IP: WASHINGTON-UPDATE EDUCAUSE Washington Update 10-09-98

[Dave Farber <farber@cis.upenn.edu>]

From: EDUCAUSE <EDUCAUSE@EDUCAUSE.EDU>

EDUCAUSE: Transforming Education Through Information Technologies

EDUCAUSE WASHINGTON UPDATE --- OCTOBER 9, 1998

IN THIS ISSUE:

EFFORT TO RECIND NSF FUNDING FOR ADVANCED NETWORK RESEARCH CONTINUES IN
SENATE

CONGRESS REACHES AGREEMENT ON WIPO COPYRIGHT ACT; DATABASE AMENDMENT DROPPED

HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE QUESTIONS "ACCOUNTABILITY & AUTHORITY" OF NEW DOMAIN
NAME MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE

_________________________________________________________________

EFFORT TO RECIND NSF FUNDING FOR ADVANCED NETWORK RESEARCH CONTINUES IN
SENATE

Reports conflict, but apparently some senators plan to add legislation to a
sweeping appropriations bill that would either completely rescind or freeze
remaining funds allocated to the National Science Foundation for research on
the Next Generation Internet (NGI) and other advanced networking research
programs for this fiscal year. As reported last week by EDUCAUSE, an effort
led by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) to amend the Internet Tax
Freedom Act (S.442) with such a provision did not materialize. (The Senate
approved that bill yesterday by a 96-2 vote, setting a three-year moratorium
on Internet commerce taxes while a commission conducts a study. The bill now
goes to the House, where version H.R.4105 shares the same features the
Senate adopted.)

A last-minute effort is reportedly underway in the Senate to attach an
incarnation of the Lott initiative to the Omnibus Appropriations bill which
may be passed as early as tomorrow.

CONGRESS REACHES AGREEMENT ON WIPO COPYRIGHT ACT; DATABASE AMENDMENT DROPPED

Last night the Senate approved a conference report on legislation to
implement U.S. compliance with the WIPO copyright treaty
(http://www.wipo.org/eng/main.htm).
Removal of additional language designed to protect unauthorized commercial
use of information compiled into databases helped expedite the agreement.
The Collections of Information Antipiracy Act (H.R.2652) had been added to
the House version, and drew concern from the education and research
communities which feared the bill would have placed burdensome restrictions
on the non-commercial use of computer databases. The bill with the database
provision was passed by the House last May, and was sent on the Senate
Judiciary Committee (Washington Update 5/19/98:
(http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/contents/update/1998/19980519.html).
Committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) has promised to hold hearings
next year on the database protection issue.

The copyright bill passed by the Senate still would prohibit the
circumvention of technological protection measures in most cases, and the
education and library communities have advocated heavily that conventional
fair use potentially could be threatened by the legislation.  The conference
committee largely implemented the House version of the bill, an approach
advocated by the higher education community.

The House is expected to pass the reconciled bill today.


HOUSE SCIENCE COMMITTEE QUESTIONS "ACCOUNTABILITY & AUTHORITY" OF NEW DOMAIN
NAME MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE

The House Science Subcommittees on Basic Research and Technology held a
joint hearing on Wednesday to discuss private sector actions to date in
assuming management of the Internet domain name and registration system.

[Background: Last June the Clinton Administration released its White Paper
policy statement on this issue
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/6_5_98dns.htm); the document
ceded responsibility for determining the future governance of the Internet
to an international board that was to be in place by October 1998.
(Washington Update 6/8/98:
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/contents/update/1998/19980608.html)  A
series of "Internet stakeholder" discussions were held in various parts of
the world over the following three months to achieve some degree of
consensus for the structure and functions of the new interim board and the
new non-profit organization. (http://www.ifwp.org/) The Internet Assigned
Numbers Authority (IANA, the U.S.-funded organization charged with running
the domain name servers) recently submitted a proposal to the Department of
Commerce laying out a series of bylaws for the new DNS management entity.
(http://www.iana.org/submitted/sub-bylaws.html) Critics charge that
parameters of the interim board's authority are not clearly spelled out and
that the public will not have sufficient access to its work.]

Panelists at the subcommittee meeting on Wednesday talked mainly of reaching
consensus, but the primary result will likely be continued debate over what
Basic Research subcommittee chairman Rep. Charles Pickering Jr., (R-MS)
stated as the "problem of accountability and authority" of the new DNS
management organization.  Apparently the congressional role in the process
is also unclear: testifying before the committees, J. Beckwith Burr of NTIA
stated that she did not believe congressional authorization was necessary
and that it should continue to play a "consulting role".

Despite the creation of an interim governing board, the Internet community
(and Congress) will still have the opportunity to make its opinions known.
On Tuesday the Department of Commerce signed an agreement with Network
Solutions, Inc. expanding its contract as registrar of Internet domain names
until June 1999.  The new organization is expected to be fully functional by
the following year.

Public comments on the IANA proposal are due to the NTIA no later than this
Tuesday, October 13.  Comments can be made at the NTIA site:
(http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/domainhome.htm#1)
_____________________________________________________________

Written from EDUCAUSE's Washington office, "The EDUCAUSE Washington Update"
is a free service of EDUCAUSE, an international nonprofit association
dedicated to transforming higher education through information technologies.


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