1/11. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (HOGRC) announced that it will hold a hearing on January 18, 2012, titled "Government Mandated DNS Blocking and Search Takedowns -- Will It End the Internet as We Know It?" See, HOGRC hearing notice.

The House and Senate are both considering bills, directed at foreign web sites dedicated to infringing activity.

The Senate bill is S 968 [LOC | WW], the "Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011" or "PROTECT IP Act". The Senate Judiciary Committee (SJC) amended and approved this bill on May 26, 2011. The full Senate is scheduled to consider it when it returns on January 23.

The House bill is HR 3261 [LOC | WW], the "Stop Online Piracy Act" or "SOPA". The House Judiciary Committee (HJC) began, but did not complete, its mark up of the SOPA in late December.

At this mark up, several members of the HJC, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), vehemently criticized the SOPA, and argued that the HJC's hurried consideration of this bill included only one hearing. Moreover, this hearing included no witnesses who could address the technical aspects of DNS blocking, which is one component of the SOPA. Several members of the HJC therefore argued that the HJC should hold a hearing on the DNS blocking provisions of this bill before continuing with the mark up.

The HJC has not yet publicly announced a date for resumption of its mark up of HR 3261. Nor has it announced a hearing on DNS blocking.

Rep. Issa is both a member of the HJC and Chairman of the HOGRC. He is using his position to conduct a hearing that will likely produce much testimony against the DNS blocking provisions of the SOPA.

Rep. Issa has also publicly released, but not introduced in the House, a draft of a bill that takes a different approach to combating foreign web sites dedicated to infringing activity. It is titled "Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act". This title provides a near acronym -- "OPEN Act". See, draft [18 pages in PDF]. See also, story titled "Rep. Issa and Others Propose USITC Based Approach to Web Sites Dedicated to Infringing Activity" in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 2,318, December 14, 2011.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) was another active critic of the SOPA during the HJC mark up sessions in December. He is also a member of the HOGRC.

1/10. Facebook sent a letter [6 pages in PDF] dated December 21, 2011, to Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) that responds to a letter sent to it by Rep. Barton and Rep. Markey on November 10, 2011. The two publicly released the Facebook's response on January 10, 2012.

The two asked Facebook about U.S. Patent Application No. 20110231240, filed on February 8, 2011. This application claims "A method for tracking information about the activities of users of a social networking system while on another domain" for advertising purposes.

Facebook's letter is evasive and non-responsive on the underlying issue of tracking by Facebook of users on other websites when they are not logged in to Facebook.

Facebook responded, first, by citing a report on its practices just issued by the Data Protection Commissioner of the tiny European nation of Ireland. Facebook's letter repeatedly resorts to this report as if it had a res judicata effect upon investigations and inquiries by Members of the U.S. Congress.

Facebook's letter, in contrast, makes no mention of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) November 29 administrative complaint against Facebook, or the Agreement Containing Consent Order [10 pages in PDF]. See, story titled "FTC Imposes Privacy Related Terms on Facebook" in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 2,315, November 29, 2011.

The two asked about Facebook's purpose for filing the patent application, and how it intends to use the patent.

Facebook responded that some patents are not commercialized or implemented. But, it did not address the application at issue in this exchange of correspondence.

Rep. Markey wrote in a release that "Facebook seems to be refusing to answer the question of what the purpose of this patent application is".

The two also asked whether Facebook intends to track its users on other web sites. Again, Facebook's letter is nonresponsive.

Rep. Markey wrote that "The main questions of whether Facebook has considered using third-party tracking data to build user profiles or employs user-provided data to target advertising remain unanswered from the company's response to our letter. Additionally in its response to us, Facebook states that it uses consumer-provided data for 'internal operations, including data analysis, research, development, and service improvement' yet provides no description of what these activities entail or how they affect consumer privacy."

Rep. Markey added that "Facebook needs to clarify precisely what these categories include. Recent media reports have clearly detailed the methods by which Facebook can and does track its users, despite the company’s previous public statements to the contrary."

Rep. Barton wrote in this release that Facebook "seems to be saying one thing and doing another ... In the company's response, it talks a lot about how they don't currently 'track' users online, but they just asked for a patent that would allow them to do just that. Why ask for something you don’t ever plan on using?"

1/11. The Senate is scheduled to resume business on January 23, 2012. There are numerous pending nominations, that require Senate confirmation, that have been approved by the relevant committee, and that are on the Senate's executive calendar.

