Get event details here.

Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:

With more than three months to go before the new Congress and administration come to Washington, policymakers are already feeling pressure to implement new safeguards for federal agencies' use of counterterrorism programs that collect or "mine" personal data, such as telephone, medical, and travel records or Web sites visited. A recent report by the National Research Council suggests lawmakers consider imposing restrictions on how personal data as part of a broader re-examination of national security laws to assess how privacy can be protected in conjunction with data-mining. The special panel of university academics, privacy specialists and technology experts was created at the request of the Homeland Security Department and the National Science Foundation.

The 376-page paper, which examines the technical effectiveness and privacy impacts of data-mining and behavioral surveillance techniques, picks up where a number of congressional inquiries and stakeholder debates left off by offering two sets of criteria to help agencies and policymakers move forward in crafting smart data-mining solutions. One set is designed to gauge whether a program is likely to be effective, while the other assesses likely privacy impacts and helps ensure that a program protects privacy to the greatest extent possible. Each should operate with the least amount of personal data consistent with its objective and should have a process for the reporting and redress for those whose privacy is improperly breached.

Over the weekend, C-SPAN aired its most recent installment of "The Communicators," which featured a half-hour discussion about Internet and privacy policy between FTC Chairman William Kovacic, C-SPAN host Pedro Echevarria and yours truly. Specifically, we chatted about how search engines use information to target advertising to users; mobile marketing; electronic health records privacy; and the future of enforcement with respect to spam and harmful Web enterprises. Kovacic also gave us a status report on the President's Task Force on Identity Theft, a multiagency panel created in 2006 to coordinate data breach policies across the federal government. The group is expected to release a major report this week that will lay out roughly 30 recommendations for sustaining government-wide momentum on the problem in the new administration and beyond. Click here to watch.

The office of the Republican vice-presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin has quoted prices as high as $15 million for copies of state e-mails requested by news organizations and citizens, according to msnbc.com. No matter what the price, most of the e-mails of Palin, her senior staff and other state employees won't be made public until at least several weeks after the Nov. 4 presidential election, her office said Thursday.

How did the cost reach $15 million? When the Associated Press asked for all state e-mails sent to the governor's husband, Todd Palin, her office said it would take up to six hours of a programmer's time to assemble the e-mail of just a single state employee, then another two hours for "security" checks, and five hours to search the e-mail for whatever word or topic the requester is seeking. At $73.87 an hour, that's $960.31 for a single e-mail account. And there are 16,000 full-time state employees. The cost quoted to the AP: $15,364,960.

The FBI in conjunction with a number of international law enforcement partners on Thursday announced the conclusion of a two-year undercover sting targeting members of the online “carding” forum known as Dark Market. Cyber criminals using this forum represented a virtual transnational criminal network involved in the buying and selling of stolen financial information including credit card data, login credentials as well as equipment used in carrying out financial crimes. FBI cyber czar Shawn Henry hinted that the announcement was coming in this CongressDaily story.

A primary objective of this operation was to infiltrate the forum, which at its peak had over 2,500 registered members; develop intelligence on key players; and in coordination with our U.S. and international partners, systematically identify, locate, and arrest them over a sustained period. The sting resulted in 56 arrests worldwide and $70 million in economic loss was prevented from the seizure of compromised victim accounts, the FBI said in a press release. Separate from those successes, the operation created new leads and more investigative information to pursue, officials said.

As the 2008 presidential election enters its final days, the Annenberg Research Network on International Communication has found some sharp differences -- and surprising similarities -- in John McCain and Barack Obama's positions on technology policy, according to the University of Southern California's Election 2008 Web site. In general, Obama and the Democratic Party feel that government can play a strong role in guiding the development of America’s communication environment, while McCain and the Republican Party rely more on the ability of the competitive marketplace to meet the public’s desires.

On media ownership and consolidation, Obama believes that prescriptive regulation encouraging diversity of ownership and enhanced enforcement of antitrust laws will lead to increased media competition. McCain’s public record and statements reveal some contradictions on the issue. While he has warned that “consolidation without competition can hurt consumers,” he has encouraged looser restrictions on ownership. On network neutrality, McCain opposes mandated network neutrality; his position is that the free market is the “best deterrent against unfair practices.” Obama, on the other hand, sees declining network neutrality as a side effect of the limited competition available among broadband service providers.

Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain mentioned "Joe the Plumber" 21 times when discussing the economic downturn in Wednesday night's final debate with Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama. Obama mentioned Joe, the nation's every man, five times. So, who won the debate? The owner of the Internet domain JoeThePlumber.com: Joe Francis, an Amarillo, Texas residential and commercial contractor.

Joe told the Silicon Alley Insider that he has been flooded by calls since McCain and Obama spent most of the debate talking abut Ohio's "Joe The Plumber" -- a real guy named Joe Wurzelbacher -- whose taxes might go up under an Obama administration. Francis, however, seemed to take it all in stride: "It was kind of cool, but I didn't expect all this... We're just kind of a small company in Amarillo."

Francis has been contacted by radio stations and people looking to buy his domain name, the blog said. He didn't disclose exactly how much he had been offered, but did say it was in the "hundreds of thousands." Oh, and he's willing to sell. I guess snaking drains pays the bills but Francis stands to earn a pretty penny for a URL that most of the world had never visited.

The Business Software Alliance recognized the contributions of two Justice Department officials with its annual cyber safety champion award on Thursday. The honor, presented in conjunction with National Cyber Security Awareness Month, was bestowed upon Michael DuBose, who heads the agency's Computer Crimes and Intellectual Property Section and FBI special agent Don Good, each of whom has led aggressive, cutting-edge efforts to fight cyber crime domestically and abroad.

DuBose has supervised the prosecution of numerous high-profile software piracy cases, including many of the best-known cases, BSA said. Good is assigned to the Washington D.C., Field Office, where he manages the criminal computer intrusion squad and leads several high-priority investigations. He previously led the InfraGard Program, an association of businesses, academic institutions, and state and local law enforcement agencies working to protect cyber infrastructure.

BSA President Robert Holleyman issued a statement saluting the winners "for going the extra mile to strengthen our economy and security." "Both of these individuals have demonstrated an extraordinary commitment to solving problems and forging partnerships for progress," he said.

Beyond high-tech safeguards employed by software and hardware vendors and Internet service providers, the Homeland Security and Defense Departments can provide unique opportunities to test new tools in controlled environments, a Thursday report from electronic commerce trade group NetChoice said. The paper, released in observance of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, also recommended agencies that deal with financial institutions should ensure that proper authentication techniques are being used within the industry.

Law enforcement agencies should devote sufficient resources to implementing existing federal anti-fraud laws and, where Web providers handle personally identifiable information, the FTC should hold companies accountable to the privacy promises they made to users, the paper said. Furthermore, the group that represents AOL, eBay, Yahoo and others, said agencies with oversight of key Internet infrastructure should hold contract partners to a high standard on security and stability. "Responsibility for cybersecurity lives at all layers of the security stack, not in any one layer," the paper concluded. "Simply put, there is no silver bullet."

