Intellectual Property
Compromise On Database Protection Still Has Critics
by Drew Clark
Critics and advocates of a draft bill designed to stop the piracy of commercial databases agree that the measure is narrower than versions introduced in previous Congresses, but several Internet companies are still expressing heated opposition to the measure.
The draft bill was crafted over three years of negotiation between aides to the House Judiciary and Energy and Commerce committees. Database-protection legislation is a key priority of database publishers like LexisNexis and the eBay online auction site, but Web portals, Internet service providers and stockbrokers oppose it.
Congressional support for the draft still comes primarily from the Judiciary Committee. Energy and Commerce Committee members, including Florida Republican Cliff Stearns, chairman of the Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee, oppose it.
"It is going to have serious problems with Commerce Committee action, particularly Cliff Stearns," one source close to the subject said. "It is highly onerous, and it will curtail access to public data by consumers."
In a Tuesday letter to the chairmen of Judiciary and Energy and Commerce, NetCoalition aggressively challenged the need for the new legislation.
"The proposal would overturn well-established principles of intellectual property law, would apply retroactively and could protect facts in perpetuity," said Kevin McGuiness, executive director of the coalition, which represents Yahoo, the Web-hosting firm Verio, and the news and market data provider Bloomberg on the issue.
McGuiness also argued that the bill includes subpoena powers that would exceed those of a controversial digital copyright law currently being used by the recording industry.
He and other critics of the draft said that unlike the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the database measure clearly would require Internet service providers "to monitor or edit the information users are sending across their systems, a degree of intrusion and invasion of no interest to the millions of Americans who use the Internet on a daily basis."
But others noted ways that the draft is more limited than a bill that was introduced in the 106th Congress. "[The draft] takes several steps in the right direction, but many significant problems remain," another industry source said. The positives the source cited include language that refers to pirates who make "a quantitatively substantial" section of databases available.
In other words, someone would need to take and re-use a substantial part of a database, rather than simply taking selected portions and building a different database, to violate the rules.
"A wish-list bill would include a straight intellectual property right like exclusive rights, as with copyrights," said Keith Kupferschmid, vice president of the Software and Information Industry Association, a database-protection supporter. "We have long since given up on that. We are just trying to focus on misappropriation of our databases."
Digital Television
FCC Approves Rules Encouraging Digital TV Growth
by Teri Rucker
The FCC on Wednesday agreed to rules designed to make cable television service and digital TV sets more compatible, but some consumer advocates are concerned that a portion of the rules addressing copy-protection issues will strip the public of "fair use" rights to copyrighted materials.
"Today's decision by a unanimous commission is a victory for consumers and a major step in the digital-television transition," FCC Chairman Michael Powell said.
The FCC approved "plug and play" rules that were hammered out between the cable industry and consumer electronics manufacturers and submitted to the FCC last year. If all goes as planned, consumers will be able to buy digital cable-ready televisions during the 2004 holiday season, enabling them to abandon the set-top boxes they currently need to view digital content, said Gary Shapiro, president of the Consumer Electronics Association.
FCC Media Bureau Chief Kenneth Ferree noted that the agency did "not rubber stamp" the agreement but listened to concerns and made changes, including adding computers to the products that should be capable of handling digital signals.
Gigi Sohn, executive director of Public Knowledge, praised the decision to include computers, saying that without them the digital transition would be "much slower."
The ruling establishes transmission standards for digital cable systems and mandates that the sets be capable of receiving over-the-air digital broadcasts. It also offers technical standards that manufacturers must meet to call themselves "digital-cable ready."
In addition, the FCC established limits on copy-protection mechanisms, including a ban on signals that degrade the broadcast quality of programming in an effort to deter multiple copying, and it plans to address "down resolution" for cable content in a future rulemaking. The FCC also banned the ability for content providers to disable TV sets in their effort to deter illegal copying.
The agency took pains to note that nothing in the decision would change copyright law or deny consumers the right to legally use content. "I wish to be clear that our encoding rules included in today's plug-and-play decision are not intended to modify existing copyright law," Powell said. "In this proceeding, the FCC simply looks to copyright law for guidance on policies that will promote the DTV transition."
Shapiro said he is pleased that FCC commissioners did not appear poised to change the encoding rules ratified by the agreement between cable and electronics firms.
But Sohn said: "We are unhappy they adopted encoding rules whole cloth without comment from the public. To say the public will have the same rights in the digital era as in the analog era is just false."
