What exactly is the difference between a “standard” and a “tech mandate”? There was some confusion today at the House hearing on the FCC’s efforts to promote a more competitive market in home video devices. (Here’s Harold's written testimony from the hearing.)

Yesterday, the MPAA and RIAA made a giant political misstep by refusing to participate in a debate about three strikes. In doing so, they exposed the public and a number of US policy makers to policy that would strip Internet subscribers of their constitutional due process rights.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I attended this year's State of the Net Conference beautifully orchestrated by Tim Lordan and his crew at the Internet Caucus Advisory Committee.

Although overshadowed by Joe Biden's big party for his Copyright buddies, the good folks at the House Judiciary Committee staged their own holiday party for Hollywood. Since "p2p" is now passe, the Judiciary's Secret Santa brought Hollywood a whole new villain to attack in the name of piracy, streaming media. (Hey everyone, remember when 'streaming media' was the good way to get content online because it could be protected unlike that evil peer-2-peer stuff so Hollywood pretended they loved streaming media so they could outlaw peer-2-peer? Boy, we were so young back then . .

Like any for-profit industry, Hollywood usually trumpets its financial successes to impress policymakers, investors, Wall Street and the general public. And this is the time of year that they usually do so, before ShoWest, the annual convention of movie theater owners. But not this year, reports Variety.

According to the trade magazine, despite a record breaking year at both the domestic and International the box office in 2008, MPAA President Dan Glickman has decided not to tout his members' success. But why wouldn't Hollywood want to show their importance to the economy, particularly in light of the country's financial hard times? Variety reports that the studios have been quiet because they unsuccessfully tried to belly up to the stimulus trough - to the tune of $246 million dollars in tax credits, and want to try again to get those credits this Congress.

Last fall a trio of bills were introduced in Congress that ostensibly combated “fencing” stolen goods online. While the act of fencing stolen goods is illegal no matter how you do it, these bills were designed to make fencing stolen goods online especially illegal. To that end, the bills attempted to force online retailers to create and pay for a private enforcement system controlled by competing traditional retailers. Fortunately, the bills did not go anywhere in the last Congress.

Recently, the exact same bills were reintroduced in this Congress.

Both the House and Senate have introduced bills that would require "electronic communications service providers" to store "all records or other information pertaining to the identity of a user" of a temporary network address for two years.

Last Friday, Public Knowledge wrapped up a busy week of Presidential transition team meetings. First, as part of the Open Internet Coalition, PK and a number of its industry and public interest allies met with FCC Agency Review team co-chairs Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach to discuss the Coalition's priorities and how we would like to see them implemented.

The 10th anniversary of the DMCA is not the only infamous 10th anniversary that Public Knowledge gets to “celebrate” this week. Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the enactment of the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998. That law extended copyright terms from 50 years after the life of an author and 70 years in the case of corporations, to 70 years beyond the life of an author and 95 years in the case of corporations. Named after Sonny Bono, the late Congressman best known for his musical and personal partnership with the performer Cher, the law has taken countless works out of the public domain, greatly weakening the wellspring of creativity and knowledge from which new creativity emerges.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and the panel’s senior Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, have asked trade negotiators not to make the controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) too specific.

In an Oct. 2 letter to U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab, Leahy and Specter said they were concerned that the agreement was being drafted in such detail that it could limit congressional flexibility to deal with intellectual property and related issues in the future. The senators also said their concerns were compounded by the “lack of transparency” that goes along with trade agreements and by the speed of the negotiating process.

They also specifically asked Schwab to steer clear in the trade agreement of issues surrounding liability of Internet Service Providers and of technological protection measures.