There are two pending Federal Communications Commission (FCC) nominations: Ajit Pai to be an FCC Commissioner for a term of five years from July 1, 2011, and Jessica Rosenworcel to be an FCC Commissioner for a term of five years from July 1, 2010.

Pai has been nominated for the seat previously held by Meredith Baker, and Rosenworcel has been nominated for the seat previously held by Michael Copps. See, story titled "Obama Nominates Pai and Rosenworcel to Be FCC Commissioners" in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 2,309, November 3, 2011.

There are also two pending Federal Trade Commission (FTC) nominations: Jon Leibowitz to be a FTC Commissioner for a term of seven years from September 26, 2010, and Maureen Ohlhausen to be a FTC Commissioner for a term of seven years from September 26, 2011.

Leibowitz is currently a Commissioner, and the FTC Chairman. This is a reappointment. Ohlhausen has been nominated for the seat previously held by William Kovacic. See, story titled "Obama Picks Ohlhausen for FTC Commissioner" in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 2,264, July 20, 2011.

There is one pending Department of Justice (DOJ) nomination of significance to information and communications technology. Michael Horowitz has been nominated to be Inspector General. The previous IG was Glenn Fine.

The DOJ and its Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has engaged in rampant abuse of surveillance powers. Some of this was investigated and disclosed to the public by the former IG Fine. For an overview of Fine's reports, see story titled "Obama Picks Michael Horowitz to Be DOJ Inspector General" in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 2,276, August 1, 2011.

At the Department of Commerce (DOC) the nomination of Rebecca Blank to be Deputy Secretary of Commerce is pending. She is currently acting Deputy Secretary.

There are three nominations for U.S. Courts of Appeals pending on the Senate calendar: Jacqueline Nguyen (9th Circuit), Stephanie Thacker (4th Circuit), and Adalberto Jordan (11th Circuit).

There are also a larger number of pending nominations for U.S. District Courts, including Rudolph Contreras, for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, and Jesse Furman and Ronnie Abrams, for the Southern District of New York.

The other pending District Court nominees on the Senate executive calendar are:

• Michael Fitzgerald (Central District of California).
• Cathy Ann Bencivengo (Southern District of California).
• Gina Groh (Northern District of West Virginia).
• Margo Brodie (Eastern District of New York).
• John Gerrard (District of Nebraska).
• Mary Phillips (Western District of Missouri).
• Thomas Rice (Eastern District of Washington).
• David Nuffer (District of Utah).
• Miranda Du (District of Nevada).
• Susie Morgan (Eastern District of Louisiana).
• Gregg Costa (Southern District of Texas).
• David Campos Guaderrama (Western District of Texas).
• Brian Wimes (Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri).

1/6. The U.S. District Court (EDVa) sentenced Hana Amal Beshara to serve 22 months in prison following her September 29, 2011, plea of guilty to conspiracy and criminal copyright infringement. The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in a release that Beshara "was one of the founders of the NinjaVideo.net website, which operated from February 2008 until it was shut down by law enforcement in June 2010. NinjaVideo.net offered visitors the ability to view, without charge, many movies still in theaters as well as some movies that had not yet been released in theaters, and many television programs immediately after they aired."

1/6. David Foley pled guilty in the U.S. District Court (NDCal) to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud, and conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The Office of the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California explained in a release: "he manufactured thumb drives, known as ``game packs,´´ containing video gaming software that could be loaded onto arcade video game machines made for the home market. Foley illegally produced the products from his home while working as the chief technology officer of Global VR, which had previously acquired all rights to produce and sell games under the UltraCade name. After producing the game packs, Foley sold the products to a co-defendant located in Milford, Conn., and agreed to sell the game packs to the public using packaging and advertisements that falsely represented the goods to have been genuinely manufactured by UltraCade. Foley thereafter received payment for the illegally manufactured game packs by mail and wire."

1/5. The Office of the U.S. Attorney (USAO) for the Central District of California announced that it filed criminal charges in the U.S. District Court (CDCal) against nine persons, and that California state prosecutors filed criminal charges in state court against three additional persons, charging violation of the federal Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Lacey Act, and state wildlife laws in connection with selling endangered species and other protected wildlife over the internet. USA André Birotte stated in a release that "The sale of endangered animals on the Internet has reached an alarming level, with as much as two-thirds of such sales taking place in the United States. These Internet sales of wildlife fuel poaching and make the killing of protected animals more profitable. Today's prosecutions are a response to this alarming trend."

