April 2010

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether California and six other states can forbid the sale to minors of violent video games that show images of humans being maimed, killed or sexually assaulted.

California's law, like all the others, has been blocked based on a free-speech challenges lodged by the video gaming industry. But in something of a surprise, the high court said it would hear California's appeal and consider reviving the laws. The move came less than a week after the justices, in a 8-1 ruling, struck down a federal law on free-speech grounds that made it a crime to sell videos of illegal acts of animal cruelty. The court's opinion gave two reasons for declaring the law unconstitutional. First, the justices said the law created a new category of unprotected expression, and second, they said it was so broad that it could reach beyond the torture of animals and apply to out-of-season hunting. While the animal cruelty case was pending, the court held on to the appeal in the California case of violent video games. Based on last week's ruling, the justices might have been expected to deny the appeal and to allow the law to expire. Instead, they voted to grant the appeal and hear the case in the fall. This suggests some justices believe that the California law could be upheld as narrowly targeted because it focuses on minors and applies to videos that "appeal to a deviant and morbid interest" in violence, as the state has argued.

A new report commissioned by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce ties strong intellectual property protections with higher wages, greater productivity and faster job creation. The study, released Monday by NDP Consulting, finds that certain "intellectual-property intensive" industries like computer manufacturing and aerospace engineering fare better in states that aggressively protect creators and their creations. But the Center's new study seems to run somewhat contrary to another report, released earlier this month by the Government Accountability Office. That study also predicted that piracy, in particular, could harm the economy, but it found the "illicit nature of counterfeiting and piracy makes estimating the economic impact of IP infringements extremely difficult...""Three widely cited U.S. government estimates of economic losses resulting from counterfeiting cannot be substantiated due to the absence of underlying studies," the GAO clarified. "Each method (of measuring) has limitations, and most experts observed that it is difficult, if not impossible, to quantify the economy-wide impacts."

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has launched a Spectrum Task Force to advance the FCC's spectrum agenda and promote collaboration across the agency. Julius Knapp, Chief of the Office of Engineering Technology, and Ruth Milkman, Chief of the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, will co-chair the cross-agency working group. The Spectrum Task Force will play a critical role in the execution of the spectrum recommendations in the National Broadband Plan, including long-term spectrum planning. The Task Force will include the Chiefs of the Enforcement, International, Media, and Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureaus, as well as the Chief of the Office of Strategic Planning and Policy Analysis.

Twice a year, in spring and fall, the Federal Communications Commission publishes in the Federal Register a list of those major items and other significant proceedings under development or review that pertain to the Regulatory Flexibility Act.