InternetNews.comhas coverage of the opening of Microsoft Research’s sixth annual Faculty Summit, a “a unique opportunity for faculty members and Microsoft researchers, architects, and executives to collectively discuss a vision for the future of computing.” Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates had some interesting comments to open the event (along with ACM past-President Maria Klawe). Here’s a sample:
But today, Gates and Klawe focused on the present; specifically, how to encourage more students to enroll in computer-science programs so that the industry will have enough qualified engineers to work on those future innovations.
Klawe presented some grim figures: The popularity of computer science as a major has fallen more than 60 percent between 2000 and 2004, she said, even though the software engineering and several related jobs will be among the fastest growing through 2012.
Some of that slack might be taken up by girls if they didn’t have such a seeming aversion to the field. Klawe said participation of women in computing has gone down over the past 25 years, with only around 15 percent of computer-science Ph.D.s going to women.
When Klawe asked Gates what could be done, he seemed to flounder. When he responded, “There’s no magic answer. Maybe get women in the field to be more visible?” Klawe hooted him down.
“No, that’s not the answer,” she said. “We all do it, but we’re not getting anywhere with it.”
“You lose them at about five stages,” Gates agreed. “And, if there aren’t enough women in field, it makes it less attractive, even if everything else is good. There’s a critical-mass element to this.”
The decline in federal funding for academic research and graduate education doesn’t help, the two agreed. Money from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) dropped by half last year.
“The biggest payoff for federal funding or research is in computer science,” Gates said, pointing to the economic and technology boom of the 1990s. “Department of Defense money was one of the elements that allowed us to turn this into one of the greatest success periods the U.S. has ever had.”
Computer science could fuel another such boom in the next 10 years, according to Gates.
“Computer science is becoming the toolkit for all the sciences,” he said. As all disciplines become more data-driven, they’re turning to computer science to make sense of the huge amounts of data. “Computer science helps model the world,” he added.
Speaking to hundreds of university professors, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Monday that he’s baffled more students don’t go into computer science.
Gates said that even if young people don’t know that salaries and job openings in computer science are on the rise, they’re hooked on so much technology _ cell phones, digital music players, instant messaging, Internet browsing _ that it’s puzzling why more don’t want to grow up to be programmers.
“It’s such a paradox,” Gates said. “If you say to a kid, ‘Yeah, what are the 10 coolest products you use that your parents are clueless about, that you’re good at using,’ I don’t think they’re going to say, ‘Oh, you know, it’s this new breakfast cereal. And I want to go work in agriculture and invent new cereals or something.’ … I think 10 out of 10 would be things that are software-driven.”
…
Gates said computer scientists need to do a better job of dispelling that myth and conveying that it’s an exciting field.
“How many fields can you get right out of college and define substantial aspects of a product that’s going to go out and over 100 million people are going to use it?” Gates said. “We promise people when they come here to do programming … they’re going to have that opportunity, and yet we can’t hire as many people as we’d like.”
Both pieces are chock full of interesting quotes and worth reading. We’ll have more on how the computing research community is organizing to take on these issues soon, so watch this space…. Update: Here’s the transcript from Gates and Klawe’s opening remarks. And here’s a video.
There’s an interesting article by Sallie Baliunas at Tech Central Station today on research funding. The piece notes a recent Nature article that suggests scientific misbehavior might be linked to “perceptions of inequities in the [science] resource distribution process” and connects that with tendency among federal funding agencies to shift emphasis from basic to applied research.
Since 1970, total federal non-medical research spending as a fraction of Gross Domestic Product has declined by about one-third. No formal history has tracked research misbehavior, leaving it impossible to say if ongoing stresses on budget allocation systems would partly explain current misbehavior.
Continual budget pressures, though, are transforming U.S. research and development. Funding agencies now weigh more heavily a proposal’s aim toward practical applications, especially those with near-term payoff.
The rest of the article focuses on this trend, citing as an example PITAC’s 1999 report “Investing in our Future” that noted that federal funding in computing research was “excessively focused on near-term problems” (a problem that persists) and providing examples of the sort of serendipitous discovery that doesn’t occur in that environment.
