January 2010

As part of its fiscal 2011 budget proposal to be released Monday, the Obama administration plans to call for a repeal of a law requiring workers to pay taxes for the personal use of company-provided cell phones, the Associated Press reported. The cell phone law, which has not been enforced consistently, was put in place in 1989 and said personal use of company cell phones should be taxed like other fringe benefits such as the use of a company car, according to the AP. The administration first proposed repealing the law last summer after public comments on ways to improve enforcement of the cell phone law generated much criticism.

FCC member Robert McDowell, the agency's senior Republican, has a strong message for colleagues crafting a sweeping national broadband plan designed to extend the Internet to all Americans: do no harm. The technology blueprint, already a month behind schedule, will outline a strategy for achieving nationwide, affordable Internet access over the next decade. In a Friday speech to the Free State Foundation think tank, McDowell warned against heavy-handed industrial policy. "It should remain flexible and iterative, relying on incentives rather than coercive mandates," he said, adding that "no one can foresee with certainty the innovation and dynamism that is coming over the horizon." McDowell also expressed concern that the agency might upend longstanding policy by reclassifying broadband -- now a lightly regulated information service -- as a heavily regulated telecommunications offering. This could result, he warned, in higher broadband prices, undermining one of the plan's key goals. At the FCC's request, the congressional deadline was bumped to March 17.

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt Friday defended his company's recent decision to stop obeying government censorship rules on its Chinese search site, while saying that the company wants to remain in China. "We like what China is doing in terms of growth ... we just don't like censorship," Schmidt was quoted as saying by the Wall Street Journal. "We hope that will change and we can apply some pressure to make things better for the Chinese people." His remarks came at the World Economic Forum's annual summit in Davos, Switzerland.

Earlier this month, Google said it might leave China and that it would stop self-censoring its Chinese search engine's results. The decision came after the company was hit with a major cyber attack it said originated from the country. Schmidt acknowledged that the company had debated entering China and that there had been discussions before the company wrote its letter to the Chinese government voicing its concerns. "We debated this," said Mr. Schmidt of Google's move into China. Of the letter, he said: "That does not then follow that we do not want to be in China." When a woman from China asked Schmidt what it would take for Google to stay in China, he responded: "We would very much like to stay in China. We would very much like the censorship we oppose to improve in China."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Minority Leader John Boehner Thursday demanded "an immediate and comprehensive assessment" of how computer hackers were able to attack nearly 50 House Web sites Wednesday night after President Obama's State of the Union speech, CongressDaily reported. The House leaders made the request in a letter to House Chief Administrative Officer Daniel Beard. The letter said the intrusions appeared to be linked to a Web site vendor that has had previous security breaches, including one this year involving House sites.

Pelosi and Boehner asked Beard to review security standards for all House vendors and to "take immediate action to protect against breaches of the House firewalls and to ensure website security of all House offices." According to messages left by hackers on some sites, a group calling itself the "Red Eye Crew" claimed responsibility for the infiltration, which left messages saying, in part, "F--- Obama."

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion over the next decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world's poorest countries, according to the Associated Press. The Microsoft co-founder and his wife - who made the announcement at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland - called upon governments and business to also contribute, with the aim of immunizing 90 percent of the children in poorer nations against dangerous diseases such as diarrhea and pneumonia. "We must make this the decade of vaccines," Bill Gates said in a statement. "Vaccines already save and improve millions of lives in developing countries. Innovation will make it possible to save more children than ever before."

Gates said the commitment more than doubles the $4.5 billion the foundation has given to vaccine research over the years. The foundation said up to 7.6 million children under 5 could be saved through 2019 as a result of the donation. It also estimates that an additional 1.1 million kids would be saved if a malaria vaccine can be introduced by 2014. A tuberculosis vaccine would prevent even more deaths, the foundation added.

Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organization, called the Gates contribution unprecedented and urged governments and private donors to add to the initiative. "An additional two million deaths in children under five years could be prevented by 2015 through widespread use of new vaccines and a 10 percent increase in global vaccination coverage," said Chan.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "AT&T Inc. detailed its plans for beefing up its often-maligned network Thursday, just one day after being tapped to carry another closely watched Apple Inc. device that will likely add even more traffic to its airwaves," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "Apple Inc.'s new iPad has the potential to be both a blessing and a curse to the growing ranks of companies that have developed more than 140,000 applications for the company's iPhone," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "President Obama will end NASA's return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday," the New York Times reports.

Leaders of a Senate Appropriations subcommittee Thursday pressed Commerce Department officials on why funding provided by the economic stimulus package for broadband deployment and adoption is taking so long to reach communities, CongressDaily reported. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and National Telecommunications and Information Administration Administrator Lawrence Strickling said they were taking steps to allocate the funds more quickly but also want to ensure that the funding is spent wisely.

"I know you need to do due diligence, but we're getting calls from our constituents" asking where the funding is, said Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md. Locke said $300 million has been allocated so far and pledged that more than $1 billion in funding for the first round of broadband grants would be awarded by the end of February. He said the rest of the funding would be allocated by the end of September.

"We know a lot of people would like the grants to flow out more quickly. We share that urgency," Locke said. But he added that this "imperative" must be balanced with the need to fund sustainable and worthy projects that will have the broadest impact while also preventing waste, fraud and abuse. Congress provided a total of $7.2 billion in broadband stimulus funds divided between NTIA and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service.

Senate Commerce-Justice-Science Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Richard Shelby, R-Ala., blasted the broadband program as a boondoggle. He also wondered whether NTIA, the smallest agency in the Commerce Department, was capable of managing the program. He noted that the $4.7 billion in stimulus funding given to NTIA for broadband grants is more than the budgets of the Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. To read more, click here (Subscription required).

Two groups that have been critical of Google's digital books project said Thursday the Internet firm's revised settlement with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers does little to fix the structural flaws with the deal. The Open Book Alliance and Consumer Watchdog filed briefs with the federal court weighing the settlement, which was initially opposed by the Justice Department.

Google has argued that the revised settlement will open "access to millions of books while providing rights holders with ways to sell and control their work online." A hearing on the case is set for Feb. 18.

Consumer Watchdog urged the court to reject the settlement, saying it's anticompetitive and violates U.S. and international law. "This scheme acts to the disadvantage of absent class members and would result in unfair competitive advantages to Google in the search engine, electronic book sales, and other markets, to the detriment of the public interest. Along the way, the settlement raises significant international law and privacy concerns," the group said in its brief.

The Open Book Alliance outlined several issues with the revised settlement in its brief. They include the group's claims that "Google's anticompetitive bundling undermines competition" in the distribution of digital books and that the deal fails to resolve antirust concerns because it gives "Google a de facto exclusive license to millions of books and continues to set a price floor for out-of-print books."

To mark Data Privacy Day, the FTC, policymakers and some technology firms Thursday highlighted the importance of securing and protecting personal information in an increasingly connected world. The FTC is holding its second annual roundtable on privacy in Berkeley, Calif., Thursday. During a discussion on the privacy implications of social networking, officials from some of the leading social networking sites said they compete for users on the issue of privacy.

"We absolutely compete in this space," Google's Nicole Wong said in response to a question. She said Google competes by trying to develop the best products that also protect privacy. Tim Sparapani of Facebook added that his firm tries to distinguish itself on privacy because "that's how we will grow our user space." And LinkedIn's Erika Rottenberg noted that "if we were to breach the trust our users put in us ... people would pick up and go someplace else."

On Facebook's blog Thursday, data privacy officials from other countries and some U.S. lawmakers weighed in on the importance of the issue. "Our goal today is not to adjust the development and pace of our privacy to the digital society, but on the contrary it is to master digital technology to ensure that privacy can be both preserved and enhanced," French Data Privacy Commission Chairman Alex Türk wrote.

While praising President Obama's focus on jobs, innovation and education in Wednesday's State of the Union address, some tech officials said there needs to be more attention paid to tax policies that ensure U.S. firms can compete effectively. "We were encouraged by the president's focus on jobs and growing our innovation economy as a means for achieving growth, but disheartened by the absence of some important policies for realizing his vision," TechAmerica President and CEO Phil Bond said in a statement. "He failed to mention pressing needs such as an immediate extension of the R&D tax credit, 70 percent of which goes to high-quality jobs."

The R&D tax credit expired at the end of 2009 after the Senate failed to take up legislation passed by the House extending it and other business tax breaks for a year.
Bond and other tech officials, however, said the president and Congress also should make changes to U.S. tax policy that would allow firms to more easily bring foreign profits back to the United States. In an op-ed earlier this week in The Hill newspaper, Information Technology Industry Council President Dean Garfield urged the president to call for the adoption of "trade, tax, and talent policies that embrace the current global realities we confront."

While focusing much of his speech on policies aimed at spurring more immediate job creation, Obama did stress the importance of trade, saying "We have to seek new markets aggressively, just as our competitors are. If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the chance to create jobs on our shores.

Obama also focused on the need to put "Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow." While the president did not specifically mention his administration's push to expand the nation's broadband Internet infrastructure, Broadband for America said expanding broadband service is one way to help spur economic growth.

"The president spoke clearly about the striking economic challenges confronting the nation and that every tool must be used to reduce unemployment and put more Americans back to work," former FCC Chairman Michael Powell and former Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., Broadband for America's honorary co-chairmen, said in a joint statement. "We agree with President Obama and believe opportunities presented by broadband access to the Internet serve as a real avenue for growth and job creation."

The White House's new cybersecurity coordinator assured a roomful of technology and Internet stakeholders Wednesday that he has the authority he needs to better secure the federal government's networks, CongressDaily reported. Howard Schmidt, who started work at his post last week, said he is often asked, "Do you have the ear of the president? Is this being taken seriously in the administration? ...The answer is `yes.' "

Schmidt's appointment in December to become the nation's first White House cybersecurity coordinator came more than a half year after President Obama announced he would appoint such an official and pledged to make cybersecurity a key administration priority. The lag between Obama's pledge to tap a senior cybersecurity adviser and the appointment raised questions in the cybersecurity community about whether the issue was still a White House priority.

After his speech at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net conference, Schmidt was pressed on whether he will have influence over budgetary decisions about cybersecurity. Schmidt said he doesn't believe he has to have control over a budget to make change. "If the president, the national security adviser, the national economic adviser says, 'Hey, we need these things,' things will happen," he said. To read more, click here. (Subscription required).

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Hackers struck at least 10 House websites overnight" Wednesday, "substituting expletives aimed at" President Obama "just hours after his State of the Union address," Hotline On Call reports.

• "U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will press China's foreign minister on the issue of Internet freedom, a growing irritant in ties between the two powers, a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday," Reuters reports.

• "Steve Jobs took the stage Wednesday to sell the world on one of his biggest gambles since returning to Apple Inc. nearly 15 years ago: a multimedia tablet-style computer called the iPad," the Wall Street Journal reports.

House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., Wednesday offered some details of his 2010 telecommunications agenda during a speech at the annual Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net conference, CongressDaily reported. In February or March, he'll formally introduce legislation overhauling a federal fund subsidizing telecommunications service in impoverished and rural areas, with a markup to follow.

Boucher also said he plans to soon circulate a bipartisan "discussion draft" of legislation designed to strengthen online privacy protections. Regarding efforts to renew a law governing the transmission of broadcast signals via satellite TV, Boucher said lawmakers are homing in on a legislative vehicle. The law was extended late last year through Feb. 28 after efforts to secure a five-year renewal failed. Later this year, Boucher will introduce a bill to create a national set of consumer protections for wireless phone users.

He also revealed plans for two additional oversight hearings: one, tentatively slated for February, on the second and final round of funding under the $7.2 billion broadband stimulus program, and another in March on the FCC's upcoming national broadband plan.

Google's top Washington lobbyist said Wednesday that threats to the free exchange of ideas are not only a human rights issue but also a commercial issue as well. During a discussion on Internet freedoms at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net conference, Google Director of Government Relations and Public Policy Alan Davidson said Google believes "in the free exchange of ideas online - it's been the cornerstone of the Internet since its inception." But he added that this "core component is increasingly being threatened."

Google's stand on Internet freedom has been thrust into the limelight in recent weeks after the Internet giant revealed that its infrastructure had been attacked from a source originating in China and that the hackers attempted to access e-mail accounts belonging to human rights activists. In response, Google announced it would stop censoring its search results for users in China, a move it said may force it leave China altogether.

Davidson and others noted that Internet freedom goes beyond just China. He said Google's services have been blocked in 25 countries in the last few years, while its subsidiary YouTube has been blocked in a dozen nations. He said fighting for Internet freedom is not something his company can do alone and urged others to work with Google and the Global Network Initiative to craft a set of principles in how companies should deal with countries that try to limit access to information.

Davidson said Google welcomed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech last week in which she pledged to make Internet freedom a diplomatic priority. But he said the issue also should be part of discussions with other countries on trade and international aid.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a fellow at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy, added that the United States and other Western countries need to pay more attention to policies they pursue to address such problems as child pornography and copyright infringement. For example, measures that require Internet service providers to identify and stop illegal practices on their networks "set up norms" that are adopted by other countries for more nefarious purposes such as tracking dissidents.

