March 2010

A group of movie industry groups said Wednesday that they have concerns about applications from some financial firms to establish online wagering services based on speculation over box office receipts for motion pictures.

The groups argued in a statement that the proposals "are based on faulty understanding of the film industry and create a risk of rampant speculation and financial irresponsibility at a time when the nation is still seeking to recover from an economic meltdown of the financial markets."

In a letter to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Gary Gensler, the movie industry groups urged the agency to delay action, now set for Friday, until April 16 on an application from Media Derivatives Inc. to create a movie futures exchange. Cantor Futures Exchange also has submitted an application for a similar exchange. Some of the movie industry groups only found out about the applications last week and need the extra two weeks to submit written comments on the proposals, they wrote.

Some of the issues the groups have about the exchanges include "the unique and problematic characteristics of the proposed contracts, the lack of any existing market in box office receipts, concerns with the basis for and reliability of futures pricing, the potential for manipulation, insider trading issues, and the concern that the contracts could harm the motion picture industry," according to the letter signed by the Directors Guild of America, the Independent Film and Television Alliance, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Motion Picture Association of America and its member companies, and the National Association of Theater Owners.

Companies that confine cybersecurity concerns to the information technology department put their bottom line at risk, according to a report released Wednesday by the Internet Security Alliance and the American National Standards Institute. The groups conducted the report in response to a request in the Obama Administration's Cyberspace Policy Review that better financial metrics be placed on cybersecurity hazards.

Highlighting that cyber attacks cost U.S. businesses more than $1 trillion in intellectual property in 2008, the report offers a framework for how companies can better organize themselves to address these threats, which can result in public relations crises and major data breaches.

One of the report's central points is that effective cybersecurity requires effort beyond the IT department, which is not seen as a growth area for companies and is often underfunded. "If anyone still thinks IT is going to solve the problem: ain't gonna happen," said Joe Buonomo, president and CEO of Direct Computer Resources, among the industry and government stakeholders that helped develop the report. The report suggests that cybersecurity concerns should be handled at the top levels of corporate structure, drawing in the board of directors.

The report also urged companies to think of cybersecurity as a financial problem that should be addressed by companies' chief financial officers. Currently, "all the economic incentives favor the attackers," according to Internet Security Alliance President Larry Clinton, arguing that cybersecurity attacks can be executed cheaply but result in substantial gains for the attackers. For this reason, companies need to make greater investments in protection, according to the report.

Despite over three years of work and more than $300 million in taxpayer dollars, it is no longer clear when the FBI will develop a computer-based system for managing investigations or how much it will cost, the Justice Department's inspector general concluded in a report released Wednesday.

CongressDaily reported that FBI officials plan to request congressional approval to reallocate funds from other information technology programs in order to continue work on the Sentinel investigative case management system, which was launched to move agents from a paper-based system to a computer-based one, Inspector General Glenn Fine said in a blistering 16-page report.

The program's cost has risen from an original estimate of $425 million to about $450 million and is expected to go higher, while the FBI this month issued a partial stop-work order to the Sentinel prime contractor Lockheed Martin Corp., the IG report said. "Our concerns about the FBI's ability to complete Sentinel in a timely and cost-effective manner have escalated," the report said. "As of March 2010, the FBI does not have official cost or schedule estimates for completing Sentinel."

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., plans to review the report, a committee aide said. "He has been frustrated in the past with the slow implementation of the Sentinel program," the aide said. "Given the concerns that the report raises about the shifts in costs and the implementation timeline, I expect that he will continue to raise this issue with the FBI." To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and an attorney for a Georgia whistleblower Wednesday asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta to reexamine an appeals panel ruling that EFF says violated the whistleblower's constitutional right to privacy of his e-mail communications.

The case involves Charles Rehberg who alerted local politicians to the systemic mismanagement of funds he uncovered at a George public hospital. In a news release, EFF claims a local prosecutor for Dougherty County conspired with the hospital to obtain Mr. Rehberg's personal e-mail communications by presenting him with a bogus grand jury subpoena. Rehberg also was charged for a burglary and assault that didn't occur - charges that were later dismissed.

Rehberg filed a civil lawsuit against the prosecutors for this misconduct. An appeals court later ruled that he did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his private email - a ruling EFF and Rehberg's attorney are disputing in their request for a rehearing.

"It's well established that individuals have a right to privacy in the content of their communications, electronic or otherwise," EFF Civil Liberties Director
Jennifer Granick said in a statement. "We're asking the court to look at this again and follow the law."

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a report Wednesday that examines technical barriers to trade and specifically cited policies imposed by the European Union, China and other countries that hamper U.S. exporters.

The report, included as part of the National Trade Estimate sent to Congress, said China's regulations and technical standards aimed at information technology products appear in "too many instances ... designed to favor China-specific approaches." In particular, USTR cited China's requirement that mobile handsets include a Chinese-specific standard known as WAPI (WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure). Standards such as this "are developed absent meaningful (if any) foreign input and tend to favor domestic producers." In an interview last week, U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., who has been a vocal critic of China's Internet restrictions, expressed concern over the WAPI standard, which he said would ensure mobile devices work with China's Internet filtering systems that block access to some information and Web sites.

The USTR report also cited the European Commission's use of European regional standards both at home and abroad, which "provide an advantage to European producers and firms." The report said U.S. firms often feel compelled to use these EU regional standards if they want to sell their products in EU countries. This puts smaller U.S. firms in particular at a competitive disadvantage, report said.

Another technical barrier cited in the report involves requirements by some governments that bar U.S. and other foreign suppliers from using testing laboratories or product certifiers based in the United States to show that their products comply with foreign technical regulations. The report noted that having to certify such products in a foreign destination imposes additional costs and burdens on U.S. firms.

"The Obama Administration is following through on its commitment to call out and break down barriers to American exports worldwide," U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk said in a statement. "USTR will take the information in these new reports, as well as in the National Trade Estimate itself, and use all the tools that we have to get these markets open to American products."

The e-mail accounts of several journalists, human rights activists and academics who cover China have been hacked, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

The attacks targeted Yahoo e-mail accounts of those who write about China and Taiwan and began mostly last week after Google announced it would redirect all its users in China to its uncensored Hong Kong-based search site, the report said. The New York Times story's author, Andrew Jacobs, also noted that hackers also targeted him, saying they "altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address."

A Yahoo spokeswoman would not comment on specific security breaches. The company, however, did release a statement saying, "Yahoo! condemns all cyber attacks regardless of origin or purpose. We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach."

Yahoo sold its Chinese operations in 2005 to a Chinese firm called Alibaba. Yahoo maintains a minority stake in the Yahoo China business but has no operational control.

The second report released Wednesday out of four gauging the opinions of Internet stakeholders found that while a large majority of those surveyed believe the Internet will lead to more efficient and responsive government institutions and businesses, they disagreed on the rate of change.

The report, based on a Web-based survey conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center, found that 72 percent of respondents agreed that in the next decade "innovative forms of online cooperation will result in significantly more efficient and responsive governments, businesses, non-profits, and other mainstream institutions." Only 26 percent agreed that these same groups would primarily retain "familiar 20th century models for conduct of relationships with citizens and consumers online and offline."

The report noted that while many businesses have used the Internet and new online tools to "upend traditional business models and practices [these] are not necessarily being felt in the public sector with the same urgency." The 900 people interviewed for the survey include what the report described as "Internet veterans,"- 50 percent of whom have used the Internet since 1992 and 11 percent have been "actively involved online" since 1982 or earlier.

Among those with the more pessimistic view about the ability of government in particular to take full advantage of the Internet is Michigan University law professor Susan Crawford, who served as a science and technology adviser on President Obama's National Economic Council and also is a former board member of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which manages the Internet address system.

"Having just spent some time in government, I'm less optimistic about the possibilities
for change than I used to be," Crawford said in her survey response. "It takes a very long time for entrenched interests to be open to paradigm shifts, and I'm afraid to say that our era is one of great entrenchment - at least in government. No matter how much information is online and available, there will still in 2020 be some small circle of men who will be hanging on to all the levers."

The White House is seriously considering proposals by a bipartisan task force to prevent lapses in information sharing among agencies that have allowed some terrorist plots to go undetected, according to members of the nonprofit panel.

A task force assembled by the Markle Foundation, a New York-based think tank that studies health information technology and security issues, recommended last week that the government expand the deployment of technologies that make it easy to probe existing information in agency databases to preempt attacks such as the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airplane on Christmas Day, Nextgov.com reported.

The proposals, which are based on past reports by the Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, were submitted to the House Judiciary Committee on March 24. The panel held a hearing that day to discuss improving information-sharing to prevent attacks such as the Christmas Day incident and the mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, which killed 13 people. The bipartisan task force, which was established in 2002, includes information technology executives, policymakers, public interest advocates and specialists in privacy, intelligence and national security. It advises all levels of government on the use of terrorism-related information.

Markle recommended agencies use persistent queries, which remember users' search terms. They work something like cookies, which are common applications on Web sites that companies use to track and remember user preferences. For example, if a user in January typed "John Doe" to review his visa application, and, in June another user types "John Doe" to review the individual's status as a foreign student, the previous user would be alerted that the June inquiry was made. The awareness of a connection allows new information to be put in a context that may warrant action.

In a January memo President Obama ordered the intelligence community to repair systemic weaknesses identified after the failed Christmas Day bombing. He called on the director of national intelligence to immediately clarify the role of analytics in "synchronizing, correlating and analyzing all sources of intelligence related to terrorism" and to speed IT upgrades to improve "knowledge discovery, database integration, cross-database searches and the ability to correlate biographic information with terrorism-related intelligence."

To facilitate piecing together disparate information, the task force recommended data be tagged with standardized information that can be indexed and searched. Markle also proposed deploying an authorized use standard that would permit users to discover certain data exists without gaining access to its contents. The searcher could ask the appropriate owners of the data to investigate the contents. But a 2008 study that Congress requested determined this solution was not a viable option because it conflicted with privacy laws, regulations and executive orders. To read more, click here.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and tech think tanks are urging Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to keep pace with technological changes in Internet use, the newly announced Digital Due Process coalition announced" Tuesday morning, CongressDailyPM (subscription) reports.

• "Google Inc. says malicious software has been used to spy on Vietnamese computer users opposed to a controversial bauxite mine in the Southeast Asian country," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "With a new version of the iPhone in the works, the clock is ticking for AT&T Inc. to get its much-criticized network ready for the looming battle," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

President Obama has appointed California's chief information officer to serve in the same role at the Defense Department and as assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration.

As California's CIO, Teresa Takai advises the governor "on the strategic management and direction of information technology resources as the state works to modernize and transform the way California does business with its citizens," according to a Monday statement from the White House. Prior to her California appointment in December 2007, Takai worked as director of the Michigan Department of Information Technology, where she also served as the state's CIO. During her tenure at Michigan, the state was ranked number one four years in a row in digital government by the Center for Digital Government, the White House said.

TechAmerica CEO and President Phil Bond Tuesday praised Takai's appointment, saying as California's first CIO, she "pulled disparate departments and agencies into one strong backbone for efficient, effective citizen service. ... Teri Takai is clearly a strong choice for turning DOD's current integration efforts into a 21st century infrastructure capable of helping to strengthen our national security on all fronts."

The leaders of a key Senate committee say federal agencies' slow transition to the massive Networx telecommunications contract is costing $18 million per month in lost savings and is a major cause for concern, according Nextgov.com reported Tuesday.

In a March 24 letter, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, told several agencies the delay was reminiscent of the transition to Networx predecessor FTS2001, which cost $74 million in lost savings. Agencies aren't taking appropriate actions to move to the new contract, the senators wrote. FTS2001 expires in spring 2011.

Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge officer for FedSources Inc., a market research firm in McLean, Va., said transition planning hasn't been smooth due in part to the telecommunications industry's difficulty with accommodating new technologies and the many steps required to inventory, purchase and implement new infrastructure and processes. "That's the essence of what the problem still is -- it takes a while to do these things," he said.

The General Services Administration, responsible for awarding the contract and working with agencies to make the transition, has taken steps to speed the process, the letter said. The committee also has worked with the Office of Management and Budget to identify challenges.

"While GSA was aware of the concern expressed by government leaders, and this committee in particular, regarding the progress of the Networx transition, we were completely unaware of the decision by [the committee] to send letters to agencies regarding their transition progress," said Karl Krumbholz, director of the Networx services program at GSA's Federal Acquisition Service. To read more, click here.

The Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service announced Tuesday that it has concluded the first round of broadband funding by awarding nearly $22 million in loans and grants to the Reservation Telephone Cooperative to provide broadband services to residents in and around North Dakota's Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.

The department said in a statement that the cooperative will receive a 10.95 million loan and a $10.95 million grant to provide broadband service in parts of both North Dakota and Montana. It is aimed at improving economic and educational opportunities in one of the poorest areas of the country, which has experienced poverty rates as high as 28 percent and a 40 percent unemployment rate.

The "broadband projects announced by USDA will open up educational, job and business opportunities to hundreds of thousands of Americans living in rural areas," Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in the statement.

RUS and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration were given $7.2 billion in economic stimulus funds to provide grants aimed at expanding broadband adoption and access. As part of the first round of funding, RUS has provided more than $1 billion of the $2.5 billion it received for broadband grants, the department said. The projects are aimed at providing high-speed Internet access to an estimated 529,000 households and 96,000 rural business and public facilities across 31 states, one territory and 17 tribal lands and predominantly Alaska Native regions, USDA said.

The department said it is reviewing the second round of applications and will announce the winners before the end of the 2010 fiscal year.

Google, Microsoft, AT&T, and a group of privacy advocates are teaming up to urge Congress to update the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to keep pace with technological advances and changes in consumer Internet habits, the newly-announced Digital Due Process coalition announced Tuesday. ECPA established standards for government access to electronic communications in criminal investigations.

Services such as cloud computing and location-based data sharing have made the 1986 privacy law out of date, the coalition contends, stripping consumers of protections they previously enjoyed over their data. The new push is "a recognition the time has come" to update the law, according to Richard Salgado, senior counsel for law enforcement and information security at Google.

Coalition members have met with the Justice Department, the FBI, the White House, and Capitol Hill stakeholders to push for an overhaul of ECPA, but Congressional action is not expected this year, according to Jim Dempsey, the vice president for public policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a coalition member.

Still, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., applauded the group's efforts and said he planned to hold hearings on updating ECPA in the coming months. "While the question of how best to balance privacy and security in the 21st century has no simple answer, what is clear is that our federal electronic privacy laws are woefully outdated," Leahy said in a statement.

Senate Judiciary Crime and Drugs Subcommittee Chairman Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Monday suggested he might push for revisions to federal wiretapping laws to prevent secret video surveillance, CongressDaily reported.

Specter made the remarks at a field hearing in Philadelphia that was prompted by allegations from a Pennsylvania family that school administrators monitored their son by using a secret webcam embedded in a school-issued laptop.

The family filed suit against the Lower Merion School District in February, contending that the school's secret monitoring came to light when the student was reprimanded for actions caught on camera in his own home. The case has become a national controversy and a rallying point for online privacy advocates. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Apple Inc. plans to begin producing this year a new iPhone that could allow U.S. phone carriers other than AT&T Inc. to sell the iconic gadget, said people briefed by the company," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "Google Inc. said its mobile services were being partially blocked in China, a week after the company stopped censoring its search engine in the country," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "The State Department has reportedly approached the Australian government about its plans to begin filtering its citizens' access to objectionable Web content," The Hill reports.

• "The federal probe into runaway Toyotas has resulted in enough scientific mystery that investigators have asked NASA scientists for help," the Washington Post reports.

• "Toyota promised" today "to respond faster to customer complaints as it held its first meeting of a committee of quality experts set up to help salvage a reputation battered by massive recalls and reports of runaway vehicles," AP reports.

A White House advisory panel made up of science and technology experts are warning U.S. policymakers that the U.S. lead in the emerging nanotechnology field is in danger of slipping because of aggressive investments and strategies launched by competitors such as China, the European Union and South Korea.

The report, released late last week by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said the United States remains the leader in nanotechnology, which involves the manipulation of matter at scales smaller than 100 billionths of meter, but the country should take certain key steps to help maintain its edge. These include increasing funding for product commercialization and technology transfer to ensure that nanotech R&D can make it to the marketplace and increased investments to study environmental, health and safety issues related to nanotech. The report is the third assessing the 10-year old National Nanotechnology Initiative, a multiagency federal initiative related to nanotechnology research and development.

The report also recommended enhancing the National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office, which helps coordinate the federal government's nanotech R&D activities, by boosting its annual budget from $3 million to $5 million. To help retain scientific and engineering talent, PCAST also recommended providing green cards to foreigners who receive advanced degrees in science or engineering from U.S. colleges or universities and who can show they have obtained U.S.-based scientific or engineering jobs. A similar proposal is included in immigration overhaul legislation proposed by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

"Going forward we need to place even more emphasis on the commercialization of the technology--through, for example, strategic funding of nanomanufacturing--supported by improved measures of the true value-added that nano products can bring to our economy," Maxine Savitz, co-chairwoman of PCAST's National Nanotechnology Initiative working group, said in a statement.

The report noted that while the United States still invests more money in nanotech R&D, $5.7 billion in 2008, other countries are beginning to close the gap. It noted that while U.S. public and private investments in nanotech grew by 18 percent between 2003 and 2008, overall investments worldwide grew by 27 percent.

The Justice Department said Monday that it would not challenge Cisco's acquisition of TANDBERG, which makes video conferencing technologies. European regulators also announced Monday that they have approved the deal after the two firms agreed to certain conditions.

The Justice Department said it decided not to challenge the deal in part because of the conditions the firms agreed to in order to gain the European Commission's approval. U.S. and European antitrust regulators examined the deal to see if it would hamper competition for a type of video conferencing technology known as "telepresence" that both firms offer. TANDBERG is based in both the United States and Norway.

"The commission's investigation had identified serious competition concerns in some of these markets, due to interoperability issues between the merged entity's solutions and those of its competitors," the commission, the European Union's regulatory arm, said in a statement . "However, in light of the remedies offered by the parties, the commission has now concluded that the proposed concentration, as modified by the commitments, would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area or any substantial part of it."

Among the commitments Cisco agreed to make include divesting its ownership of its Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) and the library of open source software useful to implementers of TIP to an independent industry body, Cisco said in a statement. It also will allow the independent body to license TIP to others for free. "Open standards lower barriers to entry, and can be especially pro-competitive in rapidly evolving high-technology markets," the Justice Department said in a statement. "The department has taken the commitments into account, along with various market factors, such as the evolving nature of the telepresence business, in reaching its decision to close its investigation."

Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Business Group, said in a statement, "Our commitments will promote multi-vendor interoperability and contribute to the ubiquity of video communications, which will benefit customers, competitors and the industry as a whole."

Census Bureau officials say they are cautiously optimistic that the computer systems it built for the 2010 decennial count will work as planned, but critics doubt the systems will be able to handle the demand as hundreds of thousands of census takers hit the streets in April, NextGov.com reported.

Witnesses at a House hearing last week gave mixed reviews of how prepared the bureau is to count the citizens who have not sent back census forms. Two critical database systems still are not working as planned, and time to test and fix defects is running out, witnesses told the House Oversight and Government Reform Information Policy, Census and National Archives Subcommittee.