The FCC also announced it would look into the plug-and-play rules that consider processes for approving content-protection technologies and pre-sale consumer disclosures.
Ferree said he expects in the next few weeks that his bureau will complete its proceeding on whether the FCC should mandate that an anti-piracy device known as the "broadcast flag" be included in electronic devices and submit it to the five commissioners for review. The technology aims to prevent widespread Internet distribution of broadcast content.
Telecom
FCC Re-Examines State Rules For Pricing Structure
by Teri Rucker
The FCC on Wednesday began re-examining the rules that states use to set prices allowing the regional Bell telecommunications companies to charge rivals to access parts of Bell networks. The Bells and their competitors hope the proceeding will lead to "more rational pricing," but each group seeks a different outcome.
FCC Wireline Competition Bureau Chief William Maher said the goal is to establish rules that encourage telecom companies to build their own facilities, that are easier for states to implement and that better evaluate the true costs of providing services.
This is the first time that the FCC will re-evaluate the rules since the agency's 1996 decision establishing the pricing method known as total-element, long-run, incremental cost (TELRIC). The Supreme Court has upheld the TELRIC rules, which direct states to consider what it would cost to build a new network with the latest efficiencies and technology when setting prices for network access.
The FCC tentatively has concluded that the rules "should more closely account for the real-world attributes of the routing and topography" of Bell networks in setting future costs and is seeking comment on how the agency's new telecom rules governing competitors' access to Bell networks affects the pricing regime.
"We initiate this proceeding to consider whether our pricing rules are working as intended, in particular whether it is conducive to facilities investment," FCC Chairman Michael Powell said. "It is my hope that at the end of this proceeding the market will benefit from a methodology that is less theoretically freewheeling."
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps supported the decision in part but dissented over concerns about the tentative conclusion. He called the decision "unnecessary and unwise," and said the conclusion is "confusing and inconsistent with the basic premises of TELRIC that were upheld as a reasonable interpretation ... by the Supreme Court."
AT&T Vice President Robert Quinn welcomed the proceeding because it "will finally reveal the truth" -- that the pricing rules "allow the Bells to recover their costs, plus a reasonable profit." The Bells have argued that the pricing structure does not adequately compensate them and is so cheap that it costs less for competitors to use Bell networks than to invest in their own facilities.
BellSouth also praised the launch of the proceeding. "The opening of this proceeding has the promise of leading, finally, to an economically rational pricing structure for the competitive telephone industry," said Herschel Abbott, BellSouth's vice president of governmental affairs.
In a separate rulemaking, the FCC will explore changes to spectrum rules that will make it easier to provide services in rural areas. For example, the agency asks whether allowing the Rural Utilities Service to take a security interest in spectrum licenses of its borrowers will make access to capital easier.
The FCC also proposes allowing power level flexibility for licensed services, enabling those services to reach a greater distance.
Cyber Security
Experts Urge A Proactive Approach To Computer Threats
by Chloe Albanesius
A proactive approach to computer viruses and cyber attacks will enable the government and businesses to more effectively address such problems in the future, lawmakers and witnesses concluded at a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.
The most dangerous aspect of cyber attacks "is the failure of many people to take the threat seriously, to receive adequate training and to take proactive steps needed to secure their networks," said Florida Republican Adam Putnam, chairman of the Government Reform Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census.
Putnam said the recent "Sobig" and "Blaster" computer worms "brought home the reality that unsecured computer systems are all too prevalent and that we ... must take computer security more seriously."
Lawrence Hale, director of the Homeland Security Department's Federal Computer Incident Response Center (FedCIRC), said focusing only on worms and viruses "would force us into a reactive posture, taking action only after threat information is received, processed and analyzed."
He said the department's cyber division, created in June, "has been successful in reducing the impact of a number of recent cyber incidents" and that it has several initiatives underway to reduce the vulnerabilities to attack.
Hale said federal agencies must integrate their management of network configuration and computer patches for any problems that arise. "An organization's patching process should define a method for deciding which patches get installed first and a method for deciding which systems get patched," he said.
In addition to the patch-management initiative, Hale said Homeland Security's cyber division is partnering with the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University to test ways to develop analytical tools for identifying planned attacks.
"One of [cyber division's] goals is to have this same level of enhanced response and information sharing with the private sector, state and local governments, and the general public to ensure everyone is equally prepared in our fight to prevent future cyber attacks against America's critical infrastructure," he said.
