Privacy
Privacy In The Spotlight At Two Hill Hearings
     The clash of perspectives on Internet privacy is expected to intensify next week as the Senate Commerce Committee and the House Energy and Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee hold separate hearings -- with separate agendas -- on the subject. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ernest (Fritz) Hollings, D-S.C., will hold a hearing on Internet privacy Wednesday, July 11, a two-panel session that is scheduled to begin with testimony from privacy advocates and conclude with replies by Internet companies and an investment analyst. Meanwhile, House subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., has scheduled his sixth privacy hearing of the year. It is expected to cover how businesses in various industries use the personal information they buy and sell. Stearns and Ken Johnson, the spokesman for Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman W.J. (Billy) Tauzin, R-La., said they are prepared to draft Internet privacy legislation after the hearing, but both said they would not introduce any bill until they vet it with industry at a U.S. Chamber of Commerce privacy event scheduled for September. A Gallup poll released this week showed that two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government should pass more laws to ensure online privacy.

Taxes
R&D Tax Proposal Becomes A Partisan Issue
     Making the research and development tax credit a partisan issue will not get the tax credit signed into law, according to the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA). "We think issues like R&D simply are not partisan in their very essence, and the fact that one side tries to make it partisan doesn't help us get where we need to be," ITAA President Harris Miller said. Miller made the comments after the Senate last week refused to attach to a healthcare bill language making the R&D tax credit permanent. The Senate quashed the effort on a mostly party-line procedural vote, with Democrats voting against it. After the vote, the Senate Republican High-Tech Task Force issued a release touting the R&D credit and criticizing Democrats. "Unfortunately, Democrats voted almost universally to pull the plug on one of the top items on the technology community's agenda," said Virginian George Allen, the task force's chairman.

Intellectual Property
Publishers Weigh Legislation To Counter Court Ruling
     Publishers and electronic-database partners that lost their copyright dispute with freelance writers in a Supreme Court decision last week are weighing possible legislative approaches even as they delete freelancers' articles from their online archives. In the case, New York Times vs. Tasini, the court ruled 7-2 for six freelance writers who sued The New York Times, Newsday and Time for making electronic copies of their work available without their permission. The court held that including articles in electronic databases was not the same as merely publishing a "revised" edition of the complete newspaper in microfilm, a revision authorized by the 1976 Copyright Act. But seeking such new legislation could be problematic because it essentially would amount to Congress telling the Supreme Court that it misinterpreted the 1976 law.

Trade
Experts Call For Presidential Leadership On 'Fast Track'
     Trade experts from a range of Washington think tanks last Friday called for greater pressure from President Bush to generate momentum in Congress for a deal on presidential trade-negotiating authority. "There is a sense of drift, that the president is not on top of his portfolio," Claude Barfield of the American Enterprise Institute, said at a Heritage Foundation event. "That will be the case unless the president makes it clear to the country that trade and trade liberalization are a top priority." In related news, the Commerce Department joined four global telecommunications firms Monday in touting a new deal with China as proof of improved relations and a vigorous pro-free-market attitude in the formerly closed economy.

Trade
USTR Releases Draft Free Trade Area Of The Americas
     The draft text of the nine chapters of the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement was published this week. U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick called publication of the previously confidential text an "unprecedented effort to make international trade and its economic and social benefits more understandable to the public." The draft reflects input from the 34 hemispheric nations whose officials began discussing the agreement in 1994 and formally launched negotiations in 1998. Negotiations, scheduled to conclude in 2005, are for reduced tariffs and non-tariff barriers to products and services sold across borders. U.S. exports to Latin America are growing faster than to any other region in the world, USTR said. The agreement covers nine areas: services, investment, intellectual property rights, market access, competition policy, anti-dumping and countervailing duty policies, agriculture, government procurement and dispute settlement.

Antitrust
Poll Finds Public Support For Microsoft Decision
     The American public supports the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision not to break up Microsoft, according to an Ipsos-Reid poll conducted over last weekend. In a survey of 1,000 American adults, 58 percent said the ruling was good news and 25 percent said it was bad news. Among heavy users of the Internet, the percentage of Americans happy with the ruling jumped to 69 percent. Almost half of the Americans polled think the government should now drop the case altogether. Another 29 percent of the public said they thought the government should continue its antitrust case against Microsoft but not split the software firm in two, and 18 percent believe the original ruling should be upheld and Microsoft should be divided. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent.

Cyber Security
Hackers Aid Encryption Software Sales
     Hacker and e-terrorist attacks are propelling sales of network encryption devices as the Internet increasingly becomes a target of cyber villains, according to a research report released by consultancy Frost & Sullivan. With the amount of classified information being transmitted via electronic networks on the rise, agencies like the U.S. National Security Agency and international bodies such as NATO are increasing network defense spending and modernizing equipment to ensure the privacy of their information, according to the study.