One of the networks not operating smoothly is the Decennial Applicant Personnel and Payroll System that issues payments to the more than 600,000 temporary employees who will travel door to door in the coming weeks, visiting households that have not filled out a census form. That system has been sluggish when trying to manage fewer accounts than what it will handle when in full operation in April, said Robert Goldenkoff, director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office. Another system, the Paper-Based Operations Control System, which processes census forms, also has shown limited functionality, he said.

The bureau has experienced numerous technical problems in the years leading up to the decennial census. It struggled to develop handheld computers that enumerators could use to collect data in the field and send it immediately back to headquarters, but hardware and software glitches, along with missed deadlines and cost overruns, forced officials to drop the devices in April 2008 in favor of its traditional paper-based process. To read more, click here.

A group of House Energy and Commerce members are urging the FTC to investigate complaints that Google's Buzz social networking service and some of its other services may harm consumer privacy.

In a letter sent late last week to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, the lawmakers urged the agency to investigate whether Google disclosed personal information about its customers without their consent as part of the launch of Buzz in February. Buzz's launch sparked complaints from users because it initially automatically signed users up for the service and used Gmail contact lists to create lists of possible friends. Google has made numerous changes to Buzz since its launch to address such concerns.

The letter also asks the FTC to probe how much Google uses personal information collected from Buzz and its other services to target ads and how Google's proposed acquisition of AdMob will affect how it delivers ads.

"We are writing to express our concern over claims that Google's 'Google Buzz' social networking tool breaches online consumer privacy and trust," according to the letter signed by Reps. John Barrow, D-Ga., who led the effort, Bruce Braley, D-Iowa, Mike Burgess, R-Texas, G.K. Butterfield, D-N.C., Tim Murphy, R-Pa., Frank Pallone, D-N.J., Mike Rogers, R-Mich., Steve Scalise, R-La., Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas as well as Del. Donna Christensen, D-V.I.

"Due to the high number of individuals whose online privacy is affected by tools like this - either directly or indirectly - we feel that these claims warrant the commission's review of Google's public disclosure of personal information of consumers through Google Buzz," they added.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the FTC in February raising many of the same issues cited by the lawmakers.

In a statement in response to the letter, Google said "user transparency and control are very important to us, and we review all products carefully before we roll them out. When we realized that we'd unintentionally made many of our users unhappy, we moved quickly to make significant product improvements to address their concerns. Our door is always open to discuss additional ways to improve our products and services moving forward."

During her spring break from Congress, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., is aiming to drum up interest in the privacy and security risks related to peer-to-peer file-sharing programs. Klobuchar hosted an event at a Best Buy store near Minneapolis Monday where members of Best Buy's technical staff known as the Geek Squad were expected to show how P2P networks work and some of the privacy and security risks associated with them.

She introduced legislation last month that would require that users are informed and provide consent before P2P file sharing programs are installed on their computers or their information is shared with others via P2P networks. The bill also would make it illegal to prevent a user from blocking, disabling or removing P2P file sharing programs on their computers and also would give the FTC authority to enforce the bill's provisions.

Users "run the risk of unintentionally sharing all of their private files like tax returns, legal documents, medical records, and home movies when they are connected to peer-to-peer networks," Klobuchar said in a statement when the bill was introduced. "This bill will let people know - in a way that they can understand - that their personal files are being shared with complete strangers."

The FTC announced last month that it had notified 100 firms and organizations that personal information, including sensitive data about customers and employees, had been exposed on P2P file-sharing networks, making the data available to users of those networks and possibly exposing those affected to identity theft of fraud. The FTC warned these entities that they must take steps to protect the sensitive information.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Microsoft Corp. has vanquished most competitors to its Office suite of software. But a new version of the popular program will be challenged by free or low-cost Web-based alternatives from Google Inc., which some businesses are adopting," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• "The United States has raised concerns with Australia about the impact of a proposed Internet filter that would place restrictions on Web content, an official said" today, AP reports.

As the nation struggled through a severe recession, use of computers and wireless Internet access at U.S. public libraries surged last year, according to a new study.

The study, conducted by the University of Washington Information School and released Thursday, studied who uses library computers and Internet access and why. It found that 77 million Americans - nearly one-third of Americans age 14 and over - utilized computers and wireless Internet access available at most public libraries. The study's findings are based on the responses of nearly 50,000 library users from 400 public libraries around the country - 3,176 responses from a national telephone survey and 44,881 Web survey responses.

"As the nation struggled through a recession, people relied on library technology to find work, apply for college, secure government benefits, learn about critical medical treatments, and connect with their communities," the study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, found.

Low-income Americans were the group most likely to take advantage of computers and Internet access at public libraries. The study found that 44 percent of people living below the federal poverty line used computers and the Internet at their public libraries. Those who used library computers or Internet access say it was most useful in finding employment, education and health information as well as in making community connections.

"Millions of people see libraries as an essential tool to connect them to information, knowledge, and opportunities," Marsha Semmel, acting director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services, said. "Policy makers must fully recognize and support the role libraries are playing in workforce development, education, health and wellness, and the delivery of government services."

The message battle continues between broadcasters and the music industry over legislation that would require AM and FM radio stations to pay a fee to performers for playing their music on the air. The latest salvo comes over the radio industry's claim that the legislation would place a new burden on already struggling local radio stations.

The performance rights legislation has been approved by the House and Senate Judiciary committees, but the leaders of those panels have urged the two sides to try to reach a compromise. While the two sides say they are continuing discussions, they also have launched major public relations battles aimed at trying to sway the public and lawmakers to their side.

The National Association of Broadcasters' allies in the House wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Minority Leader John Boehner Thursday voicing concern with the legislation's potential impact on local radio stations. "Enactment of H.R. 848 could lead to the elimination of jobs in our communities," the 119 House Democrats and Republicans wrote their leaders. "With the economic downturn, local radio stations have seen their revenues fall."

Citing new revenue forecasts, the musicFIRST coalition, which includes a dozen music industry groups, says lawmakers and their constituents shouldn't buy this argument. "You've heard it from NAB, they say now is the worst time to pass a radio performance right, ad revenues are down, woe is us, etc. Well, times are changing, radio is on the rebound and that's good news," musicFIRST spokesman Martin Machowsky said. "Our view: It's always the right time to do the right thing."

General Services Administration chief Marth Johnson said Thursday that her agency will leverage technology solutions to better serve other federal agencies, Nextgov.com reported.

GSA, which currently accounts for 13 percent of federal spending, could increase its sales if it were allowed to open its schedules to state and local jurisdictions or expand into new markets such as health information technology, Johnson said in a speech at FOSE, a government technology conference and security expo in Washington.

But if the agency is going to expand, it must change its internal business practices such as improving the flow of data and information to boost performance, she added. "What is in our hands is the whole notion of upping our performance and performing better for our clients -- being more responsive, helping people find what they need more quickly and understanding where they can get the best value for the right price," she told reporters after her speech. "If GSA ups its game, its business will grow," she said.

Johnson stressed that technology enables collaboration through collective intelligence or social media tools to harness expertise and solve problems. The technologies exist, but government still needs to work out how best to use them to communicate ideas, she said. GSA on Thursday launched two pilots for its Better Buy Project, a collaborative forum that collects ideas for improving the federal acquisition process. The first uses a wiki and other social media tools to collect comments and questions on how to improve data storage and hosting on Data.gov. The second solicits feedback on the infrastructure of a new hosting environment called Clearpath. To read more, click here.

The AFL-CIO has come out in support of a compromise version of patent overhaul legislation unveiled this month by Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking member Jeff Sessions, CongressDaily reported.

In a letter Thursday to Leahy and Sessions, the AFL-CIO said it has been concerned with proposals to overhaul the patent system that it said would have reduced damages for infringed patents, made changes to post-grant review procedures that would have undermined confidence in patent validity, and required the publication of pending patents. "It was our view that those changes proposed in these areas could inhibit domestic investment, jeopardize innovation and threaten the jobs of our members," AFL-CIO's Director of Government Affairs William Samuel wrote.

He noted that the changes included in the compromise, which will be offered as a manager's amendment when the bill goes to the floor, "address in large measure these concerns and has our support," he said. Samuel added that much progress has been made in the compromise in "balancing differing interests on a very difficult issue." To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

The FCC spent a whopping $20 million to produce its 360-page national broadband plan -- a price tag that amounts to about $50,000 per page.

"It took [the agency] about a year, I think, to develop this plan, so in effect, it's $50,000 a day," mocked House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who requested the cost figure in a recent letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski. Stearns disclosed the tally during the panel's oversight hearing Thursday on the technology blueprint.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Google Inc. told legislators that the U.S. government must support Internet freedoms, as Congress weighs bills that would deepen the government's role in advancing free expression on the Internet globally," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• In Britain, "Scotland Yard is advising administrators of public Web spaces to periodically poke through their customers' files and keep an eye out for suspicious activity," AP reports.

In its push to ensure that Americans fill out their 2010 census forms, the Census Bureau appears to be leaving nothing to chance. The bureau has its own Facebook page and a Twitter account.

"We can't move forward until you mail it back," the bureau tells its visitors on its Facebook page. "Can I Fill Out My Form Online? No. Not this time. We are experimenting with Internet response for the future," the bureau's page adds.

It also includes information about how to fill out your census form, where to find a help center and has new a tab listing which parts of the country have the highest participation rates. It also allows users to see how their own communities have responded.

So far, Sholes Village, Iowa has the highest participation rate with 77 percent of the town's residents having returned their census forms. Six of the top 10 communities are from Iowa, but North Dakota has the highest overall response rate with 45 percent of residents having returned their census forms so far.

While the Senate Commerce Committee Thursday touted support for cybersecurity legislation it approved this week, some tech industry groups say they still have concerns with the measure.

In a news release, the committee said the bill, sponsored by Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is "the first comprehensive approach to developing a coordinated public-private partnership to prevent, deter, and respond to cyber attacks. Industry leaders and associations are praising the Rockefeller-Snowe bill as critically important to America's national and economic security."

The committee noted that the bill has drawn support from AT&T, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, Symantec, U.S. Telecom, and Verizon. "The committee's rigorous open stakeholder process has resulted in a much improved measure that recognizes cybersecurity as a shared government and private sector responsibility," the statement quoted Symantec Chief Technology Officer Mark Bregman as saying.

But even though the committee adopted several changes during a markup session Wednesday, Liesyl Franz, Tech America's vice president for information security, said "we still have work to do" on some provisions that her group, the Business Software Alliance and the Information Technology Industry Council flagged in a letter to the committee earlier this week. Among the provisions cited in the letter include concern over one that calls on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to recognize and promote techniques and best practices.

BSA President and CEO Robert Holleyman said in a statement Wednesday, "Despite its many strengths, the Rockefeller/Snowe bill still contains elements that raise significant concerns and need to be addressed. The bill would establish a framework focused more on compliance than on innovation and agile response to cyber threats. The software industry is concerned that, despite its best efforts, the government would be unable to rapidly recognize best practices without defaulting to a one-size-fits-all approach."

Congressional opposition to strengthening regulation of broadband service grew Thursday when a prominent Democrat, former House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., and several House Republicans objected to an expansion of the FCC's authority, CongressDaily reported.

The members spoke out during a hearing before the Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee on the FCC's release last week of its national broadband plan. They're worried that the sweeping blueprint, which aims to extend high-speed Internet access to at least 90 percent of Americans by 2020, paves the way for new restrictions referenced in its pages.

A key concern involves the possible reclassification of broadband as a heavily regulated telecommunications service. The specter of such a change has triggered strong opposition among telecommunications and cable companies, who warn it could result in price regulation, open access on networks for competing services and reduced investment when the agency is promoting wider broadband deployment. Republicans worry the agency will adopt tentatively approved rules that would toughen "network neutrality" guidelines aimed at preserving the Internet's openness.

Dingell urged the FCC to avoid imposing another mandate, a requirement that broadband providers "unbundle" their networks, which would involve making their facilities available to competitors at wholesale rates. "This, I think, is to reopen an old fight and gives me a great concern because it could serve as a disincentive to necessary investments," Dingell said. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

Every American should have broadband access -- that's an idea every faction in the telecom world seems to endorse. Making it so is another thing altogether.

While not everyone has shown their cards yet, major telecom players are sure to air grievances soon over FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's decade-long plan to get more Americans online. Hearings scheduled on the Hill this week and panels featuring industry lobbyists will provide forums for venting.

National Journal's Sara Jerome has provided a brief overview of a few parts of the plan that will provide fertile ground for disagreement as stakeholders speak up. Click here to read more.

House Democrats and Republicans Thursday launched a congressional transparency caucus that will call for new laws requiring federal information be accessible on the Internet for free and will teach other members about open government initiatives, Nextgov.com reported.

"On a bipartisan basis this caucus can bring about real changes to the way our government does business," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., co-chairman of the new 19-member group and ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"We need to work together if we're going to ensure that taxpayer dollars are spent responsibly and lawmakers are operating honestly and effectively," Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill., the caucus's other co-chairman, added.

The caucus will work to educate lawmakers and the public and propose new policies and oversee existing ones, according to the group's members. A priority area will be President Obama's open government directive, which demands agencies increasingly publish their records online. Lawmakers from both parties are attempting to require agencies to post public information online by default, which would subsequently preserve for posterity parts of the directive.

"Real-time, crowd-sourced citizen oversight of the government's activities has become possible," a March 10 letter signed by the co-chairmen inviting their House colleagues to join the group said. "Once the right policies and data standards are put in place, Americans will be able to track every dollar of government spending, scrutinize the goals and performance of every federal program and perform searches of millions of forms and filings in a single keystroke." To read more, click here.

Public interest groups renewed their calls Wednesday for the FCC to clarify rules related to text messaging and short codes, saying a new dispute between Sprint and Catholic Relief Services over mobile giving for Haiti highlights the need for some legal clarity.

The issue relates to a dispute between Sprint and CRS over the charity's mobile-texting campaign related to Haiti. Instead of making the standard $5 or $10 donation text donation, CRS set up a system where prospective donors, when they send a text to donate, would be given the option of being connected to a CRS call center, where the donor might be persuaded to give a bigger donation, volunteer or make some other connection with the charity. The firm running the campaign for CRS, Mobile Commons, said it was told through a short-code aggregator called OpenMarket last month that Sprint is demanding that the program be shut down within 40 days or Sprint would block access to the short code it had set up for the CRS campaign.

Sprint argues that it has given Mobile Commons 45-60 days to sign a standard agreement with Sprint, which it requires of all groups that operate mobile-texting charity donation campaigns, according to Sprint spokeswoman Crystal Davis. She said the standard agreements are needed so firms like Mobile Commons can ensure the charities they work with are legitimate and provide Sprint with information it needs when customers call with questions related to the mobile-texting campaigns.

"We hope that a standard agreement can be made with the mobile giving aggregator to make certain that it verifies every 501c3 organization and mobile giving campaign it manages to ensure a secure and seamless mobile giving experience for our customers," Davis said. If an agreement is not reached with Mobile Commons in that time, Sprint will "continue to work [with] them to make sure this mobile campaign is accessible to our customers," she added.

Free Press, Public Knowledge and the Media Access Project, however, say the dispute highlights the need for FCC intervention on text messaging and short codes, which are shortened numbers used to text a certain group. Free Press and Public Knowledge filed a petition with the FCC in 2007 after Verizon declined the abortion rights group NARAL's request for a short code for text messaging with the group's members.

A small online-mall firm has won an Ohio judge's approval to inspect the inner workings of Google's closely-held online advertising software, which its high-tech rivals say is illegally rigged to help Google and hurt its competitors, National Journal.com reported.

The decision Wednesday by Franklin County Common Pleas Judge John Bessey rejecting Google's plea to delay discovery "gives us an opportunity to start gathering the evidence and documents that we need to prove our case... there's no limits on what we can ask for," said Joseph Bial, a D.C.-based special counsel for Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft representing Ohio-based myTriggers.com. "Discovery will commence immediately," he said.

The courtroom meeting was "nothing major, and certainly nothing out of the ordinary," said Google spokesman Andrew Pederson. "On discovery, it simply won't be stayed, as we had requested, so it's just a timing issue, and nothing substantive."

Google sued myTriggers last year, claiming non-payment of roughly $350,000 in online advertising fees. MyTriggers, which allows consumers to compare online prices for items such as office supplies, DVDs, and auto parts, then countersued, claiming violation of state antitrust laws.

Google "put a company out of business, and then they tried to recover money," said Bial. The discovery "is intended to address the conduct that put myTriggers out of business." Investigators, he said, will focus on Google's "Quality Score" system, which is used to determine which company's ads are displayed.

The Ohio court case is significant because competing high-tech companies are hoping that Google becomes the target of a federal antitrust case. The company's popular software makes it the market leader in the online advertising sector, but advocates for other companies -- including Microsoft -- say it is illegally abusing its market power. To read more, click here.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "An official from Go Daddy, the world's largest Internet domain name registrar, told members of Congress Wednesday that increased surveillance by the Chinese government has prompted it to stop providing new address registration services for China's domestic domain, .CN," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "A House subcommittee culminated five years of study and debate Wednesday by moving to its parent panel a bill authorizing the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission to require utilities to help shield the nation's electricity grid from major solar disturbances and acts of sabotage," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "A House Energy and Commerce subcommittee approved legislation Wednesday to regulate prepaid phone calling cards to prevent abuses such as deceptive fees," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "With the U.K. election, which must be held by June 6, likely to be the closest since 1974, strategists for Prime Minister [Gordon] Brown and Conservative leader [David] Cameron are trying to use social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook and Google Inc.'s YouTube as effectively as" President Obama "did in his 2008 presidential campaign," Bloomberg News reports.

Microsoft came under attack Wednesday from a House lawmaker for not following Google's lead in resisting China's demand for foreign firms to abide by the country's censorship rules and Internet restrictions.

During a hearing focused on Internet control in China before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Rep. Chris Smith, R-NJ, singled out Microsoft, which has said it will continue to operate in China and follow Chinese laws. Microsoft "needs to get with the program" and "join the side of human rights...rather than enabling tyranny," Smith said.

In response, Microsoft spokeswoman Christina Pearson said, "We appreciate that different companies may make different decisions based on their own experiences and views. At Microsoft we remain committed to advancing free expression through active engagement in over 100 countries, even as we comply with the laws in every country in which we operate."

Google stopped censoring Chinese search results on Monday and began redirecting users to its uncensored Hong Kong-based site, although Chinese Web filters will block some of that content.

Commission Chairman Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., described Google's action as "a strong step in favor of freedom of expression and information" and "a powerful indictment of the Chinese government's insistence of censorship of the Internet."

Members of the commission, which is made up of House and Senate lawmakers, also praised another firm at the hearing, Go Daddy, the nation's biggest provider of Internet address registration services. Go Daddy General Counsel and Executive Vice President Christine Jones told the panel that increased surveillance by the Chinese government has prompted it to stop providing new address registration services for China's domestic domain name, .cn.

"We did not want to act as an agent of the Chinese government," she said.

A coalition of groups that represent those who produce intellectual property Wednesday urged the Obama administration to bolster federal efforts to crack down on copyright infringement domestically and abroad, noting that particular emphasis should be placed on finding ways to curb IP theft via the Internet.

The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the Directors Guild of America, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, the Motion Picture Association of America, the National Music Publishers' Association, the Recording Industry Association of America and the Screen Actors Guild made the comments in response to White House IP enforcement coordinator Victoria Espinel's call last month for input on the strategy her office is crafting seeking ways to bolster IP protection. Comments on the plan were due Wednesday at 5 p.m.