"The Internet is not only vulnerable to attack today, but it will stay vulnerable to attack in the foreseeable future," CERT Director Richard Pethia warned. To combat the issue, he suggested that the government take a multi-pronged approach.
The cyber division "is a critical step toward implementation of these recommendations," Pethia said. "However, implementing a safer cyberspace will require the [division] and entire federal government to work with state and local governments and the private sector to drive better software practices, higher awareness at all levels, increased research and development activities, and increased training for technical specialists."
Norman Lorentz, the departing chief technology officer at the White House Office of Management and Budget, also stressed cooperation and keeping pace with the latest technologies. "The federal government's ability to thwart worms and viruses depends on a number of interlocking management, technical and operational controls," he said.
Security
Lawmakers, Experts Assess Two Years Of Security Work
by William New
On the eve of the second anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the House Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday heard firsthand what should have happened to prevent those attacks, as well as what still needs to be done.
Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said many shortcomings remain and added, "We must use the hard lessons of 9/11 to look forward."
"It is our duty to move faster and stronger to protect America," said committee ranking Democrat Jim Turner of Texas. The committee should take "absolutely every measure in our power" to prevent such attacks from happening again, he said.
Former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, chairman of the advisory panel to assess domestic response capabilities for terrorism involving weapons of mass destruction, testified that his panel has made recommendations since 1999 to bolster counter-terrorism measures.
The so-called Gilmore Commission's final of five annual reports, expected in December, will focus on a "return to normalcy," offering recommendations on preparedness and the roles of states and localities, he said. It also will draw attention to the need to maintain civil freedoms.
Eleanor Hill, staff director of the joint inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence committees inquiry into the 2001 attacks, discussed the 800-page unclassified version of the report, which was publicly released July 24. The review involved 500,000 pages of documents, interviews with more than 600 individuals, testimony and evidence from 13 closed sessions and nine public hearings, and seven months of declassification negotiations.
The inquiry sought to determine what the intelligence community knew or should have known before Sept. 11, to identify systemic problems and to recommend reform. Officials found a lack of access to intelligence data, focus and quality of information.
Report recommendations included creation of a Cabinet-level director of national intelligence, clear priorities throughout the intelligence community, a government-wide strategy for combating terrorism and a national intelligence officer for terrorism.
Other recommendation include: full development within the Homeland Security Department of a center to fuse data from various intelligence sources; reviews of agencies, and the development of a center for coordinating the flow of suspected terrorists' names from all points of collection.
Cox highlighted those and other report recommendations, including the full and most effective application of technology to protect the homeland.
Also on Wednesday, several House Republican committee chairmen held a press conference to highlight security accomplishments the past two years. Cox outlined accomplishments such as the quick congressional action in the weeks after the attacks, the creation of the Homeland Security Department and successful overseas efforts to disrupt the al Qaeda terrorist network.
He also pointed to technology achievements, noting that government continues to develop, implement and deploy technologies to protect the homeland and the economy. At the briefing, he exhibited a device that detects radiation in vehicles passing at up to 30 miles per hour.
Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Hal Rogers of Kentucky defended the appropriations bill his panel drafted against Democratic calls for more security spending.
Security
Lawmaker Calls For 'Sound Business' At Homeland Security
by Ted Leventhal
The Homeland Security Department must improve its accounting practices to spend less money on overhead and more on protecting America, a House Government Reform subcommittee chairman said at an oversight hearing on Wednesday.
"Improving our nation's security is essentially a test of the management and leadership abilities of the federal, state and local governments," said Todd Platts, R-Pa. "Given the magnitude and importance of the department's mission, sound business practices are critical to success and must be established at the outset."
A recent inspector general's audit found major problems with the department's accounting practices, including 18 "material weaknesses," or unreliable financial statements, where spending could not be tracked reliably. The worst offenders, the report said, were the agencies focused on emergency management, customs and immigration.
J. Richard Berman, Homeland Security's assistant inspector general, said immigration officials lack an automated accounting system and must stop work to count applications by hand two weeks before a statement is due. He blamed poor, unconnected databases for the problem.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster-assistance grant program, meanwhile, suffers from ineffective performance and financial oversight that have allowed grant recipients to misuse federal funds. Auditors questioned the use of $900 million from 1993 to 2000. And customs officials and the Transportation Security Administration also lack systems to monitor contractor performance and spending.
