Clips January 7, 2003

[Lillie Coney <lillie.coney@xxxxxxx>]

Clips January 7, 2003

ARTICLES

Teen Cleared of Hollywood Piracy Charges
Rulemaking Shifts Away From the Hill
House GOP Leaders to Create Select Committee on Homeland Security
Civilian agencies denounce new job competition deadlines
Army considers urban warfare tech
INS proposes electronic passenger tracking
A Pared-Back Security Initiative

***************************
Reuters
Teen Cleared of Hollywood Piracy Charges
By Inger Sethov

OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian teenager who created a computer program to 
copy Hollywood movies was cleared of piracy charges on Tuesday in a "David 
and Goliath" trial pitting him against the industry's biggest studios.


The Oslo district court said Jon Johansen, dubbed "DVD Jon," had not broken 
any laws when he helped unlock a code and distribute a program enabling 
unauthorized copying of DVD movies.


"I'm happy but not surprised," a beaming Johansen told reporters after his 
acquittal. "This is about consumers' rights, and all over the world 
copyright holders are trying to limit consumers' rights. We cannot have that."


Prosecutors, who had told judges to ignore the widespread portrayal of the 
trial as "a fight of David against Goliath," had urged a 90-day suspended 
jail term.


Johansen, 19, developed the program, which was distributed on the Internet, 
when he was 15.


The teenager has since become a symbol for hackers worldwide who say making 
software such as Johansen's -- called DeCSS (news - web sites) -- is an act 
of intellectual freedom rather than theft.


"Johansen is found not guilty," judge Irene Sogn, who reached the unanimous 
verdict with two technical experts, told the court, adding that police 
could not confiscate his equipment. There was no jury in the six-day trial 
in December.


The prosecution was brought after a complaint by the Motion Picture 
Association (MPA), representing major Hollywood studios such as Walt Disney 
Company, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. Johansen said he had tested 
DeCSS on his favorite movies "Matrix" and "The Fifth Element" -- both of 
which he owns on DVD -- but only managed to transfer bits of them to his 
hard drive.


DeCSS is one of many similar programs available on the Internet.


The judge said Johansen could view DVDs he had legally bought however he 
wanted. Prosecutors had failed to give evidence that Johansen's program had 
been used by others to watch pirate copies, she added. The ruling can be 
appealed within two weeks.

"This is a very solid ruling," Johansen's lawyer Halvor Manshaus told 
Reuters. "It is saying that when you have bought a film legally, you have 
access to its content. It is irrelevant how you get that access. You have 
bought the movie after all."


Hollywood studios, which encode DVD movies to prevent people from copying 
them, had said unauthorized copying was copyright theft and undermined a 
market for DVDs and videos worth $20 billion a year in North America alone.


Johansen hinted he would continue to challenge Hollywood.


"DVD players which skip commercials still don't exist," said Johansen, who 
is making about 35,000 crowns ($5,039) a month as a computer programmer. 
"This ruling means that anyone can produce equipment which allows you to 
skip commercials."
*******************************
Washington Post
Rulemaking Shifts Away From the Hill
By Cindy Skrzycki
Tuesday, January 7, 2003; Page E01

For business, it's like a "Home Alone" movie.

There are no pesky Democratic committee chairmen in the new Congress to 
hold prying oversight hearings when the Bush administration decides to roll 
back Clinton-era rules. There is no Democrat in the White House with an 
activist regulatory agenda to irritate business and pro-industry lawmakers.

Federal agencies are no longer engaged in pumping out new rules, which in 
past years were often fended off in Congress at the urging of the business 
lobby.

In short, Congress, which has been an important power center for lobbyists 
and special interests of all types when two parties shared power, is no 
longer where the action is. Instead, the real regulatory power moves to the 
Office of Management and Budget, which has been reinterpreting many Clinton 
rules and eliminating others. With that power consolidated within the Bush 
administration, many of the checks and balances that come with divided 
political power have been muted.

Business groups view the shift as a long-overdue corrective measure that 
will allow change in the regulatory process.

"The Bush administration will have more control over the agencies and less 
interference from Congress," said William L. Kovacs, vice president for 
environmental issues at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "They can put out 
rules in an easier fashion, and the more onerous rules will be subject to 
oversight."