While IP theft "takes many forms, the growth of online theft of copyrighted works presents the greatest and most urgent challenge," the groups wrote in their filing. "The Internet in general, and broadband services in particular, offer many new and exciting opportunities to consumers; prime among them are new ways to create, distribute, and enjoy copyrighted works."

Among the measures the groups urged the Obama administration to pursue include greater efforts to encourage legitimate businesses, such as Internet service providers, social networking sites, search engines and others, to help crack down on those who use their services to engage in copyright infringement. "Encouraging these intermediaries to work with content owners on a voluntary basis to reduce infringements, and assuring these intermediaries that such cooperation will not be second-guessed, should be top priories that call for the personal intervention of senior government officials if necessary," the groups said.

In addition, the groups urged an examination of federal and state laws to ensure they are not impeding efforts by ISPs and others to help combat IP theft and called on the federal government to hold an annual summit on ways to tackle IP theft.

The Senate Commerce Committee Wednesday approved legislation to improve how the federal government and the private sector deal with cyber attacks. Approved by voice vote, the bill would raise the priority of cybersecurity throughout the federal government and streamline cybersecurity-related functions.

It also aims to enhance public awareness and bolster research and development as well as require the government and private sector to collaborate and identify those IT systems critical to the nation's strategic interests. Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller , D-W.Va., said the bill offers a "comprehensive and bipartisan" approach to address the nation's vulnerability to cybercrime and global cyber espionage. "It's a pre-emptive piece of legislation."

The committee adopted by voice vote a substitute amendment that aims to incentivize private-sector involvement by recognizing their innovations with a government seal of approval similar to the Energy Star seal used for energy-efficient appliances. Federal contractors that repeatedly fail to comply with best practices and training programs identified by government officials and the private sector would be required to develop and implement a remediation plan aimed at improving their cybersecurity protections.

Earlier versions of the bill sparked concern from some critics that the bill would give the president the authority during an emergency to disconnect private networks from the Internet or seize control of those networks. The substitute states that the legislation does not authorize new or expanded presidential authorities but instead attempts to avoid bureaucratic confusion. It would require the administration and private sector to work together to develop an emergency preparedness response plan that would be implemented in the event of a cybersecurity emergency, which is described in a committee summary as something equivalent to an act of war, a terrorist attack or a major natural disaster.

Go-Daddy, the nation's largest provider of Internet address registration services, announced Wednesday that it would stop providing new Internet address registration services for China's domestic domain name, cn.

During testimony before a hearing on Internet control in China before the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Go Daddy General Counsel and Executive Vice President Christine Jones said the firm would continue to manage existing .cn names.

Go Daddy's announcement came just a few days after Google formerly stopped censoring its search results for users in China. Instead, Google is redirecting its users in China to its uncensored Hong Kong-based site. However, users in China are still being blocked from seeing some content opposed by the Chinese government because of the Web filters China uses.

Verizon's top lobbyist Wednesday urged Congress to rewrite telecommunications rules to limit the FCC's authority to regulate the Internet and instead require a more collaborative approach.

In prepared remarks before the New Democrat Network, Tom Tauke, Verizon's executive vice president for public affairs, policy and communications, said that given the changing nature of today's communications landscape, traditional definitions of service providers do not apply given the variety of services they offer. As a result, he called on Congress to rewrite telecom rules to provide a "process that uses the innovative, flexible and technology-driven nature of the Internet to address issues as they arise."

Tauke noted that the FCC's authority has come under question as a result of the court case involving the agency's efforts to impose network neutrality rules on Comcast but dismissed suggestions that broadband should be regulated under traditional telephone network rules.

"Instead of the traditional rule-making process, federal enforcement agencies could structure themselves around an on-going engagement with Internet engineers and technologists to analyze technology trends, define norms to guide such questions as network management, and understand in advance the implications of new, emerging technologies," said Tauke, a former GOP U.S. House member from Iowa.

The historic health care reform bill President Obama signed into law Tuesday calls for development of state health care exchanges that eventually will allow Americans to compare insurance through Web portals as easily as they price and book airline tickets, Nextgov.com reported.

The exchanges, as the president outlined in a June 2, 2009, letter to the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., a decades-long champion of universal health care, will create a "market where Americans can one-stop shop for a health care plan, compare benefits and prices, and choose the plan that's best for them."

The exchanges, which will provide coverage to individuals and small businesses not covered by plans offered by larger employers or the federal government's Medicare program for the elderly, will become fully operational in 2014. But language in the 906-page Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act directs the Health and Human Services Department to consult with states to set up by a Web site no later than July 1 that will allow the public to search for the most affordable health coverage.

HHS is required to develop a template for portals that states can use by 2014. By that time, states must establish their own health insurance portal sites that individuals can use to compare health insurance policies that states have certified as qualified health care plans. The exchanges also will serve as a guide for Medicare and Medicaid coverage for eligible individuals. The law also mandates that HHS develop a rating system for health plans using quality and price as the criteria, and post the information on the state health portals.

States can choose to have their exchanges managed by a government body or by a nonprofit organization that they form. In addition, states can set up two exchanges in 2014, one that serves individuals and another that small businesses use, or they can form one exchange to serve both groups. To read more, click here.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• Google's "problems in China escalated on Tuesday as its ties to some Chinese partners began to come apart and the government reacted angrily to Google's attempt to bypass government censors," the New York Times reports.

• "Google Inc. is still censoring search content for some of its customers in China, a company spokeswoman said" today, "in a decision that underscores the Internet giant's delicate effort to hold onto its mainland businesses days after moving its search engine offshore," AP reports.

Three leading technology associations on Tuesday expressed concern that a major cybersecurity bill, which the Senate Commerce Committee is set to mark up Wednesday, could have unintended consequences that could hinder the ability of private companies to respond to threats and attacks.

Leaders of TechAmerica, the Business Software Alliance and the Information Technology Industry Council praised many aspects of the bill, which was introduced last week by Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

But they complained in a letter to Rockefeller and Snowe about some provisions of the legislation, such as requiring companies to comply with cybersecurity practices identified by the National Institute for Standards and Technology. "Despite all [the] best efforts, we do have concerns regarding whether government can rapidly recognize best practices without defaulting to a one-size-fits all approach," they wrote.

"The NIST-based requirements framework in the bill, coupled with government procurement requirements, if not clarified, could have the unintended effect of hindering the development and use of cutting-edge technologies, products, and services, even for those that would protect our critical information infrastructure."

They added the bill might impose a bureaucratic employee-certification program on companies or give the president the authority to mandate security practices. "While we welcome the priority that President Obama has placed on cybersecurity in his administration, we note that the bill seems to establish a new role for the president in mandating and enforcing requisite security, reporting, and remediation measures in the private sector," they wrote.

The bill, which was under works for a year, also calls on the federal government to work with the owners and operators of critical infrastructure to develop a comprehensive plan to prevent and respond to attacks on cybersecurity networks. The associations said that provision would do much to strengthen cybersecurity efforts.

The FCC's national broadband plan could get a boost from possible House legislation that would grant the agency authority to implement one of its core recommendations: creating a nationwide wireless broadband network for public safety officials, CongressDaily reported.

The agency has suggested that the network be built using 10 megahertz of spectrum already under the control of emergency responders. The proposal follows a failed effort by the commission to auction adjacent spectrum, known as the D-block, to a commercial bidder willing to enter into a public-private partnership with first responders.

During an appearance Tuesday at a telecommunications policy forum sponsored by National Journal, House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he's exploring legislation addressing the issue.
"The commission had recommended an auction of the D-block, essentially without conditions. I agree with that recommendation," he said.

Boucher said he planned to huddle Tuesday with Communications Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., who also participated in the telecom event, on crafting a bill that would direct the FCC to hold another D-block auction, with the frequencies available solely for commercial use. Some of the auction proceeds would help finance construction of the emergency network featuring interoperable communications across jurisdictions, coupled with an additional $12 billion to $16 billion in appropriations sought by the agency. "I think we have the possibility for a bipartisan bill here," Stearns added.

Meanwhile, Boucher said at the forum that Thursday's scheduled oversight hearing featuring testimony from all five FCC regulators about the broadband plan might be bumped to April. A Senate Commerce hearing on the FCC's broadband plan that was supposed to take place Tuesday was postponed. To reach more, click here. (Subscription required)

Top executives from some of the nation's largest tech companies will be in Washington Wednesday to meet with key administration officials and congressional leaders to discuss the firms' calls for action on such issues as clean energy, tax reform, and education reform.

The executives will be in town as part of TechNet's annual CEO fly-in, where the tech executives come to the nation's capital to lobby policymakers on key tech priorities. Cisco CEO John Chambers, VeriSign CEO Mark McLauglin, Hewlett-Packard General Counsel Mike Holston, TechNet co-founder John Doerr, a partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, are just some of the dozens of tech executives expected to come to town for the event. They will be meeting with Obama administration officials such as Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and Commerce Secretary Gary Locke, TechNet President and CEO Rey Ramsey said in an interview.

In their meeting with Geithner, Ramsey said the tech CEOs will likely bring up their concern over an administration proposal calling for changes to a provision that allows U.S. companies to defer paying taxes on overseas profits. Ramsey said the CEOs will likely stress that the proposal is "anti-competitive." They also will likely focus on the importance of enhancing and making permanent the research and development tax credit.

On Capitol Hill, Ramsey said the TechNet executives also will also be meeting with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin, D-Mich., as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Sens. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, who heads the Senate Republican High Tech Task Force.

The European Union's highest court ruled Tuesday that Google is not infringing trademarks by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to their competitors' trademarks.

"Google has not infringed trademark law by allowing advertisers to purchase keywords corresponding to their competitors' trade marks," the European Court of Justice said in a statement. However, it also warned that advertisers "cannot, by using such keywords, arrange for Google to display ads which do not allow Internet users easily to establish from which undertaking the goods or services covered by the ad in question originate."

The case stems from a trademark infringement suit filed against Google in France by luxury designer Louis Vuitton. Google brought the case to the EU court after losses in the French court system.

"Some companies want to limit choice for users by extending trademark law to encompass the use of keywords in online advertising," Google Senior Litigation Counsel Harjinder S. Obhi said in a blog post Tuesday. "Today, the court confirmed that Google has not infringed trademark law by allowing advertisers to bid for keywords corresponding to their competitors' trademarks."

Obhi added that the court also said that "European law that protects Internet hosting services applies to Google's AdWords advertising system. This is important because it is a fundamental principle behind the free flow of information over the Internet."

Sens. Orrin Hatch, R-UT, and Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., introduced legislation Tuesday aimed at enhancing international cooperation to combat cybercrime.

"Cybercrime is a serious threat to the security of the global economy, which is why we need to coordinate our fight worldwide," Hatch said in a statement. "Until countries begin to take the necessary steps to fight criminals within their borders, cybercrime havens will continue to flourish."

The bill would require the president to submit an annual report to Congress assessing multilateral efforts to combat cyber crime as well as how other countries use information and communications technologies (ICT) in critical infrastructure, the extent and nature of cyber crime based in each country, the adequacy and effectiveness of those countries efforts to address cyber crime, and what type of online consumer protections are offered by other countries.

In addition, the bill would require that programs aimed at combating cybercrime target countries with low ICT penetration to ensure they do not become havens for cybercriminals. It also would encourage officials to include cybersecurity measures in programs aimed at improving such sectors as finance or telecommunications in other countries.

Gillibrand said the bill would "require the president to provide a global assessment, identify threats from abroad, work with other countries to crack down on their own cyber criminals, and urge the president to cut off U.S. assistance and resources for countries that refuse to take responsibility for cybersecurity."

The lawmakers noted that studies from network security provider McAfee Inc., have found that the global economy overall lost more than $1 trillion in 2008 as a result of cyber attacks.

Federal chief information officers have embraced the Obama administration's open government initiative by trying to increase access to government information and encouraging public participation and collaboration, a new survey of these officials released Tuesday found.

The 20th annual survey of CIOs, conducted by TechAmerica and Grant Thornton, found that CIOs are trying to improve access to government information through portals such as Data.gov, USASpending.gov, Recovery.gov and the Federal IT Dashboard and aiming to increase public participation through social media, wikis, Web. 2.0, Twitter and next-generation Web applications.

"The CIOs think that broadening public participation and involvement in government will create greater trust in government, increase the value that citizens receive from government, and unleash innovation with respect to governing and government services," Paul Wohlleben, a partner in the Global Public Sector practice at Grant Thornton, LLP, said in a statement.

At the same time, the CIOs said cybersecurity ranked among the top long-term challenges they face followed by information technology infrastructure; IT workforce issues; IT management; efficiency and effectiveness; performance management and accountability; and acquisition issues.

The report also included some recommendations to improve government IT. They included a call for officials to provide guidelines on how and where cloud computing should be used in government; provide more details about the shape, form and benefits of open government; and set a goal for cybersecurity and create a roadmap for achieving an appropriate level of operational security.

More than 40 CIOs, information resources management officials and representatives from the White House Office of Management and Budget and congressional oversight committee staff were interviewed for the survey.

House Energy and Commerce senior member Rick Boucher, D-Va., said Tuesday that his proposed legislation to overhaul the Universal Service Fund would go further than what the FCC could do under its current authority.

The FCC devoted a central piece of the national broadband plan last week to recommendations for the future of the fund, which subsidizes telephone services to low-income and rural homes. The plan proposes to pivot the fund toward subsidizing broadband access, as does a measure Boucher and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., released in draft form in November.

During a telecom forum sponsored by National Journal, Boucher said his draft measure would go further than the FCC plan. In particular, he pointed to the bill's effort to prevent "traffic pumping schemes," a practice in which phone companies inflate their call volume to boost the inter-carrier compensation fees they collect. "I don't think the commission under its current authorities could do [all that the legislation] could do today," said Boucher, chairman of the Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee.

The same topic provided a light moment from Boucher, who noted that free calls to pornographic services are possibly being used to boost access charge revenue. "I've never visited them," he noted.

Meanwhile, Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said he will provide "loyal opposition" to some of the recommendations in the FCC's plan. He reiterated his desire for more transparency from the FCC, including on how much it cost to write the plan and who wrote it.

"I'd like to know who some of these people were," he said, questioning what their "agenda" was. He also said he was glad to see that the plan did not include net neutrality rules that would rein in how Internet service providers manage traffic running over their networks, although the FCC is pursuing such regulation along a separate track.

Cloud computing can improve government efficiency, but federal agencies need coordinated guidance to address potential security pitfalls, according to an FCC proposal included in its national broadband plan released last week.

The FCC recommended in the plan that the Office of Management and Budget supplement existing cloud-based projects -- in which shared software, applications and information are accessed through the Internet -- with a government-wide strategy that takes into account security and privacy concerns, Nextgov.com reported.

"The federal government has pretty significant efforts going on, but one of the things we realized is that there were multiple flowers blooming and not a lot of guidance," said Eugene Huang, government operations director for the National Broadband Task Force, a panel of FCC officials, consultants and technology experts. "We're not interested in shutting down innovative programs, but instead in saying, 'Look, these things represent some of the cutting edge of what is possible in terms of computing and data centers,'" he said. "At a minimum, OMB and [the General Services Administration] should continue accelerating efforts."

The plan cites GSA's Apps.gov, a central portal that allows agencies to purchase cloud-based information technology services from social media tools to virtual meeting software, and the Defense Department's internal Rapid Access Computing Environment as examples of successful cloud computing initiatives. Agencies that move to the cloud can reach savings between 50 percent and 67 percent, the plan says.

"Across the board, there's a general agreement that cloud computing has tremendous potential to drive down cost and improve delivery of government services," Huang said. "But there's a flip side -- before that potential is met, [we] have to deal with concerns like security that are still out there. If you are the federal government, do you want personal identifying information on cloud services operated by the private sector?" To read more, click here.

• "Just over two months after threatening to leave China because of censorship and intrusions from hackers, Google on Monday closed its Internet search service there and began directing users in that country to its uncensored search engine in Hong Kong," the New York Times reports.

• "The alleged Chinese cyber attacks on Google have spurred proposals at the State Department and on Capitol Hill to establish an ambassador-level cybersecurity post and to tie foreign aid to a country's ability to police cybercrime," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "Police and fire chiefs from around the country are calling on Congress to make sure public safety agencies have access to enough wireless airwaves to form a nationwide communication network for first responders," The Hill reports.

A Chinese government official Monday condemned Google for its decision to begin redirecting Internet users in China to its Hong Kong-based site, where information is not censored. China's official Xinhua news service reported that an official with China's State Council Information Service said Google has "violated its written promise" and is "totally wrong."

Meanwhile, U.S. groups and officials praised Google's move. The firm announced in January that it planned to stop censoring its search results for users in China after it revealed it had been the victim of a cyber attack originating from China. Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said Monday in a blog post that the firm has had a difficult time figuring out a way to keep its promise because Chinese officials maintained that censorship was a "non-negotiable requirement." He added that he believed the firm had reached a "sensible solution" by directing mainland China users to Google's uncensored Hong Kong site.

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., a senior member of the House Foreign Relations Committee and the ranking Republican on the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, said Google's move was "a remarkable, and welcomed action, and an important boost of encouragement for millions of Chinese human rights activists and political and religious dissidents. Google's recent deliberations and decision are a blow against the cynical silence of so many when it comes to the Chinese government's human rights abuses--a blast of honesty and courage and a good example of responsible and principled corporate policy."

Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., the first Chinese-American elected to serve in the House, said in an interview that the fact that Google followed through on its promise to stop censoring search results, is "absolutely commendable." He also said it "sets a business and moral example that other companies should follow. If Google can do it, so can a lot of other technology companies." Wu added that some other technology firms have told him privately "they want to do this." He declined, however, to name which firms he had talked to about the issue.

Ten public interest groups and library associations wrote to U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk Monday voicing concern about some provisions in a leaked version of the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement being negotiated by the United States and other countries.

A "recent leak of a full text [of ACTA] heightens our concern that this negotiation is not primarily about counterfeiting or piracy; nor is at all about trade law," according to the letter signed by such groups as the American Library Association, Association of Research Libraries, the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge. "The public rationale that the treaty would not impinge on domestic law has been placed in doubt - particularly when one considers whose domestic law would be endangered,"

The groups asked Kirk about specific provisions that trouble them, including whether ACTA would include some of the exceptions to secondary liability that are part of U.S. law. In addition, the groups asked Kirk whether copyright holders "may or shall" have the option of receiving pre-established damage awards that may not reflect the alleged harm. In addition, they asked Kirk to describe the extent to which policies such as the "three strikes" principle may be imposed on Internet service providers as part of ACTA. The three strikes principle refers to laws being imposed by some countries, most notably France, that give serial infringers a limited number of chances to stop violating copyright laws before their Internet access is restricted.

In addition to specific concerns with the measure, many groups and some lawmakers in the United States and other countries have voiced concern about the secrecy surrounding the ACTA negotiations. The negotiating parties have yet to release a public draft.

"The time for public discussion as to exactly what this document will and won't do
is now," according to the letter, which also was sent to the leaders of the House Judiciary and Ways and Means committees and the Senate Finance and Judiciary committees.

Google announced Monday that it has stopped censoring its search results for users in China and is redirecting users of Google.cn to its Hong Kong-based site, where it offers uncensored search services.

