| 107th Congress |
1/22. Sen. Jay
Rockefeller (D-WV) introduced S 88, the Broadband
Internet Access Act of 2001, a bill to incent deployment
of broadband services in rural areas with tax credits.
He stated that "The Act would give companies the
incentive to build current generation broadband facilities in
rural areas by using a very focused tax credit. It would offer
any company that invests in broadband facilities in rural or
inner city areas a ten percent tax credit over the next five
years. This tax credit will help fight the growing disparity
in technology I just described.
1/22. Sen. Phil Gramm
(R-TX) introduced S
136, the Fast Track Trade Negotiating Authority Act.
It was referred to the Senate Finance Committee. He stated
that this bill "would provide the President with
much-needed fast track authority, so that he may expand trade
by entering into trade agreements with our partners around the
world. Fast track is key to unleashing the wealth-generating
machine of trade still further, to all corners of the world.
It is long past time to reauthorize this critical
provision." |
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| Internet Filtering |
| 1/23. The California
Court of Appeal heard oral argument in Kathleen
R. v. City of Livermore. Plaintiff, a parent of a
child who used Internet access computers at the Livermore
Public Libraries, filed a complaint
in California state court to compel the library to install filtering
software on computers used by children within the library.
The trial court dismissed pursuant to Section
230 of the Telecom Act of 1996 without a formal
written opinion. The three judge panel (Daniel
Hanlon, Timothy
Reardon, and Patricia
Sepulveda) heard one half hour of argument from Dan
Sodergren (City of
Livermore), Matthew
Brown (Cooley Godward
on behalf of the California
State Association of Counties) and Ann Brick (ACLU Northern California),
and one half hour of argument from Michael Millen (for
Kathleen R.). Afterwards a confident Sodergren predicted
"I think the judges are pretty definitely going to rule
in our favor." The opinion may be issued within several
weeks. See also, Opening
Appeal Brief by Kathleen R., Respondent's
Brief, Amicus
curaie brief by the ACLU NC and PFAW, Amicus
curiae brief filed by the Calif. State Assoc. of Counties,
and Reply
Brief by Kathleen R. The Livermore Public Libraries does
not accept e-rate or other federal subsidies for Internet
access, so the recently enacted federal statute, the
Children's Internet Protection Act, is not applicable to it. |
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| Greenspan Speaks |
| 1/25. Federal
Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan testified
before the Senate
Budget Committee regarding the contribution of
information technology to recent economic growth, George
Bush's proposed tax cut, and other issues. See, prepared
testimony. Regarding the effect of technology, he stated:
"Had the innovations of recent decades, especially in
information technologies, not come to fruition, productivity
growth during the past five to seven years, arguably, would
have continued to languish at the rate of the preceding twenty
years. The sharp increase in prospective long-term rates of
return on high-tech investments would not have emerged as it
did in the early 1990s, and the associated surge in stock
prices would surely have been largely absent. The accompanying
wealth effect, so evidently critical to the growth of economic
activity since the mid 1990s, would never have
materialized." He also addressed Bush's proposal to cut
taxes by $1,600,000 million over 10 years, without mentioning
the President Bush. "Lately there has been much
discussion of cutting taxes to confront the evident pronounced
weakening in recent economic performance," said
Greenspan. "And should current economic weakness spread
beyond what now appears likely, having a tax cut in place may,
in fact, do noticeable good." See also, statement
of Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici
(R-NM). |
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| New Documents |
Greenspan:
testimony
to Sen. Budget Comm., 1/25 (HTML, FRB).
FTC:
complaint,
proposed agreement,
and analysis
re proceeding against Indigo Investment Systems, 1/15 (all PDF,
FTC).
USPTO:
Report
to Congress re abusive registration of personal names as
domain names, 1/25 (PDF, USPTO). |
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| FCC Staff |
1/25. Michael Powell, George Bush's nominee to be
Chairman of the FCC, announced
that Marsha MacBride will be Chief of Staff. She currently
works for Walt Disney. Prior to that she worked at a number of
positions at the FCC. She was Legal Advisor to Powell for mass
media and cable television matters, and Executive Director of
the FCC's Task Force on Year 2000 Conversion. She started in
the Political Programming Branch of the Mass Media Bureau's
Enforcement Division. She was also Acting Deputy Chief of the
Cable Services Bureau, Senior Legal Advisor to the Chief, Mass
Media Bureau, Associate Chief in the Office of Engineering and
Technology, and Legal Advisor to former Commissioner James
Quello. See, release.