"Post-election, the administration will try to implement its own regulatory 
principles with less likelihood that Congress will get in its way," agreed 
Michael E. Baroody, executive vice president of the National Association of 
Manufacturing.

In fact, a Republican Congress with leaders such as Reps. Tom DeLay (Tex.), 
the new House majority leader, and Roy Blunt (Mo.), House majority whip, is 
likely to support actively business's drive to minimize new federal 
regulatory initiatives and exiting old ones.

The change will be most noticeable, of course, in the Senate, where the 
Democrats had held power, by the slimmest margin. Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman 
(D-Conn.), for example, was monitoring what he considered a rollback of 
regulatory protections by the Bush administration. Lieberman issued a 
90-page report last fall that questioned whether the administration 
displayed a "sufficiently healthy respect for the regulatory process" in 
challenging Clinton-era health and environmental rules.

A spokeswoman for Lieberman said that scrutiny will continue, but it will 
be more difficult for him as the ranking minority member of the Senate 
Governmental Affairs Committee. "We were keeping an eye on John Graham. The 
senator questioned the cost-benefit approach to regulation with little 
emphasis on public health or safety. We would have continued to do that," 
said Leslie Phillips, spokeswoman for Lieberman. Graham heads the part of 
the OMB that handles regulatory issues.

Lieberman's replacement is Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who isn't likely 
to be as involved in the regulatory process, though she has been interested 
in efficiency at government agencies. She held hearings on consumer fraud 
earlier when she headed the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Similarly, the loss of committee chairmen such as Sens. Edward M. Kennedy 
(D-Mass.) and James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) may take the spotlight off some 
health, safety and environmental regulations. Kennedy's likely replacement 
is Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who has said in interviews that he will 
promote the president's agenda. Jeffords was popular with 
environmentalists, while his replacement, Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), 
is sympathetic to oil industry regulatory concerns.

"We don't see any serious oversight on the part of the Republican Congress. 
On environmental issues, you have a hostile president and a conspiring 
Congress to weaken environmental protections across the board," said Wesley 
Warren, former associate director of the OMB, who now is a senior 
environmental fellow at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "And OMB is 
the point person for engineering this plan."

On Dec. 19, the OMB announced its plan to target 267 regulations for 
revision or removal. They include food-safety standards, 
energy-conservation measures, trucking rules and health care initiatives. 
Those rules were "nominated" by various interest groups, academics and 
agencies themselves. Business accounted for about half of the suggestions. 
The departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and Transportation, as 
well as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communications 
Commission, will be asked to determine the fate of about two-thirds of the 
rules suggested for the special treatment.

Environmental groups have been up in arms over the past few weeks as the 
Bush administration has rolled out proposals and final rules that affect 
how much companies can pollute when they expand their plants, allowing 
snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park and how agricultural feedlot 
operations can dispose of their waste.

Similarly, unions are unhappy about the rollback of a Clinton 
administration rule that allowed states to fund family leave with their 
unemployment funds and replacing an ergonomics standard with voluntary 
guidelines. Public safety groups are opposed to the reversal of a Clinton 
administration policy to keep Mexican trucks from crossing the border.
**********************************
Government Computer News
House set to create new homeland oversight panel
By Wilson P. Dizard III

The Republican leadership of the House plans to form a select committee to 
oversee the new Homeland Security Department, a spokesman for minority whip 
Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said today.

With IT and data-gathering initiatives among the early priorities at the 
new department, some members of this committee will no doubt be watching 
systems development at Homeland Security closely.

The speaker, Sen. Dennis J. Hastert (R-Ill.) and his fellow Republican 
leaders will lay out the plan for the select committee during a meeting of 
the House Republican Conference this evening and bring the proposal to a 
vote on the floor tomorrow as part of a package of House rules changes, 
spokesman David James said.

Another source in the House Republican leadership said panel membership 
would be determined by Hastert and would likely include committee leaders 
whose areas of jurisdiction will be affected by the implementation of HR 
5005, the Homeland Security Act.

Creation of the panel was foreshadowed by a November vote in the Republican 
Conference, when a nonbinding resolution offered by Rep. Curt Weldon 
(R-Pa.) to form a committee for homeland security oversight was adopted 
unanimously, a Weldon spokesman said.

