Politics and Law

If you want to use the Internet to peek at documents filed in federal court cases, it's usually possible. It's just relatively expensive.

The U.S. Congress allows the federal courts to charge a fee--currently set at 8 cents a page--to search for and download documents. The database, called PACER, is strict about charging and even levies fees for searches that result in no matches.

Which is why a pair of Princeton University graduate students, with some help from Harvard University's Berkman Center, have developed a Firefox browser plug-in called RECAP (PACER spelled backward). It's designed to make more court documents available to the public at no cost.

The way it works is simple: when you log in to the federal court system and pay with a credit card to download a document, the RECAP plug-in automatically and transparently forwards a copy to the Internet Archive, where it becomes available for free to the next person who wants to read it. It's a collaborative effort, with others benefiting from your purchases, while you benefit from theirs.

"RECAP helps users exercise their rights under copyright law, which expressly places government works in the public domain. It also helps users advance the public good by contributing to an extensive and freely available archive of public court documents," Harlan Yu, a Princeton graduate student, said in a blog post, marking Friday's public beta release. The other collaborators are Tim Lee, Steve Schultze, and Ed Felten.

There are some potential problems. One is that because the RECAP developers plan to make the source code available, it wouldn't be hard for someone to seed the Internet Archive with "official court documents" that had been modified in some way. (The answer is for users to pay to download important files from PACER, or for the courts to employ digital signatures.)

Another is this: the more successful that RECAP becomes, the more revenue PACER loses, which means the federal courts might eventually attempt to ban the use of it. Then again, that hasn't happened yet; until it does, RECAP is a must-install feature for any court junkie.

RECAP is also available on Download.com.

NEW YORK--The state senate in Albany was in a bit of a shambles Monday. So instead of speaking in-person at the Personal Democracy Forum as planned, NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg used Skype to make his keynote address.

"Through the miracles of modern communication, we're essentially together," Bloomberg commented to the audience at the Frederick P. Rose auditorium here in midtown Manhattan. He then spoke about how New York is using the assets of the digital age to make more information available to the city's residents--something that Bloomberg can pitch well, considering he made a fortune as the founder of the business news and information company that bears his name.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg

(Credit: NYC.gov)

Bloomberg's new initiatives include Skype and Twitter accounts for NYC 311, the city's information hotline that Bloomberg launched several years ago; a partnership with Google to get more detailed information about exactly what people are searching for on municipal government sites (and what they can and can't find); and "Big Apps," a new contest for developers to crunch and remix city data into Web or mobile applications for the masses.

The economy, however, may get in the way. Any ambitious new city projects are taken with a grain of salt these days, and with good reason.

I, for one, was scrambling to get to Bloomberg's talk on time because cutbacks and delays on the B-D-F-V subway line had added literally an extra half-hour to my commute from downtown to the conference venue at Columbus Circle. Griping about the city budget is pretty commonplace around here these days, and Bloomberg himself is no exception.

"If any of you from around the world wants to move here," Bloomberg quipped over the Skype connection when conference organizer Andrew Rasiej commented that a thousand people were on hand, "we would love to have you. We need taxpayers."

The official information available on the Web to New York residents includes public school progress data and citywide performance reporting. Beyond that, Bloomberg's administration has chosen to support new and more efficient ways of doing business: it has given the thumbs-up to collaborative workspaces and launched a venture fund for tech and finance start-ups, among other things. These are all part of a way to combat the fact that the Wall Street meltdown has left scores of the city's professionals out of work.

With "Big Apps," Bloomberg is encouraging developers to participate in a contest that "will challenge all of you, and the whole tech world, really, to come up with new applications using city data."

"We'll be releasing a huge volume of data from a number of agencies," Bloomberg said before the Skype connection briefly cut off. Rasiej re-dialed in, and Bloomberg continued that he hopes the fruits of Big Apps contests will "create the connectedness that will benefit the city economically, civically, and socially."

If developers aren't willing to act solely out of a desire to help the city, Bloomberg said that Big Apps will indeed have cash prizes, as well as an even bigger incentive.

"I'll up the ante by taking the grand-prize winners out to dinner," he said.

Good to hear that's still in the budget.

Bassem Al Rousan, Jordan's Minister of Information and Communications Technology, in his office in Amman.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh)

AMMAN, Jordan--Even by the extremes of the Middle East, Jordan is an unusual place.

