Recently in Congress Category
Steve Peterman, Executive Producer, Hannah Montana (against)
Mitch Bainwol, CEO, RIAA (against)
Kyle McSlarrow, CEO, NCTA (against)
Ben Scott, Director, Free Press (for)
Walter McCormick, CEO, USTA (against)
Christopher Yoo, CDT (against, academically)
Michelle Coombs, Christian Coalition (for)
Scott Savitz, Shoebuy.com (for)
Read it and weep.
How about those June hearings?
The bill would create a new position for a federal copyright enforcement czar, establish a new copyright enforcement division within the Department of Justice, and would also permit law enforcement agents to seize property from perpetrators of copyright infringement.
Let me repeat that. John Kerry understands we're 12th in the ITU's "digital opportunity index." This is "Mr. Out-of-Touch" John Kerry, and even he understands what we have no broadband policy at all (which really is the official policy, to have no policy and let the "market" deal with it). Policy is no policy, sounds like J. Alfred Prufrock does Broadband, doesn't it?
For the more fun part of the hearing, I'll defer to Tech Liberation Front and their notes on celebrity testimony. Why was Justine Bateman a witness? I sort of fell asleep during that part of her testimony. Not really, but I wasn't quite alert to live-blog it as much as I cared about say, the FCC Chairman or Larry Lessig.
Another flashback and money quote from TLF on celebrity testimony:
So there's another Net neutrality hearing today. I'm beginning to think we'll have to endure one every week for the rest of time. Anyway, today's took place in the Senate Commerce Committee and it featured the testimony of 1980s TV star Justine Bateman, who was in the sitcom "Family Ties."....
...my favorite celebrity testimony of all-time had to be from 1993, when Sheri Lewis and her sock puppet "Lamb Chop" testified in favor of the Children's Television Act, a law regulating educational TV programming. What made is so special was not that Ms. Lewis testified alone. Lamb Chop testified too! I wish I had the video of that to post here. I mean, there was a woman with a hand in a sock making it talk to elected members of Congress... and they were listening. Awesome.
I am going to find that video. Apparently, Kermit the Frog has also appeared before Congress. I will find proof. This I swear.
Opening RemarksIf I can get into the room, we'll see some fun live bloggin'
Witnesses
Opening Remarks
Panel 1
The Honorable Kevin J. Martin
Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
Panel 2
Ms. Michele Combs
Vice President of Communications
Christian Coalition of America
Dr. Robert Hahn
Executive Director, Center for Regulatory and Market Studies
American Enterprise Institute
Mr. Patric Verrone
President
Writers Guild of America, West
Ms. Justine Bateman
Actress / Writer / Producer
Mr. Kyle McSlarrow
President and CEO
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
Professor Lawrence Lessig
Stanford Law School
That's right, peeps! K-Mart is testifying! K-Mart! and Lessig! and McSlarrow! Oh, My!
I'm getting in line early, that's for sure. Those line standers ain't got nothin on me. Bring it.
But here's the entire CTIA press release, right from CTIA
WASHINGTON, DC - On Tax Day, CTIA-The Wireless Association® and its member companies are urging Congress to pass legislation requiring a five-year hiatus on new discriminatory state and local wireless taxes. To achieve this goal, Representatives Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) and Chris Cannon (R-UT) introduced the "Cell Tax Fairness Act" today in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"The wireless sector of the technology industry continues to be an important driver for growth in our nation's economy. Americans don't just talk on their wireless phones anymore; they access the Internet, get information, pay bills and use wireless to be more productive at work and other every day activities, " said Lowell McAdam, CTIA-The Wireless Association® Chairman and Verizon Wireless President and CEO. "With about 15 percent of each customer's monthly bill already going to taxes and fees, increasing discriminatory and unfair taxes on wireless customers presents a clear and present danger to future growth. Policymakers should roll back taxes on wireless customers."
Quite rightly, Underwired (that's Wired's oh-so-clever Blog name) points out that the new feature takes away from Flickr's purpose - photography.The big issue is the way it was implemented," said Jason Bouwmeester, a systems analyst in Canada and one of the group administrators for No Video on Flickr. "There was no public beta.... They just reset everyone's settings."
I hope people complain as loud when their taxes get raised and their roads don't get fixed. Yahoo should take a lesson from good business and good government, and give the Flickr "taxpayers" a ROI instead of stuff they don't need."I had hoped my [Pro membership fee] would go to fixing issues with the site, not to starting a video application," said Bouwmeester. "I can't see them reverting [the video service] altogether, but they should have some way for users to ignore it."
Wow. That's blunt. On the other hand, maybe Congress would get more done if cable news didn't generate another outrage to be handled every few days. Think about it. How many "action alerts" generate tons of constituent spam from people who are barely interest in a cause? Just enough to fill out a form, not enough to call. What if Congress only listened to those who cared enough to do more than click a few buttons? Is E-Government really the answer, or do we need to slow down and pay attention to the most intense voices instead of the ones that repeat the same message over and over again?Four weeks ago I had 5,250 emails in my inbox. Today? 10.
What's the difference? I've been on lots of airplanes in the past month. Why is that important? Because in airplanes there's no Internet. Nothing to distract you. I find I can answer about 10x more email in a plane than I can on the ground when the Internet is there to distract me.
That taught me an important lesson.
Want to get something done? Turn off Twitter. Turn off Facebook. Turn off blog comments. Turn off FriendFeed. Turn off Flickr. Turn off YouTube. Turn off Dave Winer's blog and Huffington Post. Turn off TechMeme.
Turn off the distractions.
24 hour news cycle. Email. Twitter. RSS feeds. Click to complain forms. Nancy Grace. Turn it all off.
Good advice.

Host Steve Wildstrom is introducing them, and I'm going to take pictures, but I will liveblog as I can. Here we go:

This panel (a good one) is about how much tech policy will influence the next President. Panelists include:

...not really, but the headline pulled you in, didn't it?
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet (Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA), Chairman) does however, have a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday, April 1 (I am not making this up) entitled "Online Virtual Worlds: Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium".
We're still waiting on that report from Dan Miller, Senior Economist for the Joint Economic Committee's Republican Staff (and avid gamer) on taxation of virtual worlds. Miller has previously said that existing tax code could in theory enable the IRS to levy taxes on virtual earnings, although an October 2006 press release from the JEC says that this is extremely unlikely.
The hearing is scheduled to be in 2123 Rayburn HOB, which means it will be webcast (and possibly live-blogged). No word yet on whether or not simultaneous hearings will take place in other realms, or if the witness list includes avatars, bots, or unicorns.