In the Senate, a spokeswoman for the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee 
said her panel likely would hold hearings soon on nominations for the new 
department. She added that the committee likely will play a large role in 
overseeing the department but that other committees will also take part.

The House created a select committee to consider HR 5005, but that panel 
has been eliminated.

The formation of the new department also calls for potential changes in 
Congress' array of appropriations committees. Those plans have not advanced 
as quickly as plans for authorization committee changes, according to 
appropriations staff members. **********************************
Government Executive
January 6, 2003
Civilian agencies denounce new job competition deadlines
By Jason Peckenpaugh
jpeckenpaugh@xxxxxxxxxxx

The Bush administration's overhaul of federal outsourcing rules is drawing 
fire from civilian agencies that believe it sets unrealistic time frames 
and could sap resources from other White House management initiatives.


A review of comments from 10 agencies on the new process shows considerable 
opposition to new competition deadlines and a requirement that most 
Inter-Service Support Agreements (ISSAs)pacts in which agencies provide 
support services to each otherface private competition. But most agencies 
did not take issue with a new competition process included in the rulesthe 
"best value" method.


The Office of Management and Budget unveiled the new rules on Nov. 14 in 
OMB Circular A-76 and accepted public comments until Dec. 19.


The Justice, Transportation, Interior, Veterans Affairs and Health and 
Human Services departments and the General Services Administration all 
protested the new deadlines. The new circular sets a 12-month deadline for 
full job competitions and limits the time for smaller studies, known as 
business case analyses, to 15 days or less.


"The 12-month timeframe is?too short a time to complete most competitions," 
said Paul Corts, assistant attorney general for administration at the 
Justice Department. The General Services Administration urged OMB to extend 
the deadline to 24 months.


The comments indicate a widespread concern by agencies that they lack the 
resources to implement the provisions of the new circular, which also 
includes new requirements for complying with the 1998 Federal Activities 
Inventory Reform Act. The Transportation Department said a requirement to 
hold recurring competitions every three to five years could hinder 
workforce planning at the agency. And GSA said the new process could impede 
its ability to comply with other areas of the president's five-part 
management agenda.


"GSA is concerned that an overly restrictive Circular A-76?could adversely 
affect our ability to maintain our level of productivity in other 
presidential management objectives such as human capital initiatives," said 
Associate Administrator Boyd Rutherford in GSA's comments.


Several agencies also protested OMB's new presumption that all federal jobs 
are "commercial" in nature until proven otherwise, which they said is 
contrary to the will of Congress. The Small Business Administration 
criticized revisions to the definition of "inherently governmental" work, 
which it said could allow contractors to supervise federal employees.


In particularly strong criticism, SBA also claimed the new competition 
process favors private contractors and could hurt recruitment efforts 
across government. "The actual duration of 'permanent' federal employment 
will become so uncertain that people may be reluctant to apply for 
government jobs," said the agency.


Additionally, agencies were critical of the requirement to compete all 
ISSAs, which would give private firms access to the multibillion dollar 
federal market for support services. OMB proposed full ISSA competitions in 
the last revision of Circular A-76, in 1996, but withdrew the proposal in 
the face of agency opposition.


Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Angela Styles has 
promised to review every comment and to consider suggestions for revising 
the new circular.


Agency comments were made available by OMB or obtained by Government 
Executive. OMB plans to post all agency comments on its Web site later this 
week.
********************************
News.com
Cleveland library to launch eBook system


By Lisa M. Bowman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
January 6, 2003, 2:45 PM PT


The Cleveland Public Library is launching an eBook system that will let 
people download publications onto their PCs and personal digital assistants.

The new eBook collection, which will go online in March, is believed to be 
the first of its kind in a public library and will operate much the same as 
a traditional library system. Patrons wishing to download the eBooks will 
need to have a Cleveland Public Library card. What's more, only a limited 
number of each eBook will be available, and after a preset number of days, 
the eBook will lock out the current reader so another patron can check it out.

About 1,000 books, including the latest titles from authors such as Michael 
Crichton, Clive Barker and Joyce Carol Oates, will be available as eBooks.


The eBook market has been slow to take off, mainly because of inadequate 
reading devices and publishers' worries that people would rampantly copy 
their books. The industry has come under fire for weak security technology.

