With Election Day and the Thanksgiving break in the rearview mirror, the next four weeks are looking to be action packed in Washington. And while the “fiscal cliff” discussions are expected to suck a lot of air out of the town, there’s a lot going on in the tech policy world, with a significant focus on privacy, intellectual property protection, cybersecurity and Internet Governance. Here’s a look forward in these areas:
Busy Weeks Ahead on the U.S. Privacy Front
First up for privacy is the Senate Judiciary Cmte. makup of ECPA reform legislation (Electronic Communications Privacy Act) this Thursday. In advance, Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) released a revised managers amendment last night, which makes significant improvements from previous drafts from the Chairman that proposed to substantially weaken the underlying legislation. Still, there is much uncertainty around the level of support among Committee members and potential amendments.
Next is the 6th NTIA multistakeholder meeting on Friday, where discussions will continue on industry-led proposals regarding “short form notices” and a comprehensive code of conduct. Hopes are that the progress initiated at the October Meeting will continue to move the discussions forward.
Finally, the FTC will hold a workshop on “Practices, Privacy Implications of Comprehensive Collection of Web Data,” an all-day event that will bring together consumer groups, academics, industry representatives, privacy professionals, and others to “examine the technological landscape, benefits and risks, consumer knowledge and attitude, and the future of comprehensive data collection.”
This heavy dose of privacy focus by legislators and regulators will end 2012 similar to how it began, and could possibly also include final revisions to the COPPA Rule, expected to be released by the FTC at some point in the near future.
Developments in the Patent Policy World
After a rousing speech last week that provided a strong defense of the US patent system, USPTO head David Kappos yesterday formally announced his resignation effective at the end of January. In what now looks to be his swansong, Kappos listed a number of improvements USPTO is making to deal with issues such as patent quality and clarity, including third party submissions on prior art and the post grant review process.
Despite the turnover at the PTO, there remains a persistent heavy focus on patent policy. Notably, the FTC and DOJ will be jointly hosting a workshop on Dec. 10th, focused on Patent Assertion Entity Activities. And as announced by Kappos last week, the PTO will hold a roundtable on Jan. 11th (details TBD), on requiring disclosure of the real party in interest for published applications and issued patents — a critical issue for dealing with patent quality and patent trolls.
With Cyber Ball in the President’s Court , Congress still focused on Cyber Funding
Shortly after returning from the election recess, the U.S. Senate vote to proceed with comprehensive cyber legislation once again came up hort. The failed vote officially puts the ball in the President’s court, where the Administration continues to explore opportunities of an Executive Order to strengthen protection of the Nation’s critical infrastructure and improve cyber information sharing. In the meantime, with extensive Federal budget cuts potentially on the horizon as part of the looming budget deal, there has been broad recognition in Congress and the Administration that funding for cybersecurity should not be impacted.
Internet Governance
All eyes around the World are still on Dubia for the upcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) Conference, where government officials from around the world will gather to revise a treaty that could have a major effect on the future of the Internet. The Hill provided a thorough overview of the key issues and what’s at stake.
On December 6, SIIA is sponsoring an event with GW University and several other groups to examine how countries use trade policy to advance cross border information flows, and how these trade discussions could impact Internet freedom.
And on the ICANN front, there were several developments over the last 10 days relating to the program to roll out of new domain names, including: (1) the ICANN Board of Directors issued a resolution directing ICANN’s CEO to launch a new effort to re-examine the purpose of collecting, maintaining and providing access to gTLD registration data in the Whois database; (2) discussions around potential changes to Rights Protection Mechanisms (RPMs), and (3) the Government Advisory Committee (GAC), which provides advice to ICANN on issues of public policy, filed 242 individual “Early Warnings” on 200 new gTLD applications which account for 162 unique strings.
David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.