The Food and Drug Administration is announcing a December 19, 2011 public meeting and seeking comments on proposed recommendations it has developed with the regulated community toward a draft Generic Drug User Fee Act. The draft legislation would authorize FDA to collect user fees related to human generic drugs and use them for the human generic drug application review process and associated submissions, to conduct related inspections (particularly of foreign manufacturers), and to engage in other related activities for fiscal years 2013-2017.

The Justice Department has seen Internet “bottlenecks,” justifying net neutrality actions, DOJ Acting Assistant Attorney General Sharis Pozen of the Antitrust Division said Wednesday at an antitrust oversight hearing in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Internet. She declined to name any of them. Also at the hearing, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz raised concerns with ICANN’s plan to roll out hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Pozen said nothing new on DOJ’s lawsuit to block the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

The Justice Department has seen Internet “bottlenecks,” justifying net neutrality actions, DOJ Acting Assistant Attorney General Sharis Pozen of the Antitrust Division said Wednesday at an antitrust oversight hearing in the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Internet. She declined to name any of them. Also at the hearing, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz raised concerns with ICANN’s plan to roll out hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs). Pozen said nothing new on DOJ’s lawsuit to block the AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile USA.

On November 28, 2011 the following bills were introduced:

Congress should ignore “Internet exceptionalists” who oppose the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Senate’s PROTECT IP Act out of hostility to the U.S. intellectual property regime, and with false claims that the bills will “break the Internet,” said a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. For some opponents of the bills, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “the Internet is inherently different from the offline world and should be off-limits to the societal rules that a democratically-elected government wants to impose on it,” said the report (http://xrl.us/bmkb7y), written by ITIF analyst Daniel Castro: “Any attempt to impose limitations on illegal activities is decried as the first step to totalitarian repression.” Though EFF and others are simply interested in “blunting the effects of policies they do not like” by protesting copyright enforcement measures, others, like Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, are “willfully blind” to the severity of online piracy, claiming the DMCA takedown process works fine, Castro said: Such people “refuse to recognize even basic facts.” Castro told Congress to be wary of Internet engineers who claim the bills would break the Internet or the DNS, because “network engineers frequently claim that certain technologies ‘break’ the Internet” to some extent -- including network address translation, which enables routers to split Internet connections to multiple users but also violates the “end-to-end principle” and “breaks” the session initiation protocol used in VoIP calls. “Yet the Internet continues to thrive and users still make VoIP calls,” he said. But Castro pointed to critics who have raised “reasonable questions” about enforcement mechanisms, especially in SOPA, and want to improve the bills. The Business Software Alliance notably backpedaled on its support for SOPA’s existing language after a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill (WID Nov 17 p1), saying as written it “could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors” (http://xrl.us/bmkb89). Bill language should ensure that enforcement mechanisms are “targeted, fair and effective,” without succumbing to “hysterical, ideological posturing and threats,” Castro said.

Congress should ignore “Internet exceptionalists” who oppose the House’s Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Senate’s PROTECT IP Act out of hostility to the U.S. intellectual property regime, and with false claims that the bills will “break the Internet,” said a report by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. For some opponents of the bills, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “the Internet is inherently different from the offline world and should be off-limits to the societal rules that a democratically-elected government wants to impose on it,” said the report (http://xrl.us/bmkb7y), written by ITIF analyst Daniel Castro: “Any attempt to impose limitations on illegal activities is decried as the first step to totalitarian repression.” Though EFF and others are simply interested in “blunting the effects of policies they do not like” by protesting copyright enforcement measures, others, like Netscape founder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, are “willfully blind” to the severity of online piracy, claiming the DMCA takedown process works fine, Castro said: Such people “refuse to recognize even basic facts.” Castro told Congress to be wary of Internet engineers who claim the bills would break the Internet or the DNS, because “network engineers frequently claim that certain technologies ‘break’ the Internet” to some extent -- including network address translation, which enables routers to split Internet connections to multiple users but also violates the “end-to-end principle” and “breaks” the session initiation protocol used in VoIP calls. “Yet the Internet continues to thrive and users still make VoIP calls,” he said. But Castro pointed to critics who have raised “reasonable questions” about enforcement mechanisms, especially in SOPA, and want to improve the bills. The Business Software Alliance notably backpedaled on its support for SOPA’s existing language after a House Judiciary Committee hearing on the bill, saying as written it “could sweep in more than just truly egregious actors” (http://xrl.us/bmkb89). Bill language should ensure that enforcement mechanisms are “targeted, fair and effective,” without succumbing to “hysterical, ideological posturing and threats,” Castro said.

The draft of a new House cybersecurity bill seeks to blend elements of the White House cybersecurity proposal with some recommendations from the House Republican Cybersecurity Task Force, in an effort to pass bipartisan cybersecurity legislation this session. The proposal, which will be formally introduced next week, would establish DHS as the lead agency to coordinate the response to national cyberthreats, create a new non-governmental organization to increase information sharing between the public and private sectors and emphasize voluntary incentives for private companies to secure U.S. networks.

The draft of a new House cybersecurity bill seeks to blend elements of the White House cybersecurity proposal with some recommendations from the House Republican Cybersecurity Task Force, in an effort to pass bipartisan cybersecurity legislation this session. The proposal, which will be formally introduced next week, would establish DHS as the lead agency to coordinate the response to national cyberthreats, create a new non-governmental organization to increase information sharing between the public and private sectors and emphasize voluntary incentives for private companies to secure U.S. networks.

Senators showed support for televising the U.S. Supreme Court, but at a hearing Tuesday some voiced reservations that it may be unconstitutional for Congress to make rules for an equal branch of government. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts debated S-410, a bill requiring cameras in the courtrooms. There’s “nothing I would love more than to watch Supreme Court arguments on television,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said at the hearing. “At the same time, as a coordinate branch of government, the Supreme Court is entitled … to determine how it operates."

Senators showed support for televising the U.S. Supreme Court, but at a hearing Tuesday some voiced reservations that it may be unconstitutional for Congress to make rules for an equal branch of government. The Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts debated S-410, a bill requiring cameras in the courtrooms. There’s “nothing I would love more than to watch Supreme Court arguments on television,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said at the hearing. “At the same time, as a coordinate branch of government, the Supreme Court is entitled … to determine how it operates."