But Steve Potash, CEO of Cleveland-based Overdrive, which provided the 
Cleveland library system, said improved software protections and the growth 
of tablet PCs are driving an increased demand for eBooks.

"It's really becoming a mainstay part of the publishing landscape," Potash 
said. During the past year, several major publishers have begun releasing 
titles in eBook format.

The Cleveland system offers several new features, including the ability to 
download books onto PCs and PDAs and create a portable eBook that can be 
read even when patrons are offline. In a statement announcing the new 
collection, library director Andrew Venable said the system would allow 
people to borrow books of all types "from the comfort of their home or office
***************************
Federal Computer Week
Army considers urban warfare tech
BY Dan Caterinicchia
Jan. 6, 2003

The Army is reviewing available technology that could be used to help it 
detect, identify and locate both friendly and hostile forces in city 
environments as quickly as possible.

The Army's Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) is 
reviewing responses to a recent request for information for technology that 
can be used to gather intelligence and fight enemy forces in an urban 
environment.

However, this type of battle, especially in a foreign city, poses numerous 
problems for the Army, not the least of which is quickly identifying "bad 
guys" as opposed to innocent civilians, said Fran Orzech, chief of I2WD's 
information operations technology development branch at 
Communications-Electronics Command (Cecom) in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

That task is made even more difficult when enemy forces set up command and 
control (C2) centers using commercially available communications equipment 
in hospitals, schools and other locations where innocent city workers and 
inhabitants can also be found, Orzech said.

The "sheer density of radio frequency signals" in an urban environment, 
emitted from those commercial systems as well as wireless and paging 
systems, is yet another complicating factor, he added.

"We need to precisely locate [the enemy C2 hubs] to decrease collateral 
damage," whenever and wherever possible, Orzech said.

The RFI, which was issued Dec. 11, 2002, and closed Dec. 23, garnered 15 
responses from public- and private-sector organizations. It is part of a 
new four-year, science and technology objective program  Information 
Operations for the Objective Force that is focused on maturing sensor 
technology, signal processing techniques and computer network operations 
for transition to the Army's Future Combat Systems (FCS) and other 
transformational programs.

The Objective Force is a strategy to develop advanced information 
technology tools, vehicles and weapons that will make the Army's armored 
forces better able to survive an all-out fight. FCS is the centerpiece of 
that effort and will equip Army vehicles with information and
communications systems to give soldiers capabilities for command and 
control, surveillance and reconnaissance, direct and non-line-of-sight 
weapons firing, and personnel transport.

The RFI included four major components of interest to the Army:

* Existing high sensitivity receiver systems that operate from 20 MHz to 18 
GHz and are capable of detecting, discriminating and identifying the 
operating protocols or information that may be associated with 
unintentional sources of radio frequency radiation up to a range of 2,000 
meters.

* Software algorithms that will take input data from a high sensitivity 
receiver and allow the discrimination and/or geo-location of individual 
sources of radio frequency radiation in a high-density environment.

* Protocol recognition technologies capable of working with the input from 
the high sensitivity receiver and identifying the underlying operational 
protocol 95 percent of the time or better.

* Traffic analysis algorithms that will examine all available received 
signal data and process it using conventional traffic analysis to further 
identify potential targets of interest.

"We are going to look at what we've got in the next week or two and see who 
has something to benefit" the Information Operations for the Objective 
Force program, said David Potter, technical manager for the RFI. "It's a 
fairly big problem with a lot of different aspects, and we don't know if 
there's one solution for all of it. We want to see if there [are] bits and 
pieces we can put together."

Once the Army has completed its review of the RFI responses and determined 
the number and types of urban information operations capabilities it has 
in-house, a decision will be made on whether to issue a request for 
proposals or to begin awarding contracts on a smaller basis, officials said.
******************************
Computerworld
INS proposes electronic passenger tracking
By DAN VERTON
JANUARY 07, 2003

The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) has proposed a new 
rule that would require all airlines and commercial shipping companies to 
submit electronic passenger and crew manifests for all U.S. citizens and 
noncitizens arriving and departing from the country.
However, the IT changes that would be required under the rule, which was 
unveiled Friday, could cost the ailing airline and shipping industry $42 
million, according to the notice published in The Federal Register.