Unlike its neighbors to the south and east, it enjoys no vast oil wealth. It shares the region's longest border with Israel, about 150 miles, and signed a peace treaty with its neighbor in 1994. Although the northern third of the country benefits from a Mediterranean climate, the rest is largely desert.

That leaves outsourcing and other businesses as one obvious bright spot, and Jordan is hoping to enlist computer technology and the Internet to fight an unemployment rate that probably hovers around 30 percent, thanks in part to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Palestinian refugees the country has taken in.

Embracing the Internet also means trying to reconcile its rollicking, unruly culture of free expression with a population that's about 92 percent Muslim and a society that's far from as strict as neighboring Saudi Arabia -- but nevertheless conservative enough to prompt most women to follow the dictates of the hijab by wearing head scarves.

Jordan has had flare-ups of offline and online censorship, including imprisoning a female member of Parliament (since pardoned by King Abdullah) and encouraging bloggers to self-censor. Reporters Without Borders says that even though a law providing for prison terms for press offenses was canceled, journalists remain under pressure.

Then there are the less expected obstacles, like a proposed tax earlier this year of about 1.5 cents per minute on wireless calls, with the proceeds going to the livestock industry to subsidize animal feed.

CNET News recently met with His Excellency Eng. Bassem Al Rousan, minister of information and communications technology of Jordan, in his offices in Amman, to talk about outsourcing, DVD piracy, Internet taxes, open source, and other topics.

Q: If a Jordanian company opens an office in Lebanon, it can't easily send Jordanian engineers to work there. And company in Lebanon can't easily send engineers here. Is there any interest in eliminating some of these legal barriers?
Al Rousan: In Jordan now the unemployment rate is about 12 percent... It is not difficult for technical jobs, marketing jobs. It's easy to come and work in Jordan.

I started working in the private sector in 1997. I saw very easy movement from Jordan to Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, the Gulf. Also Pakistanis coming to Jordan. It's easy because we consider those jobs vital for the development of businesses. The movement for skilled jobs is easy.

If Internet access is more expensive in Jordan than Europe in absolute terms, and far more expensive in relative terms, what's the best way to bring down the monthly cost? Does the government need to subsidize it, or encourage competition instead?
Al Rousan: To increase the penetration, there are some obstacles we have to overcome. One of those is the language and the content. Just last week we had a talk with Google about Jordan investing in Arabization for the content. (Editors' note: Al Rousan's aide said afterward that this involved sharing of knowledge and was not a financial investment.)

Another thing is the price of computers. We started in the government a new initiative, what we called a laptop for every university student. He can buy a laptop with no taxes on it. He can pay for this computer for four years, about 15 dollars a month.

When it comes to the Internet, we used to have a monopoly in the fixed network. Now we are working on this... Last week a company named Meta launched their services -- WiMax, based on Motorola. And the prices are OK now. Comparing the prices of 2007 and now, they're less than 50 percent of what they used to be. The government also reduced the sales tax on the Internet from 16 percent to 8 percent. I have a meeting with the minister of finance -- next week I will meet with him to try to get him to reduce it to zero. Also the tax on computers will be zero.

What we're doing is infrastructure, building a fiber-optic network that will reach all the schools. We will use it to provide Internet service to the villages. We will ask the ISP operator: Go to these schools and use it as a connection point that you can distribute to the houses in the village.

What's the status of 3G wireless, which has been delayed a few times?
Al Rousan: The regulatory body for telecommunications is conducting an auction for the spectrum, for 3G. Hopefully by the end of (April) they will finish this process and they will be able to distribute the spectrum for the operators. It could be new operators or existing operators using it.

We've also started talking to some techical companies, like Qualcomm, about a computer that costs less than $100, which connects to 3G wireless. You have a keyboard only and it connects to the television and you can be connected to the Internet. It's cloud computing -- subscribers can use it instead of having a sophisticated computer.

"Watchmen" and other pirated DVDs are on sale in Amman, Jordan, for a little over $1 each

(Credit: Declan McCullagh)

If I have my numbers right, Jordan's official goal is to have an Internet penetration rate of 50 percent by 2011. Are you on track?
Al Rousan: As of 2008, penetration of the internet is over 24 percent. Revenue in the sector is over $2 billion. The number of employees working in this sector is about 22,000.