The report's authors, Steve DelBianco and Braden Cox, were on hand for a Capitol Hill briefing. Also speaking at the event were Ken Silva, chief technology officer VeriSign and Michael Kaiser, executive director of the National Cyber Security Alliance.

(Photo Credit: Darcy Burner for Congress via Flickr)

The campaign for Washington State's 8th congressional district is heating up with Microsoft executive and Democrat Darcy Burner having raised just under $1.2 million during the third quarter of 2008, which her camp says is more than double what has been raised by her opponent, Republican Rep. Dave Reichert during the same period. The total is expected to rank Burner in the top handful of first-tier challengers nationally, her campaign said in a press release. Opensecrets.org reports that Burner has received $93,894 from Microsoft while Reichert has been given $35,750.

Burner, who unsuccessfully challenged Reichert in 2006, has become the darling of the liberal blogosphere and has raised much of her campaign cash from outside her district. She is popular with left-leaning activists not only because of her positions but because she engages with them, according to a story on Time.com. It's not unusual for Burner to post on Democratic blogs, and less than a month before her primary, she attended the Netroots Nation gathering in Austin, Texas convened by progressive blog Daily Kos.

A Reichert spokeswoman told Tech Daily Dose that Burner's bankroll is "coming from liberal, left-wing netroots who espouse extreme views and call Darcy their 'hero,' and they support her because they know she would do their partisan bidding." The Reichert aide cited one consultant quoted in the Time.com story who said: "The big question people are quietly asking about her is, in building her movement, did she lose touch with the people she sought to serve?" Reichert's staffer says the answer is "a resounding yes."

(Photo Credit: PalinAsPresident.com)

In the past 24 hours or so, PalinAsPresident.com has taken the Internets by storm, swirling through the political blogosphere and getting attention on CNN and other news outlets. The intricately detailed, interactive site pokes fun at GOP vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin. Point, click, giggle...

Conservative activist Grover Norquist has joined the Open Debate Coalition, a bipartisan group of online activists, strategists and bloggers pushing for less copyright restrictions on presidential debate footage. Norquist, who is president of the lobbying group Americans for Tax Reform, said in an e-mail to The Politico that he was happy to join in "calling for dismantling the Commission [on Presidential Debates] or fundamentally reforming it so it is accountable to one constituency only: the public."

"If the Commission wants to show any bit of responsiveness this year, they'll make sure that debate footage is put in the public domain so people can put clips on YouTube and otherwise share key moments without being deemed copyright lawbreakers," he said. Norquist added that "there is no excuse for the Commission imposing their will on the debates, despite the wishes of both major party candidates and a broad grassroots coalition on the right and left."

Coalition organizer Lawrence Lessig wrote to members outlining what he believes are the next steps. Follow the jump to read more...

On Friday, the Advanced Communications Law & Policy Institute at New York Law School will host a congressional staff briefing on recalibrating regulation in the advanced communications sector. Participants will analyze the differences between the financial sector and the advanced communications sector and discuss why calls for greater regulation in the former don’t translate well regarding the latter. Kind of timely, huh?

Speakers will also focus on ways in which industry stakeholders can work together to enhance transparency, promote collaboration, and increase accountability among firms in the advanced communications sector. An afternoon panel will bring together public and private sector representatives to discuss how to affect meaningful regulatory oversight of the sector, including a possible recalibration of FCC and FTC regulatory authority.

The roster of participants includes representatives from House and Senate offices, CTIA – The Wireless Association, the FTC, the Heritage Foundation, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the Progress & Freedom Foundation the U.S. Telecommunications Association and others. For more details about ACLP, click here.

President Bush on Wednesday signed a bill into law to stop rouge pharmacies from operating online by amending the Controlled Substances Act. The Senate unanimously cleared a House version of the legislation shortly before lawmakers left Washington to campaign. The bill, which passed the House a week earlier, requires Web pharmacies to display information identifying the business, pharmacist, and any physician associated with the site and a health practitioner will have to conduct an in-person examination of a patient for a prescription to be considered valid.

The statute would increase penalties for illegal distributions of controlled substances. For certain drugs, existing maximum penalties would be doubled, up to 10 years for a first conviction and 20 years for a second conviction. There are also new penalties of up to 30 years if death or serious bodily injury results. Under the changes, state attorneys general could shut down a rogue site anywhere in the country rather than limiting their authority to stopping sales only to in-state consumers. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., first drafted legislation and Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., sponsored the House version.

Internet hosting firm GoDaddy.com, which championed the legislation in congressional testimony, said the illicit online pharmacy business is a serious problem. Last year, GoDaddy's abuse department suspended more than 1,300 different sites tied to rogue pharmacies and this year, without the new law, the firm was on pace to see that number increase by nearly tenfold. (Photo Credit: Hillary H via Flickr)

Avue Technologies, a human resources firm that bridges the gap between the public and private sector, launched a Web site on Wednesday designed to help job-seekers find and apply for posts in the new administration, regardless of whether Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., or Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is in the White House. TransitionJobs.us will offer politically-appointed job openings when they are announced after the Nov. 4 general election and will track the "fill rate" of administration gigs, providing an overview of occupied and unoccupied positions.

The site, which is free to the public and contains no advertising, offers downloads of application forms used by prior administrations as well as those required for all presidential appointees. Visitors to the site will also be able to access a wide variety of helpful materials designed to help them understand the federal government's structure and how the employment process and practices work.

"Staffing a new administration is a monumental task, especially for a nation in crisis. The ability of the incoming administration to quickly fill approximately 7,000 vitally important positions will have an enormous impact on the success of either the McCain or Obama presidency," Avue CEO Linda Rix said. "The appointment process can be transformed in a manner that will dramatically increase the information available to those seeking employment as well as to streamline the process and provide for a much faster and efficient employment cycle."

From NationalJournal.com...

Everyone agrees the Internet can raise money, but this election might be its first real test as a get-out-the-vote tool. Perhaps that's why there's so little agreement in the political world over which methods will ultimately prove effective. In a survey of political consultants published in August by the E-Voter Institute, 77 percent said the Internet is an effective way to turn out the base. But there's so little consensus on the specifics that even simple things like offering information on polling places on a candidate's Web site are to some a low priority and to others a basic necessity.

Ben Katz, founder of CompleteCampaigns.com, a Web-based campaign services company based in San Diego, said that although voters might expect John McCain and Barack Obama to post polling place information, he wouldn't advise his downballot clients to expend the effort. There are more effective uses of their limited resources, Katz said, in part because most voters won't think to check a congressional candidate's Web site for such information.

But candidates and advocacy groups with the means to do so can see benefits from helping get supporters to the voting booth. For the organizations Jim Gianiny serves as president of Democracy Data & Communications in Alexandria, Va., a voting center is a major selling point: "They are facilitating participating in the Democratic process, and that's a really valuable thing." Read the full story here.

