Politics and Law- Page 166

The key to innovation: Privately owned fiber?

The United States through its history has been the world's leading innovator thanks to a few hobbyists tinkering in their garages. If the U.S. wants to maintain its dominance in the world market, some argue, its policies should encourage innovation through broadband deployment.

While Congress has taken steps to promote universal broadband, a new working paper from the New America Foundation suggests a peculiar route to fostering the nation's next great innovators: allowing consumers to purchase and own their own fiber-optic connection.

In their paper Homes with Tails (PDF), Columbia Law School professor and NAF Fellow Tim … Read more

SEC exempts Facebook from revealing finances for now

Even as it continues to grow, Facebook is facing less pressure to reveal its finances.

The Securities and Exchange Commission in October granted the social-networking site an exemption to part of the SEC Act of 1934, which requires companies to disclose financial information once they have more than 500 stockholders and $10 million in assets.

As BusinessWeek reported, lawyers for Facebook sent the SEC a letter on October 13, asking for an exemption for its distribution of restricted stock. The letter noted that the company could in the future have more than 500 employees with restricted stock. The company currently … Read more

Judge spares E-Gold directors jail time

WASHINGTON--A federal judge decided on Thursday not to impose a prison sentence on the senior directors of E-Gold, an Internet-based digital currency firm, who had previously pleaded guilty to violations of money laundering and running an unlicensed money transmitting business.

The three directors of E-Gold, in addition to its Gold & Silver Reserve parent company, were indicted in April 2007 after federal prosecutors accused the online payment site of being a haven for criminal activity like processing investment scams and payments for child pornography. They said its loose verification standards for users' identity attracted criminals.

The three men and the … Read more

Obama transition team names tech policy group

The transition team for President-elect Barack Obama on Wednesday announced which advisers will lead the team's efforts to develop technology policy for the Obama administration.

The three team leaders of the technology, innovation, and government reform policy working group are Julius Genachowski and Blair Levin, two former Federal Communications Commission staff members, and Sonal Shah, the head of Google.org.

The purpose of the policy working group is to "develop the priority policy proposals and plans from the Obama campaign for action during the Obama-Biden administration," according to the transition team. Obama has promised to put more … Read more

Broadband proponents to Congress: Invest in future, not autos

WASHINGTON--Rather than investing emergency funds into old economic sectors like the auto industry, the federal government should look to the future and invest in a national broadband strategy, panelists at a broadband symposium said Wednesday.

"Let Detroit go bust, let the banks go bust--put $700 billion into broadband," said Paul Dickson, CEO of the Carbon Disclosure Project. "Broadband is the future."

The U.S. economy will surely come to a halt if the country cannot keep up with the pace of modern technology, said panelists at the event, which was hosted by the Internet Innovation Alliance. … Read more

Minn. Senate race could hinge on scanning machine mistakes

Clarification at 2:52 p.m. PST: An earlier version of this story said the Minneapolis director of elections admitted she left 32 absentee ballots in her car. But the Minnesota Secretary of State's office says that's untrue and we've changed the language to reflect that position as we investigate further.

Fears of e-voting glitches in the November election are still not over. The outcome of the Minnesota Senate race--which could give the Democrats a firmer grasp on power in Washington--may depend on whether scanning machines made mistakes two weeks ago when tabulating ballots.

Republican Sen. Norm … Read more

Google's Schmidt calls for more innovation, stronger infrastructure

This story was updated at 3:20 p.m. PST with additional information.

WASHINGTON--Government leaders need to do more than provide bailout money for America's flailing economy, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Monday. They need to use the bailout programs as an opportunity to invest in infrastructure and look for more innovative solutions to persistent problems.

Addressing a large audience of academics, government workers, and others in Washington on Monday in his role as chairman of the board of the New America Foundation, Schmidt laid out the myriad ways in which the government could open the doors for innovation … Read more

DivX sues Yahoo over canceled ad deal

Yahoo is in yet another sticky situation as a result of a canceled advertising deal.

Digital media company DivX on Monday filed a lawsuit against Yahoo because the search company backed out of a two-year advertising agreement the companies reached in September of last year. DivX said the canceled deal will hurt its revenues.

Under the terms of the agreement, consumers who downloaded DivX video software tools were offered a co-branded version of the Yahoo toolbar as well as a version of Internet Explorer 7 with other Yahoo services. Before the Yahoo agreement was reached, DivX had a search tools … Read more

Microsoft's D.C. lobbying sank Google-Yahoo deal, Jerry Yang

In theory, antitrust law helps foster competition. In reality, politically connected companies sometimes use it to bludgeon competitors and boost their own bottom line, as soon-to-be former Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang learned the hard way.

Yang had lent his prestige and the weight of his position to the proposed Google-Yahoo advertising deal, in part as an alternative to being gobbled up by Redmond, and in part as a way to get an easy $800 million a year in additional revenue.

When that proposed deal unceremoniously ended earlier this month--thanks to Microsoft's take-no-prisoners lobbying efforts in Washington, D.C., and … Read more

Mourning, unease after Silicon Valley slayings

Just a few months ago, Sid Agrawal, the chief operating officer of a 4-year-old semiconductor start-up in Santa Clara, Calif., was opining on the Silicon India site about the technology industry, noting that "green technology is the buzzword of the day" and bemoaning the challenge of "hiring good analog designers."

On Friday, however, Agrawal, 56, became one of three victims in a fatal workplace shooting that has saddened friends, colleagues, and family members, and left Silicon Valley employees--already shook up over constant reports of layoffs and bad economic news--feeling all the more uneasy.

"Silicon Valley … Read more