Critics of the Supreme Court's once archaic website are bound to appreciate the high bench's new online presence, debuted Friday.

The new site "has an updated and more user-friendly design," court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said Friday in a press release.

Aesthetics aside, the new page (left) also includes a new oral argument calendar, better graphics, robust historic archives and improved search capabilities, she said. Additionally, many of the site's  features -- bar admission forms, transcripts, rules and other documents -- are still available online.

Ultimately, the redesign corresponds with the Supreme Court's newly gained stewardship over its own online presence.

Previously, the Government Printing Office managed the page (right) -- a responsibility the office has had since the site was created 10 years ago, according to the bench.

Now, the Supreme Court will manage its own pages, thanks to new funding authorized as part of the 2010 budget.

Google may reveal as soon as next Monday whether it will cease its search business in China, according to reports.

An unnamed company source told the China Business News on Friday the announcement next week was imminent. However, Google officials declined to confirm or deny reports to The Hill, noting they would not comment in advance about discussions with the Chinese government.

Separately, an independent contractor also told the newspaper that Google would cease search operations as early as April 10 -- almost three months after the search company first discovered hackers allegedly based in China targeted human rights activists using its Gmail service.

"I have received information saying that Google will leave China on April 10, but this information has not at present been confirmed by Google," the unnamed agent told the newspaper.

Nevertheless, both yet unconfirmed bits of news seem to contradict recent reports that Google and China were nearing an amenable resolution to their recent string of disputes.

On the surface, their standoff stems from a January 12 cyberattack on Google, which China has routinely denied it either authorized or assisted.

But the security breach has also re-opened countless other, once-closed wounds in the search engine's tenuous relationship with Beijing, especially the debate over China's strict Internet censorship rules.

Google announced almost immediately after discovering the January cyberattack that it would cease to filter its search results, in stark violation of Chinese law.

Ultimately, the company has yet to formalize its policy shift. But Google executives have nonetheless stressed they have no plans to renege on that decision -- even if that meant Google had to withdraw from China's lucrative search market indefinitely.

Rep. Cliff Steans (R-Fl.) is now backtracking from his early criticisms of the Federal Communications Commission's new National Broadband Plan.

Initially, Stearns, the ranking member on the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, expressed concerns the plan might be "littered with hidden agendas" that would ultimately "exacerbate the uncertainty and hinder investment."

In a letter to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, sent days before the plan was delivered to Congress, Stearns questioned whether the plan would be a "political document" that would pave the way for net neutrality and Title II reclassification provisions to become law with relative ease.

But during an interview with C-SPAN's "The Communicators" this week, slated to air this Saturday, Stearns admitted the National Broadband Plan included no such items.

“I have to be honest with you, there’s nothing in this national broadband plan talking about that, which is good news, so I’m sort of relieved,” he said, adding he was still skeptical of the plan's potential costs.

The congressman later added he agreed with the plan's proposal to reform the Universal Service Fund -- a pot of federal dollars slated for expanding telecommunication services to under-served areas.

The FCC said it hopes to use that money to expand broadband services, too, which current law prohibits. Stearns said he supported that idea, signaling a key area of agreement with subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher (D-Va.)

THURSDAY BLOG ROUNDUP:
Newmark on the Web's next big problem - Matthew Ingram, GigaOM
YouTube defense: Viacom 'secretly uploaded' content - Eric Schonfeld, Tech Crunch
Microsoft blasts Google's ad policies - Juliana Gruenwald, Tech Daily Dose
Join the National Day of Unplugging - Tanya Schevitz, The Huffington Post
Like American Idol, only for earmark requests - Nancy Scola, techPresident
York, Apple director and ex-IBM exec, dies - Doron Levin, Bloomberg
FCC finds fastest broadband in D.C., N.Y. - Cecilia Kang, Post Tech
EU proposing to make inducement a criminal offense - Mike Masnick, Tech Dirt
HTC: We're ready for big fight with Apple - Chris Foresman, ars technica

OTHER STORIES FROM THE HILL:
FCC seeking public comment on Comcast-NBC merger - The Hill
Three GOPers signal early opposition to parts of broadband plan - The Hill
Tech lobbying soars in 2009 - The Hill
YouTube fires back at Viacom - The Hill

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association on Thursday offered its endorsement of a cybersecurity bill introduced this week in the Senate.

In a statement this afternoon, NCTA President and CEO Kyle McSlarrow praised the legislation for creating incentives for "government and private sector networks to work together in identifying critical infrastructure and developing cyber emergency response plans."

That show of support is perhaps a good, early sign for Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine,) the legislation's authors. The two lawmakers -- who serve as chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Commerce Committee -- redrafted their cybersecurity bill and re-introduced it on Wednesday in response to intense industry criticism.

It is unclear how other lawmakers and trade groups might react to the bill, which would overhaul the country's piecemeal cybersecurity framework. But NCTA's McSlarrow praised it Thursday and promised to support the legislation in the coming months.

