| DMCA and SDMI |
| 4/9. Matthew Oppenheim, Secretary of the SDMI Foundation,
wrote a letter to Edward Felton,
an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science
at Princeton University,
and others, warning them that public release of information
concerning the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)
"could subject you and your research team to actions
under the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act ..." Felton is scheduled
to participate in the 4th International Information Hiding
Workshop on April 25-29 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Secure Digital Music Initiative
(SDMI) is a music industry group that is attempting to develop
a watermark based system to prevent music piracy. Watermarking
embeds copyright information in digital music files to enable
devices like MP3 players and recorders to refuse to make
copies of copyrighted music. Last year the SDMI issued a
"Public Challenge" to help choose among four
proposed watermarking technologies. It invited researchers to
attempt to remove the copyright watermarks. Felton responded,
and successfully defeated all four technologies. The SDMI now
seeks to prevent Felton from presenting or publishing his
findings. An early version of Felton's presentation has been
published in ZIP format in the Cryptome web site. |
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| Fair Use |
| 4/16. The Free
Republic filed its appeal
brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals (9thCir) in Free
Republic v. LA Times and Washington Post. The Los Angeles
Times and the Washington Post sued the Free Republic for copyright
infringement for publishing copies of news stories from
their web sites without permission. The Free Republic, which
operates a bulletin board web site for political
conservatives, raised the affirmative defense of fair use.
U.S. District Court Judge Margaret Morrow rejected the fair
use defense. See also, TLJ
case summary. |
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| New Documents |
Quebec Summit: joint
declaration re connecting the Americas, telecom
competition, and e-commerce, 4/22 (HTML, TLJ).
SDMI:
letter to
Edward Felton re DMCA and SDMI research, 4/9 (HTML, Cryptome).
Free Republic: appeal
brief re online copyright infringement and fair use, 4/16
(HTML, TLJ). |
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| Connecting the Americas |
| 4/22. Government leaders meeting at the Summit of the
Americas in Quebec City, Canada, issued a joint
declaration titled "Connecting the Americas." It
states that "We are committed to promoting the
development of the telecommunications infrastructure needed to
support and enhance all sectors of society and the economy and
will seek to provide affordable universal access. We agree to
promote the modernization of the telecommunications sector,
noting the leading role of the private sector in deploying
infrastructure and services ..." It also states that
"We agree to establish conditions, taking into account
national legal frameworks, that promote and strengthen free
and fair competition in all telecommunications services."
It states too that "Our governments will strive to
encourage the growth of e-commerce and to promote Connectivity
by providing government services and information on-line, to
the extent possible." See also, transcript
of joint press conference. |
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| Fiber Providers and ILECs |
4/23. April 23 was the deadline to file comments with the FCC in response
to its requests for comments regarding whether ILECs,
such as Verizon, must allow competitive fiber providers to
connect to CLECs in
ILEC central offices. On March 15 the Coalition of Competitive
Fiber Providers filed a Petition
for Declaratory Ruling [PDF] with the FCC requesting a
determination that competitive fiber providers may, pursuant
to § 251(b)(4)
and § 224(f)(1)
of the Communications Act, extend fiber to CLECs collocated in
the ILEC central offices and place distribution frames in ILEC
central offices. On March 22 the FCC issued its request
for comments.
Verizon submitted a long
and angry comment
[PDF] opposing the fiber providers. It argued that they
"seek complete freedom to place fiber and equipment
anywhere in ILEC central office space that ILECs have placed
their own facilities. They want this freedom in order to
connect with their CLEC customers, without the need to
collocate themselves. The Commission must reject this takeover
proposal as wholly inconsistent with the Act, ... under the
Petitioners' reasoning, however, third parties could collocate
virtually any equipment, anywhere, for almost any purpose,
simply by re-casting space in the central office as
"conduits," "ducts," or
"rights-of-way." This is nonsensical." On the
other hand, the Competitive
Telecommunications Association (CompTel) submitted a comment
[PDF] in which it argued that the FCC should promptly grant
the petition. Reply comments are due by May 8, 2001. See,
Docket No. 01-77. |
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| More News |
4/23. The U.S.
Copyright Office published a notice
in the Federal Register that it will hold a public roundtable
discussion on the intellectual property aspects of the
preliminary draft Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign
Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters being negotiated by
the Hague Conference on Private International Law. See,
Federal Register, April 23, 2001, Vol. 66, No. 78, at Pages
20482 - 20483.
4/23. The IRS published a notice
in the Federal Register requesting nominations for the Electronic
Tax Administration Advisory Committee. The ETAAC provides
an organized public forum for discussion of electronic tax
administration issues in support of the goal that paperless
filing should be the preferred and most convenient method of
filing tax and information returns. Nominations are due by May
23, 2001. See, Federal Register, April 23, 2001, Vol. 66, No.
78, at Pages 20525 - 20526. |
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| Nominations |
| 4/23. President Bush formally submitted 13 previously
announced nominations to the Senate, including Timothy
Muris to be a Federal Trade Commissioner, Peter
Allgeier to be Deputy USTR, Viet Dinh to be an
Asst. Atty. General, Roger Ferguson to be a Member of
the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and Elizabeth
Jones to be an Assistant Secretary of State for European
Affairs. See, release. |
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|
| Today |
8:00 AM - 2:30 PM. Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) will
hold its Spring Technology and New Economy Conference. The
topic is "how the DC/Balt/NVa metro area became a
regional high-tech leader, what it must do to remain in the
national vanguard, and steps that can spread more broadly the
prosperity generated by the New Economy." Location: Omni
Shoreham Hotel, 2500 Calvert Street, NW, Washington DC.
9:25 - 10:30 AM. Study Group on Enhancing Multilateral
Export Controls will hold a press conference. The Study
Group was created by the National Defense Appropriations Act
of 2000, was mandated to "develop the framework for a new
and more effective, COCOM-like agreement that would regulate
certain militarily useful goods and technologies on a
multilateral basis." The Study Group will release its
final report at this event. The scheduled participants at the
press conference include Sen.
Michael Enzi (R-WY), Co-Chair, Rep. Chris Cox (R-CA),
Co-Chair, Rep. Howard
Berman (D-CA), Co-Chair, and Cathleen Fisher, Executive
Director. Location: Room 385, Russell Senate Office Building.
3:00 PM. The Senate
Banking Committee will hold a hearing on several
nominations. Location: Room 538, Dirksen Senate Office
Building. The nominees include:
• Grant Aldonas (Under Secretary of Commerce for
International Trade).
• Kenneth Juster (Under Secretary of Commerce for
Export Administration).
• Maria Cino (Assistant Secretary of Commerce and
Director General of the United States and Foreign Commercial
Service).
• Robert Hubbard (Council of Economic Advisors).
3:30 PM. Susan DeSanti, Director of the FTC's Policy
Planning Division, will speak at the Practicing Law Institute
Program on "Antitrust Considerations in eProcurement and
B2B eCommerce." Location: J.W. Marriott Hotel,
Washington, DC. |
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