What Congress really did

(continued from previous page)

For better or for worse, some Information Age bills slipped through the cracks and died this year.

Most notably, Congress failed to pass the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act, which aimed to eliminate most online gambling. With just one roll of the dice, Net users could have faced up to a $500 fine and three months in prison. Cybercasino operators would face up to $20,000 in fines and up to four years in prison.

The Senate passed the bill in July, but due to the budget battle and White House sex scandal, Congress ran out of time the clear the bill.

"The Kyl bill would have forced responsible operators of Internet games in other legal jurisdictions underground," said Sue Schneider, chair of the Interactive Gaming Council, which opposed the law.

"In doing so, it would have eliminated any incentives for operators to keep children out of gambling sites," she added. "I am hopeful that the U.S. Congress will recognize that the best way to protect the interests of American businesses and individuals is to impose a strict, but fair regulatory regime instead of an unenforceable prohibition."

Despite a new law that says Web sites have to get parental permission before collecting personal information from children, the biggest issue sidestepped by lawmakers, consumer advocates say, was data security.

Proposals to impose broad privacy protections for digital records and personal information on the Net went nowhere.

"So far the administration has been reluctant to talk about the lack of online privacy legislation this session," said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "The kids bill was the easy political play, but it left wide open true privacy protection in the online world."

Also dead for now are a handful of bills to lift the export limits on strong encryption to end the six-year battle over the restrictions. Encryption scrambles electronic data so that only the rightful recipient can read a message.

Although the White House has eased some restrictions, U.S. manufacturers still face an array of red tape and regulations in shipping products because law enforcement says encryption can help tech-savvy criminals cover their tracks.

Privacy and encryption will likely remain hot-button issues next year in Congress.

"I'm sure the first day of Congress next session we will see slew of privacy legislation introduced," said Brian O'Shaughnessy, director of public policy for the Internet Alliance , which favors industry self-regulation in this area.

"By that point there will be much more consumer awareness about what tools and efforts are out there to protect them," he noted.

Last but not least, Net users saw no federal help in eliminating spam, no doubt the most detested item on the Net. There was a myriad of bills introduced to curb spam ranging from proposals to eliminate it all together to requiring that senders of unsolicited bulk email label their messages and remove people from their mailing lists upon requests.

Nonetheless, spam is expected to clog Congress's agenda once again next year.

"I think we'll see more bills introduce on unsolicited email because it is the bane of every online users' experience," O'Shaughnessy said. "But legislation solutions are not the answer to unsolicited email or privacy. The Net is a global medium, and Congress can't make these decisions in a vacuum."