High-tech giant Microsoft and big screen star Angelina Jolie are joining forces with leading law firms and corporate law departments on Friday to announce the formation of Kids in Need of Defense, an organization dedicated to providing legal counsel to unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in the United States. Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith will hold a Washington luncheon to launch the effort. The titillating "Tomb Rader" star is not on the guest list for the event.

Key invitees include Ronald Schechter (not Jolie), a senior partner at Arnold & Porter, and Mauricio Vivero (not Jolie), executive director of Ayuda, a D.C. based group that protects the legal rights of low-income immigrants in the metropolitan region. KIND's pro bono network of attorneys will serve children in areas of the country where the need is greatest, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, and the northeast corridor. In Washington state, Microsoft already spearheads Advocates for Immigrant Justice, a coalition of law firms, corporations and NGOs that offer pro bono help.

Others involved in KIND include Covington & Burling, Holland & Knight, Perkins Coie, Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin, Morrison & Foerster, News Corp., and many more. (Photo Credit: KIND)

Video sharing Web site YouTube responded to a copyright complaint by the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., late Tuesday, telling the camp that its suggestion to fast-track reviews of Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown requests that pertain to political candidates and campaigns won't fly. The recommendation, made by McCain general counsel Trevor Potter in a Monday letter skirts the larger issue that YouTube "does not possess the requisite information about the content in user-uploaded videos to make a determination as to whether a particular takedown notice includes a valid claim of infringement."

While presidential campaign-related video is "invaluable and worthy of the highest level of protection," YouTube attorney Zahavah Levine argued that "there is a lot of other content on our global site that our users around the world find to be equally important." She added that the site, which is owned by Google, also tries to "be careful not to favor one category of content over another, and to treat all of our users fairly, regardless of whether they are an individual, a large corporation or a candidate for public office." The real problem, Levine said, is entities that abuse the DMCA.

Content uploaders, like McCain's camp and others, can play a critical role in helping to fight illegitimate copyright complaints, she said. Levine said the campaign is "operating from the position of strength, with knowledge of where the content in your videos came from," which means it can file counter-notifications; see retractions of abusive notices; and hold claimants legally responsible for their actions by filing a lawsuit. "We believe that with your vigilance and efforts in these areas, we can go a long way towards minimizing abusive takedown behavior," she concluded.

On Monday, the top lawyer for the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wrote to executives at video sharing Web site YouTube complaining about the processing of take-down requests under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. "Overarching copyright claims have resulted in the removal of non-infringing campaign videos from YouTube, thus silencing political speech," McCain's general counsel Trevor Potter wrote.

"Numerous times during the course of the campaign, our advertisements or Web videos have been the subject of DMCA takedown notices regarding uses that are clearly privileged under the fair use doctrine," he explained to YouTube founder Chad Hurley, general counsel Zahava Levin and William Patry, senior copyright counsel for Internet giant Google, which owns YouTube. The uses at issue have been the inclusion of fewer than 10 seconds of footage from news broadcasts in campaign ads or videos as a basis for commentary, which is protected under copyright law, Potter said.

The McCain camp proposed that if YouTube receives a takedown notice for any video posted from accounts belonging to political candidates and campaigns, the firm should "commit to a careful legal review, including fair use analysis, to determine whether the infringement claim has substantial merit." If YouTube finds that the clip is legal, the site should decline to act upon the notice, Potter recommended.

Legislation signed by President Bush on Monday that requires sex offenders to provide Internet identifiers to state sex offender registries and tasks the Justice Department with creating a system that lets social networking sites compare their users' identifiers with those provided to a national sex offender registry may not achieve its intended aim of protecting children, according one high-tech policy expert who tracked the bill. That official, Center for Democracy and Technology general counsel John Morris, said Tuesday that the statute may prove "almost entirely worthless" and warned that it may also carry with it serious unintended consequences.

The bill was introduced in January 2007 by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., now the GOP presidential nominee, and a companion measure was sponsored in the House by Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D. Pomeroy revised and reintroduced his bill after hearing concerns from CDT and other groups, but that version of the bill did not win Senate approval. Instead, the Senate version won out and minor modifications were made to alleviate critics' biggest fears, Morris said, acknowledging that "we have fewer concerns than we once did." Pomeroy's retooled measure would have let probation officers who supervise sex offenders install software on offenders' computers to monitor their Web whereabouts and target supervision to those who actually pose threats to kids.

Nevertheless, Morris believes the new law will not be effective because sex offenders who want to subvert or circumvent their conditions of probation, release or supervision -- which already typically stipulate that they cannot interact with minors -- will forge ahead regardless of the registry requirement. "If they're already intending to violate provisions that apply to them, why wouldn’t they also register a real e-mail and then go create another account," he said in an interview. "It is so trivial to create a new identifier, create a new e-mail address, or social network page. Anyone who is going to pose a risk to minors that this system trying to screen against can easily circumvent it."

Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:

With a worsening economy and a changing administration on the way, the technology policy community in Washington is looking at new ways of managing risk -- both politically and financially. According to Information Technology Association of America President Phil Bond, the weakening economy is putting "greater pressure than ever on the expense side" for tech associations to be efficient regardless of size.

At the same time, the importance of government policy is greater than ever. This explains why some companies are trimming costs while others are increasing spending on lobbying. The latter "is becoming more important to the business," says Bond, who worked under the Bush administration. "Each company weighs where they are going to take some efficiencies."

Roger Cochetti, a director with The Computing Technology Industry Association, agrees that the weakening economy will put a "premium on efficiency" for the industry. Other stakeholders see new areas of focus.

The nationwide Amber Alert electronic system that alerts the public when children go missing has made great strides since April 2003, when the program's coordinator role was statutorily established, the Justice Department said Tuesday as more than 300 officials from all 50 states gathered in Orange County, Calif., for a conference on the initiative.

▪ All 50 states now have statewide Amber Alert plans, creating a network of systems nationwide to aid in the recovery of abducted children.
▪ A secondary distribution effort undertaken in partnership with wireless companies, online service providers, and other private and public entities enables Amber Alerts to be sent directly to the public.
▪ Tribal nations are working to develop their own tailored plans so that children in Indian country may benefit from Amber Alert.
▪ More than 90 percent of the 426 Amber Alert recoveries have occurred since Amber Alert became a nationally coordinated effort in 2002.
▪ Anecdotal evidence demonstrates that perpetrators are well aware of the power of Amber Alert, and in many cases have released an abducted child upon hearing the alert.

“Amber Alert has helped to rescue hundreds of children from abductors and return them safely to their homes,” Assistant Attorney General and national Amber Alert coordinator Jeffrey Sedgwick said in a press release. "Thanks to cooperation among law enforcement agencies, the media, transportation officials, public and private partners, and concerned citizens, the Amber Alert system has become part of America’s public safety landscape.”

An all-star panel of technology experts convened in Washington on Tuesday to discuss how mobile applications are changing the political landscape -- a timely topic with less than a month left until Election Day. Pollster Peter Hart provided the keynote at the National Press Club event. During is talk, he gave an update on the 2008 landscape and discussed how analysts collecting data for the elections are factoring in consumers who rely solely on their wireless phones.

