Previous U.S. trade agreements are the best guide for understanding what’s likely to come out of the Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) discussions among countries that account for half of world trade, a U.S. Trade Representative official said last week. “Far from speculating” about what could be in the new agreement, as many public-interest groups have done, “I can tell you” what the U.S. is pushing to be included, Stanford McCoy, assistant USTR for intellectual property and innovation, told an American University law school audience.

At a meeting of the World Customs Organization Secretary General and CBP Acting Commissioner Ahern in late October, CBP officials confirmed the (full) entry into force on January 26, 2010 of the Importer Security Filing (10+2 data) requirements. The WCO Secretary General raised members' continued concerns about U.S. 100% scanning requirements by 2012, noting that the Globally Networked Customs concept could facilitate the risk management approach advocated by the WCO. (Report, posted 10/28/09, available at http://www.wcoomd.org/speeches/?v=1&lid=1&cid=2&id=176)

Different standards for obscenity, based on whether such content is online, may not be legally sustainable, a defense lawyer involved in a obscenity case recently decided by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told us. A three-judge panel said content transmitted over the Internet must be subject to a national “community standard” to judge obscenity, to prevent prosecutors from bringing cases in the most conservative jurisdictions (WID Oct 29 p1). Greg Piccionelli, a veteran First Amendment lawyer who represented porn-spam operator Jeffrey Kilbride on appeal, said the relative rarity of prosecutions solely focused on Internet content didn’t diminish the ruling’s significance. “I think what we're seeing is potentially the end of obscenity in general as a viable law enforcement issue,” he said.

Social networking sites are perfecting their mix of automated filtering and human moderation to keep kids safe online, but mobile technology is raising new privacy questions, especially for services using geolocation, the NTIA Online Safety and Technology Working Group heard from leading sites at a meeting Tuesday. The group isn’t the only body Congress tasked with recommendations: The FTC will release a report Dec. 10 from a study of child safety in virtual worlds, a commission lawyer said. And it wasn’t lost on anyone that Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, a candidate for California attorney general in 2010, could be in a position to shape social-networking practices -- as several state attorneys general have already done through settlements (WID May 9/08 p2) -- before Congress wades in.

In a March 2009 presentation, the Consumer Product Safety Commission provided an overview of its regulations affecting textile and clothing products, including the long-standing regulations of the CPSA, FFA, and FHSA¹ as well as the newer regulations of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA²).

Supporters of legalized Internet gambling got a boost from a Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation study. It said regulating such gambling -- as opposed to banning it -- would generate up to $42 billion in tax revenue over 10 years. The study excludes sports betting, which remains illegal under a different law than the statutes enforced by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act. The findings assume that operators would receive a federal license to offer Internet gambling throughout the U.S. The revenue could be lower under the leading bill, HR-2267 by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., to revoke the enforcement law, because it would let states opt out of a national Internet gambling regime. The study was released by Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash., sponsor of another bill (HR-2268) to raise revenue through collection of applicable individual and corporate taxes and license fees on regulated Internet gambling activities. The analysis shows that revenue from Internet gambling will help “offset the costs of health care reform or other vital government programs,” said a spokesman for the Safe and Secure Internet Gambling Initiative.

The two DBS providers spent far more money on lobbying in the third quarter than a year earlier, analysis of public records shows. Dish Network’s and DirecTV’s combined outlays increased 67 percent.

NTIA told the Senate Commerce Committee it will take it one month longer than anticipated to award the first round of grants, initially targeted for award in early November, due to the complexity of the process. But officials expect to meet the overall program target of delivering the $7.2 billion in loan and grant money by Sept. 30, they told an oversight hearing on the broadband program. The Government Accountability Office said condensing two rounds of funding into one would give NTIA and Rural Utilities Service (RUS), which are co-managing the program, more time to review applications in the broadband stimulus grant program.

“Criminals, spies and terrorists” are taking advantage of information that users post on social networks, said the acting chief of staff to FBI Director Robert Mueller. Some of them work for “hostile foreign powers,” John Carlin said. Foreign governments probe for vulnerabilities in enemy countries’ IT networks using information from the networks, he told a conference run by law centers at the University of California, Berkeley.

Facebook’s $9.5 million class-action settlement over its Beacon advertising program (WID Sept 22 p6) received preliminary approval from U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg in San Jose, Calif. The program posted information about users’ activities on affiliated sites including that of Blockbuster’s. Blockbuster is accused along with Facebook of violating the Video Privacy Protection Act in the case, Lane v. Facebook, and by itself in a lawsuit in Marshall, Texas (WID April 21/08 p5). Seeborg rejected a motion to intervene by plaintiffs in the Marshall case. The judge told the parties in Lane that his final approval in part will hinge on showing that the terms are reasonable “specifically in light of the claims” under the video-privacy law, “and the apparent availability of statutory penalties thereunder in some circumstances.” Seeborg certified the class as including anyone whose behavior on a Facebook-connected site triggered Beacon from Nov. 6, 2007, until Friday. He scheduled a fairness hearing on the settlement for Feb. 26. Those who want to opt out of the class must do so by Feb. 1. Class lawyers have until Feb. 10 to submit their request for one- third of the $9.5 million as compensation, and it will be considered separately from the rest of the settlement, Seeborg said. Responding to the request of the Marshall plaintiffs in Harris v. Blockbuster to intervene in the Lane case, Seeborg said they had known of the San Jose suit since September 2008 and of a proposed settlement since May 2009 but waited months to file to intervene. Though the Harris plaintiffs contend they didn’t know Facebook was “attempting to indemnify Blockbuster for its violation of the VPPA” until they saw the proposed settlement, Seeborg said in a footnote they lacked evidence showing an “illicit agreement” between Facebook and Blockbuster. “An entirely innocent explanation for the fact that the release extends to all defendants [including Blockbuster] is that it would do Facebook little good to settle this dispute with plaintiffs while remaining at risk of being brought back into the litigation when plaintiffs then pursued claims against the remaining defendants,” he said. The Marshall plaintiffs can raise objections in Lane before the Feb. 1 deadline. As to their request to transfer the case to Marshall -- where the Blockbuster suit was filed four months before Lane -- Seeborg said their “first-filed” rights were operative “when they learned of the very existence of this lawsuit,” not a year later. “It would have been wholly unfounded to assume that a settlement agreement [in San Jose] would somehow carve out the subject matter of Harris,” Seeborg said. But he hinted he won’t rubber stamp the settlement just because he preliminarily approved it, creating “a perception of ‘momentum,'” in the Marshall plaintiffs’ words. Seeborg said he will review “all timely-filed objections, and not be influenced by previously granted preliminary approval.”