12/13. A grand jury of the U.S. District Court (CDCal) returned an indictment that charges Kevin George Poe with unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1030 in connection with his conducting a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack against the web site of Gene Simmons, a musician long affiliated with a rock band titled Kiss. The Office of the U.S. Attorney (USAO) for the Central District of California stated in a release that "Poe and others linked to Anonymous allegedly conducted" this DDOS attack by "sending tens of thousands of electronic requests designed to overload the computer server and render the website useless. According to the indictment, Poe used a favorite software tool of the Anonymous collective -- a Low Orbit Ion Cannon, which is a computer program that is used to send extremely large numbers of “packets” or requests over a network in an attempt to overwhelm a target computer."

The House will not meet.

The Senate will not meet.

10:00 AM. The U.S. Court of Appeals (FedCir) will hear oral argument in Power Integrations v. Fairchild Semiconductor, App. Ct. No. 2011-1218, an appeal from the U.S. District Court (DDel) in a patent infringement case. This is the second case on the calendar. Location: Courtroom 402, 717 Madison Place, NW.

12:00 NOON - 2:00 PM. The DC Bar Association will host a brown bag lunch titled "Legal Issues in Mass Digitization". The speakers will be Allan Adler (Association of American Publishers), Brandon Butler (Association of Research Libraries), Catherine Rowland (Copyright Office), Corey Williams (American Library Association), Michele Woods (Copyright Office). Free. No CLE credits. See, notice. For more information, call 202-626-3463. The DC Bar has a history of barring reporters from its events. Location: DC Bar Conference Center, 1101 K St., NW.

2:00 PM. Rod Beckstrom, P/CEO of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), and Stephen Crocker, Chairman of the ICANN, will speak on the ICANN's expansion of generic top level internet domains (gTLDs). See, notice. Location: Zenger Room, National Press Club, 13th floor, 529 14th St., NW.

Extended deadline to submit reply comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in response to its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) regarding changes to its program carriage rules. See, original notice in the Federal Register, Vol. 76, No. 189, Thursday, September 29, 2011, at Pages 60675-60700, and extension notice in the Federal Register, Vol. 77, No. 3, Thursday, January 5, 2012, at Pages 468-469. The FCC adopted this NPRM [120 pages in PDF] on July 29, 2011, and released it on August 1, 2011. It is FCC 11-119 in MB Docket No. 11-131. See also, story titled "FCC Program Carriage Order Includes Standstill Provision" in TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert No. 2,276, August 1, 2011.

The House will not meet.

The Senate will not meet.

10:00 AM. The U.S. Court of Appeals (FedCir) will hear oral argument in Lens.com v. 1-800 CONTACTS, App. Ct. No. 2011-1258, an appeal from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). This is the third case on this calendar. Location: Courtroom 201, 717 Madison Place, NW.

10:00 AM. The U.S. Court of Appeals (FedCir) will hear oral argument in MagSil v. Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, App. Ct. No. 2011-1221, an appeal from the U.S. District Court (DDel) in a patent infringement case involving hard disc drive technology. This is the second case on the calendar. Location: Courtroom 402, 717 Madison Place, NW.

10:00 AM. The U.S. Court of Appeals (FedCir) will hear oral argument in Noah Systems v. Intuit, App. Ct. No. 2011-1390, an appeal from the U.S. District Court (WDPenn) in a patent infringement case involving business method patents. This is the fourth case on this calendar. Location: Courtroom 402, 717 Madison Place, NW.

10:00 AM. The U.S. Court of Appeals (FedCir) will hear oral argument in Advanced Fiber Technologies Trust v. J&L Fiber Services, App. Ct. No. 2011-1243, an appeal from the U.S. District Court (NDNY) in a patent infringement case. This is the first case on the calendar. Location: Courtroom 203, 717 Madison Place, NW.

The House will meet at 11:00 AM in pro forma session.

The Senate will meet at 12:00 NOON in pro forma session only .

Supreme Court conference day. See, calendar. Closed.

10:00 AM. The U.S. Court of Appeals (FedCir) will hear oral argument in Intermec Technologies v. Palm, App. Ct. No. 2011-1296, an appeal from the U.S. District Court (DDel) in a patent infringement case. This is the third case on the calendar. Location: Courtroom 201, 717 Madison Place, NW.