As more countries weigh whether to punish serial copyright infringers by taking away their Internet access, critics debated Wednesday whether such efforts have a deterring effect. A panel discussion at the Congressional Internet Caucus' State of the Net conference examined such laws as one awaiting final approval in France that give infringers three chances to stop before their Internet access is cut off by a court and legislation working its way through the British Parliament that would impose graduated levels of notice against infringers with the ultimate sanction being a cutoff of Internet service.

John Morris of the Center for Democracy of Technology argued that given the importance of the Internet to education, business and other aspects of society, cutting off Internet access goes too far, saying the actions of a child could harm the entire family. "The response is disproportionate" to the crime, he argued. He said a more appropriate penalty would be a lawsuit.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association's Matthew Schruers added that more focus should be placed on "notice," when an Internet service provider or someone else notifies a user that he or she may be infringing copyrighted materials. "Notice is very effective in getting people to stop" infringing, he said, pointing to Canada's notice regime as being particularly effective.

But Shira Perlmutter of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, which represents record companies around the world, argued that "notice doesn't really work," adding there needs to be "some sort of meaningful consequences." She also said that in most cases, Internet access would be suspended to only one account and may not affect a whole family. Perlmutter added that Internet service providers cut off service to customers now if they are abusing the ISP's services. But Schruers said those are voluntary actions, while the proposed laws would require ISPs to cut off a user's access.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker Tuesday urged her FCC colleagues not to push forward with a network neutrality proceeding until the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rules on whether the agency overstepped its authority by taking action against Comcast for certain network management practices," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "Larry Ellison is setting a new course for Oracle Corp. that includes hiring 2,000 sales and engineering employees and developing a line of high-end computer systems," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• NASA's Spirit rover mired on Mars, USA Today reports.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Tuesday urged the Obama administration to work with its trading partners to continue progress on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The United States and the other countries involved in the ACTA negotiations are meeting this week in Guadalajara, Mexico for four days of talks focusing on such issues as civil enforcement, "border measures," and "enforcement procedures in the digital environment."

The agenda also includes a discussion on transparency, a key point of contention for critics of the deal who have called for a draft of the proposed agreement to be released to the public.

In a statement, Mark Esper, executive vice president of the chamber's Global Intellectual Property Center, said while his group also backs more transparency in the talks, "we must not allow ACTA to be derailed by a minority opposed to protecting the rights of artists, inventors, and entrepreneurs." He added that his group recognizes "the constraints of international trade negotiations; however, we urge the administration to ensure the congressional committees of jurisdiction--as representatives of the American people--are fully briefed on the scope of the ACTA negotiations and why concluding this agreement expeditiously is in the country's best interests."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative has said while it supports a transparent process, it must keep some details of the proposed agreement private in order to allow the negotiating parties to engage in a frank exchange of views.

The FCC Tuesday said it is seeking information from wireless providers on the fees they impose on customers for terminating their wireless contracts early. In letters to AT&T, Google, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless, the FCC said it was seeking information about whether the providers' customers are being "adequately" informed about these early termination fees (ETFs).

"We recognize that wireless carriers may have various rationales for ETFs," Consumer Bureau Chief Joel Gurin and Wireless Bureau Chief Ruth Milkman said in the letters. "At the same time, these fees are substantial (and in some cases are increasing) and have an important impact on consumers' ability to switch carriers." They added that the commission is exploring ways to improve consumer information and transparency about communications services and fees, including ETFs.

Among the dozen questions the agency is seeking answers to include whether the fees apply to all service plans, the amount of the fees for each plan, and how much of a discount the firms provide on wireless phones in exchange for signing a service contract. Verizon Wireless has come under fire for its decision in November to double the ETF on some smart phone contracts. Milkman sought information from the firm in December on the fee increase.

Employment for electrical and electronics engineers fell 3 percent at the end of 2009 after two previous quarters of small job growth, according to data from the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite the fourth-quarter setback, the unemployment rate for electrical and electronics engineers fell from 7.3 percent in the third quarter to 5.2 percent in the fourth quarter- well below the 10 percent overall unemployment rate for the nation.

The improvement in the unemployment rate, however, appears to be due to engineers who have taken jobs in other fields or given up their job searches, IEEE-USA, a trade group representing electrical and electronics engineers and other technical professionals, said in a statement Tuesday that included the BLS data. Employment rates differed across engineering fields, leading to an employment rate that was essentially flat.

"Engineers create jobs, so improvements in engineering employment data is a leading indicator of overall job recovery," IEEE-USA Past President Gordon Day said in a statement. "These data do not reflect the job recovery we were hoping for."

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Tuesday that drivers of commercial vehicles will be prohibited from text messaging while driving. The new rule, which is being issued using existing authority, will go into effect immediately and is part of LaHood's ongoing efforts to bring attention to the dangers of texting while driving and other forms of distracted driving.

"Today we're sending a strong message: We don't merely expect you to share the road responsibly with other travelers, we require you to do so," LaHood said in prepared remarks for a news conference on the rule change.

A July study conducted by researchers at Virginia Tech University found that drivers who send text messages on a cell phone are about 23 times more likely to get into some type of crash or near-miss than non-distracted drivers, LaHood said. The new rule will apply to interstate truck drivers as well as commercial bus and van drivers who carry more than eight passengers. Violators may face criminal penalties or fines of up to $2,750.

LaHood said in the months ahead, he would propose "additional legal remedies and develop new tools that will help us work alongside the law enforcement community, safety advocates, researchers, and others, to find new ways to raise awareness and bring an end to the terrible dangers posed by distracted driving."

The Justice Department Monday reached an agreement that, if backed by a federal court, will likely pave the way for its approval of Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc.'s proposed merger with concert promoter Live Nation.

The conditions, outlined in a proposed settlement filed in federal court by Justice and 17 states, included requirements that Ticketmaster license its ticketing software, divest ticketing assets and agree to anti-retaliation provisions. "The merger, as originally proposed, would have substantially lessened competition for primary ticketing in the United States, resulting in higher prices and less innovation for consumers," the department said in a news release. Canadian authorities reached a similar settlement with Ticketmaster, Justice said.

The proposed settlement calls on Ticketmaster to license a copy of its primary ticketing software to Anschutz Entertainment Group, the second largest concert promoter and an operator of key concert venues, a move aimed at enhancing short- and long-term competition in the ticketing market. In addition, Ticketmaster also will be required to divest its ownership of its self-ticketing subsidiary Paciolan Inc. within 60 days to either Comcast-Spectacor, which has already signed a letter of intent to purchase the assets, or some other buyer approved by the department. In addition, the new merged company will be prohibited from retaliating against a venue owner that chooses to use another company's ticketing or promotional services.

The Office of Personnel Management launched a new version of its USAJOBS site, a portal for seeking and applying for federal government job openings. OPM said it has redesigned USAJOBS to make it easier for the public to research and apply for jobs on the site. The agency said it used feedback from prospective employees, federal workers, college students and social media outlets like Facebook and Twitter, in the site's redesign.

CompTIA said Monday that its information technology business confidence survey shows tech companies are becoming more optimistic about their future business opportunities. The group said it's 2010 CompTIA IT Industry Business Confidence Index experienced its largest jump ever in December 2009.

The survey of IT business executives found that 34 percent said they expect to increase capital expenditures in the next six months, compared to 24 percent in a September survey, while 31 percent plan to boost staffing, up from 24 percent from September. Overall, the survey shows that executives expect the U.S. economy will continue to strengthen and forecasts a 6.5 point increase in confidence, which would move the rating on the 100-point scale into "solidly positive range."

The executives surveyed said they expect IT spending to grow at a rate of between 2 percent and 4 percent in 2010, saying they are particularly focused on security products and services, virtualization products and services, and opportunities in the health care and green IT markets.

"Many macro-economic indicators have improved over the past six months, lending factual support to the positive perceptions of IT executives," CompTIA Vice President of Research Tim Herbert said in a statement. He added that some "big unknowns still loom" such as unemployment, public sector debt, tight credit and lending markets, which may temper hopes that an economic recovery is in full swing.

The Justice Department is posting online not previously released data as part of the Obama administration's open government initiative. The information, which will be available on the department's Web site and at www.data.gov, includes statistics on crime victimizations, information about compensation for radiation victims, and final reports from federal bankruptcy trustees.

""The information we are making available today represents another step in our ongoing commitment toward becoming a more open and accessible Justice Department to the public, the media, academia and others interested in what we do every day," Associate Attorney General Tom Perrelli said Friday in a news release.

The data released by the Justice Department includes a 2008 survey of 76,000 households on the frequency, characteristics and consequences of instances of crime in the United States. The data is used to "estimate the likelihood of victimization by rape, sexual assault, robbery, assault, theft, household burglary and motor vehicle theft for the population as a whole," the department said.

The department also released three reports on the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program, which will allow those who have been exposed to radiation from a past nuclear test to use information to more easily resolve their claims for restitution. Justice also said it would be releasing more information in the future including data from the Federal Bureau of Prisons on the incidents of assault on inmates and staff.

Broadcasters and the FCC are mourning the death of former FCC Commissioner James Quello, who died Sunday at the age of 95. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Quello leaves behind "an extraordinary legacy of service."

A Democrat, Quello was appointed to the FCC in 1974 by Richard Nixon and served until 1997. He was tapped to serve as acting chairman in 1993. "Known as the 'Dean' of the FCC - and 'Boss' to the many staffers who worked for him - he was a role model to generations of FCC employees and advocates for his decency, personal charm, and commitment to his work," Genachowski said in a statement.

The Michigan native joined the FCC after working as a broadcaster at local television stations in Detroit. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader protested Quello's initial appointment to the FCC, saying he would be a pawn of the broadcasting industry, according to a 1993 New York Times profile of Quello.

In a statement, National Association of Broadcasters President and CEO Gordon Smith described Quello, who was given NAB's Distinguished Service Award in 1994, as a "friend to free and local broadcasting, and an extraordinarily bipartisan public servant during a remarkable 24 years at the FCC."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Before Comcast Corp. can transform the entertainment business by taking control of NBC Universal, it must convince Washington that the plan won't hurt rivals and consumers," AP reports. "And the promises the cable company has made so far don't impress opponents who want federal regulators to attach strict conditions to the deal."

• A new venture capital fund for technology education, called the National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital Technologies, will be introduced today, the New York Times reports. "It could be handing out grants by fall."

A week after abandoning a bid for governor and joining the California U.S. Senate race, former GOP Rep. Tom Campbell has emerged as one of the top two candidates in the Republican primary, according to a new Field Poll. Campbell garnered 30 percent of the vote, followed by former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina with 25 percent and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore with 6 percent. Thirty-nine percent were undecided. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer leads all three candidates in hypothetical matchups. Boxer leads Campbell, 48-38 percent; Fiorina, 50-35 percent; and DeVore 51-34 percent. The survey of 958 California likely voters was conducted Jan. 5-17 and has a 3.2-point error margin. The subsample of 202 likely GOP primary voters has a 6.9-point error margin.

More companies are giving in to pressure from the Senate Commerce Committee to drop aggressive marketing tactics that the panel's chairman says mislead consumers into signing up for discount membership clubs without their knowledge. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Friday that several retailers have announced they will no longer allow third-party marketing firms such as Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty to make offers for the discount memberships during the checkout process on the retailers' Web sites.

Rockefeller's committee has been investigating Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty and their partnerships with e-commerce retailers. The committee has found the three firms use a controversial tactic that has led many consumers to sign up for the three firms' discount clubs without consumers' knowledge while checking out after purchasing a product or service from an online retailer. As part of their agreements, the retailers had been passing on consumer credit and debit card information to the marketing firms without the consumers' knowledge.

Rockefeller said Friday that eight online retailers announced they will no longer allow these firms to market such memberships as part of the checkout process on the retailers' Web sites. The retailers include Air Tran Airways, Continental Airlines, Fandango, Intelius, 1-800Flowers.com, Priceline.com, US Airways and Vistaprint. This follows recent announcements from Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty that they would start requiring that consumers provide their entire credit or debit card numbers when signing up for the firms' discount membership clubs online.

"Tricking consumers into buying goods and services they do not want is not okay. It's not ethical, it's not right, and it's not the way business should be done in America. American consumers shouldn't have to worry that their favorite Web sites are ripping them off during the checkout process," Rockefeller said. He said the committee would continue its investigation until other online retailers stop engaging in such practices.

A Chinese official Friday blasted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech calling for countries to respect the rights of their citizens by allowing the free flow of Information over the Internet. "The U.S. attacks China's Internet policy, indicating that China has been restricting internet freedom. We resolutely oppose such remarks and practices that contravene facts and undermine China-US relations," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in remarks posted on the agency's Web site.

In her highly publicized speech Thursday, Clinton said while the Internet has brought much progress to China, "countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century. Now, the United States and China have different views on this issue, and we intend to address those differences candidly and consistently in the context of our positive, cooperative, and comprehensive relationship."

China has imposed an Internet censoring system that blocks access in China to some information and Web sites. Despite this, Ma claimed China's Internet is "open" and the country "supervises" the Internet according to Chinese law. The official called on the United States "to respect facts and stop attacking China under the excuse of the so-called freedom of [the] Internet."

