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TechCentral: The Week Ahead

Click over to CongressDaily's TechCentral for a look at the week ahead, plus plenty of other stories to keep you in the know.

This Week's Highlights:

The Benton Foundation and the Public Airwaves Coalition are sponsoring a discussion Monday entitled “Public Interest Obligations in the 21st Century: Where Do We Go From Here?"

The session, which takes place at noon at the National Press Club, is billed as a look at the new broadcast disclosure rules and the issues raised in the FCC’s “localism” proceeding. Among the featured guests are the two Democrats on the FCC, Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps – who were in the minority when the FCC’s GOP majority voted in December to relax media ownership rules.

Adelstein will also be on hand when key telecom and technology players gather for the annual conference of the Institute for Politics Democracy & the Internet this Tuesday and Wednesday.

Other scheduled speakers former White House Internet director David Almacy; National Telecommunications and Information Administration senior adviser Eric Werner; former Rep. Rick White, R-Wash., and Columbia University Internet expert Tim Wu.

And new media experts from the presidential campaigns of former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani are also slated to speak.

Discussion topics at the two-day session – to be held at the Renaissance Washington Hotel -- range from the impact of increased U.S. broadband penetration to the power of technology to change politics and government.

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Buzz Building Over Web Safety Task Force

From CongressDaily's PM edition on Wednesday:

A key player in the online safety community rejected an invitation late Tuesday to participate in a task force announced last month by 49 state attorneys general and the social-networking site MySpace. The Internet Education Foundation, a group that coordinates the work of the advisory committee to the Congressional Internet Caucus, said its workload is too large to take part.

The foundation said in a statement that it also fears the efforts of the multi-stakeholder panel will be overpowered by age-verification technology companies. "From the outset we expressed our concern with financial interests of vendors clouding the sober judgment of this important work," IEF said. "We sincerely hope that the task force will be able to conduct its research in a civil and sober manner."

An announcement about the task force's membership is expected Thursday, sources said. Internet businesses, nonprofits, academics and technology firms have been asked to participate.

Check CongressDaily for more details...

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Supreme Court To Hear Quanta Case This Week

Reprinted from the Nov. 26, 2007 edition of National Journal's Technology Daily

Tech Case May Shape Rule On Patent 'Exhaustion'
By Andrew Noyes

The Supreme Court will usher in 2008 with a high-profile technology case involving a major patent dispute between a group of Taiwanese computer manufacturers and their South Korean competitor. Oral argument is scheduled for Jan. 16.

The plaintiffs, led by Quanta Computer, want the court to upend a 2006 ruling by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals that they claim would let patent holders -- like rival LG Electronics -- inappropriately seek royalties from multiple companies.

Consumers Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge recently filed a brief arguing that the court incorrectly interpreted a principle that says patent owners "exhaust" their rights after a product is sold and cannot continue imposing post-sale conditions or filing infringement suits.

The watchdog groups, and numerous other Quanta supporters, claim that letting patent owners impose such use restrictions could harm consumers. They say contract law is the proper tool for protecting a patentee's legitimate interest in restricting post-sale uses.

The brief, authored by EFF staffers Fred von Lohmann and Jason Schultz and outside counsel Marc Bernstein, argues that failing to rule in Quanta's favor could lead to "increased information costs when trying to ascertain restrictions on patented goods."

Cisco Systems, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and the online auction site eBay filed their own brief that elaborates on perceived problems with the current regime. The American Antitrust Institute and Computer and Communications Industry Association also weighed in, urging the justices to overturn the appeals court.

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What Do Low U.S. Math And Science Scores Mean?

Reprinted from the Dec. 7, 2007 edition of National Journal's Technology Daily

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

The higher education community is divided on how much weight should be given to a report issued Tuesday that found U.S. high-school students overall are performing below average in science. But many concur that low U.S. test scores are largely due to the country's failure in reaching out to its underclass and immigrant population.

The United States ranked 21st on an international survey of 15-year-olds' knowledge and skills in science, known as the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

University of Washington Computer Science Professor Ed Lazowska, a former co-chair of the now-defunct President's Information Technology Advisory Committee, said the report "once again clearly indicates the performance of U.S. secondary students in science and mathematics lags that of our competitor nations."

He said the results should effectively counter a widely publicized October Urban Institute report that claimed the United States, contrary to other recent reports, is not falling behind in science and math education.

Lazowska acknowledged performance gaps among segments of the U.S. student population. While "the best-prepared students in America are equal to the best in the world," he said, "a greater and greater proportion of America's students are not being prepared at this level and are not being equipped for success."

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Bill's Passage Divides Child-Safety Groups

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

Proposed Aid To Child-Safety Group Riles Colleagues
By Andrew Noyes

Controversy is brewing over a House-passed Internet bill that would direct $25 million to a nonprofit provider of online child safety curricula over a five-year period. Child-safety advocates complain that it is unfair to funnel that much money to a single organization.

The legislation, H.R. 4134, would authorize $5 million annually through 2012 for Carlsbad, Calif.-based i-Safe. The House passed it by voice vote Tuesday, less than a week after California Democrat Linda Sanchez introduced it.

In an attempt to pacify critics, the legislation also would direct $5 million annually to the Justice Department for a competitive grant program whereby other Web safety groups could vie for funding, said Michael Torra, Sanchez's chief of staff. A Senate companion bill has not been introduced, he said.

"Authorizing i-Safe ensures that this program, which has already helped over 3 million children in all 50 states, will be able to continue its work," Sanchez said Wednesday. The group has a "proven track record for teaching kids how to be safe on the Internet."

Torra said i-Safe has received $11 million in appropriations since 2002, but the measure is the first stand-alone bill introduced to authorize an amount. The group did not receive an earmark in fiscal 2007 and, if the Senate does not pass the bill, it will be without federal money in fiscal 2008, an i-Safe spokesman said.

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Thoughts On The Internet Governance Forum

Reprinted from the Nov. 9, 2007 edition of National Journal's Technology Daily

Net Governance: U.S. Wants To Maintain The Nature Of Internet Policy
By Andrew Noyes

A pair of high-ranking telecommunications officials from the U.S. government this week emphasized the importance of maintaining the true multi-stakeholder nature of Internet policy talks in anticipation of a global conference that begins Monday in Brazil.

The second installment of the Internet Governance Forum will be a significant place to "share experiences and visions that support the continued evolution and expansion of the Internet," John Kneuer and David Gross said in a joint statement.

Kneuer, who just announced that he is leaving as head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, and Gross, the State Department's international communications and information policy chief, hope the event will foster "constructive discussions" about economic and social development.

Internet industry representatives from the United States and other nations, as well as some Western government officials, worry that a handful of delegations like China and Russia are trying to turn the U.N.-sponsored forum into a policymaking body.

Preserving the current framework makes the organization a "unique environment for an honest and frank exchange of ideas without the pressure of negotiating output discussions or conclusions," Kneuer and Gross said.

Markus Kummer, the U.N. official who heads the forum's secretariat, told Technology Daily on Friday that "more traditional" governments are not used to attending an event like the forum without it ending in a treaty or concluding document.

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Security Information Wants To Be Shared

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

By Heather Greenfield

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

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

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

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Draft Trade Bill Spurs Jobs Debate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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