A congressional “tech mandate” on search engines to delete a domain name from search results does not result in the website disappearing. Users can and do today find their way to these websites largely without the help of search engines. Relative to the questionable efficacy of this proposed remedy, requiring search engines to delete a domain name begins a worldwide arms race of unprecedented “censorship” of the Web.

– From a letter written by Vint Cerf to Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), the House Judiciary chairman and author of SOPA, warning of the dangers of the bill

Shoot the patent lawyer.

— Vint Cerf, to an audience at the Google campus, on what advice he would give to the developer of the technology that could replace the Internet

You won’t find out on Curiosity.com, which Discovery Communications is unveiling today.

But you will find lots of other answers, some of which come from famous people, like musician Wynton Marsalis and Google “evangelist” Vint Cerf.

Q&A sites are a Web staple — see Answers.com, Yahoo Answers, and Quora, for starters — but Curiosity is an interesting take: Rather than providing crowdsourced answers to user-generated queries, the site relies on experts to respond to a selected set of questions.

Some of the experts are famous people the site has recruited, and who contribute their answers via text and video. The rest of the stuff is sourced from other Discovery networks and sites. The answer to “Can frogs fall from the sky?” for instance, comes from Discovery Channel. (Answer: Yes, more often than you’d think.)

The fact that this isn’t crowdsourced means that Curiosity will never have the search-friendly volume that sites like Answers generate, though Jeff Arnold, who built the site for Discovery, figures it will still get plenty of inbound links from Google.

The bigger idea, Arnold says, is to attract “learners” — people who will want to noodle around on the site and come back to it over time — instead of one-and-done searchers.

If Arnold’s name is familiar, there’s a reason: He’s the former CEO of WebMD and also the man behind HowStuffWorks, which he sold to Discovery in 2007. Most recently, he launched Sharecare, a Q&A site for health care, and is using the same engine to power Curiosity.

The following is an edited version of the interview.

WSJ: What is the future of the Internet?

Mr. Cerf: There are several trends which will carry the Internet over the next several years. First is mobile–mobile technology and the access to the Internet via mobile devices is becoming extremely important. We’re also seeing Internet infrastructure reach more deeply into places where there isn’t any–in places like Africa. Another trend is submarine cables and satellite capability while another trend is the ability to bring video and audio to entertainment devices in cars or homes using the Internet.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

McLaughlin wouldn’t comment to the Post and the spokesperson said his email exchanges with Google had no effect on U.S. policy, but a review of email released yesterday by the White House showed McLaughlin discussed with Googlers how to combat digital piracy, organize relief efforts for Haiti, and promote “Net Neutrality,” which Google strongly favors but which is opposed by other corners of the tech world, such as broadband providers.

In particular, Post writer Todd Shields highlights one email exchange McLaughlin had with Google veep Vint Cerf regarding net neutrality:

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Previously on Digital Daily: Google Buzz Exposes White House Deputy CTO (And Ex-Googler)

With the naming of Oracle (ORCL) President Charles Phillips to President Barack Obama’s 16-Member Economic Recovery Advisory Board a few days ago, another Silicon Valley tech mandarin fell off the list to become America’s first chief technology officer.

The job–which was promised by President Barack Obama during his campaign and underscored when he released a memorandum on transparency and open government that outlined some of the CTO duties the day after he was sworn in–remains unfilled.

In fact, so does the Federal Communications Commission chairman’s post, which insiders said a month ago would go to former IAC/InterActiveCorp (IACI) exec Julius Genachowski. But he has not been nominated yet.

Both Genachowski and Phillips were on a short list floated in November by The Wall Street Journal for CTO. The third name on it, Level 3 (LVLT) exec Don Gips, has since been named to a high-level White House job.

While the continuing economic crisis has sucked all the oxygen from the room, the Obama administration has still made a lot of promises about tech issues, from improving broadband to making the government more transparent and digital.

So, who is getting the job as head geek?

Could it be well-known entrepreneur Mitch Kapor? Google (GOOG) guru-in-resident and Internet father Vint Cerf? Or some other tech-savvy Silicon Valley figure?

BoomTown is, of course, rooting for Steve “Woz” Wozniak. Once he wins “Dancing With the Stars” this season, he will be the only nerd capable of the two-stepping one needs to survive in Washington.

Post new guesses in comments below.

And, until someone is appointed to fix the nation’s computers, here is the Jan. 21 memo Obama released about some of the tasks ahead for America’s CTO:

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES

BARACK OBAMA

[Photo of the t-shirt from ThinkGeek.]