China also has been criticized in the wake of Google's recent revelation that its computers and those of several other U.S. companies had been hacked by a source in China apparently seeking access to the e-mail of Chinese human rights activists and other information. In response, Google said it would stop censoring search results for users in China and may leave the country. Ma condemned hacking, saying it violates Chinese law and urged international cooperation to combat hacking.

The Motion Picture Association of America said Friday that Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman would formally leave the group in April to lead the refugee advocacy organization Refugees International. MPAA President and Chief Operating Officer Bob Pisano will take over Glickman's job until the group finds a new chief.

A former U.S. House member from Kansas and Clinton administration Agriculture secretary, Glickman has held the MPAA's top job since 2004. He succeeded the legendary Jack Valenti, who guided the MPAA for nearly 40 years. During his tenure, Glickman worked to help secure passage of measures that increased resources and enforcement for intellectual property protection and banned camcording in movie theaters throughout the United States and around the world, the group said. "We have fought vigorously on behalf of the 2.4 million Americans and other workers throughout the world whose jobs are based on a vibrant film and television business," Glickman said in a statement.

"Throughout his tenure at the MPAA, Dan served as an incredibly skillful and dedicated advocate for the issues that are most important to the film and television industries - global market access, copyright protection and ensuring an overall healthy future for our collective businesses," Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said.

When Glickman first announced his departure in October, some of the names of possible successors that were mentioned included Pisano as well as House Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif.

A group of black elected officials are appealing to Congress and President Obama to ensure that the FCC's national broadband plan and its network neutrality rules do not further expand the digital divide. In a letter Thursday to key congressional leaders and Obama, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators and other groups called on Congress to hold hearings to provide oversight of the FCC's proceedings on these issues and to ensure they make the group's two principles a priority. These include making universal adoption the top priority of the nation's broadband policy instead of Internet regulation and ensuring the FCC does not adopt network neutrality rules that make the digital divide worse.

"In a digital economy, access to broadband spells the difference between first- and second-class citizenship," according to the letter also signed by the National Conference of Black Mayors, National Association of Black County Officials and the National Organization of Black Elected Legislative Women. They noted that while nearly two-thirds of all adult Americans report having broadband Internet access at home, the rates for minorities are much lower.

The groups said they support net neutrality supporters' goal of ensuring that broadband providers cannot discriminate against legal content. "Nonetheless, much of the net neutrality debate has more to do with providing high-end users (such as the peer-to-peer traffickers who account for 20 percent of Internet use) with access to large amounts of bandwidth at the expense of everyday users," they wrote. "Thus we are concerned that unmanaged networks would leave the underserved with increased costs and diminished service."

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed in September that voluntary net neutrality guidelines be expanded to bar network operators from engaging in discriminatory behavior, require more disclosure about network management practices and subject violators to stepped up enforcement.

As it works to push other countries to allow the free flow of Information via the Internet and other technologies, the United States can address the issue more promptly by pushing for enforcement of trade laws, which contain provisions that could help promote Internet freedom, according to a report released Friday.

The report from the Computer & Communications Industry Association was released a day after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to make Internet freedom a key diplomatic priority. It also comes a week after Google announced it would stop censoring search results for users in China and possibly end its operations in the country in response to a cyberattack originating from China.

The report cites several reasons why Internet censorship is a trade issue. The report notes that since many U.S. companies are vendors of information products and services, "information discrimination undermines market access for electronic commerce, and combating it should top our trade agenda." The report also argued that information censorship is a "non-tariff trade barrier," which the United States seeks to eliminate through trade agreements. According to the report, censorship is an "unfair rule of origin" because it blocks U.S. content. "We must elevate this issue to the top of our diplomatic and trade agendas, thereby helping other nations understand our commitment to curbing threats to Internet freedom in whatever form they manifest," the report said.

CCIA said the United States should lead by example by implementing network neutrality rules to ensure no government entity or company can control Internet access and by promoting "balanced intellectual property" laws that do not restrict Internet access in the enforcement of IP rights. In addition, CCIA called for improved coordination between the State Department and the U.S. Trade Representative through the State Department's Global Internet Freedom Task Force; the USTR to adopt a "bolder approach to foreign roadblocks and respond forcefully to protectionist decisions abroad; and the United States to advocate for "common sense" Internet laws in other countries.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The Senate Rules and Administration Committee has reached an agreement with Facebook that will enable Senators to set up an 'official' Facebook page that follows the chamber's rules," Roll Call (subscription) reports.

• "The Obama administration" today "is posting to the Internet a wealth of government data from all Cabinet-level departments, on topics ranging from child car seats to Medicare services," AP reports.

• "China's Foreign Ministry sharply criticized Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's Thursday call for broad Internet freedom, saying that the United States should 'cease using so-called Internet freedom to make groundless accusations against China,'" the Washington Post reports.

White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Howard Schmidt has not even been on the job for a month, and he already has a high-profile case to wield as evidence that the government must guard its own computer data and that of America's private sector.

On Jan. 12, Google announced in its company blog that it was a victim of a sophisticated hack against 21 companies in mid-December, apparently an attempt to access e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In defiance of the Chinese government, the company threatened to uncensor search engine data about subjects like the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, and announced it might withdraw from China altogether.

President Obama entered office promising to make cybersecurity a national priority, and he appointed Schmidt as the highest-ranking government cyber official ever. Highlighting the Google issue could be a potent catalyst for reform, according to James Lewis, a senior fellow on cybersecurity with the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Google is a very glamorous case," Lewis said. "And they went public with it, which almost never happens when a company's information gets hacked. And the U.S. has suffered probably massive losses from Chinese hacks for more than 10 years now."

Andre DiMino, co-founder of the cyber attack watchdog group the Shadowserver Foundation, said he hopes the Google hack will make Schmidt and the White House pay closer attention.

Legislation designed to avert a looming communications spectrum crisis that could derail the FCC's ambitious plan for nationwide broadband connectivity received swift approval Thursday by the House Energy and Commerce Communications, the Internet and Technology Subcommittee. The measure, approved by voice vote, would require the FCC and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration to make a thorough inventory of the nation's communications spectrum.

The agencies would report their findings to Congress and recommend which, if any, of the least-used blocks of spectrum can be reallocated for commercial use. "As more and more Americans use data-intensive smart phones and as services like mobile video emerge, the demand for spectrum to support these applications and devices will grow dramatically," Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said.

The panel adopted a manager's amendment from Boucher that made several technical changes but also gave both agencies one year, instead of the bill's original six-month deadline, to conduct their spectrum review. To read more, click here (Subscription required).

The group that manages the Internet address system said Thursday that it has given preliminary approval to four countries to, for the first time, write Internet addresses entirely in their native languages. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said Egypt, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have passed the language character evaluation, which is aimed at ensuring there is no confusion with other Internet top-level domains.

The move means users are one step away from being able to type Internet addresses in Cyrillic for Russia and Arabic for Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The countries must now request the suffixes from ICANN, such as "Egypt" in Arabic, and gain approval from the group's board before users can begin using the Internet addresses in their native languages.

"These international names will now allow people to type entire domain names in their own language," ICANN CEO and President Rod Beckstrom said in a statement. "This marks a pivotal moment in the history of Internet domain names." The issue has been a top priority for ICANN. The group notes in a paper on the issue that "60 percent of Internet users are non-English speakers, while the dominant language used on the Internet is English." The group said 12 other requests for internationalized domains are pending.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Thursday that all three of the companies that have been the subject of an investigation by his panel have agreed to drop the controversial practice of online datapass marketing. Following on an announcement earlier this month from Affinion Group, Web Loyalty and Vertrue recently told the committee that they would now require consumers to enter their full 16 digit credit card number in order to enroll in the firms' online membership programs.

The committee's investigation of Affinion, Web Loyalty and Vertrue has focused on their partnerships with trusted online retail sites such as FTD and Fandango, that often result in getting consumers, usually without their full knowledge, to sign up for discount club memberships with the three companies as part of a misleading step connected to the online checkout process with the retail sites. As part of the process, consumer credit and debit card information is passed on to the marketing firms usually without consumers' knowledge.

"Affinion, Vertrue, and Webloyalty's decision to change their aggressive sales tactics by adding the 16 digit credit card reentry requirement is a step in the right direction for American consumers," Rockefeller said in a statement. "Our ongoing Commerce Committee investigation into these companies' marketing tactics uncovered alarming evidence. Millions of consumers were unknowingly enrolled in membership clubs offered by the companies and hundreds of millions of dollars were charged to their credit cards without their consent." He said the committee would continue its work aimed at curbing misleading Internet tactics such as online datapass marketing.

Internet firms, tech industry associations, public interest groups and lawmakers praised the announcement from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that the Obama administration would make Internet freedom a key diplomatic priority. In a speech Thursday, Clinton said the United States is "committed to devoting the diplomatic, economic, and technological resources necessary to advance" the freedoms that the Internet and other technologies help support.

She said media and tech companies have a responsibility too and urged them "to take a proactive role in challenging foreign governments' demands for censorship and surveillance...They need to consider what's right, not simply what's a quick profit." She noted Google's recent decision to stop censoring search results for users in China, a move made in response to cyberattacks that originated in China targeting Google and others.

But it remains to be seen whether other firms will heed Clinton's call to follow Google's lead. TechAmerica President Phil Bond said in a statement that his group agrees with Clinton that "a single, secure and uncensored Internet is critical both for human rights and global prosperity." But he added that his group looks to "the U.S. government to address laws and practices in other countries that either facilitate censorship, oppression or a fractured Internet." And Computer & Communications Industry Association President Ed Black said in an interview after Clinton's speech that while U.S. industry may be able to make changes at the margins to help promote Internet freedom in some countries, "It's up to countries to fight other countries, not companies."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Thursday called on businesses to stand up to foreign governments that push them to censor access to information in those countries and pledged to make Internet freedom a key diplomatic priority. "On their own new technologies do not take sides in the struggle for freedom and progress but the United States does," she said during a speech at the Newseum in Washington. "We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal ascess to knowledge and ideas."

She noted that just as people around the world are using technology for social, economic and political progress, groups and authoritarian governments also have turned to the Internet and other tools to foster extremism and repression, noting the use of the Internet by al Qaeda to foster extremism and violence and stepped up censorship efforts by countries such as China, Tunisia and Uzbekistan. While warning of a "new information curtain," she also highlighted the ways people in countries with totalitarian regimes are using technology to "expose injustice," pointing to those Iranians who have managed to spread news via Twitter and cell phone images of Iran's crackdown on protesters.

Clinton said companies that stand up to censorship by foreign governments are not only claiming the moral high ground but also building trust with their customers that will help them in the marketplace. She briefly addressed the recent dispute involving Google and China, saying the department "looks to the Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough review that led Google to make its announcement" and to release the results to the public. Google revealed earlier this month that it had been the victim of a cyber attack late last year originating from China that attempted to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, as well as corporate data. In response, Google announced it would no longer censor its search results for users in China and may leave the country altogether.

The European Commission Thursday cleared Oracle's proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems, saying it believes the deal would not "significantly impede" competition. The commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, said it had concerns that combining Sun's open source MySQL database product with Oracle's database products could harm competition in that market. The Justice Department approved the Oracle-Sun deal without conditions in August.

"I am now satisfied that competition and innovation will be preserved on all the markets concerned," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. "Oracle's acquisition of Sun has the potential to revitalize important assets and create new and innovative products." The commission said its investigation, which began in September, "showed that although MySQL and Oracle compete in certain parts of the database market, they are not close competitors in others, such as the high-end segment."

In November, Oracle defended its proposed acquisition of Sun against initial EU concerns, saying "the database market is intensely competitive with at least eight strong players." In a statement Thursday announcing the EU's "unconditional" approval of the deal, Oracle said it also "expects unconditional approval from China and Russia and intends to close the transaction shortly."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Five United States senators are publicly urging Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to move faster to support organizations that are helping people in countries like Iran and China circumvent restrictions on Internet use," the New York Times reports.

• "China's dispute with Internet giant Google, which is threatening to pull out of the country over concerns about censorship and security, should not be linked to bilateral ties with the United States, a top Chinese official" said today, AP reports.

• "The U.S. plans to make unrestricted access to the Internet a top foreign-policy priority," Clinton "plans to announce" today, the Wall Street Journal reports. "The announcement, which has been scheduled for weeks, comes in the wake of accusations last week that Chinese hackers penetrated Google Inc.'s computer networks."

• The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday "ordered cable companies to share high-definition sports programming with competitors, closing what it calls a 'loophole' in the law that allows providers like Comcast to have exclusive rights to certain sports events," The Hill reports.

The American Civil Liberties Union called on Congress Wednesday to curb the power of the FBI to collect private information on U.S. citizens without court approval after a new report found the FBI abused its authority to obtain telecommunications records. The Justice Department's inspector general found widespread misuse of emergency letters to telecom providers that sought access to Americans' telecommunication records, saying in many cases the letters were sent even when an emergency did not exist.

"We concluded that the FBI's use of exigent [emergency] letters and other informal requests, for telephone toll billing records circumvented, and in many cases violated, the requirements of the [Electronic Communications Privacy Act] statute," according to the inspector general's report.