Martin Luther King's Birthday. This is a federal holiday. See, OPM list of 2012 federal holidays.

The House will meet.

9:00 AM - 4:30 PM. The Net Caucus will host its annual State of the Net Conference. See, conference web site. Location: Hyatt Regency, Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave., NW.

12:15 - 1:30 PM. The Federal Communications Bar Association's (FCBA) Young Lawyers Committee will host a brown bag lunch titled "Industry Roundtable -- The Roles and Responsibilities of the Young Lawyer". For more information, contact Mark Brennan at Mark dot Brennan at hoganlovells dot com or Brendan Carr at BCarr at wileyrein dot com. Location: Wilmer Hale, Multi-Purpose Room on the ground level, 1875 Pennsylvania Ave., NW.

The House will meet.

9:00 - 11:00 AM. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) will host an panel discussion titled "Bits and Bricks: Transforming the Construction Industry Through Innovation". The speakers will be Robert Atkinson (ITIF), Phillip Bernstein (Autodesk), Dorothy Robyn (Department of Defense), Robert Peck (GSA) and Shyam Sunder (NIST). See, notice. Location: National Press Club, Holeman Lounge, 529 14th St., NW.

9:00 - 11:30 AM. Day two of the Net Caucus's annual State of the Net Conference. See, conference web site and schedule. Location: Hyatt Regency, Capitol Hill, 400 New Jersey Ave., NW.

10:00 AM - 12:00 NOON. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee (HOGRC) will hold a titled "Government Mandated DNS Blocking and Search Takedowns -- Will It End the Internet as We Know It?" See, notice. The HOGRC does not have jurisdiction over HR 3261 [LOC | WW], the "Stop Online Piracy Act" or "SOPA". The House Judiciary Committee (HJC) does. However, this hearing is directed at provisions in the SOPA. Location: Room 2154, Rayburn Building, with overflow seating in Room 2203.

1/6. The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) Computer Security Division (CSD) released four draft documents for public comment. The deadline to submit comments for all four is February 17, 2012. See:

• draft SP 800-117 Rev. 1 [26 pages in PDF] titled "Guide to Adopting and Using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) Version 1.2".
• draft NIST IR-7817 [22 pages in PDF] titled "A Credential Reliability and Revocation Model for Federated Identities".
• draft NIST IR-7799 [75 pages in PDF] titled "Continuous Monitoring Reference Model Workflow, Subsystem, and Interface Specifications".
• draft NIST IR-7756 [35 pages in PDF] titled "CAESARS Framework Extension: An Enterprise Continuous Monitoring Technical Reference Architecture".

1/10. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released its Fifth Report and Order [130 pages in PDF] long running proceeding regarding the Emergency Alert System (EAS). This order continues the FCC's process of revising its EAS rules to specify the manner in which EAS participants must be able to receive alert messages formatted in the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP). The FCC adopted this item on January 9, 2012, and released the text on January 10. It item is FCC 12-7 in EB Docket No. 04-296.

1/9. The Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau (PSHSB) released an order [10 pages in PDF] regarding 700 MHz interoperable public safety wireless broadband networks. This order is DA 12-25 in PS Docket No. 06-229.

12/30. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its biennial report [12 pages in PDF] to the Congress on the Do Not Call Registry. It states that "The Registry currently has over 209 million active registrations. During fiscal year 2011, over 8 million more numbers were added to the Registry. Over 35,000 sellers, telemarketers, and exempt organizations subscribed to access the Registry, and over 3,000 of those entities paid fees totaling more than $13.7 million."

Tech Law Journal publishes a free access web site and a subscription e-mail alert. The basic rate for a subscription to the TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert is $250 per year for a single recipient. There are discounts for subscribers with multiple recipients.

Free one month trial subscriptions are available. Also, free subscriptions are available for federal elected officials, and employees of the Congress, courts, and executive branch. The TLJ web site is free access. However, copies of the TLJ Daily E-Mail Alert are not published in the web site until two months after writing.

For information about subscriptions, see subscription information page.

Tech Law Journal now accepts credit card payments. See, TLJ credit card payments page.

TLJ is published by David Carney
Contact: 202-364-8882.
carney at techlawjournal dot com
3034 Newark St. NW, Washington DC, 20008.

Privacy Policy
Notices & Disclaimers
Copyright 1998-2012 David Carney. All rights reserved.