Venture capitalists with more than $30 million in assets would have to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission if Sen. Jack Reed's (D-R.I.) forthcoming amendment becomes law.

According to reports, Reed hopes to tack the proposal onto his chamber's financial regulatory reform bill once it reaches the Senate floor in the coming days. The amendment mostly mirrors a bill Reed introduced last year.

The chamber's current financial reform legislation, shepherded by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) would mostly target its registration requirement at hedge funds managing more than $100 million, while sparing similarly sized private equity and venture capital funds from strict new rules.

By contrast, Reed's bill would lower that threshold to $30 million and require all three pots of money to open their books to the SEC. The provision stems from Reed's belief, widely shared in both chambers of commerce, that hedge funds, private equity and venture capital together pose systemic risks to the U.S. economy.

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We caught up with three Washington telecom lawyers who've been following the net neutrality issue from the beginning.

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FRIDAY BLOG ROUNDUP:
The FCC wants to test broadband speed - Stacey Higginbotham, GigaOM
Free iPhone apps? There's an ad for that - Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired
FCC's McDowell: Hands off Internet - Cecilia Kang, Post Tech
Bush throws cyber-dissidence conference - Nancy Scola, techPresident
Chinese shoppers buying grey market iPads - AFP
Cyberbullying on decrease, despite panic - Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt

OTHER STORIES FROM THE HILL:
U.S. partners with UK firm to measure fixed-line broadband - The Hill
OMB plans to release Web cookies policy - The Hill
Job loss a serious issue in NASA budget changes - The Hill
Spectrum, caller ID bills to House floor next week - The Hill

The FCC announced today that it has selected SamKnows Limited, a London-based firm that measures and analyzes broadband speeds, to do just that for U.S. Internet users.

Giving consumers more information about their broadband connections is a key theme of the National Broadband Plan. The FCC says arming consumers with moe ways to measure and understand the services they receive will help keep the broadband providers accountable.

A few weeks ago, the FCC set up a tool on its Web site to let Americans measure their connection speeds. But too many variables play into those results to get an accurate reading of real-time speeds.

So, after soliciting bids from third-party firms to perform independent tests of broadband services, the FCC chose SamKnows Limited, which recently completed a similar project for Ofcom, the FCC's counterpart in the United Kingdom.

"In a couple of weeks, we will be asking for consumers from across the country to voluntarily install hardware in their homes (on an opt-in basis) that is capable of measuring broadband performance," wrote FCC advisor Dave Vorhaus in a blog.  "The measurements will give us results across a broad swath of providers, service tiers and geographic areas."

The FCC says it will release a public notice in the next few days to detail SamKnows' technical approach and methodology.

Alex Salter, CEO of SamKnows, said, "We’re delighted to be building on the success of the work we’ve undertaken in the UK over the past three years where we’ve uncovered a clear discrepancy between what the ISP's are saying and what the consumer is actually receiving."

Follow the company on Twitter: @samknows.

The Office of Management and Budget still plans to unveil new rules that would allow federal agencies to incorporate tracking cookies into their websites

Current law bans the use of those tools, which track a user's browsing history on a particular website and help webmasters better individualize a page's content. Those so-called cookies are ubiquitous in the private sphere, but have remained blocked with few exceptions at the federal level since 2000 because of privacy concerns.

The White House's top information officer, Vivek Kundra, previously told NextGov that OMB would release a more relaxed guidance on the use of cookies this Wednesday, just in time for the second deadline in President Barack Obama's Open Government Directive.

However, OMB never released those rules. An unnamed spokesperson later told Congress Daily that Kundra actually misspoke about the deadline.

But a spokesman for the Office of Science and Technology Policy told The Hill on Friday that the delay does not now mean OMB has abandoned its plans to change federal cookie rules.

"Work is well underway on a new cookies approach, but it isn’t ready for release yet," the spokesman said. He did not provide a date by which the guidance would be ready.

Still, OMB and its top regulatory arm, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affars, did release a host of new rules and regulations meant to clarify concerns about the federal bureaucracy's use of the Web.

Among the guidances released Wednesday was a memo clarifying a litany of ambiguities stemming from the federal Paperwork Reduction Act, which typically requires agencies to spend months obtaining approval before launching information collection efforts online.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on Thursday expressed concern about the proposal to end the Constellation program.

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Bills that would study available radio spectrum and set new caller ID rules will greet House lawmakers during their first week back from spring recess.

Both the Radio Spectrum Inventory Act, piloted by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif), and the Truth in Caller ID Act, spearheaded by Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), could come up for their respective floor votes as early as next Wednesday, according to a tentative schedule released on Thursday by House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer's (D-Md.) office.

Waxman's bill, which cleared his House Energy and Commerce Committee with bipartisan support in early March, would direct the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the FCC to study radio spectrum and report elements of it that remain under-utilized.

The goal is to "make better use of spectrum frequencies through sharing and reallocation and will encourage both innovation and competitiveness," Waxman wrote in a post to The Hill's Congress Blog. A version of that proposal piloted by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) is still pending action in the Senate.

Meanwhile, Engel's legislation would prohibit companies from faking their caller ID data in an attempt to deceive consumers -- a process known as "spoofing."

The congressman's legislation also cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee earlier last month with both Democratic and GOP support, after months of wrangling over concerns that the bill's anti-spoofing rules could hamper federal investigators who hide their caller ID data to throw off possible suspects.

The State Department is stepping up its efforts to protect U.S. intellectual property around the world.

Robert D. Hormats, Under Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, said this week in an official blog post that he is working closely with the Obama administration's new Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator, Victoria Espinel, to develop a strategy to better protect U.S. interests overseas.

He also said the State Department is involved in government-to-government training programs for judges, prosecutors and customs and border officials in key countries.

"Over the past several weeks, I have met with representatives of numerous internet and technology companies, the entertainment industry--including unions representing creative industry workers--agribusiness, pharmaceutical companies and others in the private sector," he said in the blog. "All mentioned the importance of intellectual property protection."

He also said he is asked repeatedly how the State Department can help to protect U.S. interests.

THURSDAY BLOG ROUNDUP:
Powell warns FCC not to 'stretch' authority - Juliana Gruenwald, Tech Daily Dose
Is Net neutrality dead? - Marguerite Reardon, Cnet
FCC rolls out broadband plan, weighs response to court - Cecilia Kang, Post Tech
UK's new digital economy bill one step closer to law - Nancy Scola, techPresident
U.S. finances two projects to combat distracted driving - Matt Richtel, Bits
Multitasking (finally), iAd and more to come in iPhone 4.0 - Chris Foresman, ars technica
Tech recovery under way, says Forrester - Barbara Ortutay, AP
Are there more copyright 'pre-settlement' groups in U.S.? - Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt

OTHER STORIES FROM THE HILL:
FCC releases 'broadband action agenda' - The Hill
Issa presses White House Web chief on Google ties - The Hill
Federal IT professionals fear cyberattack is iminnent - The Hill
House subcommittee to hold hearing on broadband plan - The Hill