This week the tech world will descend on Las Vegas for the annual Consumer Electronics Show.  While there is nothing subtle about a 152-inch 3D plasma TV there are plenty of subtle forces coming from DC that shape what you see at shows like CES and at retailers like Amazon and Best Buy.  Here are just four examples.

AllVid or Why Can’t Apple, Google, Microsoft, Roku, and Boxee Boxes Get Cable Channels?

Thomas Friedman writes in his column yesterday that none of the Republican candidates has focused much on technological innovation, then proceeds to focus on the matter of “smart cities.” Friedman’s thesis is fairly straightforward: to maintain our competitive edge, we will need to keep pumping up our bandwidth, particularly in cities and towns which historically act as the incubators for The Next Big Thing and all its associated, Highly Useful Little Things. Blair Levin’s Gig U gets favorable mention, and Blair gets quoted a lot on why we want huge bandwidth in urban areas as well as making sure everyone gets access to functional broadband.

From Mountain Area Information Network, A N.C. non-profit, to Congressman Schuler.

Torrentfreak recently ran a fascinating pair of opinion pieces from two lawyers regarding whether or not someone could be liable for copyright infringement if someone else used their open WiFi connection. One attorney, Nicholas Ranallo, walks through the established law of direct and secondary copyright liability, and comes to the conclusion that generally, no, you're not liable for someone else's infringements using your connection. The other attorney, Marc Randazza, doesn't discuss copyright liability, but instead starts drawing out hypotheticals about the law of negligence.

No sooner had I posted my wonkish critique of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) score for S.911, the Rockefeller Public Safety/Spectrum Bill over on my Wetmachine blog ("Where snark meets wonk and the sparks fly!") when Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) turns around and drops a new version of the plan as part of his debt ceiling bill (Best version of Debt Ceiling bill I could find here).

To call the discussion draft on spectrum reform circulated by House Commerce Commitee Republicans "flawed" understates the matter almost to the point of absurdity.

House Republicans in advance of a Friday hearing by the Subcommittee on Communications and Technology on spectrum issues have circulated a draft spectrum bill.

A copy of the bill is here.

UPDATE: Added mention of the $35 appeal fee in the "Appeals" section below.

Today, major ISPs joined the RIAA and MPAA in announcing a joint program to deal with file-sharing. The document governing this agreement, a "Copyright Alert System," is hosted here. Public Knowledge and the Center for Democracy and Technology issued a joint statement on the CAS, available here.

Beyond that, what does this agreement represent? It extends some of the characteristics of some ISPs' existing voluntary notice-forwarding agreements, while stopping short of a three-strikes-and-you're-out procedure.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Julius Genachowski has a spectrum politics problem problem. On the one hand, he learned from last year’s D Block battle that he needs to stay aggressively on message to sell his spectrum reforms.  His every speech on spectrum therefore reads like a campaign speech for incentive auctions. ‘We have a looming spectrum crisis, we need bold action, Congress must act now to pass incentive auctions.’ But, as Genachowski has discovered, this approach can have unintended consequences. Recently, Commissioner Robert McDowell reported that this focus on incentive auctions created uncertainty in Silicon Valley over the FCC’s commitment to the TV white spaces (TVWS).