Though I’m not sure what to make of the linkage between this change in focus and scientific misbehavior, the article’s point on the real cost of the push towards applied research is well-taken. “Questions of how funding is distributed are as critical as how much funding.”
Here’s the whole thing.
[Back from vacation. Blogging resumes…]
The Administration has released its annual guidance (pdf) to Federal agencies instructing them on the areas of research and development they should make priorities in their forthcoming FY 2007 budget requests to the White House. The memo, a joint production of the White House Office of Science and Technology and budget gatekeepers, the Office of Management and Budget, “provides general guidance for setting priorities among R&D programs, interagency R&D efforts that should receive special focus in agency budget requests, and reiteration of the R&D Investment Criteria that agencies should use to improve investment decisions for and management of their R&D programs.”
As it was last year, High End Computing and Networking R&D remains a priority for the Adminstration, even at the expense of other items within the Networking and Information Technology R&D portfolio. HEC joins Homeland Security R&D, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Priorities in the Physical Sciences, Understanding Complex Biological Systems, and Energy and Environment as focal points in the Administration’s R&D portfolio. Here’s the relevant language from the computing section:
While the importance of each of the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NITRD) program areas continues, investments in high-end computing and cyber infrastructure R&D should be given higher relative priority due to their potential for broad impact. Agency plans in high-end computing must be consistent with the 2004 Federal Plan for High-End Computing and should aggressively focus on supercomputing capability, capacity and accessibility issues by emphasizing coordination, leveraging the efforts of all agencies and, where appropriate, use of coordinated multi-agency investments. Advanced networking research (including test-beds) on hardware and software for secure, reliable, distributed computing environments and tools that provide the communication, analysis and sharing of very large amounts of information will accelerate discovery and enable new technological advances. Agency requests should reflect these program priorities by reallocating funds from lower priority efforts. Agencies supporting R&D in these and all NITRD areas are expected to participate in interagency planning through the NSTC to guide future investments. Reflecting the importance of cyber security, agencies should continue to work through the NSTC to generate a detailed gap analysis of R&D funding in this area.
Even though the FY 2006 budget process is still unsettled, this memo gives a good peek at the Administration’s thinking for FY 2007. Not surprisingly, the memo implies that next year’s budget will likely be as flat as this year, noting that
Agencies may propose new, high-priority activities, but these requests should identify potential offsets by elimination or reductions in less effective or lower priority programs or programs where Federal involvement is no longer needed or appropriate.
So, it will again be critically important that the computing community work with agencies to make sure that the right priorities are struck in this zero-sum game….
For several years now CRA has sent anyone who was interested an electronic bulletin containing links to items of interest to the computing research community. While the content was always useful, the desire to aggregate links and not bombard subscribers with e-mail after e-mail meant that we’d let the bulletin ripen until we’d accumulated enough entries to make it worthwhile to send out. This had the disadvantage of making things a little less-than-timely. So it was time to evolve the format.
Behold, the new CRA Bulletin, now a blog complete with RSS feed for easy subscribing. CRA’s Jay Vegso is the curator of the blog. Here’s his description for the blog’s function:
The focus of the bulletin will be student/faculty demographic, workforce, and R&D information. My intention is to create a source for reliable information, like footnotes, rather than ‘breaking news’ or editorials. Rather than deal with large reports in a single entry, individual graphs or issues will be given their own entries. For example, Science & Engineering Indicators might have 10 entries, viewable by clicking on the S&E Indicators ‘category’ in the right-side menu.
Expect frequent cross-links from here to there as Jay comes across more juicy morsels to post. There’s already plenty of good content there, like Growth Among Computer/Math Sciences Workforce in the late 1990s, NSF Reports on Academic R&D Expenditures for FY 2002, Close to 40% of Those Employed in Computer and Math Science Occupations Do Not Have a B.S. Degree, and a whole lot more.