INS currently records arrival and departure information for nonimmigrants 
on forms called I-94 forms, which are then entered into an INS database 
called the Nonimmigrant Information System. Carriers have up to 48 hours to 
submit the data to the INS.

However, under the proposed changes, the INS would require advance 
electronic submission of biographical data on all passengers and crew 
members, including U.S. citizens and lawful permanent-resident aliens. 
Information that would be required to be submitted to the INS via the 
Advanced Passenger Information System (APIS) includes name; date of birth; 
citizenship; sex; passport number and country of issuance; country of 
residence; U.S. visa number and other details of its issuance; address 
while in the U.S.; and, when appropriate, alien registration number.

The rule proposes to implement Section 402 of the Enhanced Border Security 
and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002, which is intended to tighten border 
security in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Commercial air carriers collect biographical data from passports, visas or 
other travel documents at foreign ports and use APIS to transmit this 
information electronically to the INS and the U.S. Customs Service prior to 
the arrival of an aircraft in the U.S. However, the new rule would require 
private companies and governments to convert their existing electronic 
systems to United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, 
Commerce and Transport (EDIFACT), an international standard for data formats.

INS plans to upgrade the APIS system to accept EDIFACT data this month.

The APIS program began in 1989 and is governed by a memorandum of 
understanding (MOU) among the three U.S. Federal Inspection Service (FIS) 
agencies (INS, Customs and the U.S. Department of Agriculture) and the 
various commercial air carriers. As part of the MOU, the airlines agreed to 
send advance passenger information to the government agencies. In return, 
the FIS agreed to expedite the processing of APIS flights. As carriers 
provide additional and more accurate passenger information, the FIS 
agencies would improve their processing times.

Currently, more than 140 carriers are signatories to the APIS MOU, and two 
governments -- Australia and New Zealand -- electronically transmit APIS 
data to the U.S. Customs Service Data Center in Newington, Va.
******************************
Computerworld
MSN Messenger outage affects millions
By Cathleen Moore, InfoWorld
JANUARY 07, 2003

Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Messenger service went down yesterday, leaving most 
of the instant messaging software's 75 million worldwide users without 
access to the service for more than five hours.
According to a Microsoft spokesman, the service went down at approximately 
9 a.m. EST, and the root cause of the outage is still unknown.

The outage affected all of Microsoft's .Net Messenger Service users 
worldwide, including Windows Messenger and MSN Messenger subscribers, 
according to a statement from Larry Grothaus, lead product manager for MSN. 
The .Net Messenger Service is the back-end service that powers both the 
Windows Messenger and the MSN Messenger clients. The problems occurred 
somewhere in the .Net Messenger Service, Grothaus said.

MSN Hotmail e-mail service and other MSN services weren't affected, he said.

Although service was restored for some users by about 2 p.m. EST, some 
users were still unable to log onto the messaging software later in the 
afternoon. Microsoft didn't have any more difficulties with the service 
late yesterday, but some users may still be shut out as the service scales 
back up, according to Grothaus.

"It looks from what I've seen that [the service] is scaling back up. Some 
users may be having a little trouble getting on, but it is just an issue of 
scaling the service back up and getting everybody back on the 
authentication servers," Grothaus said.

Customers can obtain .Net Messenger Service status information online.

Last week, Microsoft's Passport service suffered an outage.
******************************
Washington Post
A Pared-Back Security Initiative
Revised Plan Focuses on Agencies
By Ted Bridis
Associated Press
Tuesday, January 7, 2003; Page E03

The Bush administration has reduced by nearly half its initiatives to 
tighten security for vital computer networks, giving more responsibility to 
the new Department of Homeland Security and eliminating an earlier proposal 
to consult regularly with privacy experts.

An internal draft of the administration's upcoming plan to improve 
cybersecurity also no longer includes a number of voluntary proposals for 
America's corporations to improve security, focusing instead on suggestions 
for U.S. government agencies, such as a broad new study assessing risks.

"Governments can lead by example in cyberspace security," the draft said.

The draft, circulating among government offices and industry executives 
this week, was obtained by the Associated Press. President Bush was 
expected to sign the plan, called the National Strategy to Secure 
Cyberspace, and announce the proposals within several weeks.