I know you've attracted investment from companies like Microsoft, and as of 2005, at least, foreign direct investment was around $100 million. What's your plan to increase this?
Al Rousan: What we are doing actually is the cabinet agreed to have a new (free-trade zone) for the telecommunication and IT, which starts by next year. They're started to develop it. In Amman, we think that having such an area will be very attractive especially now if you're comparing Jordan to the other countries around us, in many aspects from manpower, education, security, the price of real estate, and so on. The other thing which is very important is that most of our engineers work outside Jordan in the Gulf area. Now our plan is to bring them back, and instead of sending them there, have business come to Jordan.

We are now focusing on more businesses like call centers, for instance, which will serve banks, insurance companies, in the whole area, in the Gulf.

Will these be in Arabic or English?
Al Rousan: Both. And in Spanish. One company has a section that serves the Spanish language.

One of the biggest advantages in Jordan is the accent. In English and Arabic, we have a neutral accent. Here, especially in the Gulf area, our accent is almost the same as their accent. The other area we focus on is technical support and maintenance, having a technical center here in Jordan that will support companies and products like Cisco, for instance. They have a tech center here that employs about 80 IT engineers supporting the Gulf area. And part of southern Europe.

I believe the U.S.-based Web site ArabTimes.com is blocked because of its political content. How do you reconcile this with a liberal approach to Internet regulation-- will sites like ArabTimes.com continue to be censored by the government?
Al Rousan: There is a new law for telecommunications and audio visual services. The two entities will be in one law. According to the law there will be no censoring of the Internet.

When will this take effect?
Al Rousan: It is already in the law that the Internet is not censored. I think most of the government knows they cannot block it. It's a waste of time and money. This is what our policy is, not to try to do this. The problem we are facing is to convince many of the families, many parents don't want the Internet because they're afraid for their children. They want to guide their children and to tell them what to do or not to do.

But tomorrow or the day after they will go to their friends or an Internet cafe. It's better to have it in the house. The family and the government, we cannot stop those things. We have to deal with it in a different way. If you're a family, you have to educate your children.

Now we have a political Web site where they write many things, much of it good, much of it bad, depending on rumors. Nothing solid. There is no law which will excuse them for publishing such things on the Web site. Should these journalists be prosecuted? There's a debate over whether the law should apply.

The Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation publish an annual index of economic freedom. The survey says Jordan doesn't have a higher rank because it's too difficult to start a business, too difficult to close a business, the size of the government is too large, and there are restrictions on foreign investments over 50 percent in many sectors. Is this a reasonable criticism?
Al Rousan: The government tries to do their best to make this easier. There's a Parliament -- how do you deal with a Parliament that imposes taxes on telecommunications to support animal feed? They want to impose a tax on telecommunications to support animal feed. We managed to stop that. I'm trying to make you understand that Jordan is still a new country, historically. We're still not that educated about business and what it can do. So it's not always easy to make things happen.

You mentioned that foreign investors can't own more than 50 percent of a company. Yes, they can. They can go through the Cabinet. Every month we approve some. According to the law it's 50 percent unless the Cabinet approves, and we do that. The government is in favor of making things easier but the Parliament -- there are two forces opposing one another.

I agree with you, to start a business it's difficult. But once you're in the system it's smooth.

And this will be easier with the free zones, less regulation in general?
Al Rousan: Exactly. This will be used for industry, shielded from bureaucracy.

Store in Amman offering just-over-$1 pirated DVDs for sale.

(Credit: Declan McCullagh)

In downtown Amman yesterday, I found pirated DVDs of movies such as the Watchmen on sale in storefronts for 1 Jordan dinar (about US$1.41). My relatives here in Jordan told me I overpaid and could have found them elsewhere for about half a dinar. What's the government's view on commercial sale of pirated videos?
Al Rousan: You can read in the newspaper there's a raid, that they've confiscated these products. We signed an agreement with Microsoft, signed an agreement with Oracle...

What about not software licensing inside government agencies, but enforcement of copyright laws in general?
Al Rousan: Not just in the government, but outside as well. Now we're trying to establish an IT industry here. This is very important for us also. The law is very strict on these things. One way or another you cannot stop people from importing these...

Are you talking about imports from Syria?
Al Rousan: Syria and other places. You can also download them over the Internet. But the government is very strict: we get hundreds of millions of aid every year from the United States.

Under Jordanian law, is there a difference between pirated software and pirated DVDs?
Al Rousan: No, it's the same. It protects both. It's like the drug trade. You can try to stop it, but you cannot do it. There's always a way to get around it.