Two interesting stories came through the Triangle (North Carolina) Business Journal over the weekend focusing on the lack of undergraduates majoring in CS and CE. The first one, entitled “Fewer students majoring in industry could lead to labor shortage,” notes that CS enrollments in at North Carolina State and the UNC campuses have dropped from 1,988 in 2000-01 to 1,333 in 2004-05. The story was picked up and nationally syndicated by MSNBC. A second story focuses on the lack of minorities entering CS-related fields.
Both stories quote Andrew Bernat and cite the CRA as a key source. Could this be a sign that at least the business media are showing an increased interest in computing research and its effects on the American economy?
Additional news stories mentioning CRA can be found at http://www.cra.org/reports/news/index.html.
As you may have noted from the post below, there’s a new face at CRA World HQ. For the first year, CRA is participating in the Tisdale Fellowship Program, which has been bringing college students to Washington, D.C. for internships that explore current public policy issues of critical importance to the high technology sector of the economy. Other participants in the program include HP, Agilent, Dell, CSPP, BSA and Infotech.
CRA’s fellow is Daniel Rothschild, who received his Master of Public Policy this May from the University of Michigan. Dan’s interests are in the interactions between technology and society — in particular, regulatory issues, federal funding of research activities, and information and network economics. You’ll see his (hopefully frequent) contributions to the blog — like today’s post on Commerce’s proposed changes to the deemed export regulations — throughout the summer as he serves his time chained to the CRA intern desk.
The Bureau of Industry and Security at the US Department of Commerce has promulgated an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks to change American policy regarding deemed exports. A deemed export occurs when a foreign national “uses” technology subject to export restrictions while in the United States. The proposed rule would make a number of significant changes:
Deemed export applications would be evaluated not just on country of citizenship and permanent residence, but on country of birth as well;
Expand the definition of use of controlled technologies to any form of instruction on their operation, including access to manuals and, by a conservative reading, visual access to a machine or source code; and
Exclude from the fundamental research exemption all research conducted under government sponsorship that is subject, either by regulation or prudential practice, to prepublication review.
Clearly, these changes would have a significant impact on the way that fundamental research is conducted in the United States. On Sunday, CRA submitted these comments to inform rulemakers about our objections to these proposals.
There are a number of problems with these proposals. First, it is unjust and anti-democratic to judge people based on their country of birth. The country of birth rule would create the perception that America is hostile towards foreign scientist and students at a time when their presence here is vital to our economy and national security. Worse, it would create castes of citizens so that, for instance, some British citizens would be more equal than others.
Second, the rule changes are confusing, especially as they relate to the word “use.” The report from Commerce’s Inspector General that gave rise to these proposed rule changes dilutes the definition of “use” to the point that it lacks meaning. Even seeing a machine could count as “use” under the report’s rules — but the burden of determining when “use” occurs would fall on researchers and their institutions.
Third, there would be tremendous costs to researchers, their institutions, and the Department of Commerce if these rules pass. The number of deemed export applications would skyrocket and institutions — still trying to understand SEVIS compliance rules — would have another bureaucratic hurdle to jump, which is especially detrimental as Congress continues to cut research funding.
Fourth, the proposal shows a misunderstanding of editorial review and how scientific research works. The proposal would remove the fundamental research exemption from any research that is internally vetted prior to publications. It is not hard to see that this turns editorial review on its head: the reason review takes place is to double-check that nothing sensitive is published, not because researchers expect to release sensitive information.
Fifth and finally, we have not seen any credible evidence that a problem exists. Much of the information protected by export rules is freely available on the internet, and some technologies — such as computers that exceed 190,000 MTOPS — are hardly cutting edge. We are unaware of any evidence that the current regulations create any serious threats to America’s ability to control the flow of sensitive information that would be remedied by the new provisions.
The American economy and our national security depend on the work done here by foreign scientists, engineers, and graduate students. As then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote in November 2001:
The key to maintaining US technological preeminence is to encourage open and collaborative basic research. The linkage between the free exchange of ideas and scientific innovation, prosperity, and national security is undeniable.
We couldn’t agree more.
Keep your eyes on this blog for news as it breaks. We don’t know when these rules will be accepted or rejected — it could be weeks or it could be months — but we will blog about it when a decision comes down.
