Sept. 8, 2000
9:00 AM ET.
Alert No. 16. |
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| News Briefs |
9/7. The FCC released an agenda
for its Sept. 14 open meeting.
9/7. The House Commerce
Committee's Subcommittee on Telecommunications held a hearing
titled "Foreign Government Ownership of American
Telecommunications Companies." See, prepared statements of Rep.
Tom Bliley (R-VA), Sen.
Ernest Hollings (D-SC), Rep.
Jennifer Dunn (R-WA), Kevin
DiGregory (DOJ), Larry
Parkinson (FBI), William
Kennard (FCC), Richard
Fisher (USTR), John
Stanton (VoiceStream), Morton
Bahr (CWA), Gregory
Sidak (AEI), and Andrew
Lipman (Swidler Berlin).
9/7. The House Commerce
Committee's Subcommittee on Health and Environment held a
hearing titled "Telehealth: A Cutting Edge Medical Tool for the
21st Century."
9/7. Glenn Reynolds was appointed Associate Bureau Chief of
the FCC's Common Carrier Bureau (CCB). He
will have primary responsibility for the oversight and coordination
of issues handled by the Bureau's Policy and Program Planning
Division, including 271
applications, merger reviews, and local competition rules. Jeffrey
Dygert was named an Asst. Bureau Chief of the CCB. See, FCC
release [MS Word]. Katherine Schroder was appointed Chief
of the CCB's Accounting Policy Division. Mark Seifert was
appointed Deputy Division Chief. See, FCC
release [MS Word].
9/7. The FEC issued a draft advisory
opinion which pertains to the use of electronic signatures.
Several incorporated trade associations requested an opinion
regarding whether electronic signatures may be used by a corporate
representative to authorize solicitations by a trade association for
contributions to its separate segregated fund. The draft opinion
states that they may, provided that there are "adequate
security measures", including that they have the "ability
to verify that the electronically signed authorization came from the
particular representative", and that the record is stored and
retrievable. The FEC welcomes comments on the draft opinion until
12:00 noon on Sept. 13. [Draft AO 2000-22.]
9/7. The SIIA
sent a letter
to Members of the House, and a similar letter
to Senators, urging passage of H1B bills HR 3983 and S 2045.
See, SIIA
release.
9/6. The FCC's Wireless Telecommunications Bureau
rescheduled the next auction (No. 35) of C and F block broadband
Personal Communications Service (“PCS”) licenses from Nov. 29 to
Dec. 12. See, FCC
release [MS Word].
9/6. The FCC named Linda Paris
acting Director of the Office of Media Relations (OMR), and Jay
Heimbach as acting Director of the Office of Legislative and
Intergovernmental Affairs (OLIA). They replace Joy Howell and
Sheryl Wilkerson, who had been criticized by Members of
Congress for violating a statutory ban on lobbying the Congress.
Both Howell and Wilkerson went to work for the Gore campaign.
See, FCC
release [MS Word].
9/6. The Senate continued its debate on HR 4444, a bill to extend PNTR
status to China. Sen.
Max Baucus (D-MT) stated: "During the Senate debate this
month, we will hear a lot about other issues, with Senators offering
a plethora of amendments. The list will probably include human
rights, worker rights, religious freedom, prison labor, Taiwan
security, arms proliferation, and export of American jobs, among
others. ... I urge all my colleagues to support this PNTR
legislation without amendments." Sen. Paul Wellstone
(D-MN) stated that "it is commonly assumed the Senate is going
to pass PNTR."
9/5. The Senate began debate on HR 4444, a bill to extend Permanent
Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) status to China. The House has
passed the bill, and Bill Clinton supports it.
8/31. FTC Commissioner Orson
Swindle gave a speech
to a Federal Society chapter in North Carolina on antitrust
enforcement and high tech companies, titled "Government and the
Tech World: Friends or Foes?"
8/30. U.S District Judge Audrey Collins entered a Final
Judgment and Order [1.9 MB PDF file] in FTC v. JK Publications
et al., U.S.D.C., C.D.Cal., Case No. 99-0044. The FTC obtained a
$37.5 Million verdict against several defendants who ran a web porn
operation with an illegal credit card billing scam. Defendants
licensed access to databases of a California bank which included
over 3.6 Million valid credit card numbers without chargebacks or
credits issued. The bank licensed the data for fraud scrub purposes.
The porn operation used it to fraudulently bill card holders, many
of whom did not even own computers. See, FTC release.
Editor's Note: This column includes all News Briefs added to
Tech Law Journal since the last Daily E-Mail Alert. The dates
indicate when the event occurred, not the date of posting to Tech
Law Journal. |
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| New Documents |
FCC: Agenda
for Sept. 14 Open Meeting, 9/7 (MS Word, FCC).
SIIA: Letter
to House Members re H1B visas, 9/7 (HTML, SIIA).
SIIA: Letter
to Senators re H1B visas, 9/7 (HTML, SIIA).
Orson Swindle: Government
and the Tech World: Friends or Foes?, a speech on antitrust
law enforcement, 8/31 (HTML, FTC).
U.S. District Judge Collins: Final
Judgment and Order, FTC v. JK Publications, including
verdict on damages against credit card billing scam of porn site
operation, 8/31 (1.9 MB PDF, FTC).
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| New and Updated Sections |
News from
Around the Web (updated daily).
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| Quote of the Day |
"many high-tech markets are characterized by decreasing prices,
increasing output, and robust innovation -- certainly
characteristics that yield tremendous benefits to consumers. Even if
an antitrust violation is established, remedies in the high-tech
field should be very carefully calibrated to address consumer harm
and to prevent violations that are the same as (or similar to) the
violations that caused that harm. We do not want to kill the goose
that is laying the golden eggs." FTC Commissioner Orson
Swindle. (Source.) |
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