Is Jordan planning to adopt open-source software in government agencies?
Al Rousan: It will cost you more, by the way. We are working in the hospital sector, using open source. I think that in the beginning, the cost will be higher. In the long run it could be better.

You have to develop software to interface with the open source, which will cost you more. A country like Jordan cannot afford such things.

Any last thoughts?
Al Rousan: I think here in Jordan, the seeds are here. It needs somebody who can use it to get to harvest. A company whose operations in an area are very expensive, they can come to Jordan and find everything they need. In jordan, we have more than 6,000 graduates a year in information technology. Jordan doesn't have natural resources, so we depend on people. Software is one of the things that can succeed in Jordan.

The Obama administration announced new plans on Thursday to kick-start smart-grid development, including funding details and the start of a standardization process.

During a visit to Jefferson City, Mo., Vice President Joe Biden detailed plans for the U.S. Department of Energy to distribute more than $3.3 billion in stimulus funds for smart-grid technology development grants. Additionally, the Energy Department will hand out $615 million for regional demonstration projects that exhibit smart-grid storage, monitoring and technology viability.

"We need an upgraded electrical grid to take full advantage of the vast renewable resources in this country--to take the wind from the Midwest and the sun from the Southwest and power areas across the country," Biden said in his prepared remarks. "By investing in updating the grid now, we will lower utility bills for American families and businesses, lessen our dependence on foreign oil and create good jobs that will drive our economic recovery."

The $3.375 billion Energy Department grant program will give out grants ranging from $500,000 to $20 million for smart-grid technology deployments. It will also give out grants of $100,000 to $5 million for the deployment of grid monitoring devices.

The $615 million for demonstration projects will specifically fund exhibitions that verify technology viability and examine new business models, give energy storage demonstrations, or exhibitions that demonstrate grid monitoring devices that allow system operators to manipulate electric flows in real time.

Alongside the vice president in Jefferson City, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke announced his plans to chair, with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a series of meetings in May with private-sector leaders and others involved in smart-grid development to devise industry-wide smart-grid standards. The meeting participants are expected to commit to a timetable for reaching a standards agreement and to abide by the standards devised.

Regulators and private-sector representatives have warned Washington that if common smart-grid standards are not implemented, the government risks wasting taxpayers' money on soon-obsolete technologies that could be incompatible with one another.

"A smart electricity grid will revolutionize the way we use energy, but we need standards in place to ensure that all this new technology is compatible and operating at the highest cybersecurity standards to protect the smart grid from hackers and natural disasters," Locke said in his prepared remarks. "The Recovery Act will fund the development of those standards so the exciting technology can finally take off."

When it comes to broadband, Australia isn't messing around.

Earlier this week the Australian government announced a new plan to build a new fiber-optic communications network that will cost the government about 43 billion Australian dollars or roughly $31 billion in U.S. money. The new national network, which will be built by a yet-to-be-named state-controlled company, will provide broadband speeds of 100 Mbps to about 90 percent of Australian homes, schools, and businesses by 2018. The other 10 percent will get broadband access via wireless technology.

The new network will be fast enough to allow Australians to watch multiple high-definition videos at once and download loads of other multimedia content all at once. Only a small number of countries today offer speeds that high to consumers, including South Korea, Japan, France, and Germany.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said the government is taking this aggressive step because he believes a fiber-optic network is essential to stimulate the ailing economy. He also believes it will increase Australia's productivity and competitiveness with respect to other nations.

U.S. President Barack Obama also believes that broadband is crucial to keeping America competitive in the world. The U.S. has consistently fallen short of other nations when it comes to broadband. A year ago, the International Telecommunications Union ranked the U.S. 15th in the world when it comes to broadband. Australia was ranked 12th.

Even though both countries see broadband as an important way to stimulate the economy and a good investment for future productivity and innovation, they are going about it in very different ways. Instead of controlling the deployment of new telecommunications infrastructure, the U.S. plans to provide funding to the private sector as well as local and state governments to build infrastructure and invest in new services as they see fit.

Congress has allocated $7.2 billion as part of its overall economic stimulus package to increase broadband penetration and coverage and to provide faster, more affordable service to as many Americans as possible. As part of the new legislation, the Federal Communications Commission has also been tasked with coming up with a national broadband policy.

On Wednesday, the FCC opened up discussion to help establish a national broadband policy. While the stimulus investment is certainly a start, the U.S. government has made no strides to build infrastructure itself. Instead, it will rely on a public/private partnership to improve the national broadband network.