The Grokster decision is out. USACM has been following the case (and joined an amicus brief (pdf) on the case themselves) and is one of a whole bunch of sites with info on the impact of today’s ruling against Grokster (and StreamCast) on technology and innovation.
My non-lawyerly, first reading of the ruling (pdf) is that the “loss” for Grokster in the case may not be the blow to innovation technologists were concerned it could have been. The court seems to have ruled against the software companies not because they thought the safe harbor established in the Betamax case was too broad (Betamax established the concept of relief from secondary liability for companies that produce products that could be used to infringe copyright if there are “substantial non-infringing uses” of the technology); rather, the court felt that these two defendants had actively induced the infringement and profited from it. Here’s what the ruling says:
We adopt [the inducement rule] here, holding that one who distributes a device with the object of promoting is use to infringe copyright, as shown by clear expression or other affirmative steps taken to foster infringement, is liable for the resulting acts of infringement by third parties. We are, of course, mindful of the need to keep from trenching on regular commerce or discouraging the development of technologies with lawful and unlawful potential. Accordingly, just as Sony [the Betamax case] did not find intentional inducement despite the knowledge of the VCR manufacturer that it’s device could be used to infringe…mere knowledge of infringing potential or of actual infringing uses would not be enough here to subject a distributor to liability. Nor would ordinary acts incident to product distribution, such as offering customers technical support or product updates, support liability in themselves. The inducement rule, instead, premises liability on purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, and thus does nothing to compromise legitimate commerce or discourage innovation having a lawful promise.
There’s much more informed discussion of the ruling over at the SCOTUSblog, including the participation of computer scientist Ed Felten (who normally lives at Freedom-to-Tinker). Update: Felten has some deeper analysis than mine with reasons to be concerned. Update: Cameron Wilson has more deep thoughts (and USACM’s press release on the decision) at the USACM Tech Blog.
Aliya Sternstein of Federal Computer Week has a piece today on the demise of the latest iteration of PITAC. It’s a good summary of the situation, which we’ve covered in this space previously. Plus, it’s got a good quote from Dan Reed, the incoming Chair of CRA:
“People are a little demoralized about the fact that PITAC hasnt been renewed,” Reed said.
It would be unfortunate if PITAC does not get the chance to review the nation’s IT research, Reed said. “Six years in the information technology business is a lifetime, and it seems opportune,” he said today. “My personal hope is that PITAC will be reconstituted quickly.”
Tuesday marked the 11th annual Coalition for National Science Funding science exhibition and reception on Capitol Hill, an event that brings together 31 universities and scientific associations (including CRA) to highlight for Members of Congress and staff some of the interesting and important research supported by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Professor James Hendler and his colleagues and students from the Mind Lab of the University of Maryland, who demonstrated their research into the Semantic Web. Dr. Hendler’s group put together a great exhibit featuring some examples of semantic web applications in science and in anti-terrorism efforts. Group member and terrorism expert Aaron Mannes demonstrated how the semantic web app has helped him explore links between terrorists operating in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe — including an eye-catching web of links between leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden.
To demonstrate the power of structured data, the group members snapped photos of visitors to the booth, uploaded the shots to their web app running on a server under the display table, plugged in some metadata about the individual and demonstrated how the application could dynamically link their information to a variety of other sources. Visitors to the booth — including the Chairman of the House Science Committee’s Research Subcommittee Bob Inglis (R-SC) and a number of key committee staffers — seemed to grasp the import of what they were seeing. Indeed, as Inglis watched the terrorism web demonstration dynamically create new linkages between persons in the database as new information was entered, he recognized another potential use of the technology. “This would be really useful for my campaign database,” he said. Which led to a brief discussion of the open-source nature of the tools….
The exhibition was remarkably well-attended — there was barely enough room to stand at points during the event — and there were a fair number of “key” attendees besides Rep. Inglis, including House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), NSF Deputy Director Appointee Kathie Olson, and a large number of interested congressional staffers.
Thanks to Dr. Hendler and the members of his research group — Jennifer Golbeck, Chris Halaschek-Wiener, Ron Alford, Daniel Krech, Aaron Mannes, Aditya Kalyanpur, Evren Sirin, and Amy Alford — for their willingness to take time out of their schedules and fight through DC traffic and Capitol Hill security to make sure the computing research community was well-represented among the exhibits this year.