Bruce Carnes, the department's chief financial officer, said Homeland Security is working hard to integrate 83 financial-management systems and is aggressively overhauling policies, including an attempt to consolidate financial statements on an accelerated schedule.
The final product will be "the business equivalent of a global positioning system" to provide immediate budget, accounting and procurement information to the White House Office of Management and Budget, Congress and others, and improve data quality and timeliness.
Linda Springer, controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management, said while Homeland Security's reforms are under way, changes will take several years to complete. The department's first challenge is to get a clean audit opinion on its financial statements, and that will require extensive cooperation from each of its 22 entities, she said.
She also said that is only the first step in a long process of streamlining the department's systems, including identifying information technology assets and deciding whether systems will include commercial products, be developed internally developed or involve a hybrid of the two.
Budget
Senate Seeks To Move Aid For E-Archives To Amtrak
by Ted Leventhal
Responding to a critical government report and a shortfall in Amtrak funding, the Senate Appropriations Committee has voted to defer for one year the $35.9 million requested for the electronic record-keeping project of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and instead divert the funds to Amtrak.
According to a Senate source, the funds were cut at the request of Washington Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that approves funding for the Transportation and Treasury departments. Last week, the committee approved the bill, S. 1589, which also would fund NARA.
Murray had planned to propose the funding cut for the archiving project in an amendment. But she and two Republicans reached an accommodation with subcommittee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and the language was inserted in the committee report, the source said.
The Bush administration requested only $900 million to meet Amtrak's $1.8 billion budget, the source said, and the deferred archiving funds would be used to help meet the shortfall.
The committee report calls for e-archives funds to be deferred for one year while NARA addresses management problems raised in report issued by the General Accounting Office (GAO) in August. The report said the agency has failed to follow industry standards for electronic record-keeping.
"Key policy and planning documents are missing elements that are required by the standards," the report charges. "NARA cannot adequately track the cost and schedule of the [electronic archiving] program," it concluded, adding that without a schedule, "the risk is increased that funds may not be used efficiently or effectively" and that the system may not function properly as a result.
NARA criticized the move in a statement on Monday. "[The e-archiving project] is a critical need due to the volume and rapid obsolescence of electronic records today, let alone in the future," it stated. "If the numbers stand full Senate action, we will work hard to see that funding is restored" in negotiations with the House for the final version of the legislation.
But the committee source said that the e-archives are not supposed to be operational until 2007 and that taking a year to fix the program will not harm its long-term prospects. "There will be funding opportunities in the future," the source said.
Last month, the House incorporated the administration's full NARA request into its competing bill, H.R. 2989, and the report for that bill backs the program. Previously, the e-archiving initiative was funded from NARA's general account. This year, the House bill would create a separate account for the e-archives.
The project calls for a digital warehouse for government documents, including e-mail and computer files that cannot be converted easily to paper format for long-term storage. But GAO frequently has criticized the program.
At a July hearing before the House Government Reform Technology Subcommittee, Linda Koontz, GAO's director of information technology issues, said NARA only recently has improved inspection of federal agency records, ensuring that valuable electronic documents are archived, and still has not developed a workable plan for the e-archives.
Today's Feature:
International Roundup
A new report on privacy and human rights in 55 countries shows that powers for law enforcement and national security agencies have been increased at an unprecedented rate worldwide. Meanwhile, The Business Software Alliance released a study that predicts that fees on digital media and equipment in the European Union will rise 500 percent from 2002 to 2006.
Every Wednesday, read the International Roundup by Senior Writer William New
|
E-briefs
White House: President Bush called for further expansions of the USA PATRIOT Act in a Wednesday afternoon speech at the FBI academy, including the ability for law enforcement officials to seize Americans' records with an administrative subpoena in terrorism cases. Such a subpoena would permit the federal government to obtain records without review by a judge. Bush said such subpoenas "allow law enforcement to obtain information critical in a wide range of criminal and civil matters," including those involving health care and child abuse. "Yet incredibly enough, in terrorism cases, where speed is of the essence," they are not available. "If we can use subpoenas to catch crooked doctors, we should be allowed to use them in catching terrorists," Bush said. The American Civil Liberties Union said Bush is using "this tragic date to continue to endorse the increasingly unpopular anti-civil liberties policies of Attorney General [John] Ashcroft and the Department of Justice."