It will be interesting to see which approach proves to be most successful. Will Australia move more quickly up the ladder of productivity and technological innovation due to its investment in broadband? Or will the government sink billions of dollars into a project that is unsustainable in the free market?

On the flip side, will the approach taken by the U.S. really improve broadband access, penetration and speeds? Or will the investment only boost already affluent and broadband-rich regions, such as large cities? I'm very interested to hear what readers think about Australia's plans with respect to what the U.S. is doing, so please share your thoughts in the comment section below.

LAS VEGAS--Former Vice President Al Gore sought to link the democratic effects of information sharing with the growth of the wireless industry as the solution to all of life's problems.

Well, perhaps not all of life's problems. But in his address to CTIA 2009 attendees on the final day of the show, Gore made the case that previous revolutions in communications technology--such as the printing press and the radio--have dramatically improved access to information that has made the world more scientifically advanced and productive, and that modern wireless technology is capable of doing the same thing over time.

Former Vice President Al Gore also gave a keynote address at the Web 2.0 Summit in November.

(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET)

"Information is the dominant strategic resource of the economy in the 21st century," Gore said, drawing an analogy to the 1970s and the strain put on the economy by the dramatic rise in the price of oil. Information, on the other hand, has become cheaper and cheaper, with advances in processing power and wireless networking saving businesses untold amounts of money and giving average people a wealth of information at their fingertips.

Gore's hour-long speech touched on many of his usual themes about the environment, which won him the Nobel Prize in 2007. He also called on attendees to focus less on short-term business concerns and more on making the kinds of investments that will pay off in the long run at the expense of a short-term hit, such as adopting energy-efficient technologies.

Wireless technologies can be used to help monitor the health of the planet, he said, pointing to disappearing polar ice caps and rising temperatures. He also made sure to make several references to how wireless devices--namely the iPhone, produced by the company he oversees as a member of Apple's board of directors--have transformed the political process, allowing President Obama to tap a decentralized network of contributors to his successful campaign last year.

Gore's speech was originally supposed to be closed to the press, but he apparently changed his mind a few weeks ago. He did not allow photographs to be taken at the event, however.

Gore also declined to take any questions or address mounting concerns surrounding two journalists for his Current TV venture. American reporters Laura Ling and Euna Lee are being detained in North Korea and are set to be tried for allegedly conspiring to perpetrate hostile acts against the Communist state.

WASHINGTON--A diverse group of organizations Tuesday agreed that the criteria for choosing which broadband projects to fund with stimulus dollars should be largely based on the potential for job creation, but they could not agree on the degree of risk the federal government should take in its broadband investments.

The departments of Commerce and Agriculture have a combined $7.2 billion from the stimulus package to dole out for broadband deployment and expect to receive more than 10,000 applications for funding. The departments gathered together a number of different organizations at a public meeting Tuesday to discuss how to distribute those funds effectively and fairly, and how to hold grantees accountable.

The most important criteria, the panelists said, should be a project's potential for job creation. Other items mentioned included timeliness, sustainability, cost, and interoperability. There was dispute, however, over whether the stimulus funds should focus on clear, immediate benefits, or potential long-term results.

Jeannette Wing, assistant director of the computer and information science and engineering directorate at the National Science Foundation, suggested the government should invest not only in projects that will have short-term economic impact but also those that will pay off decades down the road.

"Broadband investments should be a strategic down payment on our future," she said. "Today's students are tomorrow's workforce and tomorrow's customers."

Since the stimulus funding is seen as a down payment on universal broadband access, the program provides a good opportunity to form a broader deployment strategy, said John Muleta, the CEO of M2Z Networks.

"You want some level of diversity to see what will work to reach underserved and unserved communities," he said. "By its very nature, (the stimulus is) trying to do projects that otherwise wouldn't be funded. This is a bit like venture capital where you'll fund 10 ideas to get one that really breaks out."

Others insisted the funding criteria should focus more strictly on jobs.

"We're talking about taxpayer money, we're not here to try experimental projects," said Lisa Scalpone. "This is a one-time jump-start and needs to be viable in the long term."

In either case, panelists said, clear objectives for grantees will make it easier for the government to provide effective oversight of the broadband stimulus funds.

