ACM WASHINGTON UPDATE
U.S. Office of Public Policy of the Association for Computing Machinery

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May 2, 2000 Volume 4.3

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CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION

POLICY BRIEFS:
Junger Wins In Appellate Court
Topical Legislation
UCITA Update
DNSO Recommends New gTLDs

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INTRODUCTION
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The Association for Computing Machinery is an international
professional society whose 80,000 members (60,000 in the U.S.)
represent a critical mass of computer scientists in education,
industry, and government. The USACM provides a means for promoting
dialogue on technology policy issues with United States policy makers
and the general public. The WASHINGTON UPDATE reports on activities
in Washington, which may be of interest to those in the computing and
information policy communities and will highlight USACM's involvement
in many of these issues.

To subscribe to the ACM WASHINGTON UPDATE send an e-mail to
listserv@acm.org with "subscribe WASHINGTON-UPDATE" (no quotes) in the
body of the message. Back issues are available at:
http://www.acm.org/usacm

For information about joining the Association for Computing Machinery,
see: http://www.acm.org/membership/join.html

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POLICY BRIEFS
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JUNGER WINS IN APPELLATE COURT

On April 4th, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals found that the trial
court in Junger v. Daley had erred when it failed to find computer
speech sufficiently expressive for First Amendment protection.  The
effect of the decision may have a far wider impact than the encryption
deregulation. The court found that although source code was
functional it had expressive aspects, regardless of the fact that
source code is unintelligible to nonprogrammers. The court ruled that
the First Amendment had protection extended to other functional
expression like musical works.

The Court of Appeals decision is available at:
http://pacer.ca6.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=00a0117p.06

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TOPICAL LEGISLATION

Flanking the controversy of UCITA at the state level, Congress has
been considering uniform national standards for click-wrap
contracts. The proposed Electronic Signatures in Global and National
Commerce Act (H.R. 1714) would affirm the validity of online
contracts, records and notice with few exceptions. For instance, the
law would permit companies to increase interest rates on electronic
car-loan paper because it does not require secure electronic
documents.

The House version of Electronic Signatures in Global and National
Commerce Act is available at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c106:4:./temp/~c106MUlg9q::

The Senate version of Electronic Signatures in Global and National
Commerce Act is available at:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c106:4:./temp/~c106OcU9mM::

Introduced April 12, the Cyber Security Information Act of 2000 is
designed to alleviate the legal and proprietary concerns of
companies associated with giving information about security flaws.
The Cyber Security Information Act of 2000 provides another FOIA
exemption and would prevent information that was shared on government
request from being used in any civil lawsuits against the provider of
the information. This law would shield software manufacturers from
plaintiff attempts to use provided information provided to the
government as evidence in a lawsuit.

Although H.R. 4246 has not been entered into the THOMAS database,
the Congressional Record has an excerpt of its introduction.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r106:E12AP0-155:

The Federation of American Scientists version of the CSIA is available at:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2000/cybersec.html

Criticism of the CSIA is available at:
http://www.privacyplace.com/viewpoint/smith5.html

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UCITA UPDATE

Maryland Governor Glendening signed UCITA into law on April 26. The
law has been introduced in Iowa, Delaware and Washington, DC and has
passed in Virginia and Maryland. However, Iowa passed a
UCITA-shield law that prevents the application of UCITA laws on Iowa
residents.

A scorecard for the progression of UCITA through the states is available at:
http://www.UCITAnews.com

A list state information about UCITA is available at:
http://www.UCITAnews.com/resources.htm

The ACM's page on UCITA is available at:
http://www.acm.org/usacm/copyright

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DNSO RECOMMENDS NEW gTLDS

Working Group C of the Domain Name Supporting Organization issued a
recommendation to the DNSO to expand the number of new generic top
level domain names. Working Group C, with a broad mix of individuals
and representatives of commercial and noncommercial organizations,
specifically recommended the introduction of at least 6-10 new gTLDs
during a "testbed" period of the initial roll-out. On April 19 in
its teleconference meeting, the DNSO Names Council reviewed the
Working Group C Report, but failed to adopt its consensus points in
full. While the Names Council agreed to support new gTLDs, its
resolution only calls only for the "measured and responsible"
introduction of new gTLDs -- generally viewed by the ICANN community
to mean one or two new gTLDs -- not the 6-10 gTLDs recommended by
the Working Group C.

Given the pent-up demand for new gTLDs in both the commercial and
noncommercial communities expressed at the Cairo ICANN meeting, the
rejection of the Working Group C recommendation is viewed with
surprise and concern by many seeking introduction of new gTLDs for
personal, political and other forms of noncommercial speech.

The Names Council also put out for public notice the report of
Working Group B, which rejected the proposed Famous Marks list
recommended by the World Intellectual Property Organization, and
instead introduced a period for "preregistration for all trademark
owners" for new commercial gTLDs. The Names Council announced
that it will provide supplemental recommendations to the ICANN Board
during the week of May 15, 2000, and invites the public to submit
comments on the report until May 10.

The Names Council report is available at:
http://www.dnso.org/dnso/notes/20000419.NCwgb-comments.html

ICANN's report on Working Group C's recommendations are available at:
http://www.icann.org/dnso/gtld-topic-20apr00.htm

The ACM's page on Internet Governance and ICANN is available at:
http://www.acm.org/serving/IG.html

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Washington Update is a biweekly publication of the U.S. Public Policy
Office of the Association for Computing. http://www.acm.org/usacm.