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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
The U.S. House of Representatives is scheduled to consider the Tauzin-Dingell bill this week. It's a mysteriously-named piece of legislation, in the finest Washington style, and it's becoming suprisingly well-known all of a sudden, as Internet providers try to mobilize their subscribers. Basically Tauzin-Dingell says the regional Bell companies (Verizon, Bellsouth, SBC, Qwest) would no longer be forced to lease their local lines to competing providers of high-speed Internet access. As I wrote last week (http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,50620,00.html), the House Rules committee had a deadline of Monday afternoon for amendments to the Tauzin-Dingell. They're summarized here: http://www.house.gov/rules/sum_broadband_107.htm One interesting one from Rep. Chris Cannon (R-Utah) that appears to be non-binding: "Points out that entertainment applications were driving broadband demand prior to litigation-related interruption of service and that broadband demand dropped significantly when Napster shut down. It concludes that the Congress should review copyright laws to ensure that they keep up with technology while at the same time protecting artists and copyright holders from widespread infringement." Text of HR1542: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d107:h.r.01542: http://www.house.gov/rules/h1542.pdf The committee reports (warning -- boring): ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr083p1.txt ftp://ftp.loc.gov/pub/thomas/cp107/hr083p2.txt The U.S. Telecom Association (members include Verizon, Bellsouth, SBC, see http://www.usta.org/fullmem.html) supports the bill: http://www.usta.org/on_the_hill/HR1542/support_HR1542.html Sprint and its kin oppose the bill: http://www3.sprint.com/PR/CDA/PR_CDA_Press_Releases_Detail/1,1579,2366,00.html -Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------