Google announced in January that it planned to stop censoring search results for users in China, a move it acknowledged may force the firm to leave the country. Google made the announcement after revealing it was the victim of a cyber attack originating from China that sought to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Google "made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered--combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the Web in China including the persistent blocking of Web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger--had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn," Google Senior Vice President and Chief Legal Officer David Drummond said in a blog post.

Since January, Google has been negotiating with Chinese officials to see if it could still operate in China and offer uncensored search results. "Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard," Drummond wrote. "We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement."

In response, he said Chinese users redirected to its Hong Kong site will be offered uncensored search results in "simplified Chinese" aimed at users in mainland China but delivered from the firm's servers in Hong Kong.

He said the firm believes this approach "is a sensible solution to the challenges we've faced--it's entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China," he said. "We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services." He noted the firm will be monitoring access issues and will provide updates on a special site.

He said Google plans to continue doing research and development work in China and maintain a sales operation in the country, though he said the size of that staff will depend on whether Chinese users will have access to its Hong Kong-site.

A State Department official said that Google is likely to announce Monday whether it will be pulling out of China, AP reported.

During a briefing, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said he expects Google to announce its plans Monday afternoon. While Crowley refused to speculate on what Google will announce, several recent reports said Google is likely to say it is leaving China.

Google announced in January that it would stop censoring search results for users in China, a move it acknowledged may force the firm to leave the country. Google made the announcement after revealing it was the victim of a cyber attack originating from China that sought to gain access to the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., made a renewed push Monday for the Senate to take up compromise patent overhaul legislation that was unveiled earlier this month.

In an op-ed column in Politico, Leahy said the new version of the measure "contains a combination of provisions that will improve patent quality; will provide a more efficient mechanism for administratively challenging the validity of patents; and will provide more discipline and certainty in damages calculations and willfulness determinations."

The compromise, which is expected to be included in a manager's amendment when the bill goes to the Senate floor, announced with Judiciary ranking member Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., and other senators helped bring some groups that were opposed to the bill on board.

But one prominent player in the fight for patent reform, the Coalition for Patent Fairness, which had supported the Senate Judiciary-passed measure, denounced the changes, saying they are worse than current law. The coalition, which represents some large tech firms such as Apple, Dell, Intel and Google, has said it is looking to allies in the House to help fix problems with the Senate compromise.

Some members of the coalition, however, including IBM and Microsoft have come out in support of Leahy's compromise.

In his column, Leahy argued that the "bipartisan agreement we have reached enjoys as broad support as we have for any legislative solution in this process. ... The agreement is supported by universities, biotech companies, high-tech companies, pharmaceutical companies, traditional manufacturers and green-technology pioneers, as well as labor unions whose members' jobs depend on a strong intellectual property system. It may not be everything that everyone wants -- but it is fair, reasonable and necessary for our continued economic development."

Critics of Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., are having a little Facebook fun with his prediction in July that if Republicans were able to stop President Obama's efforts to pass healthcare reform, it would be his "Waterloo."

A day after Sunday's historic vote in the House in favor of the Senate's healthcare plan, sending it to Obama for his signature, critics mocked DeMint's "Waterloo" comments on his own Facebook page by posting a link to a YouTube video of the Swedish pop band ABBA singing their hit, "Waterloo."

In one of the dozens of comments linking to the video, Facebook user Thomas Maier told DeMint, "This is YOUR Waterloo." Another commenter, Mike Rice, argued that "Washington did listen. You didn't."

A new study released Monday argues that the United States should gain at least six spots in international broadband rankings if the FCC's national broadband plan and funding included in last year's economic stimulus package aimed at spurring broadband access and adoption are going to be judged a success.

The study from the Phoenix Center, a think tank focused on telecom and tech legal and economic policy issues, said the United States will likely move up from 15th place to 13th place by 2012 in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's broadband penetration rankings even without policy changes because of "historical trends." The group is critical of the OECD rankings, which it claims are flawed, but said it is using them as a measure of the success of the broadband plan and the $7.2 billion in broadband funding included in the stimulus because "policymakers continue to use the OECD's methodology as the definitive broadband metric."

"The United States must rank at least ninth among OECD countries within the next two to three years in order for the Obama administration to claim with confidence that the broadband stimulus funds and the policies recommended by the national broadband plan made a measurably positive impact on broadband adoption," according to the report. It concluded that, "If the U.S. rank falls in the future, then new policies may be condemned as failures; if the U.S. rank rises, then new policies may be propped up as successful. Neither conclusion is legitimate absent some expectation on how rank would change without any policy change."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Congress has a cybersecurity problem that ranges from foreign governments stealing information off BlackBerrys to unwitting aides e-mailing sensitive information from their secure office computers to more-vulnerable terminals at home," Politico reports.

• "With speculation swirling that Google Inc will soon announce the closure of its China-based Internet portal, the reaction from some Chinese has been hurry up and leave, or simply: so what?" Reuters reports.

There are several technology and telecom-related events this week. Here are some of the highlights:

Monday:
TechAmerica holds its "Beyond the Beltway 2010" briefing on state and local government information technology issues beginning at 9:15 a.m.

Tuesday:
The Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing on the FCC's national broadband plan at 2:30 p.m.

National Journal is hosting a telecommunications forum beginning at 8 a.m. featuring House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., and the panel's ranking member, Cliff Stearns, R-Fla.

Wednesday:
The Senate Commerce Committee holds a markup session at 10 a.m. that will include consideration of cybersecurity legislation, S. 773.

The Congressional-Executive Commission on China holds a hearing on "Google and Internet control in China" at 2 p.m.

Thursday:
The House Energy and Commerce Communications, Technology, and the Internet Subcommittee is holding a 10 a.m. hearing on the FCC's national broadband plan.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding a markup session at 10 a.m. and included on its agenda is legislation, S.3111, that aims to improve federal agencies' response to Freedom of Information Act requests.

The FCC announced Friday that it is seeking comments on a proposed rulemaking on whether to amend the agency's rules governing retransmission agreements between broadcasters and those who seek to broadcast their programming, such as cable operators.

The issue has gained increased attention in the wake of recent disputes between broadcasters and cable operators over retransmission fees. Broadcasters have demanded more money from cable firms to make up for declining advertising revenues.

New York-area customers of Cablevision briefly lost access earlier this month to ABC programming including the first few minutes of ABC's telecast of the Academy Awards when negotiations over retransmission fees broke down. ABC programming was restored to the affected Cablevision customers after the two sides reached a tentative deal.

The FCC said it had received requests from 14 entities earlier this month for a rulemaking. "The petition argues that the commission's current retransmission consent rules do not account for changes in the video programming distribution market, and it proposes reforms including dispute resolution mechanisms and mandatory interim carriage," according to the statement from the FCC's Media Bureau. Those who want to comment on the proposal have until April 19 to provide initial comments to the FCC with reply comments due by May 4.

Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., has tried to mediate some of the recent retransmission spats and has called for revamping the FCC's retransmission rules. "We live in a very different world than we did in 1992 when the rules were written, and I think the commission's decision to examine the retransmission consent regime is smart and appropriate," Kerry said in a statement, adding, "Disputes in recent years have become much more common, and will only continue to pop up more frequently in the future, with consumers threatened with the loss of the service they've paid for when they want it most."

The president and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers sent out an e-mail to those who attended the group's advertising law and public policy conference this week for the tone of comments made by Microsoft against rival Google.

In a speech to the ANA Wednesday, Microsoft Deputy General Counsel Mary Snapp blasted Google's advertising and trademark protection policies. She claimed Google uses its dominant position to force companies "to pay inflated prices" for online advertising, and to deter them from placing advertisements on Microsoft's networks.

In an e-mail obtained by Tech Daily Dose, ANA's Bob Liodice said his group was "disappointed with the comments made by speakers from Microsoft about one of its competitors (Google)." Microsoft is an ANA member and sponsored the policy conference. Google's online ad firm, Doubleclick, also is an ANA member.

"ANA works hard to focus conference speakers on providing marketplace insights, marketing best practices and leveraging innovation for the benefit of marketers," Liodice said in the e-mail Thursday to conference attendees. "While we are not opposed to two companies debating industry issues at ANA events, we firmly believe that a respected public platform for that type of exchange should include both parties. We regret that at yesterday's lunch session, that was not the case."

He also apologized for the fact that the group did not disclose before or during the speech that another conference speaker, Harvard assistant business professor Benjamin Edelman, also works as a Microsoft consultant. "We apologize to our attendees as well as to Google that such a disclosure was not made," Liodice said.

Following Snapp's speech on Wednesday, Google spokesman Adam Kovacevich said Google works "hard to compete fair and square, and our policies are intended to provide users with the most relevant results possible, and give advertisers the best possible return on their investment."

The ANA did not respond to a request for comment on Liodice's e-mail.

Microsoft spokesman Jack Evans said, "We certainly thought our remarks were pertinent and appropriate at the conference given its focus on advertising law and public policy, and the positive response we received afterward from attendees. And we believe that the principles we outlined - openness, transparency and respect for intellectual property - are critical for healthy competition and the growth of the online advertising industry."

The GAO told lawmakers Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security and a contractor rewrote most of the quality testing procedures for a project to deploy sensors and cameras along the U.S. southwest border, in part to make them more likely to pass inspection, Nextgov.com reported.

According to GAO's report, DHS has not effectively managed key aspects of SBInet testing. SBInet is the technology component of the department's Secure Border Initiative, which includes fencing that eventually will run along the U.S. southern and northwestern borders and a network of sensors, cameras and control towers to identify illegal crossings into the United States. Boeing Co. is the project's prime contractor.

The inadequate testing in turn has increased the risk that the system will not perform as expected and will take longer to deploy and cost more, Randolph Hite, GAO's director of IT architecture and systems issues, said during a joint hearing before two House Homeland Security subcommittees.

Lawmakers voiced alarm that 70 percent of SBInet test procedures were not carried out as initially written, but instead were changed during execution "because persons conducting the tests determined that the approved procedures were not sufficient or accurate," GAO stated. Managers did not revise procedures according to a documented quality assurance process, but instead based modifications on an undocumented understanding that they established with Boeing. The company so far has collected about $615 million under the contract, and upwards of $200 million has been spent on internal program expenses.

A new independent poll found former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has taken a commanding lead over Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner in the race for the California Republican gubernatorial nomination.

The latest Field Poll shows Whitman leading Poizner 63 percent to 14 percent, while 23 percent of those polled said they were undecided or favored other candidates.

The poll also found that Whitman has taken a three-point lead over Attorney General Jerry Brown, who does not face significant opposition for the Democratic nomination. Whitman leads 46 percent to 43 percent for Brown - a 10 point swing for the Republican since a January poll. The survey found Brown leads Poizner 49 percent to 32 percent.

The survey of 748 likely voters was conducted March 9 through Monday and has a 3.7-point error margin. The subsample of 353 likely Republican primary voters has a 5.5-point error margin.

There's good news and bad news for former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in the latest poll on the California U.S. Senate race, CongressDaily reported Friday.

The bad news is that Fiorina still trails former Rep. Tom Campbell in their bid for the Republican Senate nomination. In a new Field Poll, Campbell had 28 percent, while Fiorina was at 22 percent followed by 9 percent for Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

The good news for all three GOP candidates is that Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer's lead has shrunk since a similar poll in January. The poll showed Campbell with 44 percent to Boxer's 43 percent; while Boxer takes 45 percent to Fiorina's 44 percent. Boxer leads DeVore 45-41 percent. The three-term Democrat led all three GOP rivals by double digits in a similar poll conducted in January.

The survey of 748 likely voters was conducted March 9 through Monday and has a 3.7-point error margin. The subsample of 353 likely Republican primary voters has a 5.5-point error margin.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• The FBI "has suspended work on parts of its huge computer overhaul, dealing the agency the latest costly setback in a decade-long effort to develop a modernized information system to combat crime and terrorism," the New York Times reports.

• "China Mobile Ltd., the world's biggest mobile operator by subscribers, is looking at acquisition and investment targets in Asia and Africa as profit growth slows at home, its chairman said" today, the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

Some minority groups weighed in Thursday on the FCC's national broadband plan released earlier this week, saying they are hopeful the proposal will help narrow the broadband digital divide.

A survey, released last month and conducted by the Census Bureau for the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, found that while the nation has made progress in the number of households that now get broadband Internet service, minorities, seniors, less-educated, unemployed and low-income households still lag behind other populations. For example, blacks and Hispanics showed much lower broadband adoption rates at home than whites.

"All Americans will benefit from the commission's efforts in offering concrete steps to making universal broadband a reality," Jesse Jackson, the founder and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition, said in a statement. "We are particularly encouraged by the impact that this plan will have on minorities who are currently underserved by broadband technology."

The Japanese American Citizens League said in a news release that the plan "is a critical first step towards the eradication of the digital divide and [the group] looks forward to seeing more Americans harness the power of broadband for their civic, economic, and educational success." In the NTIA study, Asian Americans had higher rates of broadband adoption at home than whites.

Both Rainbow Push and the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators said they were pleased the FCC did not adopt some proposals they said could have unintended consequences. "While we are reassured that the commission did not adopt some of the more extreme calls for unnecessary regulations that could have devastating unintended consequences, the NHCSL Broadband En Accion Taskforce will be looking forward to working with the commission to continue its focus on full access and adoption, especially in our underserved communities," the Hispanic caucus said in a statement.

An industry coalition that favors changes to the immigration system that would allow more highly skilled foreigners to stay in the United States Thursday praised immigration legislation outlined by Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

In an op-ed set to run in Friday's Washington Post, the senators discussed some of the elements they believe should be included in comprehensive immigration legislation. One of the provisions they proposed would award green cards to immigrants who receive a doctoral or master's degree in science, technology, engineering or math from a U.S. university. "It makes no sense to educate the world's future inventors and entrepreneurs and then force them to leave when they are able to contribute to our economy," Schumer and Graham wrote.

In a statement Thursday, Compete America praised the senators for recognizing "the importance of fixing America's broken immigration system, and particularly the visa system for highly educated foreign nationals." Compete America co-Executive Director Jessica Herrera-Flanigan added that "America's national interests are best served when the world's top scientists, researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, healthcare professionals and teachers can live and work in the United States. That is how we keep America on the cutting edge of innovation and technology, that is how we will help lead the country back to economic strength, and that is how we will create more jobs for Americans."

President Obama also issued a statement Thursday on the immigration proposal, saying "I am pleased to see that Senators Schumer and Graham have produced a promising, bipartisan framework which can and should be the basis for moving forward."

The sprawling fight between Google and Microsoft has spilled into a state courthouse in Ohio, where Google's lawyers will be in court next week to answer an antitrust lawsuit by a small online-mall, myTriggers.com.

Google sued myTriggers for non-payment of roughly $350,000 in online-advertising fees. MyTriggers, which allows consumers to compare online prices for such items as office supplies, DVDs, and auto-parts, counter-sued, claiming violation of state antitrust laws.

Significantly, myTriggers' lawyers include a prominent state attorney, Stanley Chesley, as well as Rick Rule, the chief antitrust lawyer for New York-based Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, who also has served for many years as an antitrust lawyer for Microsoft.

The antitrust claim argues Google illegally used its market power to raise myTriggers' online advertising rates above what the company could pay, and the firm's business "fell off a cliff," Jonathan Kanter, a Washington-based antitrust lawyer for Cadwalader, said.

At next week's court hearing, the parties will meet with a judge to set a schedule for the counter-suit, which could result in an extensive legal inquiry into Google's closely-held business tactics and software models. That inquiry may yield evidence of antitrust violations. If so, the evidence would greatly boost Microsoft's efforts to jump-start a federal antitrust lawsuit of Google. The evidence may, or may not, show that Google adjusts its closely-held advertising-prices to help allies and hurt rivals.

A federal court Thursday unsealed documents in Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube alleging the online video site has engaged in copyright infringement. The motion for summary judgment filed by Viacom includes e-mails from YouTube officials that Viacom says show YouTube officials knew copyrighted material was being posted on their site. YouTube maintains in its documents that it has acted within the law and that Viacom has used its site for promotional purposes.

In its motion for summary judgment in the case, Viacom claims YouTube's founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, "single-mindedly focused on geometrically increasing the number of YouTube users to maximize its commercial value. They recognized they could achieve that goal only if they cast a blind eye to and did not block the huge number of unauthorized copyrighted works posted on the site." The document claims their "deliberate decision to build a business based on piracy" enabled them to sell YouTube to Google in 2006.

Viacom claims in the document that Google knew that YouTube was a "pirate site," a "rogue enabler of content theft" and a "video Grokster" whose "business model is completely sustained by pirated content." But after buying YouTube, Viacom claims "Google abandoned its scruples in order to continue growing the YouTube user base until well into 2008."

The summary motion notes that YouTube and Google used digital fingerprinting technology to screen out copyrighted material from those it had made agreements with, while "refusing, until May 2008, to apply that same technology to protect Viacom unless it first agreed to license its intellectual property to YouTube."

The document cites several e-mails from YouTube's founders. In one, Karim talked about how to make YouTube an attractive site for a possible sale. In another, Chen urged his associates to "concentrate all of our efforts in building up our numbers as aggressively as we can through whatever tactics, however evil." Viacom cited another e-mail that noted that even though YouTube's ISP complained to the firm that it was hosting copyrighted content, the founders refused to act.

The FCC issued a public notice Thursday that it will begin collecting comments on Comcast's proposed acquisition of NBC Universal. The public will have until May 3 to file initial comments and final reply comments are due June 17.

Both the FCC and the Justice Department are reviewing combining Comcast, the nation's largest cable television company, with the programming power of NBCU, which controls a major broadcast network, a Hollywood studio and several cable networks. Comcast would own a 51 percent stake in NBCU.

"The applicants assert that the proposed transaction would serve the public interest and promote the commission's policy goals of diversity, localism, and competition," the FCC public notice said. The notice added that the two firms have agreed to abide by 16 "voluntary public interest commitments." These include increasing the amount and availability of local news and information programming, children's programming, Spanish programming, public, educational, or governmental channel programming, and independent programming. In addition, they have committed to providing "free over-the-air television for an unspecified period of time and to extend the 'key components' of the program access rules to retransmission consent negotiations involving the signals of the NBC and Telemundo owned-and-operated television stations for as long as the current program access rules remain in effect," the notice said.

Public interest and consumer groups have argued that such commitments will not solve the fundamental flaws with the proposed merger, which they say will lead to higher prices, fewer choices and less competition. "Comcast's promises lack substance and accountability," Consumer Federation of America Research Director Mark Cooper said in testimony on the merger before the Senate Judiciary Committee in February. "More importantly, the commitments do not begin to address the anticompetitive effects of the merger."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "A new version of a cybersecurity bill was introduced in the Senate on Tuesday that may eliminate some opposition to the measure from the tech industry," Reuters reports.

Microsoft's deputy general counsel Wednesday chided rival Google, claiming the search giant's policies hurt advertisers by blocking them from being able to move their data to a competing platform.

In prepared remarks to the Association of National Advertisers law and public policy conference, Mary Snapp discussed three principles Microsoft sees as key to the future growth of online advertising: transparency, openness and respect for intellectual property.

Snapp said that Microsoft supports the ability of advertisers to be able to "port your data freely and openly between online ad platforms and to ... efficiently [manage] campaigns across these platforms." She criticized Google in its terms of service for AdWords for barring the use of third-party tools that copy data into a non-AdWords account.