"We applaud Sens. Rockefeller and Snowe for moving ahead on legislation to address the critical security of our nation's cyber networks," McSlarrow said in a statement.

"Passage of the Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity Act is a necessary and important step in protecting our national infrastructure and we look forward to working together with the Committee as this bill moves forward," he added.

That means the industry has devoted more than $1 billion to federal lobbying over the past decade.

Read more...

A YouTube executive on Thursday stressed the video site would "cease to exist in [its] current form if Viacom and others have their way in their lawsuits."

On the same day a judge unsealed documents from that copyright infringement case, filed in 2007, Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine wrote on the company's blog that Viacom itself was responsible for the many videos illegally uploaded to YouTube.

Levine pointed to a series of court documents that show top Viacom executives using the video sharing site to promote their own shows, only to later demand that YouTube take the videos down.

YouTube said it honored those countless requests, as federal law specifies. But Levine added the company was unable to take down every video because YouTube could not "have known which Viacom content was and was not authorized to be on the site."

"But Viacom thinks YouTube should somehow have figured it out," Levine continued. "The legal rule that Viacom seeks would require YouTube -- and every Web platform -- to investigate and police all content users upload, and would subject those web sites to crushing liability if they get it wrong."

Levine thus repeated YouTube's argument that the court uphold the "safe haven" provision of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which protects third parties from copyright infringement claims, provided they take the illegal content down when asked.

Read more...

A trio of Texas Republicans on Wednesday railed on the Federal Communications Commission's newly released National Broadband Plan.

Each told the San Angelo Standard-Times they had serious reservations about the report -- a set of suggestions, most of which require congressional approval, that the FCC delivered to lawmakers on Tuesday.

Their dissent perhaps foretells some of the difficulties FCC proponents and broadband enthusiasts in Congress may face in the coming months.

Rep. Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) told reporters he doubted the need for the federal government to lead broadband expansion and invest heavily in private infrastructure.

“I have concerns about the appropriate role of the federal government in building broadband infrastructure,” Thornberry said. “It may actually hinder other efforts if the federal government takes control.”

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-Texas) also derided the plan, suggesting to the newspaper that funds appropriate for transforming the National Broadband Plan's suggestions into law could be misspent, much as broadband dollars in the 2009 federal stimulus went to "waste."

“While I believe expansion of broadband access to underserved areas is beneficial, I am concerned the $7.2 billion included in the ‘economic stimulus’ for broadband loans and grants last year will be subject to waste and mismanagement as we have seen in other stimulus projects,” the congressman said.

Neugebauer later expressed concern the proposal could mean trouble for broadcasters. His comments seemed to echo those of FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, who said Tuesday she was "very concerned" with the plan's possible impacts on local news.

However, Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas) questioned whether broadband expansion was needed in the first place. 

The FCC has routinely stressed its goal is to ensure universal access to broadband, delivering high-speed connectivity to 90 percent of U.S. households by 2020. But Conaway signaled Wednesday that he hardly shared the agency's urgency on the broadband front.

“Nobody has a ‘right’ to the broadband, but it would be nice if everybody did have it,” Conaway told the newspaper.

The Federal Communications Commission is now soliciting public comment on the proposed mega-merger of Comcast and NBC Universal -- the first formal step in the agency's thorough review of the cable giants' proposed deal.

FCC officials filed their notice for public input on Thursday, a week after Chairman Julius Genachowski testified about the merger before the Senate Commerce Committee. Ultimately, the FCC's commissioners and the Department of Justice must both approve the merger before Comcast and NBC can proceed.

Comments in this stage of the review are due to the agency by May 3, with responses to those petitions to deny and replies to opposing opinions due on June 2 and June 17, respectively, the FCC announced Thursday.

FCC commissioners have so far remained mostly mum on the proposed NBC-Comcast merger, choosing instead to emphasize generally that they will only approve the deal if it protects consumers and promotes competition. 

“Our focus will be on making sure that those values, those goals are achieved,” Genachowski told the Senate Commerce Committee last week.

By contrast, countless interest groups and a growing chorus of lawmakers have railed on the deal since Comcast and NBC announced the joint venture in December 2009.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) last week expressed concern that the merger would give Comcast "leverage to charge higher prices for broadband and cable content to other cable, satellite, telephone, and Internet companies providing competing services." That would likely translate to higher monthly rates for consumers, he said.

Meanwhile, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) said last week he feared the merger would harm independent programmers. A contingent of other lawmakers vocalized concerns last month that the deal could also harm Spanish-language programming, considering NBC owns Telemundo.

However, Comcast and NBC executives have long dismissed those criticisms, stressing their proposed merger would instead benefit consumers.

"I don't think anything specific to this merger would incentivize us to raise prices." Comcast Chief Executive Brian Roberts told the Senate Commerce Committee last Thursday.