The new draft pares the number of security proposals from 86 to 49. Among 
the draft's changes was the removal of an explicit recommendation for the 
White House to consult regularly with privacy advocates and other experts 
about how civil liberties might be affected by proposals to improve 
Internet security.

The draft notes that "care must be taken to respect privacy interests and 
other civil liberties." It also noted that the new Homeland Security 
Department will include a privacy officer to ensure that monitoring the 
Internet for attacks would balance privacy and civil liberties concerns.

"It's perplexing," said James X. Dempsey of the Washington-based Center for 
Democracy and Technology. "This administration is constantly on the 
receiving end of criticism on privacy issues. This looks like another 
example of willfully raising privacy concerns. They should know better by now."

An official for the White House cybersecurity office declined to comment, 
saying the latest draft hasn't yet been published.

The draft obtained by the AP puts the new Homeland Security Department 
squarely in the role of improving Internet security, proposing to use it to 
launch some test attacks against civilian U.S. agencies and to improve the 
safety of automated systems that operate the nation's water, chemical and 
electrical networks.

The new version also makes it more clear than ever that the Defense 
Department can wage "cyber warfare" if the nation is attacked. The 
administration said previously that government "should continue to reserve 
the right to respond in an appropriate manner."

The new draft cautions that it can be difficult or even impossible to trace 
an attack's source. But it warns that the government's response "need not 
be limited to criminal prosecution." The new version also puts new 
responsibilities on the CIA and FBI to disrupt other countries' use of 
computer tactics to collect intelligence on government agencies, companies 
and universities.

The administration published an early version of its plan in September -- 
weeks before Congress voted to create the Homeland Security Department -- 
with 86 recommendations for home users, small businesses, corporations, 
universities and government agencies.

Critics, even the InfraGard national organization of private security 
experts established by the FBI, seized on the lack of new regulations that 
would have mandated better security practices but could have required 
America's largest corporations to spend millions for improvements.

"We felt that there was a significant security improvement that could be 
made most easily through regulation," the InfraGard group wrote to the 
White House. "In many cases the deeply held conclusion was that the same 
result could not be reached in the absence of new regulation."

The draft, however, continues to challenge the need for any new 
regulations, saying mandates for private industry would violate the 
nation's "traditions of federalism and limited government." It said broad 
regulations would hamstring security by creating a 
"lowest-common-denominator approach" and could result in even worse security.
****************************
Lillie Coney
Public Policy Coordinator
Association for Computing Machinery Public Policy Committee
Suite 510
2120 L Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20037
202-478-6124 (phone)
202-478-6313 (fax)
lillie.coney@xxxxxxx


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ACM TechNews
Volume 5, Number 443
Date: January 8, 2003

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Top Stories for Wednesday, January 8, 2003:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html

"Boucher Introduces Fair Use Rights Bill"
"A Pared-Back Security Initiative"
"IT Gender Gap Widening"
"Congress to Take on Spam, Copyright"
"Defendant Acquitted in DVD Hacking Case"
"Broader U.S. Spy Initiative Debated"
"System Permits Long-Distance Manipulation of Image Files"
"Tech Doctorates Decline 7 Percent"
"Hubs Increase Net Risk"
"Apple Needs Clear Path to Future"
"Data Stored in Multiplying Bacteria"
"Phone Calling Over Internet Is Attracting More Interest"
"Nanotech Scientists Build Super-Small Circuit"
"Software Designers With Vision Map Hard Drives--and Beyond"
"The Year Ahead: The Future of Viruses"
"Outlook 2003"
"Speak Easy"
"Back to the Garage"
"Since You Asked..."