Additional speakers at the Mobile Future sponsored event included Jed Alpert, CEO of Mobile Commons; Rock the Vote's Michelle Mayorga; Casey O'Shea, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee national field director; and Katie Harbath, former deputy e-campaign director, Giuliani for President. The bottom line: More elected officials using are text messaging to speak directly to voters, which has posed new challenges for pollsters to reach the growing community of voters who have cut the cord.

On a related note, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which has conducted three major election surveys with both cell phone and landline samples since the conclusion of the primaries, found that in each occasion, there were small differences between presidential horserace estimates based on the combined interviews and estimates based on the landline surveys only. Yet a virtually identical pattern emerged: In each case including cell phone interviews resulted in slightly more support for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and slightly less for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

In Pew's latest poll, conducted Sept. 9-14 with 2,509 registered voters, including 549 reached by cell phone, 46 percent backed Obama and 44 percent backed McCain. Among the landline respondents, the candidates were tied at 45 percent each. Read more here.

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation asked the question "Does DARPA Still Effectively Spur U.S. Technological Innovation?" at a Tuesday briefing with Dr. Erica Fuchs, an assistant professor in the engineering and public policy department at Carnegie Mellon University. Fuchs discussed the results of a new study examining the role of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency between 1992 and the present on innovation in the United States.

While DARPA traditionally had great success in influencing technology development, times are changing and so is the agency's business model, Fuchs concludes in her study, which drew upon in-depth field interviews of DARPA program managers as well as additional interviews of technologists within the five established computing firms, start-ups, universities and government institutions.

With the decline of corporate R&D labs and a shift in DARPA funding away from universities, who is supporting the early stages of the pipeline? According to one former DARPA program manager she interviewed: "We never state it publicly, but … I want to fund those companies that will put Intel out of business. I’m not interested in driving Moore’s Law. The [International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors] exists, and everyone knows what it is. DARPA is not in the business of maintaining that roadmap. We’re in the business of cutting a path across it."

American University's School of Communication resumes its American Forum series on Tuesday with "Youthquake '08: How Millennials are Shaking up the Media, Mavericks, and History Makers of this Election." The discussion about the effect young voters are having on the upcoming presidential election will feature James Kotecki, a video blogger for Politico.com; Emily Freifeld, multimedia producer for WashingtonPost.com; Cornell Belcher, a Democratic strategist and pollster for presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill.; David Winston, a Republican strategist; and Heather Smith, executive director of Rock the Vote. The panel will be moderated by SOC professor Jane Hall. For more information click here.

This weekend was the first big test for "The Great Schlep," a humorous Web-based effort intended to have Jewish grandchildren visit their grandparents in Florida, educate them about Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama, and win the battleground state of Florida. The New York Times reports that the virtual movement "has been building with the pace of a nice brisket." So far, about seven million people have watched comedian Sarah Silverman's four-minute online video that explains why "visiting your grandparents could change the world."

But Mik Moore of the Jewish Council for Education and Research, the nonprofit behind the project, said 100 people visited the Sunshine State over the holiday weekend while about 100 more visited relatives in other swing states. Moore deemed it "a really good start," and said he hoped dozens more would schlep before Election Day.

In Florida, the campaign combined one-on-one persuasion -- sometimes over bagels -- with more formal activities, the newspaper reported. One schlepper from Los Angeles ended up addressing about 100 people at an event his grandparents put together at their retirement community. Read the full story here.

In anticipation of Wednesday's debate between Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., a diverse group of political watchdogs, bloggers and online strategists assembled under the banner of the Open Debate Coalition are urging the presidential candidates to implement the following principles for the final face-off before Election Day:

1) That the debate moderator has broad discretion to ask follow-up questions after a candidate's answer, so the public can be fully informed about specific positions.

2) That after a "town hall" debate full of questions handpicked by the moderator, none of which were outside-the-box, you will allow Bob Schieffer to ask some Internet questions voted on by the public.

3) That, as a stipulation of the next debate, the media pool must release all 2008 debate footage into the public domain – as you agreed would be in the public interest. CNN, ABC, and NBC agreed to release video rights during the primary, and CBS agreed more recently.

4) That you agree to work with the Open Debate Coalition after the election to reform or create an alternative to the Commission on Presidential Debates, so the process is transparent and accountable to the public.

Read CongressDaily's recent coverage of the coalition here.

(Photo Credit: FBI)

President Bush signed legislation on Monday that bans sending live images of child abuse via the Internet and authorizes money to hire FBI agents who work on child exploitation cases. Funds would be used for the development of a nationwide program to fight Web-based child exploitation through a grant program and support for Justice Department-coordinated Internet Crimes Against Children task forces.

The legislation passed the House just before lawmakers left Washington and was approved by the Senate a short time earlier after months of negotiations and an on-air endorsement by talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., and Nick Lampson, D-Texas, introduced a pair of bills that served as the foundation for the final legislation while the Senate's original versions were sponsored by Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware and Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain of Arizona, respectively.

In related news, Bush also signed legislation that requires sex offenders to provide Internet identifiers, including e-mail addresses, to state sex offender registries; and tasks the Justice Department to establish and maintain a system that allows social networking Web sites to compare Internet identifiers of its users with those provided to the national sex offender registry. The bill was introduced by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D.

As expected, President Bush signed legislation on Monday aimed at improving the federal government’s capacity to protect intellectual property. The bill toughens civil and criminal laws against counterfeiting and piracy, provides enhanced IP enforcement and prosecutorial resources, and improves IP coordination within the executive branch. The measure was introduced in July by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Arlen Specter and passed the chamber by unanimous consent. The House, which earlier passed a similar bill championed by Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and ranking member Lamar Smith, approved the bill in September.

IP advocates cheered the news…

"At a time of financial and economic turmoil, streamlining the government’s efforts to protect one of our most important assets – intellectual property – makes good economic sense," Leahy said. "This law will ensure that resources are available to enforce intellectual property laws and coordinate the government’s intellectual property policies. Americans suffer when their intellectual property is stolen."

“This is an enormous victory for this country’s innovators and a wake-up call for foreign counterfeiters who believe they can steal our ideas with impunity,” added Sen. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., who co-sponsored the bill. "The U.S. auto industry estimates it could hire an additional 200,000 workers if we eliminated the trafficking of counterfeit auto parts. This new enforcement regime will treat the theft of American ideas as the serious threat to our economy that it is.”

(Photo Credit: White House)

President Bush is expected to sign legislation aimed at bolstering government efforts to combat counterfeiting and piracy on Monday or Tuesday, Tech Daily Dose has learned. The bill, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent and won overwhelming House approval just before lawmakers left Washington, faced administration opposition because of language that would replace the government's interagency council for coordinating intellectual property enforcement with a high-level White House official who would oversee a broad IP agenda.

