A GOP-backed measure that would provide visas for foreign graduate students who earn advanced degrees in STEM fields at American universities did not pass the House on Thursday. Thirty Democrats crossed party lines to support the measure (HR 6249), but it wasn't enough to garner the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill under suspension of the rules. The vote comes after months of negotiations over a compromise failed, prompting both parties to offer separate bills in each chamber. The Republican version of the bill would eliminate the visa lottery program and re-assign those 55,000 green cards to STEM graduates, while the Senate version introduced by Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., would preserve the visa lottery program while adding 55,000 new green cards for STEM graduates. Democrats insisted the visa lottery program, which is intended to increase the diversity of immigrants who come to the U.S., is worth preserving, while Republicans are mostly opposed to any increases in the net number of immigrants. The big losers in this case are tech companies, which have pushed for skilled immigration legislation as one of their top issues over the past decade; those companies claim the U.S. simply isn't producing enough qualified technical personnel to fill the available openings.

Lawmakers Debate Ways to Prevent International Piracy: The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a hearing Thursday where lawmakers pledged to enforce copyright protections in countries where piracy is rampant. The committee is home to many lawmakers that backed SOPA and PIPA, two controversial online piracy bills that prompted widespread online protests earlier this year over fears of censorship. Since then, the content industries and their supporters on the Hill have found that their push for stronger IP protections, which previously went largely unnoticed, have made plenty of enemies in the tech world. The entertainment industry, particularly Hollywood, once held disproportionate influence over public policy, resulting in IP laws that largely favor content creators and the Obama administration's strong push to crack down on piracy. But the SOPA battle has resulted in tech companies teaming up to combine their strength against Hollywood, shifting the balance of lobbying power back to Silicon Valley. Senate Panel Adds Email Privacy Provisions to Video Sharing Bill: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved an effort on Thursday to add email privacy provisions to a bill that would make it legal for companies to share a consumers' video viewing history, with their consent. The legislation (HR 2471) would amend a 1988 video privacy law that requires companies to obtain consumers' consent every time they share viewing information. Netflix has lobbied heavily for the changes, arguing that they would allow consumers to share their viewing choices with friends via social networks. The committee added an amendment to the bill that would require a search warrant from the government to obtain emails and other electronic messages, but postponed further action on the legislation. Senate Judiciary Confirms Antitrust Pick: The Senate Judiciary Committee approved, in a party-line vote, the nomination of William Joseph Baer on Thursday  to be assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Justice Department. Baer is likely to be confirmed by the full Senate and will take over the Antitrust Division early next year, meaning he will play a prominent role in some of the larger antitrust investigations that are reportedly taking place at the moment, such as probes of Google and the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Whether Baer takes the same aggressive stance towards monopolists as his predecessors remains to be seen, but we expect the Obama administration to stay active when it comes to antitrust cases, which have become increasingly partisan in recent years. While previously the GOP had often referred to antitrust actions as one of the few regulations they support, recently Republican lawmakers have been heavily critical of the DoJ's actions to block the AT&T/T-Mobile USA merger. FERC Creates Office to Address Cybersecurity Threats: Pam Radtke Russell reports at the Energy EB that in advance of an expected executive order on cybersecurity, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission announced Thursday it has created a new office focused on cyber and physical threats to the nation’s energy infrastructure. The new Office of Energy Infrastructure Security will identify risks to pipelines and portions of the electric grid under FERC's jurisdiction, and will look for ways to mitigate potential threats. The office will coordinate and provide assistance to federal and state agencies to find those threats. The move is not related either to the administration or congressional efforts to address cybersecurity, FERC spokeswoman Mary O’Driscoll said.