1/25. Powell also announced the following FCC staff
appointments: Jane Mago, who is currently Deputy Bureau
Chief of the Enforcement
Bureau, will be responsible for the interim management of
the agency's legal functions, overseeing the Office of General Counsel. Paul
Jackson will be responsible for the interim management of
inter-governmental, legislative and lobbying functions. Peter
Tenhula will be Senior Legal Advisor to the Chairman, and
will be responsible for wireless and international issues. Kyle
Dixon will be Legal Advisor with responsibility for common
carrier and select broadband and advanced services
issues. Susan Eid will Legal Advisor with
responsibility for mass media and cable TV issues. Antonia
McGowan will continue as Confidential Assistant, and Dorothy
Clingman will be Senior Staff Assistant. See, release. |
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| More New Briefs |
1/25. VTech Holdings
filed a complaint in U.S. District Court (SDNY)
against Lucent alleging
various claims arising out of its purchase of Lucent's
consumer telephone division last year. VTech makes telephones,
electronic learning toys, and paging devices.
1/25. Chiquita filed
a complaint in the Court
of First Instance of the European Court of Justice in
Luxembourg against the European
Commission for failing to implement 1997 WTO
rulings. The case is about bananas. However, ongoing trade
disputes between the U.S. and EU over agricultural products
has the potential to lead to reciprocal trade sanctions, in
which case the EU would target U.S. high tech exporters for
retaliation.
1/25. The FTC settled a civil
administrative claim against Indigo Investment Systems, Inc.,
and its CEO, Frank Alphonso, regarding making false and
unsupported claims about the performance of Indigo's
investment trading software. To put the agreement into effect,
the FTC filed an administrative
complaint [huge PDF file] and proposed agreement
[PDF]. See also, FTC Analysis
[PDF] and FTC
release [HTML].
1/25. The U.S. Court of
Appeals (4thCir) issued its opinion
in Columbia
Communications v. EchoStar, several consolidated
appeals from a U.S. District Court (DMd)
judgment in a case regarding a contract for the use of a
satellite transponder to transmit TV programs.
1/25. Microsoft stated
that on Jan. 25 it "was the target of a denial of service
attack against the routers that direct traffic to the
company's Web sites" and that it "has made the FBI aware of this
situation". See, release.
1/25. Microsoft
announced its Java User Migration Path to Microsoft .NET (aka
"JUMP to .NET"), a set of technologies and services
to assist programmers in migrating Java language projects onto
the Microsoft .NET Platform. See, release. The announcement
comes two days after Microsoft and Sun Microsystems settled their
Java related litigation. See also, settlement
agreement. |
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| Intellectual Property |
| 1/25. The USPTO
submitted a Report
to Congress [18 pages in PDF] titled The
Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act of 1999, section
3006 concerning the abusive registration of domain names.
The report concludes: "We conclude that the time is not
ripe for further Federal legislation to protect personal names
from abusive registration as domain names. In the political
area, we see no need at this time for the FEC to intervene to
create a centralized accurate list of official candidates and
potential candidates for Federal, state or local offices. With
regard to existing remedies available under trademark law,
unfair competition, and dilution, we observe that aggrieved
personal name holders are eligible for protection under these
laws." The USPTO also published in its web site PDF scans
of all of the public
comments that it received. |
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| Online Trading |
1/25. The SEC's Office
of Compliance Inspections and Examinations issued a report
titled Examinations of Broker-Dealers Offering Online
Trading: Summary of Findings and Recommendations. Internet
based trading was first introduced in 1995. According to the
report, there are now about 7.8 Million people trading online,
making around 807,000 trades per day. Over 200 broker-dealers
provide retail investors the ability to trade online. Along
with the growth in online trading, there has been a surge in
investor complaints related to online trading. The report
makes many recommendations, including:
• "broker-dealers should consider enhancing their
web sites to provide a basic explanation of securities
trading"
• "Broker-dealers should take steps to prevent
executions of unintended duplicate orders"
• "Firms should evaluate the information they
provide to customers about margin to ensure that it is in
plain English and conspicuous"
• "broker-dealers ... conducting online initial
public offerings ... should provide customers with a full and
accurate description of their online IPO allocation and
distribution methods, including the probability of receiving
shares"
• "Firms should ensure that their advertising is
balanced, describing the risks as well as the potential
rewards of trading and investing"
• "broker-dealers should take steps to prevent
capacity or other operational concerns from disrupting market
operations"
• "Firms should evaluate the security of their
web site and e-mail systems" (the report then addresses
encryption, firewalls, passwords, and cookies) |
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| Today |
| 12:15 PM. The Federal
Communications Bar Association's Young Lawyers Committee
will host a Brown Bag Lunch. Outgoing FCC General Counsel
Christopher Wright will speak on "FCC Legal Issues."
Location: FCC, Room 8-B516, 8th Floor South Conference Room,
445 12th Street, SW, Washington DC. |
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