While Bush plans to approve the measure, sources said there would not be a signing ceremony. The anticipated action follows more than a week of intense pressure on the White House by some of Washington's top industry officials and key House and Senate Republicans. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, an original co-sponsor of the bill; House Judiciary ranking member Lamar Smith, who co-sponsored his chamber's version; the U.S. Chamber of Commerce; the National Association of Manufacturers and others reached out to Bush and his senior advisers.

Read CongressDaily's recent coverage here.

An interesting report by the Washington Post's Brian Krebs...

An effort by the state of Kentucky to seize more than 140 online gambling Web site names is raising novel legal questions about the physical location of digital property and the reach of local and regional governments on the global Internet.

Last month, a Kentucky circuit court judge granted a request by the governor to have 141 Web site names used by online gaming operations transferred to the state's control. The action was filed by a Chicago law firm on behalf of Gov. Steve Beshear (D), who was elected in part on the strength of a promise to bring casino gambling to the state.

The domains include some of the most popular online gaming sites on the Internet, including UltimateBet.com and FullTiltPoker.com. According to the state, residents spend roughly $170 million each year gambling at online casinos, potentially taxable revenue that might otherwise have been spent at the state's own gaming operations, which include regulated betting on horse racing and bingo.

Read the full story here.

Congressional e-mail began flowing again Friday after a severe outage that started Thursday evening and impacted Internet services on handheld devices; shared network drives and some Web sites within the House.gov domain. Chief Administrative Officer Daniel Beard sent a memo to members and aides on Friday informing them that computer engineers had "literally been working around the clock to resolve the issue."

The system failure was due to an overloaded circuit breaker in one of the House's data centers and did not impact server integrity. The outage had nothing to do with slowdowns that were attributed to an enormous flow of e-mail from constituents surrounding the financial bailout package, he said. One aide told Tech Daily Dose that a voicemail was left for staffers saying equipment was being shipped overnight from California to fix the problem.

In his letter, Beard said more energy efficient servers are needed within the House's computing infrastructure, which is something engineers had suspected for some time. He said he will offer a series of recommendations in the coming months that he believes will reduce the system's energy demands and greatly diminish the chance of outages. Meanwhile, IT officials were "fortifying the system with new electrical equipment to create an improved backup system in terms of our computer centers’ power supplies."

Update: CAO sent an e-mail at 1:15 p.m. stating that engineers had restored electrical power to the alternate computing facility data center and are actively restarting services. Delays were expected as a result of a backlog of messages in the mail queue.

U.S. Trade Representative spokesman Scott Elmore said negotiators of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement "reaffirmed their goal to combat global infringements of intellectual property rights" at a meeting in Tokyo this week. The talks, which took place Wednesday and Thursday, included representatives from Australia, Canada, the European Union (represented by the European Commission and the EU Presidency), Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the United States.

The meeting was the latest in a series of gatherings to discuss proposals concerning various aspects of the pact. The discussion at this meeting focused on criminal enforcement of IP but participants also continued previous discussions about civil enforcement. Negotiators made "steady progress in these discussions, and decided to continue their work at another substantive meeting to be held at a mutually convenient time in the near future," Elmore said. Read more ACTA coverage here.

The National Security Agency is intercepting and storing communications of innocent Americans in Iraq's so-called "Green Zone," according to allegations made by two NSA whistleblowers in an ABC News segment that aired Thursday night. According to the report, agency workers even pass around the most titillating conversations had by U.S. soldiers and aid workers with their families in the United States. That eavesdropping reportedly continued even after NSA analysts knew that the calls they were tapping belonged to Americans who had no ties to terrorism.

One Army Reserve linguist interviewed said the program helped find evidence related to terrorist plots against the United States but she told ABC News the intercepts were so broad that it made it more difficult to find the calls that needed monitoring. The report calls into question assurances the NSA and Justice Department repeatedly gave Congress that internally enforced "minimization procedures" are adequate to protect the private conversations of Americans, the Center for Democracy and Technology said. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller has said he will investigate the claims.

Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said he hoped the Senate "will take this matter very seriously." "The executive branch has taken on unprecedented new powers to spy on Americans, asking us to trust them that this is needed to catch terrorists," he said. "The allegations in this news report, if true, would add to the evidence that this trust is being misused." These developments reinforce the need to reverse the telecommunications company immunity recent granted by Congress to get the truth out with regard to abuse, he said. (Photo Credit: Library of Congress via Flickr)

As CongressDaily reported on Thursday, the Information Technology Industry Council surprised some tech policy watchers by announcing that longtime president Rhett Dawson’s successor will be Dean Garfield, who is currently chief strategic officer for the Motion Picture Association of America. Garfield will take the helm at ITI when Dawson retires in December. Garfield took a moment during ITI's board meeting in California to chat with us about his new gig.

Q: What experience do you bring to the job, particularly from MPAA?

A: Over the last three years I've spent lot of time doing strategic planning and working on the convergence between media and information technology. The combination of those two things will serve us well at ITI. An important part of what I do with my work is looking at how we can make sure ITI remains and grows into a thought leader for IT issues in the U.S. and globally. I have learned from my time at MPAA that in this world of growing convergence, it's impossible for media to be successful on its own. Much of our success is due to IT.

"Being a fake president is a lot harder today than it was when I was a fake president. My fake administration started before the country took some hits. It was the go-go 90s. People invested in a Web site that sold dog food because a puppet told them to do it." -- Martin Sheen

Let's hear it for Hulu.com, the advertising-supported streaming video platform created by NBC and FOX where fans of the small screen can watch an array of television shows from a range of networks and studios. News Corp. lobbyist Rick Lane sang the Web site's praises at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce intellectual property summit on Wednesday where he admitted: "I absolutely love to watch 'Bewitched.'" "The quality is pretty good -- it's not HD but it's darned good," he said.

NBC Universal General Counsel Rick Cotton also raved about the site, pointing out that 90 percent of Web users who went online to watch comedian Tina Fey portray vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live" (for the first time), looked to Hulu and NBC.com for the clip. In two weeks, the skit had at least 10 million views, which is 3 million more than the SNL skit "Lazy Sunday," which caused a copyright uproar several years ago when fans posted unauthorized copies on YouTube. Since that time, video-sharing sites have embraced software that filters for illegitimate content.

Arts+Labs co-chairman Mark McKinnon noted that 90 percent of commercial television is online now through platforms like Hulu, Netflix, Fancast, Sony PlayStation and the Web sites of ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, MTV and others. "It’s a tipping point I think for consumers," he said. I'm inclined to agree. For example, I would have never discovered the short-lived, smartly written FOX sitcom "The Loop" had it not been for Hulu nor would I have been able to catch up on old episodes of "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" or "Burn Notice." Not exactly high-brow, but then again neither is "Bewitched."