How could a company whose Chief Internet Evangelist, Vint Cerf, once told the Senate Commerce Committee that allowing “broadband carriers to control what people see and do online would fundamentally undermine the principles that have made the Internet such a success,” approach those carriers with a proposal that would seemingly do just that?

There’s a very simple answer to that question: Google is not doing that, and reports suggesting that is are misguided. Yes, Google (GOOG) “has approached major cable and phone companies” with a plan to “place Google servers directly within the network of the service providers.” Yes, this plan would improve content delivery speeds.

And, no, doing so does not violate the concept of network neutrality. If it did, companies like Akamai and Limelight, which also have servers hosted at broadband provider facilities, would long ago have been tarred as anti-Net neutrality villains. Colocating caching servers is a common practice that improves bandwidth usage by bringing data closer to the end user. And while it will certainly make Google’s services faster and more responsive, it won’t do so at the expense of non-Google services. That would be a violation of Net neutrality.

“Some critics have questioned whether improving Web performance through edge caching–temporary storage of frequently accessed data on servers that are located close to end users–violates the concept of network neutrality,” Richard Whitt, Google’s Washington telecom and media counsel explains. “As I said last summer, this myth–which unfortunately underlies a confused story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal–is based on a misunderstanding of the way in which the open Internet works…. All of Google’s colocation agreements with ISPs–which we’ve done through projects called OpenEdge and Google Global Cache–are non-exclusive, meaning any other entity could employ similar arrangements. Also, none of them require (or encourage) that Google traffic be treated with higher priority than other traffic.”

So Google is not negotiating exclusive deals for privileged access. It is not proposing “a fast lane for its own content.” It is not seeking to prioritize its traffic in violation of the Net neutrality principles it espouses. Frankly, this story has little to do with Net neutrality at all. “Network neutrality is about the routing of packets,” Tech Liberation Front’s Tim Lee explained earlier this year when Akamai was accused of violating Net neutrality. “A network is neutral if it faithfully transmits information from one end of the network to the other and doesn’t discriminate among packets based on their contents. Neutrality is, in other words, about the behavior of the routers that move packets around the network. It has nothing to do with the behavior of servers at the edges of the network because they don’t route anyone’s packets.”

Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.”

– Excerpt from “The Blueprint for Change: Obama’s Plan for America”

The short list of candidates for President Elect Barack Obama’s cabinet-level CTO may be quite a bit shorter than Washington insiders claim. In the run-up to Tuesday’s election, Vint Cerf, Google’s (GOOG) chief Internet evangelist, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Princeton professor Ed Felten and Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeffrey Bezos were among the names of those who might be considered for the job. But it’s beginning to look more and more like the Obama camp already has someone in mind for the position: Julius Genachowski.

A longtime friend and adviser of Obama’s, Genachowski was named to the President-elect’s transition team today. And while that obviously doesn’t make him a sure thing for cabinet CTO, he’s certainly well-qualified for the job. After all, Genachowski was a former adviser to Federal Communications Commission chairs Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard. And with a lengthy stint at Internet company IAC, his acumen includes Internet business operations as well as Washington tech policy.

And then there’s this: Genachowski’s the guy who came up with the idea of cabinet-level CTO in the first place. Dibs!

Obama will appoint the nation’s first Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century. The CTO will ensure the safety of our networks and will lead an interagency effort, working with chief technology and chief information officers of each of the federal agencies, to ensure that they use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.”

– Excerpt from “The Blueprint for Change: Obama’s Plan for America”

The short list of candidates for President Elect Barack Obama’s cabinet-level CTO may be quite a bit shorter than Washington insiders claim. In the run-up to Tuesday’s election, Vint Cerf, Google’s (GOOG) chief Internet evangelist, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Steve Ballmer, Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Princeton professor Ed Felten and Amazon (AMZN) CEO Jeffrey Bezos were among the names of those who might be considered for the job. But it’s beginning to look more and more like the Obama camp already has someone in mind for the position: Julius Genachowski.

A longtime friend and adviser of Obama’s, Genachowski was named to the President-elect’s transition team today. And while that obviously doesn’t make him a sure thing for cabinet CTO, he’s certainly well-qualified for the job. After all, Genachowski was a former adviser to Federal Communications Commission chairs Reed Hundt and Bill Kennard. And with a lengthy stint at Internet company IAC, his acumen includes Internet business operations as well as Washington tech policy.

And then there’s this: Genachowski’s the guy who came up with the idea of cabinet-level CTO in the first place. Dibs!