The ACLU said in a statement that the FBI's use of exigent letters and national security letters (NSL), which are used to obtain information from third parties for national security investigations, "reveals a systemic, widespread abuse of power." The FBI's power to use national security letters was expanded under the USA Patriot Act, passed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The ACLU noted that Wednesday's report is the third from the Justice Department's IG that identified breaches of department regulations and possible law violations by the FBI.

"Given this report, there is absolutely no excuse for Congress not to reform the NSL authority during the current Patriot Act debate," ACLU Washington legislative office acting director Michael Macleod-Ball said. "Without an outside check, FBI agents are able to demand and obtain sensitive information at will."

TechAmerica announced Wednesday that CEO Chris Hansen is giving up his post to head the group's foundation, leaving TechAmerica President Phil Bond as the tech association's sole leader. Hansen and Bond have worked together to lead the tech association since it was created from the merger of the Information Technology Association of America, which Bond led, and AeA, where Hansen served as president and CEO. Bond will assume his new role of both president and CEO immediately, the group said in a news release.

"We have two great leaders at the helm and now we want to expand our foundation's role as TechAmerica continues to grow and assert its influence" TechAmerica board of directors Chairman Hank Steininger, managing partner of Grant Thornton's Global Public Sector practice, said. TechAmerica board Vice Chairman Peter Boni, CEO of Safeguard Scientifics, praised Hansen for his work in helping to successfully merge ITAA and AeA, while also touting Bond as "the perfect person to lead TechAmerica into the future."

The FCC voted 4-1 Wednesday to remove what critics argue is a legal loophole stemming from the 1992 Cable Act that allows cable companies to withhold programming -- including regional sports networks and premium content -- from rivals, CongressDaily reported. "Today the commission levels the competitive playing field," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, during the agency's monthly public meeting, adding, "Locking up a much-loved local sports franchise could be game, set, match for competition."

Cable companies have been able to withhold content because program access provisions in the law only pertain to fare delivered via satellite and not terrestrial means, such as fiber-optic lines. Genachowski noted that technological improvements over the years have made terrestrial distribution less costly and more attractive. The dissenting vote was cast by the agency's senior Republican, Robert McDowell, who warned: "The FCC is not Congress. We cannot rewrite statutes." Also today, the FCC announced the creation of a "consumer task force" designed to ensure that consumers are protected under all of its proceedings and decisions.

The FCC Wednesday proposed further restrictions on the use of robocalls, which are prerecorded telephone calls using a computer. Under the proposed revisions under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, sellers and telemarketers would be required to obtain written consent from consumers before making robocalls even if the caller has an established business relationship with the consumer.

The changes are aimed at harmonizing the FCC's rules with revisions recently adopted by the FTC. The FCC's rules are aimed at telephone companies, airlines, banks, and insurance companies, which fall outside the FTC's jurisdiction. In particular, the proposed FCC rules would require robocalls to include an automated mechanism allowing consumers to "opt out" of receiving future robocalls from the caller and also would exempt some federally regulated healthcare-related calls from the rules.

Some types of calls already exempted from robocall restrictions would continue to be exempt such as calls from tax-exempt nonprofits, calls from political campaigns, and informational calls that are not engaged in marketing or advertising such as a call from an airline providing a flight update.

"These proposed changes set the commission on a path to harmonize its prerecorded message rules with the Federal Trade Commission's recent rule amendments in this area and, in effect, would apply the Federal Trade Commission's more stringent standards to certain entities ... that operate outside the scope of the Federal Trade Commission's jurisdiction," FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau Chief Joel Gurin said in a statement.

A new study released Wednesday shows that unemployed Americans who use the Internet are more likely to continue their active job searches than those who lack Internet access. The study from the tech and telecom think tank Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies estimated using U.S. census data that those unemployed workers who use broadband are 50 percent less likely to give up on their job searches than those who lack such access, while those with dial-up Internet access are one-third less likely to drop out of the labor force.

The study said there are several reasons why the Internet helps keep the unemployed from giving up on their job searches such as the inexpensiveness of using the Internet to search for information about jobs and wages and the emotional and other types of support unemployed Americans receive via the Internet. "We find evidence that the jobless are more likely to be discouraged when they do not use the Internet. This evidence suggests that support and information obtained from the Internet reduces the likelihood that they feel there are no jobs, or no jobs for which they could qualify," according to the report.

The study also highlights the benefits and importance of community broadband centers to assist those who do not have Internet access at home, Phoenix Center President Lawrence J. Spiwak said. "These findings suggest that broadband connectivity can contribute to economic recovery," he added.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Despite growing opposition in Washington and strong resistance from television stations, the FCC is proceeding with a controversial plan to reallocate a significant portion of digital airwaves to wireless carriers," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "The United States has had multiple meetings with Chinese authorities over Internet freedom and will have more in the coming days, a top State Department official said on Tuesday amid continuing tensions between Google and Beijing," Reuters reports.

• "A coalition well-stacked with Google's corporate enemies is building a case on Capitol Hill this week against an anticipated court decision that would allow the search giant to publish millions of library books on the Internet," Roll Call (subscription) reports.

Reauthorizing legislation aimed at improving U.S. competitiveness through investments in research and education is among the top priorities House Science and Technology Chairman Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., Tuesday outlined for his committee in the second session of the 111th Congress. The 2007 America Competes Act aimed to spur innovation by authorizing a doubling in funding over seven years for research and development activities at the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Energy Department's science office, while also supporting improvements in science, technology engineering and math education.

During a news conference, Gordon said he is aiming to reauthorize the America Competes Act, which expires at the end of 2010, by Memorial Day. It would reauthorize NSF, NIST and Energy's science office and redirect the agencies' research activities "to make them more efficient," Gordon said. For example, he said he would like to move NIST away from its current 1950s-style lab structure to one that is more multidisciplinary and better reflects today's research needs. To read more, click here. (Subscription required.)

A new report released Tuesday from the Government Accountability Office recommends changes in how the FCC tackles issues that come before the agency to better reflect the converging nature of today's communications landscape. In particular, the report found that while there have been some changes in the FCC's bureau structure that have allowed for communication between the agency's bureaus, the FCC lacks written procedures that will help spur more inter-bureau collaboration and communication on issues that come under the jurisdiction of more than one bureau.

"FCC's reliance on informal coordination has created confusion among the bureaus regarding who is responsible for handling certain issues," the report said, adding that the situation has led the FCC to release analysis that lacks input from all the relevant staff. The report recommended that the FCC develop written policies that outline those issues that cross more than one bureau, identify which bureau will take the lead on such issues, and take steps to ensure better communication between the staff of the various bureaus.

The GAO also said the agency needs to clarify commissioners' access to information about items on the FCC's agenda. To address this issue, the report recommended that at the beginning of his or her term, each new FCC chairman develop and make public internal policies that outline how much access commissioners will have to information from the FCC's bureaus and offices during the decision-making process.

"This report underscores the organizational challenges and opportunities facing the FCC," Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee who asked for the GAO report, said in a statement. "The rapid evolution of the telecommunications marketplace requires an agile agency." He and Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., noted that FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has begun making changes at the agency aimed at improving its effectiveness. "I look forward to further reforms at the FCC and urge the chairman to continue to take steps to ensure that the FCC serves the public interest by being open, transparent and accountable," Boucher said.

The group that manages the Internet's address system said Tuesday that the Internet is running out of unallocated addresses that use the old IPv4 protocol. Internet protocol addresses are the unique identifiers that allow computers connected to the Internet to communicate with each other. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers said the available number of IPv4 addresses has dipped below 10 percent. As a result, ICANN is urging the Internet community to do more to spur the adoption of the new IPv6 protocol.

"For the global Internet to grow and prosper without limitation, we need to encourage the rapid widespread adoption of the IPv6 protocol," ICANN President and CEO Rod Beckstrom said in a statement.

Given that IPv4 addresses will eventually run out, IPv6 was designed to deal with the growing demand for IP addresses. According to ICANN, there are "300 trillion trillion trillion possible IPv6 addresses." But Internet users have been slow to adopt IPv6 for a number of reasons, including the increased cost in time and money to move to an IPv6 system; a need for bridging technology to make IPv4 and IPv6 systems compatible; and a lack of demand, according to an ICANN fact sheet on the issue. The document added that "a widespread shift to IPv6 will only occur once the cost of running on IPv4 starts rising due to scarcity."

ICANN said technical experts have estimated that it will take a couple years to deplete the pool of available IPv4 addresses, since many blocks of those addresses have been allocated to groups that have yet to distribute them to the public. Still, Beckstrom noted that "IPv6 is the future of the Internet."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative Tuesday released the agenda for next week's talks on the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which will include a discussion on transparency. Public interest groups and even some lawmakers have been critical of the ACTA process, saying it has not been transparent enough.

Other topics on the agenda for the four-day meeting, which will take place Jan. 26-29 in Guadalajara, Mexico, include discussions over civil enforcement, "border measures," and "enforcement procedures in the digital environment," another area of concern for many groups. Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., said last week at a conference that making more details public about the proposed agreement, aimed at cracking down on and counterfeit goods, will help build public support for the pact.

A USTR spokeswoman said last week that some secrecy has been essential to ensuring a "frank exchange of views" among countries involved in negotiating ACTA, but added that USTR is working with its negotiating partners to make the process more open.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The American Red Cross has received more than $22 million in U.S. text-message donations for Haiti earthquake relief efforts, far outpacing the charity's previous record of $400,000 for emergency relief using similar technology," the Washington Post reports.

• "President Obama on Monday pushed the button on his first-ever tweet -- a message about his visit to the headquarters of the American Red Cross to thank workers for their efforts in responding to the devastating earthquake in Haiti," the New York Times reports.

• "International journalists in China said on Monday that their Google e-mail accounts have been hacked in attacks like the ones against human rights activists, which last week led the search giant to consider pulling out of the country," AP reports.

Telecommunications giants are demanding that Google and other companies that use their networks to deliver applications, content and services be subject to any expanded network neutrality rules adopted by the FCC, CongressDaily reported Friday. The push to include them is being led by AT&T in an apparent effort to stymie a proposal that would toughen voluntary guidelines governing the Internet's openness.

Regulating the Internet on such a wide scale would be virtually impossible to enforce, critics of the idea say, and raises a host of thorny legal and technical issues. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed in September that the agency's four net neutrality principles be strengthened to bar network operators from engaging in discriminatory behavior, require more disclosure about online traffic management practices and subject violators to stepped up enforcement.

In written comments Thursday, the deadline for public input on the FCC proposal, Google argued that the commission's authority in this area extends only to Internet service providers. The majority of Internet content and applications, for example, fall well outside of the commission's jurisdiction," the company stated, adding that such offerings "do not provide the transmission component that constitutes 'communications by wire or radio.'"

AT&T countered that "any rules adopted in the proceeding must be applied evenhandedly to all information service providers that have market power" and serve a gatekeeper role. AT&T argues no net neutrality rules are needed and that the proposed expansion of existing guidelines would do more harm than good. But if stricter rules are imposed, it said Google's domination of the search advertising business and what it views as the company's repeated exploitation of its gatekeeping power cannot be ignored. Verizon echoed these views. To read more, click here (subscription required).

A slick 22-page presentation that Comcast has been circulating on Capitol Hill about its planned merger with NBC Universal -- featuring 11 pages marked "confidential" -- surfaced publicly Friday. The documents have been shared with several committees, including the House and Senate Commerce and Judiciary panels, all four of which will hold oversight hearings early this year on the proposed $30 billion transaction.

Comcast states that it hopes to close the deal, pending regulatory approval by the FCC and Justice Department, within the next nine to 12 months. The FCC review is boiled down to weighing "the potential public-interest harms of the transaction against the potential public-interest benefits" to conclude whether "on balance" it serves the public.
Comcast states that both companies pledge to make "upfront commitments that will confirm our recognition of the need for the FCC to assure an ongoing competitive marketplace."

A section on myths and realities seeks to answer concerns that a combined Comcast-NBC would act as a "walled garden" by discriminating against competing television programs or unaffiliated online content. The cable provider argues in the document that even after the merger is completed "six out of every seven channels that Comcast carries will still be unaffiliated with Comcast."

The FCC adopted an order Friday that will clear the way for the deployment of the next generation of wireless devices and for the rollout of public safety communication services. The FCC's order bans the further distribution and sale of wireless microphone and other devices that operate in the 700 megahertz band of spectrum. The agency said these devices may interfere with the other services that will be operating in this band of spectrum.

The FCC is giving those individuals or groups that have wireless microphones or other devices that currently operate in this swath of spectrum until June 12 to transition to a different frequency. Those who currently own wireless microphones can find information about whether their device is affected by the FCC's order through the agency's Web site.

Steve Largent, president and CEO of the wireless industry group CTIA, praised the FCC's order, saying "it will help ensure that harmful interference does not hamper commercial wireless carriers' fourth generation deployment plans, which promise to increase mobile broadband availability and adoption, as well as create much needed jobs."