The Information Technology Industry Council, which represents the public policy interests of Apple, Dell Computer, Hewlett Packard, IBM and other major high-tech companies, is expected to announce longtime president Rhett Dawson's successor in the next day or so. Dawson, who served in the Reagan administration as assistant to president for operations and was an executive at Potomac Electric Power Co., has led ITI since 1993. Sources originally thought the announcement would come on Wednesday but later said it would probably happen Thursday. One thing those sources were pretty confident about: Ralph Hellmann, ITI's top lobbyist who some thought would be a shoe-in, is not the heir apparent.
Update: We know who it is and we're pretty surprised!

A Tennessee college student was arraigned on Wednesday on charges related to breaking into vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin’s private e-mail account last month and later posting several messages as well as the contents of the Republican vice presidential candidate’s address book to the Internet. See AP video above.

From Wednesday's CongressDaily PM Edition:

Key House and Senate Republicans, joined by some of Washington's top lobbyists, are pressing President Bush to sign legislation aimed at bolstering government efforts to combat counterfeiting and piracy. The bill passed the Senate by unanimous consent and won overwhelming House approval just before lawmakers left Washington Friday.

But the measure has faced administration opposition because of language that would replace the government's interagency council for coordinating intellectual property enforcement with a high-level White House official who would oversee a broad IP agenda. President Bush has until Tuesday to sign or veto the bill or it automatically becomes law. Read the full story here.

Also of interest in Wednesday's PM Edition: ICANN Boosts D.C. Presence Amid Accountability Concerns. Read the full story here.

The chief executive for pharmaceutical giant Schering-Plough is hopeful that under a new presidential administration and a new Congress, headway can be made on a meaningful overhaul of the nation's patent system -- an effort that failed this year after months of negotiations between key members of the House and Senate and industry stakeholders. Fred Hassan told a U.S. Chamber of Commerce summit Tuesday that lawmakers must find a way to craft a bill that does not disadvantage some sectors while giving a boon to others. His industry was critical of proposals that emerged in the 110th Congress while major high-tech and media firms championed the effort.

"What we need to do is find a way to deal with both business models and come up with a solution that will encourage [both industries]," he said during a Q&A session following a keynote speech. "We still haven’t been able to come there. I hope that after the election we will find a way for both industries to find this common ground so we can make progress in the next administration." "What gives us a lot of comfort is that both industries are innovation driven and both believe in IP," Hassan said.

Hassan said he sympathized with the tech sector's concerns about the harm caused by "patent trolls," which would have been addressed in this session's legislation through specific changes to how patent disputes are handled in court. At the same time, he explained that a pharmaceutical company spends 10-15 years and about a billion dollars developing a new drug and language in the legislation could have jeopardized that work.
"We're concerned that a small patent challenge on a small issue might wipe out the whole platform, which is worth a lot of money," he said.

Here's a quick rundown of the Internet questions Tuesday night's presidential debate moderator Tom Brokaw selected to ask Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill. MyDebates.org, a joint project by the Commission for Presidential Debates and social networking community MySpace, sent Brokaw 25,000 potential questions from by Web users in anticipation of the big event.

(1) "Since World War II, we have never been asked to sacrifice anything to help our country, except the blood of our heroic men and women. As president, what sacrifices -- sacrifices will you ask every American to make to help restore the American dream and to get out of the economic morass that we're now in?"

(2) "Would you give Congress a date certain to reform Social Security and Medicare within two years after you take office? Because in a bipartisan way, everyone agrees, that's a big ticking time bomb that will eat us up maybe even more than the mortgage crisis."

(3) "How can we apply pressure to Russia for humanitarian issues in an effective manner without starting another Cold War?"

(4) "[This question] has a certain Zen-like quality, I'll give you a fair warning… What don't you know and how will you learn it?"

Read the candidates' responses here.

From Tuesday's CongressDaily PM Edition:

As Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., prepare for their town hall debate tonight in Nashville, political watchdogs, bloggers and online strategists are urging the presidential nominees and debate organizers to ensure that questions asked via the Internet are chosen by ordinary people rather than the media. A recent letter from a bipartisan coalition to both campaigns argued that questions selected by TV producers during the primary cycle's YouTube debates were "gimmicky and not hard-hitting enough" and never would have "bubbled up" on their own.

"The Internet portion of this debate is true bottom-up democracy, the format needs to allow the public to help select the questions in addition to asking them," said the letter, signed by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich's advocacy group American Solutions, left-leaning MoveOn.org, and the founders of Craigslist and Wikipedia. Other signers include GOP strategists Mindy Finn and Patrick Ruffini, Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, and DailyKos.com founder Markos Moulitsas.

In tonight's debate, questions will be selected from online submissions and likely voters in the audience. One petitioner, Internet activist Carl Malamud, said the format appears to be a small step in the right direction. Liberal blogger Matt Stoller agreed: "My guess is that in 2012, people will wonder why debates were ever done without public input." Read the full story here.

Corporate, government and academic institutions on Tuesday announced the formation of the Center for Applied Identity Management Research -- an initiative focused on developing research and solutions for society’s most daunting identity management challenges such as cyber crime, terrorism, financial crimes, ID theft and fraud, weapons of mass destruction, and narcotics and human trafficking. Backers include the U.S. Secret Service, LexisNexis, IBM, Cogent Systems, Visa and business solutions provider Intersections. Indiana University economic crime expert Gary Gordon will serve as executive director of the center.

“As a non-profit organization governed by its partners with a strong affiliation with its host academic institution, Indiana University, CAIMR is uniquely positioned to foster a collaborative applied research environment that brings together the multi-disciplinary talent, resources, data sources, and analytical capabilities to take up this challenge,” Gordon said in a press release. LexisNexis Chief Businses Officer Norman Willox, who chairs CAIMR's board added: “A collaborative, multi-disciplinary applied research approach is required to provide pragmatic solutions to diverse areas such as cyber crime.”

Speaking at the National Press Club announcement, Indiana University professor and cybersecurity researcher Fred Cate, stressed that "how you determine quickly, reliably and affordably that a person is who he claims to be and that he is entitled to the access -- whether to a Web site, a network, or a government facility -- he seeks is an enormous challenge that has long plagued industry and government." That challenge will only be solved through close cooperation among public and private sector stakeholders, he said.

The project was a long time in the making -- National Journal's now-defunct Technology Daily reported on plans for the center back in June 2006.

Television evangelist Joel Osteen, perhaps one of the biggest stars in the modern-day religion business, has written to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin asking that the Commission not allow technology companies to bring to market new wireless devices that will "most certainly" interfere with wireless microphone use. Osteen, whose weekly broadcast from Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, reaches more than 2 million viewers, pointed out in his letter that “wireless microphones allow pastors and musicians to interact more closely with members or our congregation.”

The celebrity clergyman and best-selling author joins a list of other prominent wireless microphone users including the NFL, NASCAR, Broadway, Grand Ole Opry, MTV, Country Music Association, Cirque du Soliel, and the National Religious Broadcasters who have all asked the FCC to protect their transmissions. Osteen asked the Commission not to “turn a blind eye” to wireless microphone use in houses of worship, noting that the devices are essential to the success of his mega-church.

