Building the Silicon Dominion
By Courtney Macavinta
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM

WASHINGTON--When travelers cross state lines into Virginia the "Welcome" sign might as well read: "Thank you for leaving Silicon Valley."

At least, that's the message Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore wants to send.

Gilmore envisions San Francisco Bay Area companies pulling up stakes and setting up shop in his native state, where he says they could have easier access to federal lawmakers, lower housing costs, and numerous tax incentives.

Since he was elected last January,

the former state attorney general has gone into overdrive to lure new high-tech companies to the state, and to keep existing establishments sweet on the so-called Silicon Dominion.

The state's technology sector already is growing three times faster than its overall economy, and the industry is expected to employ 413,000 people with more than 24,000 firms by 2002, according to the governor's office.

Northern Virginia is especially key to the state's treasure chest. Gilmore is fond of saying that more than half of all the Internet access in the world runs through the area. Once home to tobacco farms, the triangle now houses America Online, MCI-Worldcom , UUNet, and PSINet. The Net's white pages also live there--Network Solutions and its ".com" registry are located in Herndon, Virginia.

One of the Republican elect's first moves when he got into office was to appoint a Secretary of Technology and a Council on Technology Services to promote public and private IT initiatives. The Virginia Economic Development Partnership also is beefing up "pro-business" outreach to out-of-state firms, emphasizing perks such as its low unemployment-insurance premiums and utility costs.

It seems to be working.

ISPs aren't the only firms carving paths to the state. Oracle Corporation, for example, is setting up a $65 million campus that will create up to 3,500 jobs in Virginia. MCI WorldCom plans to build a $200 million information technology facility that will employ 4,000.

And many of these IT firms' chief executives sit on Gilmore's Commission on Information Technology--which is quickly making Virginia a bellwether state when it comes to Net policy. In December, the group proposed a seven-point Virginia Internet Policy Act, which takes on online child pornography, consumer privacy, fraud, and unsolicited bulk email.

Last month, the commission saw results when Gilmore signed the first criminal law to curb spam, which is a boon to online service providers who say the messages clog their networks. Under the law, "malicious" spamming--causing the recipient more than $2,500 in losses--could be prosecuted as a felony. In addition, ISPs can sue the sender for $10 per message or $25,000 per day, whichever is greater.

For his tech-savvy blueprints, Gilmore is gaining national attention. For example, he was named to the U.S. Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce by former speaker of the House of Newt Gingrich to study Net taxation issues.

But the state's Net policy track record isn't without controversy. Civil liberties groups have made Virginia a constitutional test bed for laws that regulate online speech.

The American Civil Liberties Union, for one, is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court a Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld a law prohibiting the state's employees from accessing online "sexually explicit communication," even if doing so is job-related. In addition, another federal judge overturned a library's policy to screen Net access for all patrons in Loudoun County, Virginia.

Gilmore recently sat down with CNET News.com at the WTOP radio station in Washington, where he takes call-in questions from listeners at least once a month. Gilmore talked about his efforts to stoke the state's high-tech fire, and about the closely watched court cases that have put Virginia at the center of the Net free-speech debate.

CNET News.com: You've taken a lot of steps to be on the forefront of Net policy issues. Do you use the Net in your everyday life?
Gilmore: I sure do. We have several computers at home. I go on the Net almost every day. I have a chance to visit places that I think are interesting, to communicate with people, and to do email. Both of my sons are on the Internet every day, and working with it they're obviously very tuned in to the uses of information technology and high-tech. And my wife Roxane is especially using the Internet. She's a teacher and has actually formed a Web page for education to give teachers an opportunity to dial in and use the Net and register their lesson plans towards the standards of learning that we're doing in Virginia. I think we're all doing pretty well, but little Ashton is really on top of it.

Did you and Roxane do any online shopping this holiday season?
Oh, sure we did. I know Roxane bought books over the Internet. You can imagine who those might have been for.

NEXT: Mapping out high-tech growth