WASHINGTON -- President Bush's pick to be the top U.S. antitrust official is a moderate who is expected to encounter little serious opposition in the Senate.
Bush said this week he will nominate Charles James, currently the head of the antitrust practice at Jones, Day, Reavis and Pogue and a former Justice Department lawyer under Bush Sr., to be assistant attorney general for antitrust.
"The Department is so fortunate that these two exceptional individuals, who have had outstanding public service careers, will return to the Department of Justice," Attorney General John Ashcroft said in a statement. Ashcroft was also referring to Bush's pick of Daniel Bryant to be the Justice Department's chief lobbyist.
James, 46, had previously raised questions about the Clinton administration's dogged pursuit of Microsoft, but does not appear to have taken sides on the lawsuit.
"All of the sort of bullish kinds of things that appear in Netscape documents undermine the government's claim that Microsoft was a big problem for Netscape," James told The Washington Post in 1998.
Congress on Napster: Courts nowadays can't hand down a technology-related decision without congressional critters jumping to get quoted in the press.
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the ornery chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, which oversees copyright law, pledged to hold hearings on Napster and its relationship with the music industry.
"I guess my feeling about this 9th Circuit decision is a gnawing concern that this legal victory for the record labels may prove Pyrrhic and shortsighted from a policy perspective," Hatch said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The outlook for Napster, which the California court is considering shutting down, may be more dim in the House of Representatives.
On Friday, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) became the vice chairman of the new Courts, Internet and Intellectual Property Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee.
Earlier this week, he welcomed the Ninth Circuit's ruling against Napster. "I think that the decision that has been handed down is a very important one.... It allows the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to do its job," said Goodlatte, a longtime ally of content owners and co-chairman of the Congressional Internet Caucus.
Goodlatte has championed legislation, such as the No Electronic Theft Act, that is favorable to the entertainment and software industries. And, as chairman of the House Republican High Technology Working Group, he is in a position to block any pro-Napster amendments to copyright law.
Declan's D.C. Notebook (continued)
Anti-Napster lobbyists: Bob Dole will be doing more than just hawking Viagra and Pepsi.
The ex-GOP presidential hopeful turned shingle-out-for-hire lobbyist has signed up to represent the Recording Industry Association of America in its battle against Napster.
Dole, formerly the Senate majority leader, is now a "special counsel" at Verner, Liipfert, Bernhard, McPherson and Hand in Washington. RIAA also has retained Tony Podesta, who has close ties to Democrats.
Barr Changing Tune? Bob Barr (R-Ga.) is generally regarded as an ardent conservative, but when he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference, he ended up quoting objectivist Ayn Rand and saying nice things about former President Bill Clinton.
Barr said "privacy and private property are intimately linked" and mentioned Rand's classic novel The Fountainhead during a speech Friday afternoon. He then praised Clinton for vetoing a bill that would increase the penalties for disclosing classified information.
The former Clinton impeachment manager is best known in privacy circles for his opposition to government surveillance, but Barr also believes the federal government should regulate corporations' data collection practices.
"The right to privacy is vanishing faster than any other commodity in the western world," Barr said, according to one audience member who sent notes to Wired News.
He added: "The greatest threat to privacy is technology" and warned of "the tyrant's toolbox."
Copyright win: Copyright holders won a second case before an appeals court in Washington.
A D.C. Circuit panel said on Friday that a law extending copyrights another 20 years -- otherwise known as a handout to Disney that allows Mickey Mouse to be copyrighted in perpetuity -- was constitutional.
"In sum, we hold that the CTEA (Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998) is a proper exercise of the Congress's power under the Copyright Clause. The plaintiffs' First Amendment objection fails because they have no cognizable First Amendment interest in the copyrighted works of others," the majority ruled.
A partial dissent by Judge David Sentelle said that there was little evidence that the law was designed "to promote the progress of science and useful arts" as required by the U.S. Constitution -- when it is applied retroactively.
TV Covers Net-crime: Television news magazines gave serious airtime this week to Internet-related misdeeds.
On Monday ABC News' Nightline covered a federal law that makes it illegal to possess doctored images that "appear" to be of minors.
PBS's Frontline explored hackers, both malicious and otherwise. During the portion of the show devoted to terrorism, complete with footage of the recent bomb attack on a U.S. Navy ship, Defense Department special agent Jim Christy warned that "anonymity is built into the process."
CBS's 60 Minutes II featured a segment on the National Security Agency.
"We're behind the curve in keeping up with the global telecommunications revolution," NSA chief Mike Hayden said.
Hayden warned: "Our adversary communications are now based upon the developmental cycle of a global industry that is literally moving at the speed of light ... cell phones, encryption, fiber-optic communications, digital communications."
Over the last few years, the NSA and its allies at the FBI have warned that an avalanche of bad guys -- terrorists, child pornographers, money launderers and drug smugglers -- have used encryption and other technologies to evade detection. Look for this issue to resurface during the appropriations process as agencies scramble to find reasons to pad their budgets.