After a year of hard work, the IBM Center for the Business of Government has unveiled a presidential transition Web page intended to serve as a resource for new political appointees and help career executives who take government jobs smoothly navigate the change (since more than half will not have been through a transition before).

Some key features of the site:

▪ The Operator’s Manual for The Next Administration: Enables managers to quickly select from one of eight “tools” or levers - such as performance, collaboration, or money - that executives need to use to advance their policy goals.
▪ Getting it Done: A Guide for Government Executives: Provides an interactive environment to share and learn from government executives. Select from one of six “to dos” on working and managing in a political environment.
▪ Issue Briefs: Short two-page briefs to highlight policy-related issues featured in past IBM center reports, such as delivering benefits in an emergency situation, improving the environment and securing the global economy.
▪ Transition Reports: Series of reports relevant to those involved in developing management initiatives during presidential transitions.

For more on tech transition issues, check out this story written by yours truly for Government Executive magazine.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
-- Margaret Mead

Less than a week after Leonardo DiCaprio and a bunch of his A-list friends launched an online public service announcement to encourage American youth to register to vote, the Creative Coalition will try its hand at leveraging Hollywood's spotlight to promote the Democratic political process. The Coalition plans to launch its new "YouVote" video on popular video-sharing site YouTube and on NBC’s "Access Hollywood" on Monday.

The video, conceived and directed by filmmaker Sue Kramer, stars over 40 celebrities, including Blake Lively, Anne Hathaway, Tim Daly, Samuel L. Jackson, Susan Sarandon, Marcia Cross, Jane Krakowski and The Muppets. "This video demonstrates that Hollywood understands voting is not about liberal or conservative, it’s about participating in the democratic process and being a proud American,” Kramer said.

A couple of questions: Which celebrity get-out-the-vote video will rule YouTube? DiCaprio's has 722,172 views thus far. Also, can Muppets vote? Update: A keen reader informs me that Muppets cannot vote -- and sends me this YouTube video as proof. (Thanks, AS).

The Science Coalition, a group of 47 of the nation’s leading public and private research universities, has released a list of 10 questions they would like to have answered by the presidential campaigns of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. The questions, which were sent in anticipation of Tuesday's televised debate at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., focus on where the candidates stand on expanding the nation's commitment to basic research.

Several questions relate to specific research areas, such as medical, national security, space, and energy and climate change. Others deal with particular policies, such as K-12 STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education and the America Competes Act, which Congress passed and President Bush signed but remains largely unfunded.

Follow the jump to read all 10 questions…

Surf on over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a new "Issue of the Week." Here's a taste:

When House lawmakers disclosed plans last December to investigate the FCC and allegations that Chairman Kevin Martin employed heavy-handed tactics to pursue his deregulatory agenda, expectations were high that he and other regulators would be grilled in public hearings and a scathing report eventually would lay out incriminating evidence of misconduct.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee kept busy for months reviewing internal electronic records dating back to 2005 and collecting 40 boxes of documents as investigators met privately with current and former FCC employees, among others.

Staffers examined a wide range of allegations, including concerns Martin had put veteran employees out to pasture to make room for political cronies, suppressed or altered reports that didn't reflect his views and restricted internal communication through iron-fisted policies. A leaked committee staff memo in April recommended hearings in June and concluded that the FCC "appears broken and most of the blame appears to rest with Chairman Martin."

High-tech attorney David Oxenford posted an interesting item on his Broadcast Law Blog late last week titled "Will Guitar Hero Show the Promotional Value of Music and Change the Music Royalty Outlook?" The piece caught my eye because I've had a single late-night encounter with the insanely addictive videogame and lived to tell the tale… plus, I personally know several Washington policy wonks who can't put down their plastic guitars [you know who you are].

Oxenford, who has previously written about the value of music in connection with the royalties to be paid by Internet radio and the performance royalty proposed for broadcasters, writes that one key question that has been raised in debates is to what extent is there a promotional value of having music played on the radio or streamed by a webcaster. Enter Guitar Hero, a platform once thought to be an unlikely source of promotional value for music. Oh, the times they are a changin'...

Read his full post here.

The House approved the Senate-passed multibillion dollar bailout on Friday by a vote of 263 to 171. President Bush signed the bailout package less than two hours later. The legislation included several provisions of interest to the high-tech community including a two year extension of the federal R&D tax credit and alternative energy tax breaks.

Bring on the praise…

"This measure is not just for financial services and if no action was taken it would unduly hurt businesses of every size in every sector because all firms rely on credit to grow and prosper," said TechNet President Lezlee Westine. "The ramifications would have quickly boomeranged through the entire American economy and that was too great a risk."

"The R&D tax credit motivates U.S.-based companies to keep cutting-edge research projects in the United States while funding high wage and high skilled jobs for American R&D workers across diverse industries such as manufacturing, information technology, biotech, agriculture, aerospace and others," the R&D Credit Coalition said.

American Electronics Association President Chris Hansen also praised the R&D tax credit extension but warned that the United States is falling behind other countries that encourage innovation. "Although the high-tech industry is healthy and continues to add jobs, we are concerned that our country’s future growth is being jeopardized by not making the crucial investments necessary to operate in this competitive global marketplace," he said.

Telecommunications Industry Association Vice President Danielle Coffey said her group was pleased with the bill's passage but will continue to work next year toward a permanent R&D tax credit.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Intellectual Property Center will host its fifth annual IP summit on Wednesday, Oct. 8 and boy oh boy is there going to be a lot to talk about. Lawmakers passed a major IP enforcement bill in the waning weeks of the 110th Congress and it awaits President Bush's signature. The trade group sent a letter to the White House Thursday evening urging Bush to sign the bill post-haste.

The summit’s overall theme, "It Starts With An Idea: Fostering Innovation in the 21st Century," highlights the importance of promoting an innovation-based economy that creates jobs, saves lives, and generates breakthrough solutions to global challenges. Speakers include: Chamber President Tom Donohue, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, NBC Universal general counsel Rick Cotton, News Corp. Vice President Rick Lane, Pfizer's Rich Bagger, Microsoft IP chief Susan Mann, and many others. For more information, click here.

Digital TV transition PSA courtesy of Talk Show with Spike Feresten. Tag line: "Forget it, old people. No more TV for you starting in 2009."
Best line: "Will all of this make Jack Benny come back?"

The high-tech industry will walk away with a big win if the House passes the Senate's version of the multi-billion dollar financial rescue package: the extension and expansion of a federal research and development tax credit. The tax break, which proponents say is crucial for U.S. innovation, was among a number of so-called tax extenders included by senators to make the measure more palpable. Under the Senate bill, which passed 74-25 Wednesday night, the R&D credit is revived for two years and expanded in 2009 from 12 to 14 percent. The House voted 228-205 to reject an earlier proposal Monday.