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said Friday that his office was faxed information from a conservative Web site that included sensitive data about donors to the group's cause. The faxes sent to Stupak's office included such information as the names, addresses, e-mail addresses, credit card name and numbers and other important data about 139 donors to the ExposeObama.com Web site, a site dedicated to opposing President Obama.

"This apparent breach of personal information could easily lead to these individuals falling victim to identity theft if placed in the wrong hands," said Stupak, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. "I am concerned that if the ExposeObama.Com Web site is sending this critical information to my congressional office, they may also be sending it to others, further compromising the identities of these 139 individuals."

Stupak said his office notified the individuals whose information was compromised and also sent a letter to the editor of ExposeObama.com, longtime GOP operative Floyd Brown. In the letter, Stupak told Brown the fax came from C4Strategies, an Internet services consulting firm based in the Washington suburb of Lorton, Va.

ExposeObama.com General Counsel and Treasurer James V. Lacy said in an e-mail response that a vendor who works for the site made a "simple mistake" that was caught "midstream." He said the faxes only went to four congressional offices. "Hopefully, the federal employees who work for those congressmen who received the credit card data will not commit credit card fraud," Lacy added.

Desperate for more airwaves to bolster emergency communications, representatives from eight public safety groups worked the halls of Congress this week to press for legislation to grant them rights to spectrum the FCC failed to auction on their behalf, CongressDaily reported. Despite the lobbying blitz, lawmakers were still assessing the proposal and had made no commitments. The groups met with House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., aides to Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., and FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Noting it's been eight years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, which highlighted problems with emergency communications, Robert Davis, president of the law enforcement group Major City Chiefs Association, said "We still do not have the ability to communicate with each other. This is unacceptable." But even the staunchest proponents of legislation acknowledge a major obstacle: funding. Estimates range from $6 billion to $30 billion to construct a nationwide broadband network that would improve interoperable communications across agencies and jurisdictions. While some revenue could be raised by leasing excess capacity to commercial outlets, the federal government would foot much of the bill.

The FCC's bid in 2008 to auction the D-block swath of spectrum for public safety use failed after no one cast the minimum bid. The FCC hoped the winning bidder would finance the network's construction. Public safety officials say they would be better served if the frequencies were directly allocated to them, putting emergency groups in charge. First responders want to combine the D-block with an additional 10 MHz they've been granted in an adjacent band to create a robust network that can accommodate cutting-edge wireless data, voice and video technologies.

In an interview, San Jose, Calif., Deputy Policy Chief Chris Moore said Waxman "committed to helping us solve the interoperability problem." The FCC is expected to include recommendations for improving emergency communications in its upcoming national broadband plan, to be presented to Congress March 17.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "A quartet of House Republicans commended Google on Thursday for threatening to pull out of China earlier this week, saying the company's actions could help spark the passage of legislation that aims to loosen the ties between American technology firms and countries that restrict human rights," the New York Times reports.

• "The White House on Thursday came out forcefully behind Google Inc.'s plan to stop censoring its search engine in China, while Beijing defended its Internet policies, saying foreign Web companies were welcome to do business in the country 'in accordance with the law,'" the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "The Federal Communications Commission is considering aggressive moves to stake out its authority to oversee consumer access to the Internet, as a recent court hearing and industry opposition have cast doubt on its power over Web service providers," the Washington Post reports.

• "A big reason why the government is inefficient and ineffective is because Washington has outdated technology, with federal workers having better computers at home than in the office. This startling admission came Thursday from Peter Orszag, who manages the federal bureaucracy for President Barack Obama," The Hill reports.

U.S. broadcasters and telecom companies are pitching in to help relief efforts for Haiti after the country was devastated by a major earthquake earlier this week. The National Association of Broadcasters said Thursday that a public service announcement featuring First Lady Michele Obama and detailing "critical earthquake relief information" will be available Friday for download on NAB's public service Web site by radio and television stations.

The NAB also encouraged broadcasters to produce localized public service announcements urging help for the Haitian relief efforts and called on stations to participate in the group's "Broadcasters for Haiti Day" on Feb. 1 by dedicating airtime on that day for "fundraising relief efforts, telephone banks, radiothons and telethons."

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Senate Commerce Communications, Technology, and the Internet Subcommittee, Thursday praised the efforts of several telecommunications companies in providing communications expertise, equipment and manpower to Haiti. "I'm in touch with industry leaders to try and mobilize more resources faster and greatly appreciate their efforts," Kerry said in a statement.

He noted that Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF), a telecom humanitarian organization that provides emergency telecommunications services, is deploying two emergency teams to Haiti to set up emergency telecom centers for emergency first responders. In addition, CapRock Government Services is providing satellite phone services to U.S. military personnel sent to assist the relief effort, while Iridium has provided satellite handsets to the Defense Department, Federal Emergency Management Agency and TSF, Kerry said.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit has revealed that the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection agency searched more than 1,500 computers, cell phones and other electronic devices belonging to international travelers as they entered U.S. airports or other border posts. The searches were conducted between October 2008 and June 2009. The group blasted the policy that allows customs agents to search computers and other devices without suspecting any particular wrongdoing.

"These documents show that the constitutional rights of thousands of travelers were put at risk and violated by the CBP's policy," ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump said in a news release. "The CBP's ability to take and view the personal files of anyone passing through U.S. borders without any suspicion not only presents an inconvenience to travelers, but also fails to protect sensitive personal information that is commonly stored in laptops and cell phones." The ACLU said the documents obtained by the lawsuit also revealed that customs agents had transferred electronic files to third-party agencies nearly 300 times.

The electronic search policy was implemented in July 2008 under the Bush administration and applies to all travelers, even U.S. citizens, who pass through U.S borders or go through U.S. customs at airports. The Obama administration announced in August that it would continue the practice but pledged to provide more transparency and accountability. DHS also said it would conduct a civil liberties impact assessment within 120 days of its August announcement, a deadline the ACLU says the agency missed.

At the time, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano defended the policy saying, "Keeping Americans safe in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen materials entering the United States." She added that the administration's policy on electronic searches strikes a "balance between respecting the civil liberties and privacy of all travelers while ensuring DHS can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders."

Eagerly anticipated public comments on the FCC's plan to bolster its network neutrality rules are due Thursday, with many to be submitted to the agency later this afternoon, CongressDaily reported. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed in September that voluntary guidelines governing the Internet's openness be expanded to bar network operators from engaging in discriminatory behavior, require more disclosure about network management practices and subject violators to stepped up enforcement.

The bitter divide over net neutrality was highlighted by the widely divergent viewpoints detailed in early submissions. While a coalition of more than 40 civil rights, public-interest and advocacy groups applauded the chairman's proposal in two sets of comments, the wireless association CTIA issued a statement saying it would request that mobile communications providers be exempt from neutrality regulations. "The commission cannot point to a market failure that would justify its proposed rules," the group said, insisting that wireless broadband networks face a unique set of capacity constraints and other limitations not associated with wired systems.

After Google announced earlier this week that it may pull its operations out of China, a group of House members called on Congress Thursday to pass legislation that supporters say would give information technology companies like Google cover under U.S. law to allow them to resist efforts by foreign governments to censor their operations in those countries.

"We do believe that what Google has done is the game changer," Rep. Christopher Smith, R-N.J., sponsor of the Global Online Freedom Act, said at a news conference. He and other lawmakers, as well as human rights activists and two Chinese dissidents, praised Google for standing up to China.

The U.S. Internet firm revealed earlier this week that it had been the victim of a cyber attack originating from China late last year that attempted to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, as well as corporate data. In response, Google announced it would no longer censor its search results for users in China and may end its operations in the country altogether. Chinese officials said Thursday that they expect Web companies operating in the country to adhere to China's censorship rules, the Associated Press reported.

Smith and the other U.S. lawmakers urged other information technology companies to join Google's example. They also called on the State Department to use funding Congress has appropriated to support Internet freedom around the world to fund efforts to defeat China's Internet firewall, which blocks information opposed by the government.

Smith said his legislation, which the House has yet to consider, would require the State Department to release an annual list of countries designated as "Internet-restricting countries," require U.S. firms to notify U.S. officials of requests from foreign governments to filter or censor information, and would prohibit U.S. Internet firms from jamming U.S.-government Web sites such as the Voice of America. In addition such firms would be required to store personally identifiable information outside of countries that impose Internet restrictions. "The bill would give the IT companies the back-up of the U.S. government," Smith said.

In a statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said this week that Google "is to be commended for taking action in response to cyber attacks originating from China targeting Chinese human rights advocates, and the intellectual property and corporate data of Google and more than 30 other companies." She added that it "should serve as an example to businesses and governments."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "U.S. government officials and business leaders were supportive but wary of taking sides in Google Inc.'s battle with China, a sign of the delicate tensions between the growing superpower and the West," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "The White House so far has left the administration response" to the Google-China Internet censorship fight "to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is scheduled to give an address on Internet freedom next week," The Hill reports.

• "The Obama administration has invited dozens of the nation's top executives to the White House" today "seeking tips on how the federal bureaucracy can become leaner and meaner," the Washington Post reports. "White House officials are hoping to use new technologies, such as the Web and text messaging, to make that" happen.

• Roll Call (subscription) reports on the difficulties people are having finding information about procurement opportunities in the Senate through government Web sites.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said Wednesday that Google's announcement that it had been the victim of cyber attacks originating from China underscore the need for the nation to take cybersecurity more seriously, adding that his panel would mark up his cybersecurity legislation early this year.

Google said Tuesday that the hackers' primary goal was to access the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. In response to the incidents, Google has said it will no longer censor its search results for its Chinese users and as a result may have to end its operations in China.

"Cyber-attacks are increasing exponentially and we need to get serious about America's cybersecurity," Rockefeller said in a statement. "Our nation's public and private infrastructure is too critical to remain vulnerable and unprotected."

His bill, among other things, would formally establish the position of White House cybersecurity adviser, an individual who would coordinate the federal government's cybersecurity activities and report directly to the president. After months of delay, President Obama announced last month that he had tapped Howard Schmidt to serve as the administration's cybersecurity coordinator, a position similar to the one Rockefeller's bill would create.

The FBI Wednesday warned Internet users to be careful when responding to Web-based appeals for donations to assist the victims of Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti. "Past tragedies and natural disasters have prompted individuals with criminal intent to solicit contributions purportedly for a charitable organization and/or a good cause," the FBI said in a news release.

It advised consumers not to respond to unsolicited e-mails; to be skeptical of individuals representing themselves as surviving victims or officials seeking donations via the Web or social networking sites like Facebook; verify the legitimacy of nonprofit organizations by using various tools available on the Internet; and make contributions directly to known organizations instead of relying on others to make such donations.

The FCC said Wednesday that it will grant permission to those noncommercial broadcasters that have asked to raise funds to aid efforts to assist Haiti as it tries to recover from Tuesday's devastating earth quake. The agency's Media Bureau posted procedures on the FCC Web site on how broadcasters can obtain approval for such fundraising.

Current FCC rules restrict noncommercial broadcasters from fundraising except to support their own operations. However, they can apply for a waiver to such rules. "These temporary waivers will help tap the American spirit of generosity in this time of great need to aid Haitian relief efforts," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

As House Democratic members meet this week to outline strategies on important policy issues, the Information Technology Industry Council is urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to ensure the House addresses key priorities aimed at helping to spur innovation and economic growth, including extension of the research and development tax credit. The credit expired at the end of December when the Senate failed to take up legislation that would extend it and other tax breaks for another year.

"We urge you to expand and extend the research and development credit which has already expired. Congress took a modest step by slightly expanding the credit in the last Congress, and we encourage you to make a further expansion as soon as possible," ITIC CEO Dean Garfield wrote in a letter Wednesday to Pelosi. He also urged her to work with Ways and Means Committee leaders to advance legislation "to bring our tax rates in line with our global competitors' rates."

The group also called on lawmakers to develop comprehensive plans to increase broadband deployment and adoption; spur the growth of health information technology and provide investments in a "smart" electric grid and renewable energy. In addition, ITIC said it would like to see action on immigration and education legislation to ensure that the "best and brightest" foreigners can remain in the United States and also provide domestic workers with the skills they need to fill 21st century jobs. In addition, Garfield urged lawmakers to act on several pending free trade agreements.

"We believe all of these recommendations can and should be advanced this year, and we stand ready to work with you and your colleagues to make significant progress," he wrote.

Human rights activists praised Google for announcing it will stop censoring its search results for Chinese users, an action that could force the firm to leave China altogether. Google announced the move Tuesday after revealing that its computers and those of other U.S. firms had been hacked by a source originating in China, an attack the Internet search firm said was aimed at gaining access to the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

"A transnational attack on privacy is chilling, and Google's response sets a great example," Human Rights Watch's Arvind Ganesan said in a statement. "At the same time, this incident underscores the need for governments and companies to develop policies that safeguard rights." Google began operations in China in 2006, and believed at the time that "the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results," according to a blog post from Google Senior Vice President David Drummond.