If you’re at a CRA member institution, interested in showing off your NSF-supported research and representing your colleagues in the computing research community at a future Hill event, drop me a line! Recent participants have included DK Panda and his students at Ohio State University in 2004; Tim Finin and his colleagues and students at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2003; and Thad Starner and Janet Kolodner of Georgia Tech in 2002.
Please use the Category and Archive Filters below, to find older posts. Or you may also use the search bar.
Gates on CS/CE Enrollment and Funding
/In: Funding, People, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaInternetNews.com has coverage of the opening of Microsoft Research’s sixth annual Faculty Summit, a “a unique opportunity for faculty members and Microsoft researchers, architects, and executives to collectively discuss a vision for the future of computing.” Microsoft Chairman and CEO Bill Gates had some interesting comments to open the event (along with ACM past-President Maria Klawe). Here’s a sample:
Newsday also has coverage of the event, focusing on the declining enrollment in CS/CE question:
Both pieces are chock full of interesting quotes and worth reading. We’ll have more on how the computing research community is organizing to take on these issues soon, so watch this space….
Update: Here’s the transcript from Gates and Klawe’s opening remarks. And here’s a video.
Science Funding’s Unintended Consequences
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaThere’s an interesting article by Sallie Baliunas at Tech Central Station today on research funding. The piece notes a recent Nature article that suggests scientific misbehavior might be linked to “perceptions of inequities in the [science] resource distribution process” and connects that with tendency among federal funding agencies to shift emphasis from basic to applied research.
The rest of the article focuses on this trend, citing as an example PITAC’s 1999 report “Investing in our Future” that noted that federal funding in computing research was “excessively focused on near-term problems” (a problem that persists) and providing examples of the sort of serendipitous discovery that doesn’t occur in that environment.
Though I’m not sure what to make of the linkage between this change in focus and scientific misbehavior, the article’s point on the real cost of the push towards applied research is well-taken. “Questions of how funding is distributed are as critical as how much funding.”
Here’s the whole thing.
High End Computing Remains a “Priority” in Administration’s FY 07 Plans
/In: Funding, Policy /by Peter Harsha[Back from vacation. Blogging resumes…]
The Administration has released its annual guidance (pdf) to Federal agencies instructing them on the areas of research and development they should make priorities in their forthcoming FY 2007 budget requests to the White House. The memo, a joint production of the White House Office of Science and Technology and budget gatekeepers, the Office of Management and Budget, “provides general guidance for setting priorities among R&D programs, interagency R&D efforts that should receive special focus in agency budget requests, and reiteration of the R&D Investment Criteria that agencies should use to improve investment decisions for and management of their R&D programs.”
As it was last year, High End Computing and Networking R&D remains a priority for the Adminstration, even at the expense of other items within the Networking and Information Technology R&D portfolio. HEC joins Homeland Security R&D, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, Priorities in the Physical Sciences, Understanding Complex Biological Systems, and Energy and Environment as focal points in the Administration’s R&D portfolio. Here’s the relevant language from the computing section:
Even though the FY 2006 budget process is still unsettled, this memo gives a good peek at the Administration’s thinking for FY 2007. Not surprisingly, the memo implies that next year’s budget will likely be as flat as this year, noting that
So, it will again be critically important that the computing community work with agencies to make sure that the right priorities are struck in this zero-sum game….
CRA Bulletin Now a Blog
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaFor several years now CRA has sent anyone who was interested an electronic bulletin containing links to items of interest to the computing research community. While the content was always useful, the desire to aggregate links and not bombard subscribers with e-mail after e-mail meant that we’d let the bulletin ripen until we’d accumulated enough entries to make it worthwhile to send out. This had the disadvantage of making things a little less-than-timely. So it was time to evolve the format.
