This week’s shaping up to be very busy. Particularly the calendar for Wednesday, featuring activity on issues ranging from mobile broadband, to cyber to digital learning (see full list in the calendar section).

Cybersecurity is headlining the week once again, as the Senate continues to move forward with all deliberate speed to finalize and introduce comprehensive cybersecurity legislation (still expected to be on the floor in the first half of February), while a key House Subcommittee will markup cybersecurity info. sharing legislation (H.R. 3674).

On the privacy front, the EC last week formally released its long-awaited proposal to comprehensively reform the EU’s 1995 data protection rules for online privacy. The proposal includes two legislative proposals setting out the Commission’s objectives: a Regulation setting out a general EU framework for data protection, and a Directive on protecting personal data processed for the purposes of prevention, detection, investigation or prosecution of criminal offences and related judicial activities. SIIA released a statement in response, highlighting our deep concerns and expressing our commitment to seek revisions to ease administrative burdens and make it easier for global companies to demonstrate compliance with the EU privacy regime.

Also, in the “you might have missed it” column, here’s a list of recent developments we’re tracking over the last couple weeks that should be of interest to many SIIA members:

IP:
Earlier this month, the PTO submitted two reports to Congress mandated by the recently passed patent reform legislation the “America Invents Act”: (1) the Prior User Rights Defense Study, which concludes that the AIA provisions are consistent with similar rights of major trading partners and that there is no evidence of a negative impact on innovation, and (2) the International Patent Protection for Small Business Study, which concludes that many small businesses may benefit from extending patent rights internationally, but few small businesses are aware of the need, and how to do this.

Standards:
On January 19th, the White House released a memo announcing “Principles for Federal Engagement in Standards Activities to Address National Priorities.” The memo is the result of a lengthy assessment by the NSTC Subcommittee on Standards, led by officials at NIST, OSTP and USTR re: the Government’s role in standards, which included outreach to SIIA and many of our member companies, and it follows a broader set of proposed recommendations released in October 2011.

China:
In December, official Chinese Government website sources reported that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued its 12th Five Year Plan for the Software and Information Technology Services Industry, a document which describes the blueprint and goals for developing the software and IT services industry through direct funding mechanisms, 10 development ‘focus points,’ and 8 mega-engineering projects. Additionally, the plan calls for revenues from the domestic software and IT services sector to exceed 400B RMB, overall Y/Y growth of over 25%, and for exports to exceed 60B USD. MIIT has not released the plan to the public. For more information, please see SIIA Chinese partner USITO.

This Thursday, December 8th, the Senate Commerce Committee will hold a hearing regarding ICANN’s Expansion of Top Level Domains. The purpose of the hearing is to examine the merits and implications of ICANN’s new gTLD program that is set to roll out in January 2012 and ICANN’s continuing efforts to address concerns raised by the Internet community regarding new gTLDs.

Not withstanding the hearing, there is no indication that the new gTLD application window of January 2012 to April 2012 is likely to change.  SIIA has provided a briefing for members on the potential impacts of the gTLD expansion, if you have not seen it, you can access it here.

Today, Cybersecurity Subcommittee Chairman Dan Lungren (R-CA) held a hearing on his draft information sharing cybersecurity legislation to create a nonprofit called the National Information Sharing Organization. It would serve as a national clearinghouse for sharing information about cyberthreats among the federal government, operators of critical infrastructure, state and local governments and the private sector.

This follows last week’s approval of a new cybersecurity information sharing bill by the House Intelligence Committee to allow the government and private companies to share information about electronic threats and attacks. Private entities would participate on a voluntary basis and would receive significant liability protections in return. There are significant differences between the measures, which Chairman Lungren has characterized as “complimentary.”  Neither of the bills are likely to receive a vote in the House before 2012.

The European Commission has sent their draft review of the European Data Protection Directive privacy though an inter-services consultation process.  This process will end on December 9th. The draft review document will be officially released to the public later – most likely in January, perhaps on January 25th or so to coincide with Data Protection Day. Draft copies may be informally available at some point before that.

And on the IP front, indications are still that House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith still plans to proceed with a markup of SOPA on Wednesday, Dec. 14th.  Stay tuned on that one.

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.