Amnesty International said for many years it has been calling on foreign firms operating in China "to respect the right to freedom of expression for Web users and not to cooperate with the authorities in censoring the Internet and self regulating the flow of information." It praised Google for finally taking such a stand, but also said it is "important that Google raises with the Chinese government its concerns about hacking activities originating in China," Roseann Rife, the group's deputy Asia-Pacific director, said in a statement.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association said Google's move and concerns that China's Internet censorship may violate international trade agreements may persuade Chinese leaders to abandon such efforts. "It is increasingly apparent that censorship is a barrier to trade, and that China cannot limit the free flow of information and still comply with its international trade obligations," CCIA CEO Ed Black said in a news release.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Desperate for more airwaves to bolster emergency communications, public safety officials worked the halls of Congress Tuesday to press for legislation to grant them rights to spectrum the FCC failed to auction on their behalf," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "Google said Tuesday that it would stop cooperating with Chinese Internet censorship and consider shutting down its operations in the country altogether, citing assaults from hackers on its computer systems and China's attempts to 'limit free speech on the Web,'" the New York Times reports.

• "Google CEO Eric Schmidt will join President Obama and former President Bill Clinton as speakers at this week's House Democratic Caucus retreat," CongressDailyPM (subscription) reports.

Google Tuesday said it may end its operations in China after discovering that the Google e-mail accounts of human rights activists have been breached. In a blog post, Google Senior Vice President and Senior Legal Officer David Drummond said it discovered the breach when it detected a cyber attack in December originating from China.

"We have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists," he wrote. "Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective." Drummond noted that only two Gmail accounts had been breached and it appears only account information not the content of the e-mails was accessed. However, he said Google has discovered through its investigation that other Gmail accounts of dozens of U.S., China and European-based human rights advocates have been "routinely accessed" by third parties via e-mail phishing scams or through secretly installed malware.

In addition to making security improvements to its operations, Drummond said the incidents have forced Google to re-evaluate its operations in China. He noted that when Google launched its Chinese operations in 2006, it hoped the benefits of free speech would outweigh the firm's uneasiness with censoring some search results, as demanded by Chinese authorities. Drummond said it will no longer censor results on Google.cn and will discuss with Chinese officials whether the company can "operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China."

House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Edolphus Towns says he will investigate a report the panel has received that Arbitron CEO Michael Skarzynski may have provided false information during a hearing in early December on concerns about Arbitron's electronic radio listening device known as the Portable People Meter. Arbitron announced Monday that Skarzynski had resigned effective immediately as president and CEO and as a member of the company's board, CongressDaily reported Tuesday.

In a statement, the media ratings firm would only say that Skarzynski had "violated a company policy in a matter entirely unrelated to the financial performance of the company" but declined to give further details.

Towns said in a statement late Monday that, "as chairman, I am committed to protecting the integrity of the committee's proceedings, and will review this matter to determine whether the committee was intentionally misled and whether further action is warranted." If the panel finds that Skarzynski intentionally provided false testimony, it could refer the matter to the Justice Department for further action, according to a committee spokeswoman.

The White House's deputy chief technology officer said Tuesday that while the Obama administration believes in the fair use of content, it should not be used as an excuse for copyright infringement. Andrew McLaughlin made the comment at Public Knowledge's Fair Use Day event that explored the doctrine of fair use, which is the legal right that allows for particular uses of copyrighted materials.

McLaughlin said the administration will continue to aggressively enforce intellectual property laws but also believes that Americans should have the right to take advantage of the fair use of copyrighted works. "These two things must coexist and need not be seen as inherently in conflict," said McLaughlin, a former Google executive.

He did note that the administration has made a shift in favor of fair use compared with previous administrations when it comes to providing access to copyrighted materials to the blind and visually impaired. A U.S. delegation in December indicated support at a World Intellectual Property Organization meeting for international "consensus" on providing "basic, necessary limitations and exceptions in copyright law for persons with print disabilities," according to the delegation's statement from the meeting. The U.S. delegation said this "consensus" could come in the form of a model law, a joint recommendation adopted by WIPO or a multilateral treaty.

Earlier in the day, Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., also discussed the importance of fair use to the economy. He cited the example of News Corp. Doyle said while News Corp. Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch has criticized Google for using News Corp. content, the firm's Fox News unit has cited its fair use rights in defending itself against a copyright infringement lawsuit. "Murdoch's content is valuable, and the economic contribution of the copyright industries is substantial," Doyle noted. "But I think that Murdoch's example is proof that copyright industries also are fair use industries."

As part of the Obama administration's open government initiative, the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday launched the first phase of its three-part initiative to help the public better understand the agency, how it works and how it goes about its mission of regulating food, drugs and medical devices.

As part of the first phase, FDA Principal Deputy Commissioner Joshua Sharfstein unveiled a new feature, known as FDA Basics, on the FDA's Web site that provides details on what the agency does and introduces users to some of its top officials, including providing videos of interviews with key FDA personnel. For example, it explains how a product gains FDA approval, how to file a complaint or get information about product or food recalls. In addition, the agency also will host online question-and-answer sessions on various topics. The transparency initiative was developed after receiving more than 900 comments on how to improve the agency's transparency and interaction with the public, Sharfstein said in a conference call with reporters.

"I think this is a step toward making the FDA a more open and transparent agency," he said.

The other two phases being developed by FDA's transparency task force will include recommendations on how to make more information about the agency's activities more transparent, useful and understandable while also protecting confidential information when appropriate. The third phase will involve recommendations on how to make the agency's process more transparent to the industries the FDA regulates. Sharfstein noted some industry commentators said they would like a better sense of where their applications stand in the approval process.

Rep. Mike Doyle, D-Pa., Tuesday echoed concerns raised by public interest groups about the secrecy surrounding the details of the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. During remarks at Public Knowledge's Fair Use Day event, Doyle, an Energy and Commerce Committee member, said transparency is key to ensuring the proposed agreement's legitimacy.

He added that the Office of the U.S. Trade representative has told him that ACTA will not "cement current provisions in the" 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) into international law that he would like to see changed such as the anti-circumvention provisions. But Doyle noted that some analysts say it could lead to a three-strikes policy such as France's proposed law, which would allow authorities to cut off a users' Internet access for serial online copyright infringement. "I will oppose any effort by Congress or by a trade agreement to cut people off the Internet," Doyle said.

He noted that Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk last week also requesting information about the agreement, saying more transparency about the pact will help built public support for it. In the letter, Wyden asked a series of questions about some of the concerns that have been raised about the proposed agreement, the latest draft of which has not been made public.

USTR officials have said the agreement will not require changes in U.S. law but Wyden asked if it would constrain the U.S. ability to modify current law; whether there are any provisions that address third-party liability; and whether the pact would require compliance with provisions found in the DMCA. He also asked what legal initiatives the agreement is seeking to encourage Internet service providers to crack down on online infringers such as requiring ISPs to monitor their customers' online activities.

"USTR strives to be as open and transparent as possible to the American public while also maintaining the ability of ACTA negotiating partners to engage in the frank exchange of views necessary to reach agreement on complex issues," a USTR spokeswoman said in response to Wyden's letter and Doyle's comments. "We have been working closely with our trading partners to bring increased transparency to the ACTA negotiations and we see the need to give the public an opportunity to provide input as we go along. We will continue to work with our trading partners to define the process to allow the public to provide meaningful input."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The government should not choose winners and losers in the technology sector when allocating broadcast spectrum, says the senior lobbyist for television and radio broadcasters," The Hill reports. "'Government is not very good at picking winners and losers,' said National Association of Broadcasters CEO Gordon Smith, who until last year was a Republican senator from Oregon."

• "AOL said Monday that it plans to lay off more than 1,000 workers this week, as the company continues efforts to restructure as a Web content publisher," the Washington Post reports.

Maryland officials Monday outlined an aggressive effort to be the "nation's epicenter for cybersecurity." Appearing at the Gaithersburg, Md., campus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley unveiled a policy report that provides what officials said is the first comprehensive inventory of any state's cybersecurity assets.

"Maryland is poised to lead the nation's war on cyber crime," O'Malley, a Democrat, said in a statement. "From the innovative work being conducted at NIST, our universities and Maryland companies both large and small, to our highly-educated IT workforce, we have a duty to ensure the safety and security of every American citizen against this growing threat."

The report noted that Maryland led the country in the last year in the creation of computer systems design jobs, growing by 6.6 percent. The state also is home to more than 50 key federal facilities and 12 major military installations, which employ "nearly 200,000 well-educated, highly-skilled government employees and contractors in cutting-edge research and development and scientific, medical and technological innovations."

The report recommended the creation of a National Center of Excellence for Cyber Security in Maryland, which would be a partnership between the state and federal government, as well as the private sector and academia. The center would include cybersecurity testing laboratories; information sharing about vulnerabilities in hardware, software and IT systems; and education and training. The report also recommended the state launch an aggressive effort to brand Maryland as a "hub of cyber intelligence" to attract information technology companies; continue focusing on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education to meet the workforce needs of the cyber and information technology industry; and align its cybersecurity best practices with those of the federal government.

Panelists ran into a challenge Monday when discussing the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Free Trade Agreement during an event hosted by Google. Because the treaty's negotiations are confidential, panelists with knowledge of treaty specifics said they had to be guarded about their language.

Such confidentiality has marked the entire ACTA process, according to panelists, who called for more transparency in the negotiation of the multilateral intellectual property treaty that can come into effect without Senate ratification, cemented as an "executive agreement." U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk and his team have indicated in the past that while they value transparency, keeping the details of the trade deal under wraps is essential.

Beyond broad agreement about the need for transparency, panelists clashed with the single ACTA proponent on the panel over whether the treaty will impact U.S. laws. Steve Metalitz, who represents such copyright stakeholders as the Motion Picture Association of America, predicted that the treaty will "color within the lines" of current U.S. rules since the reality is that "Congress may not be eager to...change the law," he said.

But others on the panel thought such restraint was unlikely. "We can all agree that it would create some constraints on the U.S. government in the future," said Ryan Clough, legislative counsel to Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif. "That's a serious concern."

ACTA detractors worry the treaty will codify as international norm those pieces of U.S. copyright law that they say are problematic. These include provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act that allow for inadequate "fair use" exceptions for copyrighted material, critics say. They also say leaked information about the content of the treaty suggests it will give service providers too much power to police the Internet.

A Chinese writer's group said Google has apologized for poor communication in scanning Chinese authors' books for the Internet firm's online library, the Associated Press reported. The Chinese Writers' Association said over the weekend that Google pledged in a letter to work out a settlement over copyright concerns by June, according to the AP. In a blog post, the Open Book Alliance's Peter Brantley said Google should also apologize to writers in the United States and other countries. The alliance opposes Google's digital books initiative, saying it's anticompetitive. Google has defended the effort saying it will help both readers and authors by expanding access to books.

In a blog post Monday, Comcast Executive Vice President David Cohen argued that the cable provider's challenge against an FCC enforcement action is not a fight about network neutrality, as some public interest groups and others have portrayed it, but is instead about the FCC overstepping its authority. A federal appeals court Friday heard arguments in Comcast's challenge to the FCC's enforcement action against the cable provider two years ago for impeding customer access to sites such as BitTorrent that enable the sharing of movies, video games and other files.

"The primary basis for our challenge, and the basis on which we hope the court will decide this case, is that no federal agency can subject any company or individual to sanctions for violation of federal standards when there was no law in the first place," Cohen wrote. "This is a basic issue of fair notice, regardless of the issue at stake. So it shouldn't matter whether you are for or against 'net neutrality' regulation -- this is simply not the way the government should conduct its business."

The FCC's enforcement action was based on a policy statement rather than formal rules, prompting Comcast to challenge the government in court by arguing the FCC lacked authority to chastise it before adopting official regulations. Still, FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick and others indicated Friday that a ruling against the commission could affect current FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's efforts to impose network neutrality rules, which would prevent network operators from prioritizing certain types of content.

"If the FCC -- or any agency -- wants to regulate in an area, it needs first to establish binding regulations and apply them properly, consistent with the process that Chairman Genachowski has now proposed," Cohen said.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., Friday praised the marketing firm Affinion Group for dropping a controversial tactic known as online datapass marketing. Rockefeller's committee has been investigating Affinion and two other firms, Vertrue and Webloyalty, that partner with trusted online retail sites to get consumers to sign up for discount club memberships as part of a misleading step connected to the online checkout process with the retail sites. As part of the process, consumer credit and debit card information is passed on to the marketing firms usually without consumers' knowledge.

A committee report released late last year found that the three firms and their e-commerce retail partners have netted more than $1 billion from their controversial marketing practices, which have affected millions of consumers. In a letter earlier this week to Rockefeller, Affinion Group CEO Nathaniel Lipman said the firm was abandoning online datapass marketing and will now require that consumers provide their entire 16-digit credit card or debit number when signing up for such programs online.

"After careful consideration of the ever changing nature of the Internet, Affinion has decided to cease online datapass marketing for its membership programs," he wrote. Lipman added that the firm had already announced other changes such as making it easier for consumers to cancel such memberships.

"While Affinion's decision to end the so-called 'datapass' process is a positive step, this investigation is ongoing and will not end until all online shoppers are protected and online datapass marketing has been stopped," Rockefeller said in a statement.