"These and other similar sorts of restrictions raise your costs, they reduce competition, and they prevent anyone but Google from giving you, the advertisers, the scale and choices you want and need," Snapp said. She added that given Google's dominance in the online ad market, "few of you can afford to give up using Google because of these restrictions. But that doesn't mean you should have to accept them either."

She also criticized Google for not providing adequate protection of trademarks, a policy she claims benefits Google's bottom line.

A federal judge in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday approved Facebook's settlement of a class action lawsuit that challenged the social networking site's now-defunct Beacon application that allowed Facebook users to see what other members were buying online.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs in the case claimed Facebook "violated
consumers' privacy rights by failing to properly provide notice and obtain informed consent before acquiring and transmitting personal information from Beacon-affiliated Web sites to Facebook," according to the settlement.

As part of the settlement, Facebook has agreed to pay $9.5 million to fund an independent foundation focusing on "projects and initiatives that promote the cause of online privacy, safety, and security," according to the settlement. Facebook also agreed to terminate the Beacon program after gaining preliminary approval of the settlement last year.

"We're pleased that [U.S. District] Judge [Richard] Seeborg has approved the settlement after carefully considering all opinions," Facebook said in a statement. "The independent foundation will fund worthy projects helping protect and improve Internet users' privacy, safety and security. We look forward to providing additional details on the foundation in the weeks and months ahead."

Legislation introduced in the House this week would redefine executive branch public information as content that is available on the Internet and searchable, requiring agencies to post all future public records online within three years, Nextgov.com reported Wednesday.

The bill introduced Tuesday by Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., would task the federal chief information officer in the Office of Management and Budget, a position currently held by Vivek Kundra, with establishing publication rules for all agencies except independent regulatory agencies such as the FCC. CIOs at independent regulatory agencies would have discretion in setting rules.

The measure would take public information "out of the metal file cabinets and into the sunlight of the Internet," Israel said at a news conference. The event was scheduled to coincide with Sunshine Week, an annual nationwide campaign to promote open government and freedom of information. It was spearheaded by journalists in 2002 and now attracts civic groups, libraries and lawmakers.

Under the bill, each agency would have to create a searchable catalog of materials it makes publicly available, including where the records can be found, whether the records are available to the public at no cost or for a fee, and brief descriptions of the records.

Currently, many public documents are accessible on paper or on computers in federal buildings, which typically are open only from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., noted Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a government transparency group that joined Israel to debut the bill. To read more, click here.

Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, released a new draft Wednesday of their legislation aimed at improving the nation's response to cyber attacks. Rockefeller has scheduled a markup of the bill in his committee on March 24.

The bill would raise the priority of cybersecurity throughout the federal government and streamline cybersecurity-related functions, authorities and laws. It also aims to enhance public awareness and education about cybersecurity and bolster cybersecurity research and development.

A summary of the revised bill noted that it is largely unchanged from previous versions. The new draft, however, includes some new provisions including a requirement that the president and critical infrastructure sectors work together through existing "coordinating councils" to identify specific information technology systems that would threaten strategic national interests if they were disrupted or shut down. The draft also would require the president to provide security clearances to key private sector officials responsible for operating IT systems that the country relies on to allow for the sharing of classified threat information with these officials.

In addition, the new draft would require the president to work with industry to identify private sector training programs and industry best practices for IT products and services and incorporate them in the IT products and services the federal government buys. The draft would require federal contractors that fail to abide by such practices after two consecutive audits to develop and implement a collaborative remediation plan, the summary said.

After delaying it twice, the Congressional-Executive Commission on China has rescheduled its hearing on Internet freedom and Google's issues with China for next week. The March 24th hearing will explore whether China's regulation of the Internet is both a human rights and a trade issue.

"Witnesses will examine the challenges and hazards China's regulation of the Internet poses both to advocates of free expression and to foreign companies doing business in China; and possible ways for policymakers and private actors to respond to China's regulation of the Internet from both the human rights and trade perspectives," the commission, which was established by Congress in 2000 to monitor human rights and the development of the rule of law in China, said in a statement.

Google announced in January that it would stop censoring its search results for users in China after the firm revealed it had been the victim of a cyber attack originating from China that attempted to gain access to the Gmail accounts of human rights activists and other information.

Google has been negotiating with Chinese authorities to see if it is possible for the firm to remain in China if it does not abide by Chinese censorship rules. But recent reports indicate that Google may be preparing to pull out of the country, a move that appears to be making its Chinese advertising partners nervous. A group of advertisers sent a letter to Google asking for details about Google's plans in China and how the firms would be compensated if Google leaves, Reuters reported Wednesday.

Those expected to testify at the commission's hearing next week include Google's top Washington lobbyist, Alan Davidson, as well as Go Daddy Executive Vice President and General Counsel Christine Jones, Human Rights in China Executive Director Sharon Hom, Computer and Communications Industry Association President Ed Black, and former Ambassador Mark Palmer. Black has argued that China's Internet censorship rules may violate its trade agreements.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "A handful of cash-rich companies are consolidating power in the technology industry, using their wealth to expand into new businesses and making it harder for small and midsize competitors to break through," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

• The Federal Communications Commission's "honeymoon has ended with the release of its national broadband plan," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports. "During a meeting Tuesday that featured considerable praise from regulators for the sweeping technology blueprint and the 50-person team that crafted it, there were signs that deep fissures are emerging among commissioners."

President Obama Tuesday commended the FCC and its staff for its work on the national broadband plan, saying expanding broadband high-speed Internet access will help "build a foundation of sustained economic growth and the widely shared prosperity we all seek."

In a statement issued on the same day the FCC formally sent its broadband plan to Congress, Obama said his administration "will build upon our efforts over the past year to make America's nationwide broadband infrastructure the world's most powerful platform for economic growth and prosperity, including improving access to mobile broadband, maximizing technology innovation, and supporting a nationwide, interoperable public safety wireless broadband network."

Obama's economic stimulus package enacted last year included $7.2 billion to provide grants aimed at improving broadband access and adoption and also mandated that the FCC draft the national broadband plan it unveiled Tuesday.

"Just as past generations of Americans met the great infrastructure challenges of the day, such as building the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highways, so too must we harness the potential of the Internet," the president said.

Four of the nation's leading consumer advocate groups endorsed the Obama administration's definition of what constitutes an electronic health record, a requirement clinicians and facilities must meet to receive federal funds, Nextgov.com reported Tuesday.

The Consumers Union and AARP have given their support to the proposed meaningful use rule as outlined by the Health and Human Services Department and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). But the rule, as explained in a 556-page document, wasn't positively received by many doctors, who submitted most of the more than 1,000 comments received since Jan. 7. They zeroed in on the rule's complexity, length and lack of understanding of the realities of the challenges they face in their day-to-day work.

The comment period closed on Monday. Many health-related groups supported the rules. The Consumer Partnership for eHealth, which includes the National Partnership for Women and Families, and the Pacific Business Group on Health, a coalition of companies and public sector groups that work to improve quality of care and reduce costs, also urged CMS to keep the proposed rules, arguing they will reduce medical errors and improve patient safety.

If adopted, the rules will govern who receives federal incentive payments of up to $44,000 each for doctors and up to $2 million each for hospitals that follow the proposed meaningful use definition when establishing electronic health record systems. The subsidies are part of the economic stimulus package Congress passed in February 2009, which included about $20 billion for health information technology.

"We are convinced that CMS is on the right track to ensure that taxpayer money is well-spent," said Christine Bechtel, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families and a member of the Health Information Technology Policy Committee, which advises HHS. "These criteria are achievable because they are based on the capabilities of today's [electronic health records] and what is already being done by some providers." To read more, click here.

The FCC officially sent its mammoth national broadband plan to Congress Tuesday by unanimously approving a page-and-a-half-long joint statement endorsing the themes of the 360-page document, CongressDaily reported. But the five agency regulators, three Democrats and two Republicans, did not hold a formal vote on the plan, a reflection of the reality that they sharply disagree on some of its 200 proposals, if not its overall direction.

The blueprint for dramatically expanding high-speed Internet access and use over the next decade elicited various degrees of praise from all five regulators, with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski emphasizing that the agency should act with urgency on the recommendations. "We need a strategic plan for broadband in America," he said. "Our country is not where it should be in this fast-paced and rapidly changing world."

But in a sign of the challenges ahead for Genachowski, criticism came not just from the agency's GOP members but from Democrat Mignon Clyburn, who raised concerns about proposals that would shift large chunks of broadcast television spectrum to mobile carriers. "The plan does not study the impact that a spectrum sell-off would have on women and minority-owned broadcast television stations," she said. "We may be doing the country a disservice" if the FCC's actions encourage smaller stations serving niche audiences to turn in their megahertz and stop broadcasting, she said.

GOP member Robert McDowell voiced concern about several provisions in the plan, saying it "opens the door to classifying broadband services as old-fashioned monopoly era, circuit-switched, voice telephone services under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934" and reiterated his concerns about the agency's network neutrality proceeding. His GOP colleague, Meredith Baker, expressed similar concerns.

The plan has sparked a wave of reaction and will be the focus of two congressional hearings next week. Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va., announced Tuesday that he would be holding a March 23 hearing on the plan. The House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee has already announced that a March 25 hearing also will focus on the plan.

While many lawmakers weighed in Monday when the commission released the plan's executive summary, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement Tuesday that the plan "embraces the goal of universal, affordable broadband access across a variety of platforms, and provides Congress with an opportunity to work with the FCC to make this goal a reality. Broadband must be deployed in a way that bridges the digital divide - ensuring that every American has access to affordable and robust broadband Internet service and the economic opportunities it creates."

In his last major speech as head of the movie industry's trade association, Motion Picture Association of America Chairman Dan Glickman announced Tuesday the relaunch of the group's movie ratings Web site, which he said would provide more information and transparency about the ratings process.

The new Web site includes a tab that allows users to search for a rating by movie title or to search by year and rating. The site also includes information about the ads played before movies begin. The movie ratings system is operated by the Classification and Ratings Administration, an independent division of the MPAA. The group rates movies based on five categories, which range from G for all audiences to NC-17, which contains adult-only content.

"We're hoping this will provide some added transparency, as well--shining a light on how the process works and promoting better understanding of the lesser-known but equally important Advertising Administration, which strives to ensure every piece of movie advertising is appropriate for the audiences that see it," Glickman said in remarks at the ShoWest movie industry convention in Las Vegas.

Glickman, a former Democratic House member from Kansas and Agriculture secretary during the Clinton administration, is set to leave MPAA next month to lead the refugee advocacy organization Refugees International.

Some federal departments have obtained waivers to sidestep a long-standing policy that bars government Web sites from tracking visitor activity on the Internet, Nextgov.com reported.

In 2000, the Office of Management and Budget issued a federal policy banning the use of persistent cookies, files that a Web site deposits on a user's computer to collect information about how the visitor navigates the site to provide more personal interaction. The policy was established to protect personal privacy. But critics argue that it hinders the government's ability to provide richer online experiences for the public and stymies efforts to solicit and respond to what the public wants, noting commercial sites routinely employ cookies to enhance their public outreach.

Even civil liberties advocates favor the use of agency cookies as long as they allow visitors to opt-out and do not collect personally identifiable information. White House officials began considering a new cookie framework last summer, but they have not instituted changes yet. Some Obama administration officials and many open government activists have urged OMB to rewrite the policy so Web managers can tailor agency sites to visitors' preferences and conduct other traffic analysis that the public now typically expects from private sector sites.

In the meantime, some departments, including the General Services Administration and NASA, have used a little-noticed provision in the original cookie policy that allows agency heads to authorize the use of the tracking technologies if they have a "compelling need." OMB is not required to sign off on the waivers, nor are agencies required to tell OMB if managers have granted waivers.

Ari Schwartz, vice president and chief operating officer at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said his group has met with OMB officials to retool the online tracking policy under the rubric of open government. CDT is one of the civil liberties organizations that supports federal cookies within limits, though Schwartz said his group has concerns about the current waiver provision. "If we stick to this waiver policy, over time it's going to deteriorate. ... It won't be based on whether privacy threats have been addressed but will be based on how quickly an agency can get approval from a senior official," he said. To read more, click here.

A new report released Tuesday, which examined the effects of Internet pornography, warns that Internet pornography can have many damaging effects on children and women in particular.

The report, conduced for the Witherspoon Institute, a research group focused on ethical and moral issues, found that Internet pornography is much more ubiquitous and easily accessible to children than other forms of pornography. The report notes that about 75 percent of pornographic Web sites display visual teasers on the homepages before asking if the viewers are of legal age. And only 3 percent of these Web sites require proof-of-age before granting access to sexually explicit material.

The report also said that "today's pornography is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from any that has come before--and that qualitative difference includes for at least some consumers a slippery slope into ever more hard-core, sexually fetishistic, and formerly shocking imagery."

While noting that more research is needed, the report concludes that "a growing body of research strongly suggests that for some users pornography can be psychologically addictive, and can negatively affect the quality of interpersonal relationships, sexual health and performance, and social expectations about sexual behavior."

"Any child with unrestricted Internet access is just one click away from accidentally or intentionally viewing an abundance of free material, from soft-core pornography to prosecutable material depicting live sex shows, orgies, bestiality, violence and child sexual abuse," Donna Rice Hughes, president of the online safety group Enough Is Enough, said in a statement. "This important report serves as a wake-up call to parents and caring adults that no child or adult is immune to its damaging impact."

While praising proposed changes to the universal service fund and other items in the FCC's national broadband plan, the nation's largest broadband providers also are urging the FCC to refrain from implementing policies that would discourage private investment in high-speed Internet technologies.

With the FCC's formal release Tuesday of its long-awaited national broadband plan, the nation's largest cable and telecommunications firms voiced cautious praise for the document. In particular, they applauded the FCC's call for transitioning the universal service fund, which subsidizes low-cost telephone service, to support broadband service.

"Rightfully, universal service and intercarrier compensation reform are critical components of the national broadband plan," AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stephenson said in a statement. "Reforming universal service and ensuring affordable broadband for all Americans are the two most critical components of achieving universal broadband." Verizon Executive Vice President Tom Tauke said his firm is "encouraged by the call to reform the policies that subsidize some companies' telecommunications services so the policies are focused on the technologies of the 21st century."

But such enthusiasm was tempered by calls for the FCC not to impose regulatory burdens that might stifle future investments. There's growing concern among industry executives that the FCC may reclassify broadband as a heavily regulated service. Such a move is strongly opposed by dominant broadband providers, who warn of dire consequences and reduced private sector investment.

The FCC's massive national broadband plan appears designed to please a wide array of constituencies, but maintaining the support of competing interests will be challenging when the political daggers come out during the implementation phase, experts said Monday. The technology blueprint, which will serve as a roadmap for extending affordable broadband service to all Americans over the next decade, makes dozens of recommendations to Congress and the commission, CongressDaily reported.

The 360-page document will be the focus of an FCC meeting Tuesday in advance of Wednesday's congressional deadline. "There is no way to make big decisions in this area without pissing somebody off," a telecommunications lobbyist said.

While the main telecommunications and cable industry associations and several watchdog groups were quick to express support, the specifics of how the plan is implemented, and the fate of separate proposals to toughen broadband regulation, threaten to unravel the delicate coalition. "The support for the plan is one thing. Support for each individual initiative is another," observed Paul Glenchur, senior communications analyst at the Potomac Research Group. He added that as legislative and rulemaking proposals emerge, "that's when the disputes will be aired."

House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., one of a few Democrats to immediately endorse the plan, will hold a March 25 oversight hearing featuring the testimony of all five agency regulators -- the first in a series of such congressional sessions. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman also weighed in with support.

It was 25 years ago today that the first .com Internet address was assigned to symbolics.com, a Massachusetts firm. Since then, about 80 million .com Internet addresses have been registered, according to a new report released Monday from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Despite the crash of the so-called .com companies a decade ago, the number of Internet addresses ending with .com continues to grow by about 668,000 a month, maintaining its dominance as the top Internet address even though the number of generic Internet addresses has grown to 21. The report notes that .coms have accounted for about $400 million in economic benefits to businesses and consumers - a figure that the study's authors predict will double in the next decade.

When the National Science Foundation opened up the Internet, which was still primarily a research tool, in 1985 to commercial businesses, "little did they know ... they were creating one of the biggest technical revolutions in world history," ITIF President Robert Atkinson said at news conference.

To help sustain the e-commerce growth, the report recommends adoption of policies that enable the deployment of new technologies such as wired and wireless broadband, mobile payment platforms and health information technology. It also calls on policymakers to remove regulatory and legal barriers that hamper new e-business models; create incentives for companies to invest in Internet-related business practices; and advance polices to promote digital literacy.

VeriSign, the firm that administers the database of all the .com Internet addresses, is holding a policy forum Tuesday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of .com featuring a keynote address from former President Bill Clinton.

Broadcasters voiced concern Monday with a provision in the national broadband plan released by the FCC that urges broadcasters to give up some spectrum, saying it doesn't appear as "voluntary" as promised.

The broadband plan anticipates that 120 MHz would be relinquished by TV broadcasters, who would receive some of the proceeds from auctioning their airwaves. While the agency encourages stations to give up frequencies voluntarily, it holds open the possibility of mandatory steps -- such as spectrum fees and sharing transmission towers -- that are strongly opposed by the National Association of Broadcasters.

"We were pleased by initial indications from FCC members that any spectrum reallocation would be voluntary, and were therefore prepared to move forward in a constructive fashion on that basis," NAB Executive Vice President Dennis Wharton said in a statement. "However, we are concerned by reports today that suggest many aspects of the plan may in fact not be as voluntary as originally promised. Moreover, as the nation's only communications service that is free, local and ubiquitous, we would oppose any attempt to impose onerous new spectrum fees on broadcasters."

The statement added that broadcasters have already returned 108 megahertz of spectrum as part of the transition from analog to digital television. Still, in the broadband plan, the FCC calls for making 500 megahertz of spectrum available for broadband in the next decade, adding that 300 megahertz should be available for mobile broadband within five years. The NAB argues that the FCC should conduct a spectrum inventory, as called for by legislation approved by the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week, before moving forward on any reallocation plan.

Initial reaction Monday to the FCC's long-awaited national broadband plan was positive, particularly from public interest groups. The FCC detailed the document Monday and released the executive summary of the plan, which outlines six long-term broadband goals, including superfast connectivity to 100 million households and transforming the United States into a world leader in mobile broadband use and innovation.

Public Knowledge President Gigi Sohn described the report as a "balanced, comprehensive and forward-looking plan." She said her group is "particularly encouraged to see so much attention devoted to competition policies, which we believe will help to create new opportunities for innovators and new choices for consumers in what is now a tightly held duopoly" for broadband services.

Consumer Federation of America Research Director Mark Cooper said it was "good news" to see that the FCC will launch dozens of proceedings to implement its policies. "Given the complete absence of policies to address the digital divide and promote competition in broadband in the past decade, this is an ambitious agenda and a good starting point for responding to the challenge confronting the U.S. communications network," he said.

While saying his group "strongly" supports the FCC's goals, Free Press Executive Director Josh Silver warned that "to put the market to work for American consumers, the FCC will need to foster competition to drive down prices and drive up speeds. This will require confronting the market power of the cable and telephone giants that control the broadband market."

The FCC released it long-awaited national broadband plan Monday -- a 360-page document that agency officials dubbed a "call to action" for extending low-cost, high-speed Internet service to all Americans by 2020, CongressDaily reported.

