| .edu Management |
| 4/11. The Commerce Department's NTIA announced its
intent to enter into an agreement with EDUCAUSE for the
management of the .edu Internet domain name space. This
contract will be awarded for a 5 year period, and will be
renewed indefinitely upon satisfactory performance. The
contract will be at no cost to the U.S. government, and
EDUCAUSE will only recover its cost of administering the .edu
domain services. See, NTIA
release, Educause
release, and notice
to be published in the Federal Register. |
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| PRC Trade |
| 4/11. Sen. Charles
Grassley (R-IA) addressed trade with the PRC and the
taking of hostages. He stated: "Having personally pushed
for strong trade relations with China, I'm frustrated and hurt
by China's decision to detain the crew members for 11 days.
China's action has called into question their commitment to
join an international forum governed by the rule of law, and I
hope we see a clear signal that the reformers, and not the
military, are in charge in Beijing. That is critically
important to China's ability to pursue normal commercial ties
with the United States." Sen. Grassley is Chairman of the
Senate Finance
Committee, which has trade related jurisdiction. |
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| New Documents |
NTIA:
notice
re selection of EDUCAUSE to manage .edu domain, 4/11 (HTML,
NTIA).
Reilly:
comment
opposing Verizon's petition to FCC for permission to provide
long distance service in Mass., 4/9 (PDF, FCC). |
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| Bananas and Tech |
4/11. The US and EU reached an agreement to their long
standing dispute over trade in bananas. The EU currently gives
preferences to bananas imported from certain former European
colonies, to the detriment of Chiquita bananas from
Latin America. The US successfully challenged this arrangement
before the WTO, and then imposed
retaliatory tariffs on some EU exports to the US. Under the
agreement, the EU will provide a transition to a tariff only
system by 2006, and the US will terminate is retaliatory
tariffs. See, USTR
release, State
Dept. release, EU
release, and Chiquita
release.
This dispute, like a similar dispute over European trade
barriers to imported beef, threatens US high tech companies.
First, the EU retaliated for the US's challenges to Europe's
beef and bananas trade barriers by bringing its own challenge
to the US's Foreign Sales Corporation (FSC) tax regime. FSC
benefits US exporters, including software and hardware
producers with significant sales abroad, such as Microsoft,
Cisco, and Motorola. The WTO ruled that the FSC regime is an
illegal export subsidy. Late last year the Congress passed
replacement legislation, which is now under challenge before
the WTO. Second, ongoing disputes over beef, bananas, FSC, and
other matters, have the potential to lead to an escalating
trade war. The EU has indicated that if this were to occur it
would target US high tech exporters for retaliatory tariffs.
Hence, removing disputes over bananas and other agricultural
products is in the interest of US high tech companies that
export to Europe. For background see, TLJ
News Analysis: The FSC Tax Bill and Technology Exporters,
Nov. 17, 2000. |
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| More News |
4/11. The Internal Revenue
Service ruled that AT&T's
proposed split off of Liberty Media Corporation, which will
own all of the assets reflected in the Liberty Media Group,
qualifies as tax free for AT&T, Liberty Media and their
shareowners. AT&T acquired Liberty Media through its
acquisition of Tele-Communications, Inc. (TCI) in March 1999.
See, AT&T
release.
4/11. Thomas Reilly, Attorney General of Massachusetts,
submitted a comment
[PDF] to the FCC in which he urged it to withhold approval of
the Supplemental Application by Verizon for authority to
provide in-region interLATA service in Massachusetts pursuant
to Section
271 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
4/5. Sen. Conrad Burns
(R-MT) and Sen. Larry Craig
(R-ID) sent a letter to the acting heads of the U.S. Forest
Service and Bureau of Land
Management regarding proposed rules changes regarding
right of way fees and their calculation as provided for under
the Federal Lands Policy and Management Act (FLPMA). The
proposed changes include a proposal to levy fees on fiber
optic cable based on the number of individual strands of fiber
in the cable, as opposed to the cable itself. Sen. Burns
stated that "This has the potential to slow or shut down
the laying of fiber optics, and serves to hinder the
technology growth in rural areas like Montana and Idaho." |
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| People |
4/11. Former FCC Chairman Reed
Hundt will join the Board of Directors of Intel. Hundt was a high
school classmate of Al Gore, a law school classmate of Bill
Clinton, and an FCC Chairman from 1993 through 1997. Hundt
already holds many other private sector positions. He is an
advisor on information industries at the management consulting
firm McKinsey & Company, an advisor to the private equity
firm Blackstone Group, a venture partner at Benchmark Capital,
and a director at other corporations. See, Intel
release. See also, Hundt's controversial account of his
partisan and stormy FCC years: You
Say You Want a Revolution: A Story of Information Age Politics
(Amazon).
4/10. Robert Raben opened a legislative, consulting,
and lobbying practice in Washington DC. He will concentrate on
intellectual property policy. His clients include the RIAA
and Sony Music Entertainment. Raben is a former Assistant
Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legislative
Affairs. Prior to that he was counsel to the House Judiciary
Committee's Courts and Intellectual Property Subcommittee.
Prior to that, he was Counsel to the House Constitution
Subcommittee. And before that, he was on the personal staff of
Rep. Barney Frank
(D-MA). |
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| Today |
| Deadline to submit nominations for the Patent Public
Advisory Committee and the Trademark Public Advisory
Committee to the USPTO. The
Advisory Committees review and advise the Director of the
USPTO on matters relating to policies, goals, performance,
budget, and user fees of the USPTO relating to patents and
trademarks, respectively. Nominations must be postmarked or
electronically transmitted on or before April 12, 2001. See, notice
in the Federal Register, March 13, 2001, Vol. 66, No. 49, at
Pages 14551 - 14552. |
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| About Tech Law Journal |
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