Innovation Policy Post

The European Commission has announced that it was opening an investigation into search and search advertising focused on Google. The investigation comes after complaints from three companies that were unhappy about their rankings in either the regular unpaid Google search results or Google ads.

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, which has promoted competition among tech companies for nearly 40 years, has seen the EC’s history of investigating large companies to ensure competition. So this announcement does not come as a surprise. We expect that the methods of other search engines’ may also be examined so that authorities can adequately compare the different policies and practices of search engines when it comes to ad and search rankings.

On 15th November the parties negotiating the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (Australia, Canada, EU, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, and the US) published the finalized version of the agreement. At the end of November, a so-called technical meeting to finalize the legal wording will take place in Sydney.

Today, as a step to clear the way for a final adoption of ACTA, the European Parliament adopted a non-legislative Resolution on ACTA. 

A bill that would have led to more Internet censorship is on ice -- thanks to a hold placed on it by Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore. The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), S.3804, will no longer have the smooth ride this session the content industries wanted.  Although the bill passed the Senate Judiciary last week on a voice vote, it continues to face vocal opposition in both houses and is now unlikely to get a full Senate vote this session.

Chairman Wyden, D-Ore, said President Obama hopes to double exports within 5 years and he sees Internet and tech companies as instrumental to achieving that – if the U.S. can reduce the trade barriers brought by Internet censorship.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has approved a measure Thursday that would give the government additional tools to pressure other companies to not do business with domains suspected of illegally sharing copyrighted material.

Senator McConnell announced last Thursday that he’s resolved to stop any and all legislative initiatives supported by the White House and/or the Democratic Majority in the Senate. Current House Minority Leader John Boehner, however, has expressed an interest in working with the President and across the aisle in Congress on the chief priority identified by the American people last week -- jobs and the economy –should he be elected Speaker in the 112th Congress.

The results of this week’s mid-term elections have been linked to a public desire for “smaller government” or hostility to “big government.” Assuming this is the case, it may be useful to consider what implications a small-government philosophy has for important policy debates, such as the effort to reform the vast federal patent system.

In the wake of Tuesday’s election results, the demise of net neutrality has been greatly exaggerated.
 

In May, 73 Democrats signed on to a letter outlining their opposition to the FCC imposing net neutrality rules through reclassification. 

Though a few key races for the tech industry remain undecided, CCIA and others interested in tech policy are sorting through what this election and the divided government left in its aftermath mean for our issues.

First, what won’t change: many tech issues are bipartisan – privacy, cybersecurity, spectrum and some areas of the National Broadband Plan.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement may have been negotiated behind closed doors, but the Washington International Trade Association hosted an open discussion on the final draft of the controversial agreement.

Computer & Communications Industry Association President & CEO Ed Black told those gathered that he had problems with both the substance and the process of how ACTA developed. Transparency was a big issue as well as a sort of bait and switch. He said the anti-counterfeiting title would lead one to think it dealt with trademarks, but somehow that expanded into Internet liability – with Internet companies left out of the talks.