The technology blueprint, required by last year's economic stimulus package, outlines six long-term goals, including superfast connectivity to 100 million households and transforming the U.S. into a world leader in mobile broadband use and innovation.

"The National Broadband Plan is a 21st century roadmap to spur economic growth and investment, create jobs, educate our children, protect our citizens, and engage in our democracy," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement.

The plan also recommends the development of standardized cable set-top boxes that would enable Internet surfing on televisions, and suggests the idea of a free, advertiser-funded wireless broadband service available regionally or nationwide. During a news conference Monday, FCC officials said the plan would require dozens of new commission rulemakings, but only limited congressional action, for implementation. That action would include allocating $12 billion to $16 billion to create a nationwide wireless broadband network for public-safety officials.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, introduced legislation Monday that would establish an advisory panel to examine agency backlogs in processing Freedom of Information Act requests for government information and provide recommendations on ways to improve agency responses to these requests.

The panel established by the bill also would be charged with examining whether the system for charging fees and granting fee waivers under FOIA should be changes to cut down on delays in processing fee requests. The panel would be made up of government and nongovernment representatives with experience in responding to and submitting FOIA requests and in setting government information policies.

In a floor statement introducing the bill, Leahy noted that FOIA backlogs are increasing. The Homeland Security Department reported having a backlog of 18,918 FOIA requests in 2009, while the Justice Department reported a backlog of nearly 5,000 FOIA requests that same year, he said. "These mounting FOIA backlogs are simply unacceptable," Leahy said, adding that his bill "will help to reverse these troubling statistics."

Cornyn said in a statement that the "Faster FOIA Act would identify methods to reduce delays in the processing of FOIA requests and ensure the efficient and equitable administration of FOIA throughout the federal government." Leahy and Cornyn have co-authored several FOIA bills. In 2009, they succeeded in enacting legislation that mandates greater transparency for legislative exemptions to FOIA.

The State Department Monday launched a new Web site aimed at fostering global conversations about foreign policy issues.

The new "Opinion Space" site uses "new data visualization models" and analysis to map out where participants' points of view fall on a visual opinion map. The map is based on the similarity of users' opinions and not on where they live. "Those who agree on basic issues are neighbors, and those who are far apart have agreed to disagree," according to the site.

The site is a joint project of the State Department and the University of California at Berkeley's Center for New Media and is open to anyone around the world. "This is an example of what we call 21st century statecraft and an opportunity to extend our engagement beyond the halls of government directly to the people of the world," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a statement. "I can't wait to be a part of this exciting new conversation."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "U.S. regulators will announce a major Internet policy this week to revolutionize how Americans communicate and play, proposing a dramatic increase in broadband speeds that could let people download a high-definition film in minutes instead of hours," Reuters reports.

• "The Chinese authorities have warned major partners of Google's China-based search engine that they must comply with censorship laws even if Google does not, an industry expert with knowledge of the notice said Sunday," the New York Times reports.

The group that manages the Internet's address system approved a proposal that would create a database of trademarks aimed at improving their protection on the Internet, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers announced Friday.

The Trademark Clearinghouse is expected to serve "as a central repository for information to be authenticated, stored, and disseminated" relating to the rights of trademark owners.

"In forming this trademark clearinghouse, we've listened to our community about providing trademark protection," ICANN board Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush said in a statement following the nonprofit corporation's meeting this week in Nairobi, Kenya. "We've also adopted an extremely rapid process by which people or organizations can challenge trademark infringement."

The board also rejected a proposal to implement an "expression of interest," a pre-registration process for those wishing to apply for new generic Internet addresses, also known as domain names. Under procedures it previously approved, ICANN plans to expand the number of generic top-level domain names from the current list of 21, which include .com, .net, and .org, and could include almost any word in most languages.

Internet crimes reported to the Internet Crime Complaint Center increased by more than 22 percent in 2009 over the previous year, the center reported Friday. The center, a partnership between the FBI and National White Collar Crime Center, received a total of 336,655 complaints last year and reported total losses linked to online fraud of nearly $560 million - more than double 2008's amount, according to its annual Internet Crime Report.

The top reported Internet-related crime, representing 16.6 percent of the complaints, involved e-mail scams in which the scammer pretended to be with the FBI in order to gain information from the recipient. This was followed by complaints (11.9 percent) involving the failure of an online firm to deliver merchandise or of a buyer to pay a firm for a product or service.

The other top five types of complaints involved advanced fee fraud in which a scammer requests money upfront for some reward but fails to deliver; identity theft; and overpayment fraud, which occurs when a scammer gives a victim a fraudulent monetary instrument above an agreed upon amount for a transaction and asks that the difference be paid with a legitimate form of payment.

"The figures contained in this report indicate that criminals are continuing to take full advantage of the anonymity afforded them by the Internet," National White Collar Crime Center Director Donald Brackman said in a statement. "They are also developing increasingly sophisticated means of defrauding unsuspecting consumers. Internet crime is evolving in ways we couldn't have imagined just five years ago."

A coalition of business groups launched a new organization Friday aimed at boosting American economic competitiveness by promoting science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. The Business and Industry STEM Education Coalition's starting roster includes major players such as the Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"Without a concerted effort to enhance the quality of science education in the U.S., innovative industries like biotechnology cannot achieve their immense potential to heal the sick, feed the hungry, restore the environment, and fuel the economy," said Paul Hanle, president of the Biotechnology Institute, in a statement. "It's vital that the private sector work in partnership with government and the nonprofit sector to achieve our common goal of making US science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education again the best in the world."

The new group is aiming to increase the number of STEM bachelor degrees awarded in the United States to 400,000 by the year 2020, and will work to boost STEM education and literacy among children and adults alike. Eight government entities that employ professionals in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, serve as advisory members, including the Defense and Education departments and the National Science Foundation.

Last November, the White House launched the Educate to Innovate initiative, a $260 million commitment made up of public-private partnerships aimed at motivating students to excel in science and math.

A federal appeals court Friday upheld a key portion of the FCC's program access rules that ban exclusive contracts between cable television operators and their affiliated programming networks -- a decision that could have repercussions for the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC Universal, now under government review, CongressDaily reported. The exclusivity prohibition had been challenged by Cablevision and Comcast, whose cases were consolidated by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

But Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian Roberts repeatedly assured lawmakers that his company would abide by the prohibition even if the court struck it down. He reiterated that commitment Thursday during testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee. Friday's decision by a three-judge panel renders his promises moot because Comcast will be required to make its programming available to competitors, including the satellite networks DirecTV and Dish Network.

"We're disappointed that the court has preserved the current unfairness that allows DirecTV to have exclusives for NFL Sunday Ticket and NASCAR Hot Pass," Comcast responded in a statement, referring to programming agreements not covering the ban.
"Whatever the court decided on these rules, we remain prepared to discuss with the FCC having them continue to apply to Comcast as part of the NBCU transaction, if appropriate," it added. Both the FCC and the Justice Department are reviewing the Comcast-NBCU deal. A Comcast spokeswoman said the company does not plan to appeal the decision.

In its 2-1 decision, the court argued that the commission "was reasonable in its conclusion that the prohibition - in its original form - continues to be necessary."
The petitioners had argued that forcing them to share content they own or produce violates their First Amendment rights, and that the FCC misinterpreted provisions in the 1992 Cable Act that created the ban.

"The commission's program access rules have played a vital role in making diverse and attractive video programming available to cable and satellite TV viewers," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a statement. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

The National Association of Broadcasters Friday touted the newest congressional supporters of a resolution opposing a bill that would require AM and FM radio stations to pay performers a fee for playing their music on the radio.

The latest lawmakers to sign on in support of the House resolution are House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman emeritus John Dingell, D-Mich., and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., NAB said in a statement. Their support brings the total number of House supporters of the resolution to 258, well above the number needed for it to pass.

NAB argues that the performance rights bill backed by the music industry would place a big financial burden on radio stations. In addition, the NAB notes that performers already benefit from the exposure they receive from radio air play.

Marty Machowsky, a spokesman for the MusicFIRST Coalition, which represents several music industry groups including the Recording Industry Association of America, argued that the NAB is taking a hypocritical stand on the issue, opposing the performance rights legislation, while battling cable companies to pay a fair retransmission rate to the broadcast networks for using their programming. The latest dispute emerged last week when ABC briefly cut off programming last weekend to subscribers of cable provider Cablevision in the New York area over retransmission fees. The programming was restored minutes into last Sunday's Academy Awards show on ABC after the two sides reached a deal.

The White House's push for agencies to dangle prize money in front of the public to solve the government's problems should jump-start creativity, according to some information technology contractors. The White House late Monday released a memorandum explaining how agencies can legally coordinate contests to solicit ideas for using technology to modernize government, Nextgov.com reported.

The move was prompted by a December 2009 directive that required the Office of Management and Budget to establish guidelines on incentive-based strategies to enhance open government, which encompasses agency transparency, industry collaboration and public participation.

But Monday's memo extended beyond open government, encouraging the use of prizes to promote innovation and address other national priorities. The memo reads more like an endorsement than a set of restrictions and could spur innovation not just government wide, but nationwide, industry observers said. "It's almost like encouraging agencies to test the limits of their mandate -- which is very brave and forward-thinking," said Guido Jouret, chief technology officer for Cisco's emerging technologies group.

For example, the Commerce Department is authorized by law to bestow a Commercial Space Achievement Award, but other agencies without explicit mandates can turn grant programs into prizes or use federal acquisition regulations when the reward is for a good or service that benefits the government, according to the guidance. OMB officials this week cited the results of a successful contest where NetFlix awarded a $1 million prize in September 2009 to developers that improved the software the video rental company uses to personalize movie recommendations for customers.

Evaluating entrants fairly will be one of the key tests for the Obama administration as it moves forward with contests, said Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft Federal. "Everything that they've been doing so far has been done in good faith," she said. "It could easily get out of hand, if it's not properly managed." To read more, click here.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "A Chinese minister made the government's strongest statement yet on Google Inc.'s future in the country, warning that the U.S. Internet company 'will have to bear the consequences'" if it "follows through on its pledge to stop censoring its Chinese search site," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

While technology has helped people all over the world gain greater access to more information, many governments last year devoted increased attention and resources to curtailing access to those technologies and information, the State Department said Thursday in its annual Human Rights report.

"It was a year in which governments spent more time, money, and attention finding regulatory and technical means to curtail freedom of expression on the Internet and the flow of critical information and to infringe on the personal privacy rights of those who used these rapidly evolving technologies," the report noted.

"Many governments continued to exert control over information that came into and was produced within their countries," the report added. "This was accomplished by hindering the ability to organize in public, online, or through use of new technologies; by restricting the dissemination of information on the Internet, radio, or television or through print media."

During a briefing to discuss the report, Michael Posner, the assistant secretary for human rights, said one of the areas the department is pursuing "practical strategies" for protecting human rights is in Internet freedom, saying it's "critical that we figure out how are we going to address the restrictions on the Internet that many governments ... are now imposing with greater energy and resources."

Federal regulators reviewing the proposed $30 billion merger of Comcast and NBC Universal pledged Thursday to closely scrutinize the transaction's impact on consumers and the marketplace.

"Senator, I can assure you there is no rubber stamp at the Department of Justice," Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney, who heads the antitrust division, said during an exchange with Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing.

"The interests of consumers will be heard in our review of this transaction -- they have to be. That's our core obligation," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, who also appeared before the panel.

The regulatory chiefs testified at the fourth congressional hearing on the deal, which would combine Comcast, the nation's largest cable and residential broadband provider, with NBCU, one of the largest programming ventures. Although their testimony marked the first time these officials have answered questions publicly about the planned transaction, both were restricted from discussing any specifics while it is still under government review. Both agencies are expected to issue decisions in the fourth quarter of the year.

Several members voiced concerns, including Senate Commerce Chairman John (Jay) Rockefeller, D-W.Va. "When companies swell to include both content and distribution we need to pay attention," he said. "It is vitally important that when we have mergers in these markets, consumers cannot be left with less programming and higher rates." Also skeptical were Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Maria Cantwell of Washington, the only Commerce member to recommend that the deal be blocked.

Other key lawmakers took a wait-and-see attitude. "I have an open mind on this," said Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass. "Mergers can increase efficiencies and promote innovation when done well," or "distort markets, reduce consumer choice, and drive up the price of services" when approved without rigorous conditions, he said. Commerce ranking member Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, urged the agencies to "tread carefully" with their reviews and refrain from drawing in ancillary policy matters, but also not to harm consumers, innovation and investment. To read more, click here. (Subscription required)

President Obama Thursday reiterated his administration's commitment to enacting the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, aimed at curbing global piracy, despite a vote by the European Parliament this week calling for greater transparency in the deal's negotiations.

During remarks at the Export-Import Bank's annual conference, the president discussed the need to "aggressively protect" U.S. intellectual property.

"There's nothing wrong with other people using our technologies, we welcome it -- we just want to make sure that it's licensed, and that American businesses are getting paid appropriately," Obama said. "That's why [the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative] is using the full arsenal of tools available to crack down on practices that blatantly harm our businesses, and that includes negotiating proper protections and enforcing our existing agreements, and moving forward on new agreements, including the proposed Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement."

Mark Esper, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Global IP Center, applauded the president for highlighting the importance of IP protection "as well as singling out the need for a strong Anti-Counterfeiting and Trade Agreement that will raise the bar on enforcement standards and improve cooperation between nearly forty countries."

But the ACTA negotiations have been criticized by public interest groups and some lawmakers for lacking transparency. They have pointed in particular to the fact that a public draft of the agreement has not been released.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman, D-Calif., said Thursday that he is working on his own legislation aimed at bolstering global Internet freedom.

Berman said he is still working out the details and plans to work with Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., on the legislation. Smith has introduced his own bill, known as the Global Online Freedom Act, which would require the State Department to set up an Office of Global Internet Freedom and compile an annual list of Internet-restricting countries. The measure also would require U.S. information technology and communications firms to store personally identifiable information outside of Internet-restricting countries and report when countries ask them to censor, block or restrict access to information.

In an interview, Berman said he is still open to using parts of Smith's GOFA bill or even moving the measure itself. But he added that he's trying to figure out "what's the most effective thing we can do to help people in countries where the government is" seeking to restrict Internet freedom. "If GOFA can do it or some variation, that's what we're looking at," he said.

Berman's panel held a hearing Wednesday on the issue of Internet freedom, which looked in particular at Google's recent spat with China on the issue. Google announced in January that it would stop censoring search results for users in China after the Internet firm discovered it had been the victim of a cyber attack originating from China.

Food and Drug Administration officials said this week that the agency plans to issue this year proposals regulating prescription advertisements on the Internet, and the agency likely will not differentiate between social media tools, Nextgov.com reported.

Since November 2009, the pharmaceutical industry has pushed FDA to allow companies to promote medical information about drugs on Twitter and other similar microblog applications, using abbreviated text. Current FDA regulations on product labeling do not distinguish between hard copy and digital content, like Twitter posts. "That's akin to using standards created for horse and buggies to regulate automobiles," said Jeffrey Francer, assistant general counsel for the drug industry group PhRMA, during a conference call with reporters on Tuesday. "So we're asking for new standards as quickly as possible."

On Feb. 26, PhRMA submitted comments to the agency, proposing FDA adopt several Internet-specific standards, including giving drug companies permission to microblog, in forums such as Twitter, about scientific news regarding their products. The group also suggested allowing companies to place a universal FDA seal of approval on space-constrained messages, which would link to more complete labeling. And PhRMA asked FDA to allow manufacturers to provide one-line warnings in sponsored search results that would link to information on drugs' risks.

FDA spokeswoman Shelly L. Burgess said in a statement to Nextgov that forthcoming guidance will focus on Web-based approaches that would remain relevant for decades, rather than on specific applications. "Our guidance will not become quickly outdated as the tools and technology evolve," she said. The regulatory areas that FDA expects to cover in its Internet promotion guidance include accountability, ownership and responsibility, Burgess added. To read more click here.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Microsoft chairman and founder Bill Gates on Wednesday criticized China for doing too little to protect intellectual property," The Hill reports. "Microsoft has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in China because of lax protections for copyrights and patents, straining its relationship with the emerging economic superpower."

• "Groups pushing for robust Hispanic participation in the 2010 census are enlisting a new corps of foot-soldiers in their battle to reach that hard-to-count demographic: tech-savvy, smart-phone-toting young people," AP reports.

FCC regulator Mignon Clyburn Wednesday criticized broadband providers for raising their rates as the FCC works to bring broadband Internet service to more Americans.

In a statement, Clyburn noted that on Tuesday when she announced the FCC's proposal to create a National Digital Literacy Corps to help educate Americans unfamiliar with computers and the Internet, "I learned that another major broadband provider is raising its rates for its lowest tiers of broadband service." Comcast recently informed its customers that it would be raising its rates on its lower-priced broadband tiers by $2 a month, DSLReports.com reported Tuesday.

She lamented that "just as we are in the process of proposing steps to ensure that more people are comfortable signing up for broadband service, providers of that very service are raising prices."

Clyburn said the FCC should more closely examine the issue of rising broadband costs, noting that 36 percent of those surveyed say they have not adopted broadband because of a cost-related reason. "Across-the-board price increases, especially on those who can least afford it, should raise a red flag for the commission," she said. "When prices rise across the industry, and where there are only a limited number of players in the game, we have to ask ourselves whether there is any meaningful competition in the marketplace."

Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury defended the price hike, saying the cable and broadband provider hasn't "increased the price of our service in more than five years and about half of our customers are currently in promotions and won't be impacted by this change. ... We've invested billions of dollars to deliver broadband service to 99 percent of the homes in our footprint and will continue to invest to increase speeds and add features customers want and value."

The public interest group Free Press applauded Clyburn for "tackling the issue of competition in the broadband market head-on," the group's policy director, Ben Scott, said in a news release. "For too long, the FCC has avoided confronting the competition problem, leaving American consumers and business at the mercy of the phone and cable companies."

Even though the FCC says it can revamp the multi-billion dollar universal service fund on its own -- and without the need for congressional action -- a key House lawmaker is forging ahead with USF legislation anyway. Either way, the fund, which now subsidizes mostly traditional phone costs in low-income and rural areas, would be redirected toward supporting broadband deployment and adoption.

Following a House Energy and Commerce Committee markup Wednesday on unrelated legislation, Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., said he hopes to mark up his draft universal service legislation this month. When asked whether his measure conflicts with the FCC's approach, he said both have the same goal: to transition the fund to support broadband Internet access. He added, however, that they differ on some details.

Boucher and Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., released a draft of their bill in November that would expand the base of corporate contributors to the federal fund, cap its size and widen its mission to encompass broadband. Boucher said Wednesday that he has spent many hours "trying to finalize it," but couldn't say when he would have a final draft.

The Senate passed a bill Wednesday that includes a one-year extension of the research and development tax credit and legislation extending satellite retransmission licenses. The bill must still be reconciled with House legislation or passed by that chamber before it can be sent to President Obama.

The measures were included in legislation that extended several business tax breaks and unemployment benefits. The satellite legislation included in the bill would reauthorize the expiring statutory licenses that allow satellite providers to retransmit broadcast stations to consumers. It also would "modernize and simplify the licenses, while making adjustments that will encourage satellite providers to make more local content available," according to a statement from Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. Portions of the legislation would expire in 2014.