******************* News Stories ***********************

"Boucher Introduces Fair Use Rights Bill"
The Digital Media Consumers' Rights Act presented to Congress on
Tuesday by Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) and Rep. John Doolittle
(R-Calif.) aims to revise the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
(DMCA) so that consumers can exercise their fair use rights when ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item1

"A Pared-Back Security Initiative"
A revised internal draft of President Bush's National Plan to
Secure Cyberspace cuts the number of security proposals from 86
to 49 and broadens the authority of the Homeland Security
Department.  The latest version removes a recommendation for the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item2

"IT Gender Gap Widening"
Women have been making gradual gains in most professions that
were traditionally male-dominated, but information technology
appears to be an exception--for instance, the number of computer
science degrees awarded to women declined from 35.8 percent to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item3

"Congress to Take on Spam, Copyright"
The 108th Congress is liable to pass at least some of last year's
major technology-related legislation, including bills that would
enforce copyrights and create uniform spam regulation.  Rep. Rick
Boucher (D-Va.) is back with his Digital Media Consumers' Rights ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item4

"Defendant Acquitted in DVD Hacking Case"
The trial of John Lech Johansen, the Norwegian teenager accused
of copyright infringement for inventing and distributing the
DeCSS DVD decryption program, ended in a verdict of not guilty in
Oslo City Court.  Attorney Halvor Manshaus says the court ruled ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item5

"Broader U.S. Spy Initiative Debated"
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Total
Information Awareness (TIA) project will supposedly uncover
potential terrorists by mining the "transaction space"--huge
databases of personal information--according to Information ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item6

"System Permits Long-Distance Manipulation of Image Files"
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories are developing a
system dubbed "Be There Now" that supports the online
manipulation of image files from remote locations, which can save
hours of download time and protect sensitive files.  Sandia team ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item7

"Tech Doctorates Decline 7 Percent"
The number of science and engineering doctorate degrees awarded
in the United States slipped 7 percent between 1998 and 2001,
according to a National Science Foundation (NSF) survey conducted
by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center; ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item8

"Hubs Increase Net Risk"
Ohio State University researchers have completed a study showing
how the Internet's infrastructure is becoming more vulnerable to
physical disaster than in its early days.  Whereas the Internet
was previously built in a mesh-type network, competitive market ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item9

"Apple Needs Clear Path to Future"
Apple Computer could maintain its competitiveness by switching
from Motorola PowerPC chips, which form the basic architecture of
Mac computers, to Intel-compatible microprocessors that are
central to Windows machines, writes Dan Gillmor.  He notes that ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item10

"Data Stored in Multiplying Bacteria"
American researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
have successfully stored information within bacteria as
artificial DNA in an effort to create a new type of memory that
could survive a nuclear catastrophe or other disaster.  The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item11

"Phone Calling Over Internet Is Attracting More Interest"
Telephony via the Internet promises to save money, but it is
mainly restricted to niche markets; however, there are signs that
it has begun to branch out, and widescale adoption will lead to
dramatic revisions in the telecommunications sector.  Analysts ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item12

"Nanotech Scientists Build Super-Small Circuit"
Canadian researchers have created an electronic circuit activated
by just one electron.  University of Toronto chemist Al-Amin
Dhirani says the nanoscale circuit is formed by a sharp metal tip
that holds the source of the electric charge.  Just one nanometer ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item13

"Software Designers With Vision Map Hard Drives--and Beyond"
Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter observes that
computing revolutions took off with the advent of technologies
that can map out data sets visually, such as the spreadsheet and
Apple Macintosh's point-and-click graphical user interface.  Such ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item14

"The Year Ahead: The Future of Viruses"
Security experts predict that cyberattack methods will increase
in sophistication this year, including the emergence of faster,
more destructive computer viruses.  "Really what has happened is
that the bar has risen on how fast and how hard viruses can hit," ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item15

"Outlook 2003"
InformationWeek Research's Outlook 2003 poll finds more optimism
among IT managers this year than last, although their corporate
strategies are more cautious and risk-averse.  Seventy-two
percent of managers expect revenue gains this year, compared to ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item16

"Speak Easy"
Industries such as medicine, automotives, video games, and
telecommunications are using speech recognition technology to
save money, increase productivity, and enhance their products.
Using speech recognition, mobile workers can access important ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item17

"Back to the Garage"
The combination of the tech recession, the bursting of the
dot-com bubble, and the economic downturn was a tremendous blow
to Silicon Valley, but it also has, incredibly enough, sparked a
new entrepreneurism.  More Bay Area professionals--especially the ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item18

"Since You Asked..."
A survey of over 500 IEEE Fellows on how technology trends will
progress in the next five to 10 years was characterized by
cautious optimism, and the belief that technology is a key
societal component.  The Fellows considered the development of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2003-5/0108w.html#item19


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