A federal appeals panel voiced skepticism Friday that the FCC had the authority to take action against Comcast for secretly impeding customer access to sites such as BitTorrent that enable sharing of movies, music, television shows and video games, Dow Jones news service reported. Comcast was ordered in August 2008 by the FCC, which was chaired at the time by GOP-appointee Kevin Martin, to stop the "discriminatory" practices and disclose to its customers how it would end such practices.

During oral arguments Friday, the three-judge panel sharply questioned FCC General Counsel Austin Schlick to cite the communications law that supports the agency's action against Comcast, according to Dow Jones. Schlick acknowledged that a ruling against the commission could affect current FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's efforts to impose network neutrality rules, which would prevent network operators from prioritizing certain types of content.

In a statement, Genachowski said the case, "underscores the importance of the FCC's ongoing rulemaking to preserve the free and open Internet. I remain confident the commission possesses the legal authority it needs and look forward to reviewing the court's decision when it issues."

Public interest groups such as Free Press also noted the importance of the case. "If this decision is upheld, it will mark a turning point in telecommunications law and bolster the agency's current move to make its network neutrality principles into much-needed rules," Free Press Policy Director Ben Scott said in a statement.

The National Association of Broadcasters is taking to the airwaves to defend its airwaves. The group has launched a new television ad that warns viewers that proposals being debated in Washington could hurt free over-the-air television. The release of the ad comes as lawmakers voice resistance to proposals being debated before the FCC that could force broadcasters to relinquish spectrum to make way for wireless broadband. House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., Thursday was among the latest members of Congress to voice opposition to such proposals.

The NAB's 30-second spot, being broadcast in both English and Spanish, notes that over-the-air TV provides important community and emergency information and entertainment. "But one day soon, it could be taken away," the ad warns. "There's a movement among special interest groups to limit free antenna TV, and millions of Americans who depend on it would lose out." The spot, which is airing this month on local stations across the country, ends by urging viewers to tell lawmakers "to keep free antenna TV as part of our communications future."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• The Federal Communications Commission "hopes to use a dispute with the nation's largest cable TV and Internet provider to establish its legal authority to adopt... 'network neutrality' regulations," AP reports. "The rules would aim to prevent phone and cable companies from abusing their control over the market for high-speed Internet access."

• "Congressional resistance to an FCC proposal that would force broadcasters to relinquish much of their spectrum and abandon free high-definition signals is mounting, with House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., becoming the latest member to voice strong opposition," CongressDailyPM (subscription) reports.

• "The State Department announced Thursday a new campaign encouraging international dialogue, through the social networking site Twitter, on the meaning of democracy," The Hill reports.

• AP reports on some of the high-tech ways being proposed to protect air travelers.

Some key lawmakers appear supportive of FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's request for a one-month extension for submitting a national broadband plan to Congress, CongressDaily reported Thursday. After strongly dismissing a prediction made by Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.V., in November that the Feb. 17 statutory deadline would slip, Genachowski formally asked lawmakers Thursday for extra time to complete the blueprint.

"Apparently the volume of public comments submitted to the commission will require a longer period for review that the original schedule for formulating the national broadband plan permitted," House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said in a written response.

The top leaders on the Senate Commerce Committee favor the extension if it means the plan will be stronger. "Chairman Genachowski has indicated that a short delay is necessary to qualitatively improve the plan. I support his efforts," Rockefeller said in a statement. And Senate Commerce ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, "is supportive of the delay as long as it results in a substantive and quality product," a spokesman said.

But Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell said he would prefer that "the agency to be able to meet its statutory deadlines, and apparently the agency will not be able to do so in this case. That is disappointing." The agency's other GOP member, Meredith Baker, said in a statement that she hopes the "extra time, while not ideal, will result in a thorough and actionable plan."

Some industry and public interest groups echoed Baker's comments. "If one more month means that the national broadband plan will be of the best possible quality and a real blueprint for how we address the nation's true broadband priorities - getting broadband everywhere and getting everyone possible on broadband - then it's worth the wait," Comcast Senior Vice President Joe Waz said in a blog post.

While resolving its dispute with Sinclair Broadcast Group, cable provider Mediacom Communications Corp. said Thursday that the disagreement highlights the need for policymakers to overhaul the rules governing retransmission consent agreements between cable providers and broadcasters. The new one-year agreement between Sinclair and Mediacom ensures that this weekend's NFL playoff games and other broadcast programs provided by Sinclair's broadcast stations will not be blacked out to about 600,000 Mediacom customers in 15 markets.

In a statement, Sinclair would only say that Mediacom has agreed to drop its FCC complaint against Sinclair as part of the one-year agreement and that the deal resulted in an "acceptable economic arrangement" for the firm, according to Sinclair CEO David Smith. In a Thursday letter to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a senior Commerce Committee member who had urged the two sides to reach a deal, Mediacom Chairman and CEO Rocco Commisso also declined to provide details about the agreement but did urge reform of the rules that cover such deals.

"If consumers are to be protected in the long run, not just for a period of weeks or months, it is essential that the existing retransmission consent rules be thoroughly examined and reformed. I pledge to work with you to achieve that goal," Commisso said. "As the recent Sinclair/Fox experiences demonstrate, the system is broken. Consumers are being harmed both by the uncertainty created by broadcasters' threats to allow their signals to 'go dark' and, over the longer term, by the increased costs that are the product of a negotiating process that allows broadcasters to hold consumers hostage."

It's the second major broadcast-cable dispute to be resolved in the past week as broadcasters seek additional revenue to replace slumping ad revenues. Time Warner Cable averted a similar blackout of broadcast programming to its cable customers after reaching a New Years Day agreement with Fox. FCC Media Bureau Chief William Lake praised the latest deal, saying in a statement that it "will prevent the disruption and frustration that Mediacom customers would have experienced if Sinclair stations were no longer available over Mediacom systems."

The question of how patients and healthcare providers can prove their identities online was examined Thursday at a meeting of the Nationwide Health Information Network working group, which is focused on examining how health information can be transmitted securely over the Internet. The working group is part of the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, which was mandated by last year's economic stimulus package.

Panelists probed such questions as what standards should govern authentication and what variables--such as the kind of information being exchanged--should impact how standards are applied. The forum also examined how to ensure the interoperability of authentication practices between organizations and providers.

The meeting comes as the Health and Human Services Department works to distribute funding included in the stimulus package aimed at expanding the use of health IT and as health care providers look to streamline bureaucracy by sharing patient data via the Internet. This might include, for example, a lab sharing patient information with a doctor or a hospital transmitting prescription data to a pharmacy, the panelists said. If such practices were to become pervasive, the standards for authenticating the identity of providers and individuals would be central to preventing cybercrime and protecting provider and patient data, panelists said.

"It is not acceptable for me as an individual to be granted access to health information for the other Sean Nolan that lives in Bellevue, Wash.," Sean Nolan, chief architect for Microsoft Health Solutions, said of the potential challenges facing patients and providers who use such technology.

The two federal agencies charged with handing out $7.2 billion in grants to spur broadband access and adoption launched a new online tool Thursday aimed at helping those interested in applying for the broadband grants to find potential partners. BroadbandMatch was created by the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration and the Agriculture Department's Rural Utilities Service to assist those who may want to seek out partnerships in an effort to improve their expertise and chances of obtaining one of the broadband grants.

The new tool allows any company, nonprofit, state or local government or individual interested in apply for a broadband grant through NTIA or RUS to post a profile with information about what they would bring to a grant proposal application. It also allows those seeking a partner to search criteria to find an entity that matches their needs. "In the first funding round, many applicants wanted to form partnerships but didn't know how best to locate other organizations with similar aims and complementary resources," NTIA Administrator Lawrence E. Strickling said in a statement, adding that the new online tool is aimed at addressing this need.

In the coming weeks, RUS and NTIA will be announcing the rules for the second and last round of broadband funding, which was included in the economic stimulus package passed last year.

The FCC wants to hear from you. The agency launched a new Web site Thursday called Reboot.FCC.gov aimed at soliciting public input on how the FCC can improve citizen interaction with the commission. The site will seek feedback on such issues as how the FCC presents its data, the redesign of the agency's Web site and ways to improve agency decision making. The site also will feature a blog with posts from the FCC's five commissioners and other agency employees.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski has pledged to reform the agency in the wake of increased scrutiny in recent years from Congress. The House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee released a scathing staff report in 2008 that found "abuses of power, suppression of information and manipulation of data" during the leadership of then-Chairman Kevin Martin and recommended several changes.

"Transforming the commission into a model of excellence in government is one of my top priorities," Genachowski said in a news release. "The success of this transformation depends on strong public participation throughout the process."

Critics are keeping up the pressure on regulators to scrutinize Comcast's proposed acquisition of NBC Universal. A broad array of public interest, labor and other groups have written an open letter, released Thursday, to members of Congress and President Obama expressing "grave" concerns about the proposed deal.

The signatories include public interest groups such as Free Press, Common Cause and Consumers Union, as well as labor unions such as the Communication Workers of America and such industry groups as the American Cable Association and Satellite Broadcasting and Communications Association. "It will result in less competition, higher consumer costs and fewer content choices," the groups wrote. "It also will give one company unprecedented control over innovative new media that offer news, information, entertainment and cultural programming through emerging technologies."

The Comcast- NBC deal will be reviewed by both the Justice Department and the FCC. In their letter, the groups claimed the commitments Comcast has made to address concerns raised about the deal are "window dressing." They urged the administration and lawmakers to closely review the merger and "take necessary measures" to protect consumers and competition.

Under the deal announced in early December, Comcast, the nation's biggest cable provider, will buy a majority stake in NBC Universal, which owns a movie studio, the NBC television network and cable channels such as Bravo and SyFy. "Viewed objectively, the GE/Comcast NBCU transaction is pro-consumer and strongly in the public interest, and we look forward to making that case to Congress, the Justice Department, and the FCC," Comcast Executive Director of Corporate Communications and Government Affairs Sena Fitzmaurice said in a statement. "There is absolutely no evidence that this proposed transaction would produce any of the adverse effects these groups claim the deal would cause."

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is urging Congress to increase its funding for fiscal year 2010 in light of new projections that the agency said shows it will receive in excess of $100 million more from patent fees than it estimated in September. Appropriators used the September projection of $1.887 billion to set the agency's fiscal 2010 spending level.

"Absent further congressional action, the USPTO will not be able to expend this fee income to address its urgent fiscal needs," Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos wrote in a Monday letter to House and Senate appropriators. He added that, unlike past years, appropriators removed language from the 2010 spending bill that allowed the agency to spend up to $100 million more in fees than the set spending level.

Despite the projected increase in fees, Kappos warned that the dire fiscal problems the agency faced last year when it was forced to "cut spending sharply" will likely carry over into 2010. He said unless the agency, which is funded by fees, receives more funds, it will be forced to operate on a "bare-bones budget" that would allow it to replace only a small percentage of the 500 patent examiners expected to leave this year.

But lawmakers may not be swayed by Kappos' warnings. USPTO fee projections have been overly optimistic in recent years, a congressional source said. House and Senate appropriators chided the agency in the fiscal 2010 Commerce, Justice and State appropriations conference report for using a budget process that does not adequately plan for economic downturns when fees may be less than anticipated.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is asking for a one-month extension on the national broadband plan the agency is required to submit to Congress," AP reports.

• "The Recovery Board is pushing back against concerns that its stimulus website attributes millions of dollars to ZIP codes that seem not to exist," The Hill reports. "While one watchdog group alleged Wednesday that more than $375 million in stimulus funds recorded on Recovery.gov went to 'phantom' locales, federal officials tracking those funds said 'human errors' during the early reporting process are actually to blame."

• "FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn set an ambitious goal for herself in 2010 -- learn to type on an iPhone's touch screen," The Hill reports.

Three groups that represent writers are calling on the more than 60 members of Congress who have written books to oppose a settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers as part of Google's effort to digitize millions of books. In a letter Wednesday to lawmaker authors such as Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and Reps. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., and Ron Paul, R-Texas, the three writers' groups argued that the revised settlement could lock millions of authors into the complex deal.

Last fall, the Justice Department raised concerns about the settlement, which only covers out-of-print books. In response, Google announced a revised settlement in November aimed at addressing some of the concerns by limiting the agreement's international scope, while also preserving the "core benefits of the original agreement: opening access to millions of books while providing rights holders with ways to sell and control their work online."

The revised settlement, however, did little to quell criticism about Google's digital books initiative. "As fellow authors, you know the freedom to negotiate your own book contract is basic and precious. We hope you will join us in speaking in opposition to the amended settlement. The Department of Justice detailed fundamental flaws to the court in September," the writers' groups wrote. "A preponderance of those flaws remain. We urge you, as an author and member of Congress, to contact the DOJ and implore them to continue their close scrutiny of this settlement."

The Justice Department has indicated it will review the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger, the Associated Press reported Wednesday. The firms announced in December that Comcast would take a controlling stake in NBC Universal, which includes the NBC broadcast network, Universal studios and cable channels such as Bravo, SyFy and the USA network.

The deal also must be reviewed by the FCC, AP reported. Public interest groups such as Free Press and the Consumer Federation of America have called for regulators to block the Comcast-NBC deal. Free Press Wednesday praised the Justice Department's move. "We are glad to see the review of Comcast/NBC is moving forward," Josh Silver of Free Press said in statement. "A Comcast/NBC merger would create a media behemoth with too much power in too few hands."