"Ensuring that Americans have access to broadcast television content is important, and it is particularly relevant for consumers in rural areas who might not otherwise be able to receive these signals over-the-air," Leahy said.

Meanwhile, the measure also would retroactively extend for one year the R&D tax credit, which expired at the end of 2009 after the Senate failed to take up House legislation that included extensions of the credit and other tax breaks. While the Senate's passage of the extension is good news for the tech industry and other business sectors, the legislation still falls short of the tech industry's call for making the R&D tax credit permanent. They also have been urging Congress to update the credit to make it more competitive with the research incentives offered by other countries.

"We've let this credit expire for the 14th time since its creation nearly 30 years ago," TechNet President and CEO Rey Ramsey said in a statement earlier this week urging the Senate to pass the tax extenders bill. "This annual uncertainty of this credit hampers the ability of U.S. businesses to plan the future roadmap of the products they create to keep us on the cutting edge of global competitiveness."

The House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday approved legislation that would make it illegal to falsify caller identification information, a practice known as "spoofing," while also backing two bills to improve the allocation of spectrum.

The anti-spoofing bill would make it illegal to use technology to transmit "misleading or inaccurate caller ID information with the intent to defraud or deceive." The bill would provide an exception for law enforcement or national security purposes. "Caller ID spoofing has emerged as a useful tool for identity thieves and other scam artists," Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said. "These nefarious actions are the target of the bill."

The committee also approved two spectrum-related bills. One would require the FCC and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration to conduct an inventory of the radio spectrum currently being used by both public and private entities and make recommendations about whether some spectrum should be reallocated or shared. The panel approved a substitute amendment to address some national security and intelligence concerns raised by the Obama administration and other issues.

The second bill aims to improve the process for moving federal users off of spectrum that has been reallocated and auctioned for commercial use. The Obama administration also raised concerns with this measure such as whether agencies would have adequate resources to properly plan for relocating once new spectrum has been identified. Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said he would attempt to address these issues before the measure goes to the House floor.

After last month's session with President Obama, YouTube will be hosting its second in-person interview later this month with FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, YouTube announced Wednesday.

The session will take place next Tuesday, the day the FCC plans to unveil its long-awaited national broadband plan. Video and text questions for Genachowski can be submitted via YouTube's CitizenTube site, where users can also vote on which questions should be posed to Genachowski. The suggested topic areas for questions relate to the broadband plan. They include access and affordability, mobile and wireless, security and privacy, and issues related to the open Internet debate.

"Access to the Internet has transformed almost every aspect of our economy and society," Steve Grove, YouTube's head of news and politics, said in a post on the policy blog of Google, which owns YouTube. "This is your chance to press the FCC on how the national broadband plan will help bring the Internet to everyone."

The music industry is taking their fight for performance fees to their adversaries' doors Wednesday. The music industry has begun portraying broadcasters' opposition to legislation that would require AM and FM radio stations to pay a fee to performers for playing their music on the air as "piggish."

To highlight the point, the Radio Accountability Project, sponsored by several music industry groups, is launching a cross-country tour featuring a giant inflatable pink pig. The pig's first stop Wednesday was the Washington headquarters of the National Association of Broadcasters. The pig also will visit the headquarters and top stations of radio corporations across the country over the next few months, the project said.

"The radio companies are being piggish by refusing to pay musicians for their work while big radio corporations make billions of dollars in profits," Radio Accountability Project spokesman Mark Corallo said. "The inflatable pig will showcase the most piggish radio broadcasters across America--like Clear Channel and Cumulus."

NAB has countered that the legislation would primarily benefit large record companies, not musicians and would place a major financial burden on already struggling local radio stations.

"It's no surprise that [the Recording Industry Association of America] is now employing silly frat-boy stunts, given its well-documented practice of suing college kids to rescue a bankrupt business model," NAB spokesman Dennis Wharton said in a statement. "It also seems appropriate for RIAA to use an inflatable pig as its mascot, since its foreign-owned members would be the biggest beneficiaries of performance tax pork. RIAA is losing this issue on Capitol Hill and in the court of public opinion, and today's demonstration represents a new low in a campaign of utter desperation."

In the spirit of the event, NAB said it served sausage pizza to the protesters at the event.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Cable and satellite TV companies urged the" Federal Communications Commission "and Congress Tuesday to fix what they insist is a broken system that permits broadcasters to make excessive demands and use hardball tactics during carriage negotiations," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center Tuesday released a list of more than 40 complaints filed by air travelers about the use of whole-body imaging machines.

The complaints were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The complaints are short and direct, where passengers generally said they believe the machines are invasive and violate their privacy.

"These documents reveal that many travelers are unhappy with the privacy and health implications of this technology," Ginger McCall, EPIC's staff counsel, said in a statement. "The documents also show that many travelers are not aware that they are being subjected to whole body imaging and are not informed of the option to have a pat down instead."

EPIC said it previously obtained documents for the scanners that reveal the machines can store and transfer high quality naked images of travelers, contrary to the claims of the Transportation Security Administration. TSA is in the midst of boosting the number of whole-body imaging machines used at airports across the country. The agency plans to buy and install 1,000 of the machines by the end of next year.

A TSA spokesperson could not be immediately reached for comment. But the documents released under the FOIA request also included responses to the complaints. "We monitor the number and nature of complaints we receive to track trends and spot areas of concern that may require special attention," one TSA response stated. "This ongoing process will enable us to ensure prompt, corrective action whenever we determine that security-screening policies need modification or specific employees or screener teams are the subject of repeated complaints."

The FCC disclosed Tuesday that its upcoming national broadband plan, to be unveiled March 16, will recommend that spectrum be set aside for a free or low-cost wireless broadband service.

The agency said the proposal, one of several to be presented to the commission and Congress, could help increase broadband adoption in the U.S., now at approximately 65 percent of households. While no details were provided on how widely available such service might be, the agency is particularly concerned that rural and inner-city areas are falling behind in Internet usage.

The agency buried the news of its proposal in a news release distributed at a summit on "digital inclusion" that it co-sponsored with the Knight Foundation. FCC regulator Mignon Clyburn slipped in a passing reference to the idea during the middle of her keynote at the event.

The data protection firm LifeLock has agreed to pay a total of $12 million to settle charges from the FTC and 35 states that it used false claims in promoting its identity theft protection services, the FTC announced Tuesday. LifeLock has promoted the effectiveness of its services by widely advertising the Social Security number of LifeLock's CEO.

But according to the FTC's complaint, LifeLock's fraud alerts placed on customers' credit files do not protect against misuse of existing accounts, the most common type of identity theft. The firm also did not protect against the misuse of medical or employment information. In addition, the FTC alleged that LifeLock falsely claimed it would prevent unauthorized changes to customers' address information, would constantly monitor customer credit reports, and would ensure customers were notified by a creditor before a new account was opened. In addition, the FTC also said the firm did not live up to the security measures it promoted.

"While LifeLock promised consumers complete protection against all types of identity theft, in truth, the protection it actually provided left enough holes that you could drive a truck through it," FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said in a statement.

Under the settlement secured by the FTC and the states, LifeLock and its co-founders will be prohibited from making deceptive claims and misrepresenting the "means, methods, procedures, effects, effectiveness, coverage, or scope of any identity theft protection service." In addition, it must create a "comprehensive data security program" and have it reviewed by a third party every two years for 20 years.

In a statement, LifeLock Chairman and CEO Todd Davis said his firm is "pleased" with the agreement because it sets advertising standards for his industry for the first time. "We are committed to developing and applying the most advanced technologies available to help protect consumers from the consequences of identity theft," he said. "We will also continue to work closely with lawmakers and regulators going forward to raise awareness about the threats of identity theft and to help consumers take effective action to protect themselves."

Reps. Chris Smith, R-N.J., and David Wu, D-Ore., announced Tuesday the launch of a new bipartisan Global Internet Freedom Caucus to promote online free expression. At the same event, Wu announced he was introducing legislation aimed at providing groups and individuals with the tools to bypass efforts by some countries to block or censor the Internet.

Wu's bill would require the National Science Foundation to establish an Internet Freedom Foundation, which would provide competitive grants and awards to universities, private industry, and other research and development organizations to develop technologies to defeat Internet suppression and censorship measures, such as China's Green Dam Internet filtering system.

"In this fast changing digital world, we must work together to appeal to the better angels and strive not just for prosperity but for freedom," Wu said during a news conference. He said he expects the measure to be referred to the House Science and Technology Committee, where Wu serves as a senior member.

The new bipartisan caucus established by Smith and Wu aims to also serve as a forum for members of Congress, the executive branch, and U.S. industry to discuss ways to enhance online freedom and address minimum standards of conduct for U.S. businesses that operate in Internet-suppressing countries, they said.

The recording industry is the principal investor in musicians' careers, according to a study released Tuesday by IFPI, an international recording industry group, and WIN, a network of independent record labels. The global study found that about 30 percent of record companies' sales revenue is spent on supporting musical talent, amounting to $5 billion dollars spent on artists' careers every year. The study drew on data from IFPI's member record companies and other case studies.

The findings appear to attempt to refute a public relations challenge that has pestered the recording industry: the notion that labels bankrupt their talent, an allegation AM and FM broadcasters readily assert in their ongoing feud over whether radio stations must begin paying royalties to musicians. Legislation cleared by both Judiciary Committees would require AM and FM radio stations to pay a fee to performers for playing their music on the air. Broadcasters argue the bill would benefit corporate record labels, many of which are foreign owned, more than musicians.

Trumpeting the study, IFPI CEO and Chairman John Kennedy said the record industry plays a crucial role in the careers of successful artists. "Investing in music is the core mission of record companies," he said in a statement. "No other party can lay claim to a comparable role in the music sector. No other party comes close to the levels of investment committed by record companies to developing, nurturing and promoting talent."

The study argues that the recording industry supports artists by providing musicians with advance pay and by covering recording, video, touring, and promotional costs. It said some artists' careers hinge on the kind of heavy up-front investments that might be difficult to secure outside of record companies. The report also touted the "ripple effect" of recording industry spending, estimating that 2 million people, including those in radio, are employed globally in its "music economy."

Broadcasters, however, counter that both performers and record companies benefit from the free air play artists receive from radio stations.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is once again urging President Obama to appoint members to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board, which has been languishing since it was first created in 2004. Leahy and Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., first wrote Obama last year urging him to move quickly to appoint new members to the board.

"The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is an integral component of our counterterrorism policies established by Congress to ensure that privacy and civil liberties concerns are appropriately considered in developing and implementing these measures," Leahy wrote Monday. He added that "given the many pressing privacy and civil liberties issues facing our nation, including timely issues related to counterterrorism and cybersecurity policies, this vital Board has remained vacant for far too long."

The five-member board was recommended by the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and was constituted in 2005. Leahy worked in 2007 to revise the board, making it an independent panel and requiring its members be confirmed by the Senate. He also secured funding for the board last year. However, the Senate failed to confirm members nominated by then-President George W. Bush before the terms of its members expired in 2008.

The Justice Department announced Monday that it would require Election Systems & Software to sell off voting equipment systems it purchased in September from Premier Election Solutions in order to restore competition in the voting equipment market. The department argued that without the move the acquisition would result in higher prices, lower quality and less innovation.

ES&S will be required to sell of hardware, software and firmware used to record, tabulate, transmit or report votes. The Justice Department and nine state attorneys generals filed a proposed settlement to address their antitrust concerns in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

They argued that the ES&S's purchase of Premier "substantially reduced competition as it combined the two largest providers of systems used to tally votes in federal, state and local elections in the United States," leaving ES&S as the provider of more than 70 percent of the voting equipment systems in the United States. However, because ES&S's acquisition of Premier was valued at only $5 million, the department could not examine its competitive impact until after the two firms had combined, the department said.

"The proposed settlement will restore competition, provide a greater range of choices and create incentives to provide secure, accurate and reliable voting equipment systems now and in the future," Molly S. Boast, deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, said in a statement.

The Global Network Initiative said Tuesday that it has tapped Susan Morgan to be its first executive director. Morgan, who will begin her new job in May, most recently served as head of corporate responsibility strategy, policy and business planning at British Telecommunications.

"Technology has the potential to dramatically increase access to information and protect personal privacy," Morgan said in a statement. "However, increasing demands from governments to limit content, restrict freedom of expression and monitor users represent a worrying threat to human rights."

The GNI is made up of companies, civil society organizations, investors and academics that have developed a set of principles to assist information technology and communications firms when they work in countries that may infringe on human rights, freedom of expression and privacy. GNI members include firms such as the Calvert Group, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, as well as groups such as the Center for Democracy and Technology, Human Rights Watch and the World Press Freedom Committee.

Morgan will be responsible for serving as the group's chief lobbyist and spokesperson and also work on trying to boost the group's membership, "encouraging collective action [and] overseeing the learning and accountability framework." The group also announced the formation of its board of directors, which is made up of representatives from industry, nonprofit organizations and academia.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Major telecommunications and cable companies are growing increasingly concerned the" Federal Communications Commission "will reclassify broadband as a heavily regulated telecom service -- a move that could mire the commission in protracted court battles and dissuade investments in the technology, they warn," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• Roll Call reports on the ethical problems some Hill and campaign staffers may run into when using social networking tools both for personal and work use.

The Treasury Department announced Monday it is amending its trade sanctions to allow for the export of personal Internet based communications services to Cuba, Iran and Sudan. The changes will allow for new general licenses for exports from U.S. firms or U.S. individuals to the three countries for services such as Web browsing, blogging, email, instant messaging and chat, social networking, and photo and movie sharing as well as for related software.

"Consistent with the administration's deep commitment to the universal rights of all the world's citizens, the issuance of these general licenses will make it easier for individuals in Iran, Sudan and Cuba to use the Internet to communicate with each other and with the outside world," Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said in a statement. "Today's actions will enable Iranian, Sudanese and Cuban citizens to exercise their most basic rights."

At a briefing Monday, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said the move is consistent with the Obama administration's efforts, outlined in a January speech by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to make Internet freedom a diplomatic priority. "It represents precisely our strategy that the secretary outlined in her Internet freedom speech," Crowley said. "We will continue to help people throughout the world with their ability to have a free flow of information and stay in touch with each other."

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners is asking the Treasury Department to clarify that grants for broadband access and adoption funded under the 2009 economic stimulus package are not taxable.

In a letter sent last week to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the group noted that it has already raised similar concerns about the electrical smart grid grants provided by the stimulus, also known as the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. "Unfortunately, even tax experts are unsure of the tax consequences of stimulus grants. The agencies providing grants cannot resolve this issue," NARUC wrote, adding that grant recipients need "immediate" guidance from Treasury or the IRS.

"If the Department of Treasury and the IRS determine that ARRA grants are taxable it will significantly undermine congressional intent," NARUC President David Coen and NARUC Telecommunications Committee Chairman Ray Baum wrote. "It most certainly will curtail the scope of grant funded broadband infrastructure, mapping, and adoption projects."

While she's been running for months, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina made her bid for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination in California official Monday by filing papers to run in June's Republican primary election against former Rep. Tom Campbell and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore. The winner will face Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer in the fall.

In a statement, Fiorina said if elected she would work to create more jobs by lowering taxes and reducing regulations on small businesses, while also cutting government spending. "I don't come from Washington; I come from the real world. From that real-world experience I know firsthand how to create jobs, and I have been on the receiving end of job-killing government regulation," she said. "Changing Washington starts with changing the people we send there."

Fiorina's effort to portray herself as a successful businesswoman, however, came under fire Monday after a letter from Arianna Packard, the granddaughter of HP co-founder David Packard, was obtained by the conservative blog Red State. In the letter to Sens. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who recently endorsed Fiorina, Packard sharply criticized Fiorina's conservative credentials and tenure at HP, in which she oversaw a controversial merger with Compaq opposed by a member of the Hewlett family.

"You write that she is a 'proven business leader.' This may be how she spins her career, but most business commentators consider Fiorina's tenure at HP to be a disaster," Packard wrote. "The stock price dropped by 50 percent only to rally 10 percent on the announcement of her firing." Packard went on to credit Fiorina's successor, Mark Hurd, with the firm's recent success.

Microsoft announced Monday the launch of a new program aimed at providing U.S. veterans and their spouses with the training they need to transition to 21st century civilian jobs.

The firm said it would contribute a total of $8 million in cash and software over the next two years for programs that will provide veterans leaving the military for the civilian workforce and their spouses with skills training, job placement, career counseling and other support services such as childcare, transportation and housing. Among the groups eligible to apply for Microsoft's support include service organizations, work force agencies, community colleges and other nonprofit organizations. The first group to join the initiative is Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Microsoft said in a statement.

The Elevate America's Veterans program is modeled after Microsoft's Elevate America program launched in February 2009, which partnered with states to provide people with technology skills training, industry-recognized certifications and work force readiness tools to help Americans prepare for today's jobs. Twelve states have signed up for the program so far and others have until March 31 to join.

"Our servicemen and women are amazing leaders, but to be able to compete in the tough job market when they return from duty, many of them need access to technology training," Microsoft Corporate Vice President Pamela Passman said in a statement. Nearly 185,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are unemployed - a rate that is 20 percent higher than the overall unemployment rate for nonveterans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

"I believe this effort will go a long way to helping [veterans] succeed in the 21st century work force," Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, a World War II veteran, said in the statement. "I hope Microsoft's commitment will inspire all employers across the country to give back to veterans."

The Homeland Security Department on Friday announced that it will expand the use of advanced imaging technology -- the controversial body scans -- to 11 U.S. airports, thanks to $1 billion in economic stimulus funds, NextGov.com reported. The units go beyond the capability of metal detectors to pick up explosives, weapons and nonmetallic threats hidden underneath clothing.

Though the department's Transportation Security Administration promises passenger privacy through blurred imaging and remote viewing, privacy advocates have raised concerns that the scans reveal anatomical features and are stored, not deleted as TSA claims. The Electronic Privacy Information Center published documents in January revealing that the machines can record, store and transmit passenger scans.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has called the technology a "virtual strip search," questioned the efficacy and privacy implications of the scanners' expanded use. "The Bill of Rights extends beyond curbside check-in and if the government insists on using these invasive search techniques, it is imperative that there be vigorous oversight and regulation to protect our privacy," the ACLU's Laura W. Murphy said in a statement.

The first screeners were installed Friday at Boston Logan International. Chicago O'Hare International will receive units this week, and the remaining locations will be up and running this summer. TSA already has 40 units in 19 airports nationwide and expects to have an additional 450 deployed by the end of 2010. To read more, click here.

The CEO of the group that manages the Internet address system Monday urged African leaders to take steps to "shatter" telecommunications monopolies in their nations to help lower the price of Internet access to their citizens. During opening remarks at the start of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' meeting in Nairobi, Kenya, Rod Beckstrom argued that the Internet can be an important tool for development but it is being hampered by high rates of access in Africa.

"If you have a monopoly what do you have? You have the most expensive Internet access rates in the world and where are those? Largely in Africa," Beckstrom said. "How can the poorest people on earth pay the highest rates for Internet access. It's an incredible brake on development."

It was one four challenges Beckstrom urged Africa's leaders to take on when they meet Tuesday at a meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which is taking place at the same conference center as ICANN's meeting. The group of six East African nations is focused on increasing coordination of development and drought control measures.