Labor: Senate Democrats on Wednesday prevailed in their bid to defeat the White House's proposed changes to overtime rules. The 54-45 vote, which came during debate on a spending bill for fiscal 2004, knocks down a plan by President Bush to exempt from overtime pay rates those workers who make more than $65,000 per year. Instead, the amendment approved on that vote would prohibit overtime exemptions for anyone currently eligible for such pay and also would allow for the inclusion of more workers under overtime mandates.
Privacy: The House on Wednesday began debating a bill to reauthorize the 33-year-old Fair Credit Reporting Act. Members in both parties said the bill includes significant new provisions on consumer privacy and identity theft. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Ohio, cited last week's FTC study indicating that nearly 10 million Americans fell victim to identity thieves last year, costing businesses and consumers roughly $50 billion. The bill calls for a standardized system of "fraud alerts" to protect victims of ID theft by preventing new credit accounts from being fraudulently established in their names. The bill also includes new medical privacy protections, prohibiting lenders from using or sharing consumers' medical information without their consent. "I think we have a bill that is better than existing law and that frankly contains more new consumer protections than I've seen in a while," said Financial Services ranking Democrat Barney Frank of Massachusetts.
Taxes: Rep. Mary Bono, R-Calif., and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., are crafting legislation that would preclude states from applying sales taxes to music and videos that are purchased and downloaded from the Internet. The goal of the legislation is to create an incentive for those downloading music to do so legally, rather than stealing it, said Bono's spokeswoman. The legislation would provide a short-term prohibition on the taxes to create an incentive for people to pay for the downloads, said Michael Sullivan, legislative assistant to Ensign. The legislation should have broad support, he said, because it does not divide the content, technology or manufacturing industries and it would have a minimal impact on states. "We are hopeful the attention this brings to legal downloads will get people to do the right thing and use these sites so artists can compensated for their work," Sullivan said.
Lobbying: The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA) is urging House and Senate negotiators on the fiscal 2004 bill to authorize Defense Department programs to drop language that would require all Defense-purchased goods to contain at least 50 percent U.S. content. "Today, there are virtually no commercial products that are made to conform to the Buy American Act," Joe Tasker, ITAA's senior vice president for government affairs, said of the bill, H.R. 1588. "It would mean simply that the Defense Department would not be able to acquire commercial IT products." ITAA also opposes a provision that would require bidders on Defense contracts to identify the countries of origin of the components for the contracted systems. The provisions in the House version of the bill "would have far-reaching negative consequences for IT producers and the U.S. government customer," ITAA President Harris Miller said. The group is circulating a paper on the provisions.
Net Governance: The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which governs the Internet-addressing system, has appointed a new general counsel and a new vice president of business operations. John Jeffrey, the general counsel, is the executive vice president of Live365, which operates an online radio network. Jeffrey also has served in legal affairs positions at Discovery Communications, TCI Interactive and Fox Television, and he was a litigation attorney in Los Angeles. Kurt Pritz, the new head of business operations, was vice president of production at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he directed the engineering and manufacturing of theme-park shows worldwide for the company.
Cyber Security: Despite having advanced security protections, the banking and finance industry remains vulnerable to certain types of attacks, such as terrorist actions and cyber attacks. According to a report released on Wednesday by Dartmouth's Institute for Security Technology Studies, the industry has worked hard to introduce robust security throughout the sector since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks but much remains vulnerable to sophisticated physical or cyber attacks targeted at "choke points," such as major trading exchanges and payment systems. The report also said the industry is at risk from hacking, computer viruses and cyber crimes. The report suggests that lawmakers and government agencies continue to work with sector leaders to understand and analyze vulnerabilities and to develop security measures.
Security: Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge next week will launch an initiative by the Council for Excellence in Government to connect citizens, businesses and government on homeland security issues. Ridge is slated to deliver the keynote speech Sept. 16, a panel discussion featuring Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, officials from local governments, "first responders" to emergencies and civic organizations. In October, the nonprofit organization and the department plan to conduct a series of town-hall meetings to try to better understand security concerns in communities. The first meeting is scheduled for Oct. 8 in St. Louis, followed by trips to Miami, Rochester, N.Y. California, Kentucky, Texas and Washington are possible locations for town-hall meetings as well. The council said that working groups comprised of people in business, academia and government will make recommendations to Homeland Security based on public input from the meetings.
|