"We're going to have programs that are going to be funded from all different shapes and sizes, and it's important they all have to meet the same goals," said Amina Fazlullah, a media and telecommunications attorney for U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

The broadband provisions of the stimulus package included an initial set of criteria for the two departments responsible for the funds to consider, such as whether a project will increase affordability and subscribership, whether it will provide the greatest broadband speeds to the greatest population, and whether it will enhance service for health care delivery and education.

Meeting those goals--not to mention a host of others numerous groups would like to see addressed--means the Commerce and Agriculture departments will be in the business of picking winners and losers, panelists acknowledged.

"There's going to be an enormous amount of subjectivity," Muleta said. "What we have to do is have some discretion for the people developing the program to determine how to mechanize this."

When the president announced on Monday a $1.2 billion investment in science research at national labs, he spoke at the White House before a select group of companies that reflect his commitment to reviving the economy through investments in green technology.

Representatives from more than two dozen companies joined an audience of lab directors and researchers to hear the president commit to funding projects that can spur job creation in the green-tech sector. The companies present mirrored the president's goals: there were many venture capital firms that have helped establish successful clean-energy companies, start-ups waiting for late-stage investments, and large companies that could represent the success possible.

"Progress is rarely easy, and I know people in this room understand that," Obama said. "Sometimes the funding dries up, or the investors walk away. Sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed. And often it takes not just the commitment of an innovator, but the commitment of a country to innovation."

The president highlighted the accomplishments of a few companies, including Serious Materials,which makes energy-efficient windows. The California-based company recently reopened a window factory in Pennsylvania that shed more than 100 jobs when it shut down.

Representatives from Solyndra were also present at Monday's announcement. The solar start-up is the first company to receive a grant from the Department of Energy as a result of stimulus funding. The funding will allow the company to build a second plant, which will employ about 1,000 people, once operating, and employ 3,000 people in its construction.

Representing both the potential in solar power as well as the potential to develop commercial products from basic research, executives from the firm Suniva also attended the White House event. The company last year received $50 million from investors, including New Enterprise Associations, to commercialize its photovoltaic cell technology.

New Enterprises Associates, one of the first venture capital firms to focus on energy-related investments, was present, as was RockPort Capital Partners, which funds energy, environmental, and advanced materials companies. There were also two investment banks present: Pacific Crest Securities is a technology-focused investment bank, and Fourth Sector Bancorp is the first venture bank devoted to sustainable enterprises.

One venture capital firm at the event, Craton Equity Partners, invests in green building materials, an area with potential for growth. Autodesk, which produces design software with a focus on sustainability, was also present. The president also highlighted the Seattle-based firm McKinstry Company, which is retrofitting schools and businesses to make them more energy efficient and expects to hire as many as 500 new workers in the next few years.

President Obama's decision to allow federal tax dollars to be used with embryonic stem cell research does more than reverse his predecessor's policies and fulfill a long-standing campaign promise. It also reopens the debate about how well science and politics can, or should, mix.

On Monday, Obama signed an executive order allowing research on more stem cell lines than the Bush administration had permitted in its political compromise eight years ago.

"Promoting science isn't just about providing resources, it's also about protecting free and open inquiry," Obama said. He added that such research must be subject to strict guidelines, and "we will support it only when it is both scientifically worthy and responsibly conducted."

Some representatives of the biotechnology industry praised Obama's decision, saying it will do more than provide additional funding--it could also stimulate private investment by giving the market more confidence in the field.

The world of private financing has largely dried up, said Michael Werner, an attorney for Holland & Knight who represents stem cell companies and is a founding board member of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research. Obama's decision may change that, he said.

But critics and skeptics of Obama's decision say that injecting taxpayer dollars into a delicate and already controversial scientific process could backfire. Obama's decision to make stem cell research scientifically worthy of federal tax dollars is as much of a politically subjective decision as Bush's choice not to, they say.

In addition, it's difficult for companies to make long-term plans about funding because Obama's successor could reverse this decision yet again, a situation that economist Robert Higgs has dubbed "regime uncertainty." Or Congress could overrule him with yet another set of rules.

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who specializes in health care reform, said permitting more tax dollars to be spent on scientific research will only complicate the field.

"It is inevitable that when you get federal money involved, you politicize the issue," Tanner said. "I worry that it comes at the expense of sound science. I don't think you can say somehow the Obama administration is going to be a blank slate when it comes to science. Is the Obama administration really going to be open to a study that shows there is no global warming?"