Behold, the new CRA Bulletin, now a blog complete with RSS feed for easy subscribing. CRA’s Jay Vegso is the curator of the blog. Here’s his description for the blog’s function:
Expect frequent cross-links from here to there as Jay comes across more juicy morsels to post. There’s already plenty of good content there, like Growth Among Computer/Math Sciences Workforce in the late 1990s, NSF Reports on Academic R&D Expenditures for FY 2002, Close to 40% of Those Employed in Computer and Math Science Occupations Do Not Have a B.S. Degree, and a whole lot more.
Media noticing lack of CS/CE majors
/In: R&D in the Press /by DanRothschildTwo interesting stories came through the Triangle (North Carolina) Business Journal over the weekend focusing on the lack of undergraduates majoring in CS and CE. The first one, entitled “Fewer students majoring in industry could lead to labor shortage,” notes that CS enrollments in at North Carolina State and the UNC campuses have dropped from 1,988 in 2000-01 to 1,333 in 2004-05. The story was picked up and nationally syndicated by MSNBC. A second story focuses on the lack of minorities entering CS-related fields.
Both stories quote Andrew Bernat and cite the CRA as a key source. Could this be a sign that at least the business media are showing an increased interest in computing research and its effects on the American economy?
Additional news stories mentioning CRA can be found at http://www.cra.org/reports/news/index.html.
CRA Welcomes New Fellow
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaAs you may have noted from the post below, there’s a new face at CRA World HQ. For the first year, CRA is participating in the Tisdale Fellowship Program, which has been bringing college students to Washington, D.C. for internships that explore current public policy issues of critical importance to the high technology sector of the economy. Other participants in the program include HP, Agilent, Dell, CSPP, BSA and Infotech.
CRA’s fellow is Daniel Rothschild, who received his Master of Public Policy this May from the University of Michigan. Dan’s interests are in the interactions between technology and society — in particular, regulatory issues, federal funding of research activities, and information and network economics. You’ll see his (hopefully frequent) contributions to the blog — like today’s post on Commerce’s proposed changes to the deemed export regulations — throughout the summer as he serves his time chained to the CRA intern desk.
Commerce seeks to change “deemed export” regs
/In: Policy /by DanRothschildThe Bureau of Industry and Security at the US Department of Commerce has promulgated an advance notice of proposed rulemaking that seeks to change American policy regarding deemed exports. A deemed export occurs when a foreign national “uses” technology subject to export restrictions while in the United States. The proposed rule would make a number of significant changes:
Clearly, these changes would have a significant impact on the way that fundamental research is conducted in the United States. On Sunday, CRA submitted these comments to inform rulemakers about our objections to these proposals.
There are a number of problems with these proposals. First, it is unjust and anti-democratic to judge people based on their country of birth. The country of birth rule would create the perception that America is hostile towards foreign scientist and students at a time when their presence here is vital to our economy and national security. Worse, it would create castes of citizens so that, for instance, some British citizens would be more equal than others.
Second, the rule changes are confusing, especially as they relate to the word “use.” The report from Commerce’s Inspector General that gave rise to these proposed rule changes dilutes the definition of “use” to the point that it lacks meaning. Even seeing a machine could count as “use” under the report’s rules — but the burden of determining when “use” occurs would fall on researchers and their institutions.
Third, there would be tremendous costs to researchers, their institutions, and the Department of Commerce if these rules pass. The number of deemed export applications would skyrocket and institutions — still trying to understand SEVIS compliance rules — would have another bureaucratic hurdle to jump, which is especially detrimental as Congress continues to cut research funding.
Fourth, the proposal shows a misunderstanding of editorial review and how scientific research works. The proposal would remove the fundamental research exemption from any research that is internally vetted prior to publications. It is not hard to see that this turns editorial review on its head: the reason review takes place is to double-check that nothing sensitive is published, not because researchers expect to release sensitive information.
Fifth and finally, we have not seen any credible evidence that a problem exists. Much of the information protected by export rules is freely available on the internet, and some technologies — such as computers that exceed 190,000 MTOPS — are hardly cutting edge. We are unaware of any evidence that the current regulations create any serious threats to America’s ability to control the flow of sensitive information that would be remedied by the new provisions.
