Politico - Goodlatte to Tackle Internet Regs

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By Tony Romm

The House Judiciary Committee will play a leading role this year in top tech debates including net neutrality, patent reform and copyright enforcement.

Leading the charge is Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the newly reconstituted panel on Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet. Goodlatte, also the co-chair of the Congressional Internet Caucus, recently told POLITICO that his new panel plans to break out of the gate quickly with hearings to examine the "competitiveness of various industries," particularly those on the Web.

Near the top of Goodlatte's list is the Federal Communications Commission's new open Internet rules that requires network operators to treat all Web traffic equally. As Goodlatte's Republican colleagues on the Energy and Commerce Committee lambaste the new regulations -- rules that Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.) has promised to repeal -- the Virginia GOPer said his panel is also eying the FCC's rules.

"I expect we will want to play a very significant role in making that challenge," said the congressman, adding the nation's anti-trust rules, with some modification, could best keep Internet providers in check.

"It's throwing the book at the bad guys, without regulating everybody else on the Internet," Goodlatte said of an anti-trust approach, which he first proposed more than a decade ago.

This year marks the return of Judiciary's more robust intellectual property and Internet-focused panel. In 2006, House Democrats shifted the subcommittee's focus mostly to anti-trust issues, concerning many technology stakeholders.

With the subcommittee's renewed interest in Web-related issues, tech leaders are bullish about new chairman Goodlatte, who is familiar with Internet debates, as well as ranking member Mel Watt (D-N.C.), who served previously on the old IP panel.

Those industry players are hoping the subcommittee will wade into a number of big-ticket tech reforms -- such as a revision to a 1986 statute that determines how law enforcement can collect information on the Web, and a new regime for enforcing the rights of creators and innovators at home and abroad.

Patent reform is also on stakeholders' agenda, and the issue is set to come up Tuesday as the panel holds its first hearing of the new session.

Goodlatte told POLITICO in a interview that he sees "a lot of common ground on reform" with his Democratic colleagues -- including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), who's reviving debate on his bipartisan patent reform bill at a hearing on Thursday.

While he has a keen interest in Internet issues, Goodlatte's new subcommittee focuses mainly on intellectual property. The new chairman declined to comment on a pending Senate effort, also spearheaded by Leahy, to clamp down on domain names serviced abroad that offer illegally copied songs and movies. But he promised to hold hearings as Congress seeks to protect the rights of creators while clamping down on countries like China, where Goodlatte said IP infringement remains rampant.

"I think there definitely needs to be more done domestically and internationally, because clearly the theft of IP is a huge problem," he said, not long after meeting with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who told the congressman that additional copyright protections would help the software giant create jobs.

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