Research manipulation
In the case of global warming, both sides have accused the other of manipulating research findings to reach political ends. The late author Michael Crichton described this in his book State of Fear, concluding with an essay saying: "Groups with other agendas are hiding behind a movement that appears high-minded... (and) vague terms like sustainability and generational justice--terms that have no agreed definition--are employed in the service of a new crisis."

During the Bush administration, former Surgeon General Richard Carmona accused his bosses of political interference, and House Democrats released a report in 2003 accusing the administration of manipulating science related to wetlands, stem cells, missile defense, and sex education. (Bush aides say that, contrary to that claim about stem cell research, they acted after consulting scientists. Also, the previous policy merely restricted taxpayer funds being spent on this purpose; private companies could continue to pursue research without hindrance.)

An extreme example was the Soviet Union, which suppressed genetic research in favor of the pseudoscience known as Lysenkoism.

For its part, the current administration has tried to distance itself from any appearance of impropriety. On Monday, Obama also signed a presidential memorandum saying: "Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions. If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the federal government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public."

The executive order that Obama signed overturns restrictions President Bush instituted in 2001 that limited federal funding to 21 existing stem cell lines. The National Institutes of Health will have 120 days to develop guidelines for evaluating funding requests.

"What's interesting is that in the early part of this decade, when stem cell research was under scrutiny by folks in Washington, a lot of companies felt it impacted the private markets because there was a sort of cloud over it," said Werner, the attorney representing stem cell companies. "The private markets kind of responded to the sense that maybe this is gong to be outlawed, maybe there is something wrong with this research. What will be interesting to see is whether the same would be true now that there will be such a shot in the arm from the administration for this research."

The United States has the proper policies to bring research to the marketplace, such as protections for intellectual property, Werner said, but without a federal commitment to basic research in a scientific area, it will be harder to bring ideas to market. In the area of stem cell research, a lack of federal support may impact the development of regenerative medicine and therapies, which Werner called "the new paradigm of health care moving forward."

"When it gets down to approval from the FDA, they'll be more likely to do that when there's a body of research out there," he said. "Anything that adds that knowledge to the public space will be a huge help to adding technologies to this industry. We know how to promote and support biomedical research--we just didn't do it in this area."'

More money equals results?
Scientific arguments over the use of adult stem cells vs. embryonic stem cells, as well as claims of potential applications for the research, have been distorted in attempts to win the political debate, said the Cato Institute's Tanner.

Moreover, it is questionable whether public funds will accomplish anything the private sector has not or cannot, Tanner said.

"Scientists always want more money, but the evidence to suggest there's a line of research not being done right now because of a lack of federal money--I've never had anybody able to show me that," he said.

The in vitro fertilization industry has thrived on private capital, Tanner said.

"There's no evidence to suggest you need federal money to make this research work," he said.

Richard Garr, president and CEO of Neuralstem, a company working to develop a stem cell therapy for Lou Gehrig's disease, acknowledged there may or may not be new technologies that emerge from additional funding resources.

"The thing about basic research is, it's kind of like shooting an arrow and putting the target where it lands," he said.

Still, Garr said, the research that will this executive order will facilitate includes basic research as well as work on products in the late stages of development. The federal funding will largely go to universities and public research institutions rather than the private sector, but companies like Garr's invest in those projects. Garr's Neuralstem, for instance, pays for research being conducted at the University of California at San Diego.

"To the extent that the infrastructure is there and universities are staffed up, that affects private companies," Garr said.

Restricting federal funding to certain stem cell lines complicated the way universities had to conduct their research, he said, since federally funded projects would not be confused with other projects. The initial funds from California's Proposition 71--which passed in 2004, allocating $3 billion for human embryonic stem-cell experiments--were spent on real estate.

"You literally couldn't do research in the same labs for approved lines and unapproved lines," Garr said. "Lifting these restrictions will free up all of these resources in the scientific community."

While states like California stepped in to fund projects that the federal government would not, private sources did as well. Major companies like Aastrom, Geron Corp., and Stemcells, Inc. all increased their research and development expenditures on stem cell research from 2005 through 2007, according to a 2008 analysis (PDF) from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Even if the economy continues to stall for months, private capital for worthy projects will be available in the long term, Tanner said.

"We're talking about research that's not going to see fruition for years," he said. "Whether or not there's a great deal of investment capital this year is not a great concern."

CNET's Declan McCullagh contributed to this report