Heather Green has a great piece in this week’s issue of Business Week on the chilling effect of copyright legislation on research. Here’s a snippet: Scientists like to probe the unknown and pioneer useful technologies. But in the spring of 2001, Edward W. Felten discovered that such efforts aren’t always welcome. A computer scientist at […]
Thanks to David Padgham (and USACM’s spiffy new blog) for pointing out this Wired story with the latest on sputtering talks to reach a compromise on the Induce Act. It appears the tech community and the entertainment industry are still far apart on consensus language for the bill — originally designed to create a new […]
Wired reports that the Senate could enable, as part of it’s National Intelligence Reform Act, work on a system “that would let government counter-terrorist investigators instantly query a massive system of interconnected commercial and government databases that hold billions of records on Americans.” The proposed network is based on the Markle Foundation Task Force’s December […]
Thanks to Tom Jones for pointing out this story in the Financial Times on the increasing attention paid to supercomputing in the wake of the Japanese Earth Simulator’s 2 year reign at the top of the Top500. Here’s a bit: Hard drive by lobbyists helps US take supercomputer lead By Simon London An almost audible […]
Thanks to Rodney Peterson of Educause for pointing this out: U.S. cybersecurity chief abruptly resigns, cites frustration By TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) The government’s cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention […]
C-net News.com reports that the Senate committee vote on the Induce Act scheduled for today has been postponed. Additional coverage here.
From the ACM [a CRA affiliate organization] press release: New York, September 27, 2004 — Seeking to bolster the security, accessibility, and public confidence in the voting process, ACM’s elected leadership has approved a public statement on the deployment and use of computer-based electronic voting (e-voting) systems for public elections. ACM’s position is that while […]
Reuters reports that Senate backers of the INDUCE Act — including Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Tom Daschle — may attempt to attach the bill to a must-pass spending bill in an effort to secure passage for the controversial (and ill-conceived) legislation. The Senate Judiciary Committee could take up the bill on […]
CRA Chair Jim Foley sat for an extended interview with CNET News.com on the state of the IT research enterprise in the US. Here’s the intro: James Foley is worried. As chairman of the Computing Research Association–a group made up of academic departments, research centers and professional societies–his job at CRA is to improve computing […]
The U.S. Public Policy Committee of ACM — one of CRA’s affiliate organizations — has joined a broad coalition of groups who have written (pdf) to the members of the US Senate urging them to “slow down” their efforts to pass legislation (called INDUCE) that would create a new form of secondary liability for copyright […]