The other issues he urged the African leaders to address include dispelling myths being circulated in Africa that the new Internet addresses created by the next-generation Internet protocol IPv6 are not available to Africans; to urge more African countries to participate in ICANN by joining its Government Advisory Committee; and to view the Internet as more than just an "industrial structure but please view it as a platform for development."

Beckstrom noted that while 15 percent of the world's population lives in Africa, Africans make up less than 7 percent of all Internet users. "The internet ... is perhaps the most sustainable platform for development," he said.

Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., late Sunday praised cable operator Cablevision and the Walt Disney Co. for reaching an agreement that allowed 3 million New York-area viewers to tune in for Sunday night's broadcast of the Academy Awards on ABC. But Kerry urged discussion on ways to avoid such disputes in the future.

"I'm pleased to see that common sense has been restored in these negotiations and that Disney and Cablevision have agreed not to make consumers the victims," Kerry, who has been active in urging the two sides to reach a settlement, said in a statement. "Moving forward, however, we must assess the roots of these broadcast disputes and ensure that the rules of the road promote resolution rather than public conflict that strips consumers of the services they rely on."

ABC, which is owned by Disney, had cut off Cablevision viewer's access to ABC programming midnight Saturday after the two sides were unable to reach agreement over retransmission fees. But the programming was restored minutes into the Oscar show after a tentative deal was announced.

New York's WABC7 said in a statement Sunday night that the two sides had "made significant progress and have reached an agreement in principle that recognizes the fair value of ABC7, with deal points that we expect to finalize with Cablevision." The dispute is the latest in a string of disagreements between cable operators and broadcasters over retransmission fees.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• Obama "will join space experts at a conference in Florida next month to discuss the administration's 'new vision' for NASA, the White House announced Sunday," The Hill reports.

• "Seeking to exploit the Internet's potential for prying open closed societies, the Obama administration will permit technology companies to export online services like instant messaging, chat and photo sharing to Iran, Cuba and Sudan, a senior administration official said Sunday," the New York Times reports.

Federal projects aimed at reducing the government's susceptibility to cyber-attacks are at risk due to difficulty defining agency roles, creating metrics, incorporating transparency and reaching agreement about how much to inform the public about online threats, according to a GAO report released Friday. Coordinating actions with international entities and addressing identity issues were cited as two additional challenges.

Federal cybersecurity projects fall under the umbrella of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, created by President Bush in 2008 to reduce the government's vulnerability to cyber-attacks, along with providing protection and anticipating future threats. But the GAO report uncovered significant factors inhibiting its effectiveness. The GAO recommended that the Office of Management and Budget take steps to address each barrier. "OMB agreed with five of six recommendations," the report said, "disagreeing with the recommendation regarding defining roles and responsibilities."

During a week that had the FCC busy highlighting how the national broadband plan will benefit specific groups, boons to small business were the focus of a speech delivered Thursday by Chairman Julius Genachowski.

According to the FCC, small business recommendations in the broadband plan include a review of competition rules to give small businesses broadband choice, new mentoring programs with help from the Economic Development Administration, and the creation of a public-private partnership for digital literacy training to support small businesses in needy areas.

"Broadband can have a dramatic effect on small businesses, a key engine for new job creation in our economy," Genachowski said this week, according to prepared remarks. "Arming these businesses with cutting-edge technology and innovative tools doesn't just help local businesses reach local customers. It brings them a world-wide market for their goods and services." Fifty percent of small businesses have failed to create Web sites, Genachowski highlighted at a December event collecting broadband perspectives from small business owners.

Other events this week touted how the plan will help children, families and American Indians. The FCC's National Broadband Plan is due to Congress by March 17.

During a House Communications, Technology and the Internet Subcommittee hearing Thursday, Republican lawmakers criticized how stimulus dollars devoted to broadband have been handed out so far. Their concerns focused on the destinations of money handed out by the National Telecommunications and Information Association and the Rural Utilities Service, with members arguing that the dollars have not wound up in the communities that most need them.

"It has come to my attention that there have been some specific complaints about the overbuilding of existing networks," said subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., according to prepared remarks. "In north Georgia, NTIA awarded a $33.5 million grant to an area that already has extensive broadband service." He added that broadband programs that funnel money to areas where existing providers already offer service could have a harmful effect on jobs and future broadband deployment, "rather than promoting broadband and stimulating the economy."

Witness Jonathan Adelstein, administrator of USDA's RUS, defended how money has handed out so far, arguing that the RUS has already been effective in addressing previous complaints. "Funding has been awarded to a diversity of providers--from small telecommunications companies, wireless providers, rural electric and telephone 3 cooperatives to cable providers--to build out our rural networks, creating urgently needed jobs in rural America," he said.

Recent programs improvements have included streamlining the application process, adding funding opportunities and improving outreach, Adelstein said, noting that tweaks came in response to comments from Congress and the public.

Former Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., the president of the National Association of Broadcasters, hopes he can be the one to resolve the endless standoff between artists and radio stations over royalties, which AM and FM stations pay to publishers and songwriters but not musicians when the stations air songs.

Smith said he "certainly" hopes the issue can be resolved while he is top guy at the NAB, noting talks are ongoing with the Recording Industry Association of America. "I'd love to be the person to do that, but not if it costs us the radio industry," he said. After passing the Judiciary panels in both chambers, legislation for new fees has moved further than ever before. With Smith ascending to the top NAB spot late last year, it had looked like the hard-fought issue might have better prospects than ever. For now, though, the groups remain at loggerheads.

Smith said that although he is talking to the recording industry about the issue, "finding a middle ground is extremely difficult." One possibility on the table is to redirect money that radio stations are currently paying to play songs--but which is not heading to musicians--toward the artists. "We are talking," he said. "I can't describe it as negotiating."

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III warned Thursday that the cyberterrorism threat is 'real and... rapidly expanding,'" the Washington Post reports.

• "FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is urging his four colleagues on the commission to sign a joint 'mission statement' endorsing the overarching goals of the proposed national broadband plan in lieu of an up-or-down vote on the massive technology blueprint," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

• "Stimulus tax dollars have been wasted on building broadband to areas with existing networks, according to House Republicans," The Hill reports.

• "Threatened by Apple Inc.'s growing stable of portable devices, Sony Corp. is developing a new lineup of handheld products, including a smart phone capable of downloading and playing videogames, according to people familiar with the matter," the Wall Street Journal (subscription) reports.

The Democratic-led FCC put the kibosh on its videotape of a news conference last Thursday in which Chairman Julius Genachowski committed a verbal gaffe. Reporters attending the briefing were told the session was being taped for the "FCC Live" section of the agency's website, where videos are posted of commission events. Journalists were instructed to identify themselves upon asking questions and speak only into a microphone.

But the agency, which repeatedly has pledged to operate in a more open and publicly accessible manner, buried the video after the chairman provided some erroneous information. Genachowski twice told reporters that a proposed communications network for emergency responders would require $16 billion to $18 billion in congressional funding.

After some news outlets cited those figures in breaking stories, FCC officials contacted reporters to say Genachowski misspoke -- and meant to say $12 billion to $16 billion. The video never surfaced publicly and the "FCC Live" section of the agency's website doesn't mention that a Feb. 25 press conference ever occurred. "We recognized the mistake and corrected it that same day. We are not planning on posting the video in the interest of not providing the public with misinformation," an FCC spokesman said.

As to Genachowski's revised cost estimate: what's a few billion among friends?

Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., warned FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Wednesday that a dispute involving Disney-owned ABC programs carried on Cablevision could result in 3.1 million households losing access to the network before Sunday night's telecast of the widely viewed Academy Awards show.

The contract dispute, which would affect viewers in Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, is the latest in a series of battles over the retransmission of broadcast channels on cable.

Kerry, in a letter to Genachowski, acknowledged that "these are private negotiations," but asked the commission chairman "to urge the parties to stay at the negotiating table and continue transmitting ABC programming to Cablevision consumers."

"This game of chicken being played again and again between cable companies and broadcasters with consumers in the cross hairs must come to an end," Kerry wrote.

But in another letter Wednesday to Genachowski, House Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton insisted the talks are "private discussions" that should be "free from government interference of cajoling," and that consumers have ample choices for content.

Cablevision is running ads in Washington asserting that Disney is demanding $1 billion for carrying its network. Broadcasters insist their programming draws more viewers to cable, resulting in more subscribers.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., "urged federal regulators to intervene in a fee dispute between Cablevision Systems Corp. and Walt Disney Co.'s ABC television station in New York before viewers lose access to programming," Bloomberg News reports.

• "The chairs of the Rural Telecommunications Task Force are circulating a letter to colleagues expressing concern about recent changes to the Commerce Department's process for awarding broadband stimulus money," The Hill reports.

• "With Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) set to unveil patent reform legislation as early as" today, "the Coalition for Patent Fairness is coming out strongly against the proposed compromise," Roll Call (subscription) reports. "After years of negotiations failing to come to fruition, the high-tech group says the recently announced agreement is worse than existing patent law."

Education Secretary Duncan announced today that his department will unveil a new technology proposal sometime this week.

Duncan outlined five priorities to be addressed in the plan: learning, assessment, teaching, infrastructure and productivity.

In a nod to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, Duncan expressed optimism that the agency will support the Education Department in its quest to provide broadband for every student.

The plan will include policy recommendations at the federal, state and local levels, he added.

Duncan spoke at the Ed Tech Government Forum held at the Capitol Hyatt Regency. The event, orchestrated by the Software and Information Industry Association, brings national education leaders and e-learning executives together to focus on education technology.

"Most young people can't remember a time without the Internet," Duncan said, "but most learning experiences in school don't match that reality outside. ... We have to bridge that gap."

Some conference attendees expressed concern about the administration's FY11 budget proposal that calls for consolidating the Educational Technology State Grants into a larger funding stream with a host of different programs. The worry is that the new funding regime won't provide the same level of support to private vendors of education technology as the existing one does.

Duncan emphasized that under the proposed changes, there is still an overall budget increase.

Other national education leaders to give remarks at the conference included Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.; Roberto Rodriguez, special assistant to the president for education; and Steven Paine, state superintendent of schools for the West Virginia Department of Education.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee could mark up spectrum inventory legislation designed to identify unused and underutilized wireless airwaves as early as next week, House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., told the National Association of Broadcasters on Tuesday.

The measure sponsored by Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman was approved by Boucher's subcommittee in January. It would free up more spectrum for wireless broadband to help the FCC achieve the sweeping goals to be outlined in its national broadband plan, which is scheduled for unveiling March 16.

A companion bill sponsored by Senate Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman John Kerry, D-Mass., passed the full Senate Commerce panel in July.

Both the FCC and the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration would be required to inventory all spectrum under their management.

Two federal agencies have extended the application deadline for grants from the economic stimulus bill aimed at expanding broadband access in the United States.

The March 15 deadline for applications in the second and final round of stimulus funding for high-speed Internet access is being pushed back toward the end of the month. Applications are now due to the Commerce Department by March 26 and to the Agriculture Department by March 29.

The new deadlines apply to projects that seek subsidies to build networks. Proposals for public computer centers and broadband training programs are still due by the original March 15 deadline.

Some applicants have complained that the original deadlines were unfair because the government has yet to respond to all proposals submitted in the first funding round.

Congress included $7.2 billion in last year's stimulus package to help spur broadband access and adoption nationwide.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "Apple filed a patent-infringement complaint against Taiwan's HTC Corp. yesterday, seeking to prevent U.S. imports of phones that run Google Inc.'s Android operating system," Bloomberg News reports.

• "Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski's coming National Broadband Plan will propose up to $25 billion in new federal spending for high-speed Internet lines and a wireless network for police and firefighters as part of a broader plan that appears to be a win for wireless companies," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "U.S. technology companies came under fire on Capitol Hill Tuesday for bowing to pressure by foreign governments to censor or block Internet sites in countries like Iran or China," the Wall Street Journal reports.

• "The House Energy and Commerce Committee could mark up spectrum inventory legislation designed to identify unused and underutilized wireless airwaves as early as next week, House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., told the National Association of Broadcasters on Tuesday," CongressDailyAM (subscription) reports.

The FCC's decision to mothball controversial proposals that would have forced television broadcasters to relinquish up to half their spectrum was prompted by more than just industry opposition. House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., revealed today that pressure from congressional Democrats played a significant role. "I have signed letters along with other members and I have had discussions at the commission indicating that the forced approach was wrong," he said during a Tuesday speech to the National Association of Broadcasters.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski announced in late February that the agency's upcoming national broadband plan, to be unveiled March 16, would recommend that stations be remunerated for voluntarily relinquishing airwaves to be auctioned to mobile carriers. That's the most innocuous of several spectrum reallocation ideas floated by the agency in recent months to fend off a looming megahertz shortage.

Speaking to reporters, Boucher elaborated that he and former Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, D-Mich., were among the signatories of a letter to the FCC, sent when they first learned stations could be forced to cede spectrum, urging the agency to back off. The congressman doesn't want the commission to take any steps that might undermine the TV industry's historic switch last June to digital transmissions.

The FCC's upcoming national broadband plan could spur legislation -- but not the sort the Democratic-led commission was expecting. The sweeping technology blueprint, to be formally unveiled March 16, will feature several recommendations for congressional action to achieve the goal of nationwide, affordable broadband access by 2020.

House Republicans, however, might respond with bills designed to "prevent" the agency from adopting some of the regulatory rulemakings it will propose in the plan, said Neil Fried, chief counsel for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Fried revealed the legislative strategy during an appearance on a congressional staff panel this morning at the National Association of Broadcasters annual state leadership conference. He later told Tech Daily Dose that lawmakers would pursue the tactic if they're displeased with some steps the agency wants to take.

Fried also told the crowd he expects federal regulators to approve the pending Comcast-NBC Universal merger, though for a rather cynical reason: "to pursue conditions they otherwise couldn't get."

Jobs legislation on the table this week includes provisions to push back the sunset on licenses that allow satellite providers to retransmit broadcast stations, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced in a statement Monday.

Copyright law dictates that satellite providers have licenses to retransmit broadcasts. These licenses expired Sunday night, but bipartisan Judiciary Committee leaders in both chambers wrote satellite providers and urged them to maintain the status quo so that service would not be interrupted.

Attempts to reauthorize the licenses were stymied last month when Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., blocked a measure that would extend several provisions set to expire last week. At the time, Leahy blasted Bunning for putting his constituents' television viewership in peril. "Many Vermonters are at risk of turning on their televisions Monday morning for their morning news, weather and traffic updates, only to see a blank screen," Leahy said in a statement last week.

The satellite provisions in the jobs bill reauthorize the licenses along with seeking to expand access to public television. They also aim to update and streamline satellite rules in accordance to recommendations from the Copyright Office. "After months of negotiations, we have struck a reasonable agreement to advance this legislation. I hope Congress will quickly pass this important bill," Leahy said in a statement.

From this morning's Earlybird:

• "The Obama administration" today "plans to declassify portions of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, created during the Bush administration as a secret effort to harness the nation's defensive and offensive strategies for protecting commercial and government networks," the New York Times reports.

• "Trouble with the Pentagon's strapped Web network could threaten its new decision to permit service members access to social networking sites, including Facebook and Twitter," The Hill reports.

• "The Republican Study Committee, a group of more than 115 conservative House Republicans, sponsored a 'Twitter Day' on Monday with the theme 'My commitment,'" Roll Call (subscription) reports.

Sens. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, and Ted Kaufman, D-Del., announced legislation Monday to launch a study of the FCC's technical capabilities. Their proposal would direct the National Academy of Sciences to examine the FCC's tech-related decision-making processes, whether the agency has enough technical staff, its recruiting and hiring processes, and how to streamline rulemakings and procedures.

"With the rapid advancement of technologies and innovation within the telecommunications industry, the FCC must be better equipped and more agile to address the ever-changing technical landscape from a regulatory perspective," Snowe said in a statement.

The pair raised concerns about insufficient technical expertise at the agency. Snowe's statement pointed out that in 1948, "the FCC had 720 engineers on staff; today, it has fewer than 300--an astonishing 62 percent reduction--even though the FCC now must face technical issues concerning the Internet, wireless communications, and broadband."

The bill authorizes $1 million over two years for this research.

A group that promotes online privacy called for new regulations on pharmaceutical companies Monday in a Food and Drug Administration filing that blasted how these companies advertise online. The Center for Digital Democracy said that online behavioral targeting by corporations in the health-related fields pose significant risks to consumers and must be further investigated.

"It is essential that the FDA craft regulatory safeguards for Internet-related promotion, especially since interactive communications will become the dominant form for the delivery of health information and advertising to both consumers and health professionals," CDD's executive director Jeff Chester said in statement.

The FDA had requested comments, due this week, on how companies promote FDA-regulated medical products using the Internet, including social media sites. The Internet has "raised questions and concerns over how to apply existing regulations to promotion in these newer media," according to the FDA's background on its proceeding. In particular, the Web has created challenges for figuring out how to state mandatory information, such as a drug's side effects.

Chester's group pushed beyond these compliance concerns to raise questions about how pharmaceutical companies might use online marketing tools to prey on consumer anxieties. "Few U.S. health consumers are aware that they are being identified, labeled, profiled, and tracked on the Internet while they search or access information on specific conditions or concerns," CDD's statement said.

Pharmaceutical companies are steering the FDA toward looser regulations that will not open them up to repeated compliance slaps. The agency should be mindful of "imposing too many, or overly confining, restrictions on industry, which could silence an important voice in the chorus," Eli Lilly's hearing statement said.

Mobile phones are changing the way Americans access the news, according to a Pew survey released today. A third of cell phone owners access news on their phones, according to the study of 2,259 adults conducted in January. "News is pocket-sized," the study said.

A quarter of all Americans access news on their phones, the study found. "The impact of this new mobile technology on news gathering is unmistakable," it said. "People's relationship to news is becoming portable, personalized and participatory."

Americans who access the news from their handhelds most often grabbed weather data, current events coverage and access to applications that provide news content. According to the study, 80 percent of American adults have cell phones today, and 37 percent go online from their phones.

Groups who depend on "special access" broadband lines urged the FCC last week to examine the rates incumbent telecommunications carriers charge companies who run data over their high-capacity networks. The groups claimed that AT&T and Verizon overcharge competitors for access to these lines.

In an FCC filing, a coalition of groups who use special access lines pressed the agency to study the level of competition in the special access market and whether incumbents abuse their market power. "Every month that reform is delayed results in hundreds of millions of dollars in special access overpayments and further injury to broadband innovation and job growth," wrote the NoChokePoints coalition, which includes Sprint, XO Communications and Clearwire, among others. The FCC reopened an examination of the deregulated special access market last year and called for comments from stakeholders.

Special access lines provide high-capacity connections between such points as a cell tower and the phone network or a company data center and the broader Internet backbone. The rates are not paid directly by consumers, so incumbent carriers argue that this is a business-to-business issue. They also say competition is healthy in the special access market and that complainers' "rhetoric and unverifiable anecdotes" aim to rig the market in their favor, as AT&T wrote in its filing.

With the FCC planning to unveil a far-reaching plan for high-speed Internet later this month, both sides invoked national broadband goals in their comments. AT&T argued that it would be unwise at this juncture for the FCC to undermine the private sector's incentives to make major broadband investments. Sprint, on the other hand, claims that federal broadband dollars would be better spent if special access rates were lower. "With the national broadband plan on the way, you've got to solve the special access problem so those tax dollars can be invested wisely," said John Taylor, a spokesman for Sprint.