During a White House ceremony Wednesday, President Obama recognized more than 100 educators and mentors for outstanding service in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and also announced five public-private partnerships aimed at better preparing teachers in these subjects. The five partnerships the president outlined are expected to invest $250 million in preparing more than 10,000 new math and science teachers over the next five years and assist in providing professional development to more than 100,000 current STEM teachers.

"Our future depends on reaffirming America's role as an engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation," Obama said. But to do this, he added that "we have to admit that we are being outpaced by our competitors" in other countries.

Among those investing in the administration's "Educate to Innovate" initiative, launched in November, is Intel, which has pledged $200 million in cash and in-kind support over the next decade. This includes an expansion of Intel's science and math teacher initiative to provide training to more than 100,000 U.S. math and science teachers in all 50 states over the next three years. One of the other partnerships cited by Obama includes an expansion of the National Math and Science Initiative's UTeach program, which, with the help of the Dell Foundation and others, will aim to prepare more than 4,500 undergraduates in STEM subjects to be new math and science teachers by 2015, and 7,000 by 2018.

Tech groups praised the STEM initiative. "Continuing to put talented, motivated, and educated math and science teachers in the classroom will inspire our nation's youth to develop the important STEM skills they must have to become tomorrow's scientific problem solvers and tackle the global challenges facing America in the 21st century," Information Technology Industry Council President and CEO Dean Garfield said in a statement.

The American Bar Association's intellectual property law section is urging the Senate to act on legislation that would require AM and FM broadcasters to pay performers a fee for playing their music on the radio. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the legislation in October.

When Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy introduced his bill, he "emphasized the need for provision of fair compensation to artists. He noted that terrestrial broadcast radio is the only platform that still does not pay for use of sound recordings, and that the historical justification for this distinction 'has been overtaken by technological change,'" Don Martens, chairman of the ABA's IP section said in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid last month. "We are in complete agreement with Chairman Leahy, and we urge the prompt consideration and approval of S. 379 in the Senate."

Martens said the issue has not been taken up by the full ABA, and so he was only writing on behalf of the group's IP section. While intellectual property interests strongly support the bill, resolutions have been introduced in both chambers opposing performance rights legislation. Critics of the legislation say performers benefit from the exposure their music gets to radio audiences and imposing a new fee would harm radio stations that are already struggling financially.

A spokeswoman for Leahy said she does not know when the Senate might take up the legislation.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "A new website tracks government-run Twitter accounts from around the country," The Hill reports. "The site launched late last year called GovLive tweets says it tracks 68,031 tweets from 540 agencies."

• "Google Inc. muscled its way further into the mobile industry, unveiling its own branded mobile phone dubbed Nexus One and debuting a new online phone store through which it plans to sell the device and others directly to consumers," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "A raft of sci-fi-inspired gadgets and technologies are being announced this month, promising a future of 3-D television, super-smart phones and next-generation electronic tablets that wrap the features of a laptop and a digital book into one wafer-thin package," the Washington Post reports.

The Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project has identified some flat lines in Americans technology use in a report released Tuesday that examined Internet, broadband, and cell phone use nationally. The percentage of U.S. adults who use the Internet is just a point higher than it was back in 2006, clocking in this year at 74 percent, the survey found.

The survey, which last month polled 2,258 adults and has a margin of error of 2 percent, found 60 percent of American adults use broadband connections at home, down from 63 percent in April 2009. "The Internet, it's pretty clear, is a saturated market," Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, said.

Meanwhile, the report also found little change in the number of U.S. adults, 55 percent, who connect to the Internet wirelessly. Still, the wireless number is misleading, Rainie said. He noted that wireless use is rising, but consumers are now accessing it through various conduits that the survey does not consider.

The lack of growth in broadband use at home may relate to economic stress, "with people not renewing their contracts, scaling back, or not venturing into this area," Rainie said. He predicted growth in broadband use given the injection of funding aimed at spurring broadband access and adoption as part of the federal economic stimulus package passed last February.

The National Music Publishers' Association said Tuesday that it has won its latest copyright infringement battle against the operator of an illegal free-lyric Web site.

NMPA said that its members Peermusic, Warner/Chappell and Bug Music have secured a consent agreement that bars Motive Force LLC and its owner Sean Colombo from using unlicensed lyrics on a Web site or for software applications and orders them to turn over any profits they made from operating the unauthorized lyric site. In August, the three NMPA members filed two copyright infringement lawsuits: one against Motive Force and Colombo in federal district court in Pennsylvania and another in federal district court in California against LiveUniverse Inc. and its owner My Space co-founder Brad Greenspan. That lawsuit is still pending, the publishers' group said.

"Unauthorized sites that profit on the backs of songwriters will not be tolerated," NMPA President and CEO David Israelite said in a statement. "The successful resolution of this matter should serve as an example to the owners of all unauthorized music Web sites and Web applications."

The group that manages the Internet's address system has hired a new Washington-based lobbyist. Jamie Hedlund will take over at the end of the month as the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' vice president for government affairs for the Americas, according to an ICANN insider.

Hedlund has a broad background in telecom and technology policy issues. He is currently the vice president of regulatory affairs for the Consumer Electronics Association, where he has worked since late 2008. Prior to that, he served as director of public policy for Yahoo. Hedlund, who began his career as a staff attorney at the FCC, has much experience in the telecom field, having also worked for Level 3 Communications, Sprint and T-Mobile.

In an interview, Hedlund said he has focused on Internet issues in recent years, particularly on the plumbing of the Internet while at Level 3, and was excited to tackle a new aspect of the Internet world at ICANN. "It's a really exciting time for ICANN," he said, noting that ICANN's relationship with the U.S. government changed last fall giving the group more independence from U.S. oversight. "This model of governance is innovative ... one that if done correctly, will succeed in maintaining a single Internet."

The job Hedlund is taking on has been broadened to include areas outside of
Washington. In addition to helping ICANN maintain its relationships with officials in Washington, Hedlund, who speaks both Spanish and French, said he also will be responsible for interacting with ICANN stakeholders from North and South America. He is set to start his new job at ICANN on Jan. 26. He will replace ICANN's former Vice President of Corporate Affairs Paul Levins, who decided to move back to his native Australia.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The Obama administration is calling on federal regulators to make more radio spectrum available for wireless Internet services so they can compete with broadband plans provided by the major phone and cable companies," AP reports.

• "The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is investigating the privacy and security implications of cloud computing, according to a recent filing with the Federal Communications Commission," The Hill reports. "The FTC, which shares jurisdiction over broadband issues, says it recognizes the potential cost-savings cloud computing can provide."

The Senate Judiciary Antitrust Subcommittee will hold a hearing, most likely in late January, to examine how Comcast Corp.'s pending bid for a majority stake in NBC Universal will affect consumers, particularly the price they may pay for cable television, Reuters reported Monday. Among those expected to testify include Comcast Chairman Brian Roberts and NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker as well as a consumer advocate and a representative from a competing firm, according to Reuters. Consumer groups have raised concerns about the merger, saying it could hurt competition in the video market.

The public interest group Free Press on Monday once again called on federal authorities to closely scrutinize the merger in light of a new initiative by Comcast and other cable and multichannel video operators to provide programming online to their subscribers. Free press and other groups have called on the Justice Department to investigate the initiative called TV Everywhere. (See related story).

As the FCC works toward developing a national broadband plan by a congressionally mandated Feb. 17 deadline, the Obama administration Monday weighed in with its views, urging the commission to identify spectrum for wireless broadband in an effort to increase competition in the residential broadband market.

"Given the projections of explosive growth in wireless bandwidth requirements, a primary tool for promoting broadband competition should be to make more spectrum available for broadband wireless services," Lawrence Strickling, administrator of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration, wrote the FCC. "The administration supports exploring both commercial and government spectrum available for reallocation, and favors a spectrum inventory to determine how radio frequencies are currently being used and by whom."

In its letter, the NTIA noted that in most markets consumers have at best two choices for broadband service and possibly only one that offers the speed they need for such services as online video streaming. Noting the high cost of building a wireline broadband infrastructure, the NTIA said wireless broadband may be the most viable source of competition to the dominant broadband services offered by the cable and telephone companies. Still, the NTIA noted that "the two largest US wireless providers, Verizon and AT&T, also offer wireline services in major portions of the country, raising the question of whether these providers will market these services as replacements for wireline services, either within the region where they provide wireline services or at all."

In addition, NTIA also said that while auctions "under most circumstances" have been the best way to allocate new spectrum frequencies, the administration said dominant broadband players "intent on forestalling new entry that will compete for the incumbents' existing customer base" may be the ones that provide the highest bids for new sources of spectrum. "Based on the Department of Justice's experience with other highly concentrated telecommunications markets, NTIA agrees with the department that 'there are substantial advantages to deploying newly available spectrum in order to enable additional providers to mount stronger challenges to broadband incumbents,'" NTIA wrote.

The cable industry Monday dismissed calls by public interest groups for a federal investigation into an initiative, known as TV Everywhere, by cable, satellite and other multichannel video providers to distribute content online, saying allegations that these industry participants are illegally colluding to extend their business models to the Internet are baseless.

"The call for an 'investigation' of TV Everywhere has no factual or legal basis no matter how many times Free Press and its allies repeat the words 'collusion,' 'cartel' and 'illegal,'" National Cable and Telecommunications Association President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow said in a statement. In the name of protecting competition, they would actually reduce the amount of online content available to consumers."

Free Press, Consumers Union, the Media Access Project and four other groups Monday wrote Christine Varney, the assistant attorney general for antitrust, urging the Justice Department to investigate an initiative they claim "rests on an illegal agreement among competitors specifically designed to undermine emerging Internet-based competition and consumer choice in video programming delivery." In a conference call, representatives from these groups argued that cable providers and their multichannel video competitors have illegally colluded in an effort to limit competition from other online sources. Ben Scott of Free Press said the groups are not "not opposed to content companies charging for content. We're opposed to companies bundling and tying content to cable subscriptions."

But McSlarrow argued that the online service, which would be provided at no extra charge to subscribers, "could significantly increase the amount of high-value video content available online." Time Warner also issued a statement Monday defending TV Everywhere as a consumer friendly service aimed at providing consumers with "more value for their money, by allowing them to watch their favorite shows when they want to watch them on both their TVs and over the Internet at no additional charge. That is what TV Everywhere is, and it is quite plainly beneficial for consumers."

After Fox broadcasting and Time Warner Cable reached a New Years Day deal in their dispute over programming fees, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is now urging Sinclair Broadcasting Group and cable provider Mediacom Communications Corp. to resolve their differences before a Friday deadline. With their agreement set to expire at the end of 2009, Fox had threatened to force Time Warner to drop Fox television programming in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and other markets unless the cable provider agreed to pay higher fees, according to the Associated Press.

"Fox and Time Warner have granted a New Year's resolution of millions of viewers, and I congratulate them," Genachowski said in a statement released Jan. 1. "Now it is the turn of Sinclair and Mediacom to respect the wishes of their audience, and resolve their differences before the expiration of their extended agreement on Jan. 8th." Sinclair extended its agreement, which was set to expire on Dec. 31, allowing Mediacom to carry Sinclair's Fox and CBS stations while the two sides continue to negotiate a new agreement, the AP reported.

In addition to the FCC, the disputes between cable operators and broadcasters over fees for carrying broadcast TV programming are drawing the attention of some lawmakers and public interest groups. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., a senior member of the Commerce Committee, issued a statement praising Fox and Time Warner for reaching a deal. "Both the broadcasting business and the cable business are expensive enterprises and good faith negotiations should result in mutually acceptable terms to both the seller and the buyer without final consumers being put in the crosshairs," Kerry said in a statement. "I am glad that despite some bumps in the road, that was achieved in this instance."

Watchdog Public Knowledge also issued a statement urging the FCC and Congress to address the issues that have led to such disputes and ensure consumers are not harmed. "Congress and/or the FCC should examine the current retransmission consent process and consider whether the system needs adjustments to ensure that viewers are not disenfranchised," Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn said. "Most importantly, policymakers should consider requiring interim carriage of over-the-air stations should a retransmission consent agreement expire while the parties are still negotiating."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Public interest groups" today "will call for federal antitrust watchdogs to investigate an industry-wide strategy by television service providers that they say will strap users to unnecessarily high monthly subscription fees and stifle competition," the Washington Post reports. "The 'TV Everywhere' plan by cable, satellite and phone companies" would bring "television shows and movies to computers and devices, but only for those that subscribe to both television and high-speed Internet services."

• "Time Warner Cable Inc. and News Corp. reached agreement on a new contract that keeps the Fox broadcast network on the air in millions of homes, ending a fierce television-programming dispute that each side had characterized as a crossroads for the television business," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports. "The impasse, which had threatened blackouts for viewers in New York, Los Angeles, Dallas and elsewhere, has been the most high profile of several year-end negotiations between TV companies and firms that pipe TV into homes."

• The deal "has opened the door for broadcasters to demand as much as $5 billion a year from pay-TV providers and their subscribers, analysts said," the Washington Post reports.