A growing coalition of industries and academic institutions, which rely heavily on federal R&D, have been lobbying Congress to make permanent the tax break, which lapsed in December for the 13th time since its initial creation in 1981, or at minimum grant incremental extensions. The Information Technology Industry Association estimates that the credit's expiration has already put at risk more than $14 billion and 10,000 jobs. "America’s most innovative employers are now looking to the country’s leaders for answers," ITAA President Phil Bond said in a statement.

The House and Senate previously approved a two-year renewal but the chambers disagree on how to pick up the tab for the estimated annual $7 billion tax break. Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., a senior Ways and Means Committee member, and Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., ranking member for the Ways & Means Health Subcommittee, championed the standalone R&D bill, which is supported by much of their committee, including Chairman Charles Rangel. "The fact that it takes a national economic crisis for this Majority to pass R&D, to pass the extenders, should be a wake up call for every job provider in the country," Camp said Thursday.

From CongressDaily's AM Edition:

Members of the House will be permitted to use third-party Web sites like YouTube to communicate with constituents as long as the content is for official purposes, and not personal, commercial or campaign communication, according to rules adopted Thursday by the House Administration Committee. The rules are seen by House Administration Chairman Robert Brady as a compromise between several proposals under consideration in recent months and are closely aligned with those circulated by the Senate Rules Committee last week.

One plan by Rep. Michael Capuano, D-Mass., who chairs the commission charged with drafting the language for the Administration Committee, was slammed by Minority Leader John Boehner in July as "an attack on free speech." House Administration ranking member Vernon Ehlers and Reps. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Tom Price, R-Ga., drafted alternate language, which formed the basis for the changes that won committee approval. Ehlers said Brady "demonstrated outstanding leadership."
Read the full story here.

Songwriters and music publishers in the United States will now be paid 9.1 cents per digital download sold after years of digital music services being allowed to license music without permission from rights holders as long as they paid other royalties and abided by certain conditions. A deal struck by the National Music Publishers Association and the Recording Industry Association of America in 1997 set the per-song fee for physical recordings like compact discs at 9.1 cents but did not address digital delivery, which has been popularized in recent years by services like Apple's iTunes music store. The board rejected an appeal that publishers be moved to a percentage rate rather than a penny rate.

The 109th Congress considered legislation to set royalty rates but the bill fizzled and did not reappear this session. At the beginning of the proceeding before the three-judge Copyright Royalty Board, publishers sought a higher rate while music labels asked for a lower rate. Digital media services also wanted lower rates. Under the decision, the rate for CDs and digital downloads will be frozen for five years, which Digital Media Association Executive Director Jonathan Potter said will "keep royalty rates stable" as digital services and retailers continue to grow. His group represents iTunes, Amazon.com, Best Buy and others.

The panel also established for the first time a rate of 24 cents for each ringtone subject to the so-called Section 115 license. Additionally, music publishers will have the right to seek a 1.5 percent late fee for payments, calculated monthly. NMPA President David Israelite said he was pleased with the decision, which came on the heels of an agreement between musicians, publishers, record labels and high-tech firms that proposed for the first time mechanical royalty rates for interactive streaming and limited downloads, including for subscription and advertising-supported services.

Leonardo DiCaprio, will i. am, Tobey Maguire, and Forest Whitaker launched a new series of public service announcements to encourage American youth to register to vote. Celebs appearing in the soon-to-be-viral-video: Amy Adams, Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Courteney Cox, Ellen DeGeneres, Jamie Foxx and many more. First the spot employs reverse psychology, which typically works best on small children, then roughly four minutes of rambling. But it might do the trick...

A bill passed by Congress on Tuesday that will require the government to keep closer tabs on who has quick access to the Internet also includes language to bring parents, industry, and teachers together to educate children about Web dangers. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye and ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison cosponsored the so-called "broadband mapping" bill and Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, was the original sponsor of the safety measure, which requires schools receiving E-Rate funds to teach about Web safety and creates an interagency panel to identify technologies to guard children from unwanted content.

“As a parent, I understand the importance of keeping our children safe while using the Internet,” Hutchison said in a statement. “Senator Stevens has been a vocal leader on this issue and this bill will provide parents and teachers with the tools they need to help protect and educate our children while they are online.” Stevens, who is engaged in a high-profile corruption trial, said the legislation "will improve online safety for children and strengthen parental control without infringing on First Amendment rights."

Meanwhile, the Senate approved a bill Tuesday cosponsored by Stevens and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y, to create an online registry of sex offender e-mail and instant messaging addresses. The measure lets the Justice Department make the registry available to social networking sites and allows them to compare the database with user profiles. The bill would also make it a crime for any person 18 years or older to knowingly misrepresent his or her age with the intent to use the Internet to engage in criminal sexual content involving a minor.

“Often, sex offenders are able to operate freely on the Internet, and social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook are increasingly becoming an important part of many young lives. This bill will ensure that this continues to be a safe experience," Stevens said in a statement.

From CongressDaily's PM Edition:

Music, Web Industries Eye More Talks On Fee Agreements

Consultations between the music and Internet industries will be able to continue with the Senate's passage late Tuesday of a bill authorizing royalty collector SoundExchange to negotiate fee agreements with webcasters on behalf of copyright owners and performers before the end of the year. Introduced last week by Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., it passed the House after initial resistance from the National Association of Broadcasters.
Read More

Congress Clears Bill Targeting Rogue Internet Pharmacies

The Senate Tuesday unanimously cleared a House version of legislation intended to stop rogue pharmacies from operating on the Internet and protect the safety of consumers who fill legitimate prescriptions online. The bill, which won House approval last week and now heads to President Bush, would require online pharmacies to display information identifying the business, pharmacist, and any physician associated with the site.
Read More

The federal government's Hurricane Katrina Fraud Task Force has brought federal charges against 907 individuals in 43 federal judicial districts who are accused of bilking people of out money through a number of mechanisms, including Internet scams, since the storm made landfall in Louisiana in August 2005, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich said Wednesday.

The task force is charged with deterring, detecting and prosecuting individuals who try to take advantage of the disasters related to Hurricanes Katrina and other natural disasters that have occurred since. One such con, highlighted by a DOJ press release, involved two brothers who launched a Web site less than a week after Katrina struck that purported to raise money on behalf of the Salvation Army. The defendants were sentenced last fall to 111 months and 105 months, respectively, for their roles in the scheme that collected more than $48,000.

From CongressDaily's TechCentral:

Intense public interest in the bill outlining the bailout of the nation's financial industry overwhelmed the House of Representatives computer and Internet systems on Monday, making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to access certain Web sites.

Users trying to access some House sites found it virtually impossible to do so for much of Monday. Internet surfers trying to access the Web site of the House Financial Services Committee frequently received a message saying the committee's site was unavailable. The site contained text of the $700 billion bailout bill, the 2008 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and explanatory language, which the House defeated Monday.

Web traffic to sites was three to four times greater on Monday, said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the House chief administrative officer. The spike was due to a "dramatic increase" in the number of constituents e-mailing their representatives about the bailout bill and attempts to download the bill, he said. Read the full story here.