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U.S. Chamber Snags Federal Piracy Expert
by Sarah Lai Stirland
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Monday announced that it has hired former Commerce Department official Caroline Joiner as executive director of its global anti-counterfeiting and piracy initiative.
The announcement came a day before a high-level summit between the Bush administration and Chinese officials. The Chinese officials are expected to issue a progress report on efforts to curtail piracy and counterfeiting.
"I had been in the Department of Commerce's trade-promotion office, helping small businesses learn how to export and to compete internationally, and [counterfeiting and piracy] was a problem that came up over and over again as a barrier to their growth internationally," Joiner said about her decision to pursue new professional challenges at the chamber.
Joiner succeeds Brad Huther, who will become senior coordinator of the chamber's domestic IP enforcement efforts. The chamber is working with law enforcers and has hired its own investigators in Los Angeles and New York.
Joiner's previous position at the Commerce Department was executive director for USA Trade Promotion, a division of the U.S. Commercial Service of Commerce.
'Broadcast Flag' Expert Leaves Senate Office
Keith Murphy, a legislative aide to Sen. Gordon Smith, R-Ore., will join Viacom at the end of April after having spent about a year in Smith's office.
Murphy currently works on legislation that Smith circulated earlier this year for the anti-piracy technology known as the "broadcast flag." The draft bill would grant the FCC authority to enact rules to prevent the indiscriminate copying of audio and broadcast content over the Internet.
A Legal Times article on Monday raised questions about the potential conflict of interest the hire poses. But Smith's press secretary, Chris Matthews, dismissed those concerns. "Viacom doesn't have any interest in [the legislation,]" Matthews said.
Viacom previously lobbied the FCC on behalf of CBS to enact rules concerning the broadcast flag. But Viacom since has spun off CBS.
In other news, the law firm of Perkins Coie announced last week that it has hired two partners who specialize in intellectual property issues. Michael Ananian joins the firm's Menlo Park., Calif., office from the law firm of Dorsey & Whitney in Palo Alto, and Stephen Bishop joins the firm's Seattle office after leaving his job as an associate general counsel at Amazon.com.
While at Amazon, Bishop managed the company's global patent and trademark portfolio. Ananian is an electrical engineer by training, as well as a patent attorney. His job at Perkins Coie will be to help clients including Google and Microsoft apply for patents.
"There's a very good team approach that I didn't find in my previous firm," Ananian said of his decision to move to Perkins Coie. "They're taking an aggressive stance on building this reputation as being a full-service kind of firm, but we're small enough to have boutique-style client relationships."
Judges Clash Over Sex-Offense Case
Publicly reported instances of extreme, deviant sexual offenses have a way of bringing out the passions in people, be they members of the general public, policymakers or even federal judges, who often may appear dispassionate and clinical in court.
One of the latest examples arose last week in a little-noted 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals opinion. A panel of three judges fought among themselves over the question of whether obscene material found on a suspect's personal digital assistant could be used as evidence to prove the suspect's intent as he met with an undercover police officer who had pretended to be a 14-year-old girl in a chat room on the Internet.
On April 4, Circuit Judges Pamela Ann Rymer and Clifford Wallace ruled that a district court abused its discretion when it allowed government prosecutors to use some of the obscene stories on the suspect's PDA to convince a jury of the suspect's criminal intentions. The judges said their decision was bound by previous case law on evidence, and that the stories were too prejudicial and ultimately irrelevant.
That opinion sparked an angry, 76-page dissent from their colleague, Judge Stephen Trott. "It seems that the law of relevancy is now more concerned with protecting a sexual predator's obscene manuals on what to do with children than with protecting the real children upon whom they practice their perversions, as this case illustrates," he wrote.
His colleagues' decision, Trott concluded, violates congressional intent and "handcuffs" jurors when faced with deciding what is in the mind of such offenders.
The accused person in the case, Kevin Curtin, had met and chatted with a Las Vegas police detective online and had arranged a meeting in the city. After his arrest, Curtin said he thought he was role-playing with an older woman and had expected to meet that older woman for sex.
Wallace shot back in a footnote: "Contrary to the dissent's assertion, we have not 'made relevant literature off limits in the 9th circuit as a matter of law.' Nor do we 'hamstring' the capability of the rule of law to cope in this Circuit with adults who see children as sexual prey."
All three judges were appointed by Republican presidents.
Elsewhere, the Advertising Council, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and News Corp., the parent company of the MySpace social-networking site, announced an online ad campaign.
MySpace has caused acute concern among parents because of the trove of personal information teenagers provide about themselves online, making them easier targets for sexual predators.
The ads, a joint effort between to promote public safety on the Internet, aim to "educate teens on how to be smart and maintain safe online relationships," according to a jointly issued statement. The ads will run across several of News Corp.'s television, radio and new media properties, as well as in the New York Post.
Fox Interactive Media, a unit of News Corp., on Tuesday announced it hired Hemanshu Nigam from Microsoft to head its new online safety initiative. At Microsoft, Nigam worked on cyber security issues. He also dealt with law enforcement official requests for information in terrorism investigations. Nigam is a former Justice Department attorney who prosecuted child predators.
Online Sex And Late-Night Sarcasm
Two sex-related Internet incidents involving former officials at the Homeland Security Department, meanwhile, inspired some late-night sarcasm and humor.
Last week, Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary Brian Doyle resigned after Florida cops busted him for trying to solicit sex from another law enforcer posing as a 14-year-old girl in a chat room. That news came after a different Homeland Security official pleaded no contest to exposing himself to a teenage girl in a mall.
Comedian Jay Leno addressed the two incidents. "Now it turns out another Homeland Security official was arrested for exposing himself to a teenage girl at a mall," Leno said. "You know what's really creepy? These are the same people in charge of patting us down at the airport."
He added: "And their lawyer -- ah, their lawyer, just as sleazy. ... He said all the men were trying to do was lure terrorists into a trap by assembling a team of 72 virgins."
Quote Of The Week
"Now the Internet is before us and it allows cunning sexual vultures repeatedly to enter the bedrooms of immature children where, by seductive and calculating means, unwary children are enticed to leave the security of their homes and to venture into unspeakable dangers."
-- Circuit Judge Stephen Trott in the lead paragraph of a dissent in a sex-offense case.
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