The American economy and our national security depend on the work done here by foreign scientists, engineers, and graduate students. As then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice wrote in November 2001:
We couldn’t agree more.
Keep your eyes on this blog for news as it breaks. We don’t know when these rules will be accepted or rejected — it could be weeks or it could be months — but we will blog about it when a decision comes down.
Grokster Loses Unanimously
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaThe Grokster decision is out. USACM has been following the case (and joined an amicus brief (pdf) on the case themselves) and is one of a whole bunch of sites with info on the impact of today’s ruling against Grokster (and StreamCast) on technology and innovation.
My non-lawyerly, first reading of the ruling (pdf) is that the “loss” for Grokster in the case may not be the blow to innovation technologists were concerned it could have been. The court seems to have ruled against the software companies not because they thought the safe harbor established in the Betamax case was too broad (Betamax established the concept of relief from secondary liability for companies that produce products that could be used to infringe copyright if there are “substantial non-infringing uses” of the technology); rather, the court felt that these two defendants had actively induced the infringement and profited from it. Here’s what the ruling says:
There’s much more informed discussion of the ruling over at the SCOTUSblog, including the participation of computer scientist Ed Felten (who normally lives at Freedom-to-Tinker).
Update: Felten has some deeper analysis than mine with reasons to be concerned.
Update: Cameron Wilson has more deep thoughts (and USACM’s press release on the decision) at the USACM Tech Blog.
FCW Covers PITAC’s Expiration
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaAliya Sternstein of Federal Computer Week has a piece today on the demise of the latest iteration of PITAC. It’s a good summary of the situation, which we’ve covered in this space previously. Plus, it’s got a good quote from Dan Reed, the incoming Chair of CRA:
Read the whole thing here.
CNSF Exhibition: Science on Capitol Hill
/In: CRA /by Peter HarshaTuesday marked the 11th annual Coalition for National Science Funding science exhibition and reception on Capitol Hill, an event that brings together 31 universities and scientific associations (including CRA) to highlight for Members of Congress and staff some of the interesting and important research supported by the National Science Foundation. This year CRA was ably represented by Professor James Hendler and his colleagues and students from the Mind Lab of the University of Maryland, who demonstrated their research into the Semantic Web.
Dr. Hendler’s group put together a great exhibit featuring some examples of semantic web applications in science and in anti-terrorism efforts. Group member and terrorism expert Aaron Mannes demonstrated how the semantic web app has helped him explore links between terrorists operating in Iraq and elsewhere around the globe — including an eye-catching web of links between leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden.
To demonstrate the power of structured data, the group members snapped photos of visitors to the booth, uploaded the shots to their web app running on a server under the display table, plugged in some metadata about the individual and demonstrated how the application could dynamically link their information to a variety of other sources. Visitors to the booth — including the Chairman of the House Science Committee’s Research Subcommittee Bob Inglis (R-SC) and a number of key committee staffers — seemed to grasp the import of what they were seeing. Indeed, as Inglis watched the terrorism web demonstration dynamically create new linkages between persons in the database as new information was entered, he recognized another potential use of the technology. “This would be really useful for my campaign database,” he said. Which led to a brief discussion of the open-source nature of the tools….
The exhibition was remarkably well-attended — there was barely enough room to stand at points during the event — and there were a fair number of “key” attendees besides Rep. Inglis, including House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC), NSF Deputy Director Appointee Kathie Olson, and a large number of interested congressional staffers.
Thanks to Dr. Hendler and the members of his research group — Jennifer Golbeck, Chris Halaschek-Wiener, Ron Alford, Daniel Krech, Aaron Mannes, Aditya Kalyanpur, Evren Sirin, and Amy Alford — for their willingness to take time out of their schedules and fight through DC traffic and Capitol Hill security to make sure the computing research community was well-represented among the exhibits this year.
If you’re at a CRA member institution, interested in showing off your NSF-supported research and representing your colleagues in the computing research community at a future Hill event, drop me a line! Recent participants have included DK Panda and his students at Ohio State University in 2004; Tim Finin and his colleagues and students at University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2003; and Thad Starner and Janet Kolodner of Georgia Tech in 2002.