Today marks the 15^th anniversary of the launch of the Technology Liberation Front. This blog has evolved through the years and served as a home for more than 50 writers who have shared their thoughts about the intersection of technological innovation and public policy.

Many TLF contributors have moved on to start other blogs or write for other publications. Others have gone into other professions where they simply can’t blog anymore. Still others now just publish their daily musings on Twitter, which has had a massive substitution effect on long-form blogging more generally. In any event, I’m pleased that so many of them had a home here at some point over the past 15 years.

What has unified everyone who has written for the TLF is (1) a strong belief in technological innovation as a method of improving the human condition and (2) a corresponding concern about impediments to technological change. Our contributors might best be labeled “rational optimists,” to borrow Matt Ridley’s phrase, or “dynamists,” to use Virginia Postrel’s term. In a recent essay, I sketched out the core tenets of a dynamist, rational optimist worldview, arguing that we:

• believe there is a symbiotic relationship between innovation, economic growth, pluralism, and human betterment, but also acknowledge the various challenges sometimes associated with technological change;
• look forward to a better future and reject overly nostalgic accounts of some supposed “good ‘ol days” or bygone better eras;
• base our optimism on facts and historical analysis, not on blind faith in any particular viewpoint, ideology, or gut feeling;
• support practical, bottom-up solutions to hard problems through ongoing trial-and-error experimentation, but are not wedded to any one process to get the job done;
• appreciate entrepreneurs for their willingness to take risks and try new things, but do not engage in hero worship of any particular individual, organization, or particular technology.

Applying that vision, the contributors here through the years have unabashedly defended a pro-growth, pro-progress, pro-freedom vision, but they have also rejected techno-utopianism or gadget-worship of any sort. Rational optimists are anti-utopians, in fact, because they understand that hard problems can only be solved through ongoing trial and error, not wishful thinking or top-down central planning.

Wisdom and progress are directly correlated with society’s willingness to experiment with new ideas, tolerate change, and learn from failures. Writing in 1960, Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek wisely observed that many intellectuals, “ignore the importance of the freedom of doing things” and that “[f]reedom of action, even in humble things, is as important as freedom of thought.”  The two are inextricably linked, in fact. Technology is simply a means to an end and that end is material progress and human flourishing. The goal is to expand the range of life-enriching innovations available to people while also empowering them pursue lives of their own choosing. But experimentation and freedom of action are absolutely crucial if we hope to achieve that end.

When thinking about public policy, “freedom of doing things” can be reconceptualized as “permissionless innovation.” Generally speaking, innovation and innovators should be treated as innocent until proven guilty. When forces—governmental or otherwise—conspire to constrain the general freedom to innovate, they are, in reality, constraining human creativity and learning, thus limiting our efforts to improve the world around us.

There can be no greater revolution than the revolution to liberate the human mind. It is peaceful, collaborative revolution aimed at breaking the chains that bind our ingenuity and which curtail our ability to pursue happiness however each of us define it. Accordingly, removing barriers to people building more and better tools to improve their lot in life has been a priority of much of the writing here on the TLF.

When searching for a quote to end my next book, I settled on one from Samuel C. Florman, an engineer who throughout his life rose to the challenge of defending technological innovation with remarkable gusto. Commenting on the swelling ranks of “antitechnologists” he saw around him a generation ago, Florman perfectly identified the profound danger of giving up on finding new and better ways of doing things. “By turning our backs on technological change, we would be expressing our satisfaction with current world levels of hunger, disease, and privation,” he argued. “Further, we must press ahead in the name of the human adventure. Without experimentation and change our existence would be a dull business.”

Defending that “human adventure” has been the goal of all those contributing to the Tech Liberation Front over the past 15 years because experimentation and change are the key to our very survival as a species.  I’m looking forward to seeing what the next 15 years of this adventure brings and hope to work with others here and elsewhere to make sure that all citizens of the world get to enjoy the fruits of human ingenuity and technological creativity.  

Yesterday was National Lemonade Day. Over at the Mercatus Bridge blog, Jennifer Skees and I used the opportunity to highlight the increasing regulatory crackdown on kids operating ventures without first seeking the proper permits from local authorities. We ask, “wouldn’t it be better to teach them the value of hard work and entrepreneurial effort instead of threatening them with penalties for not getting costly permits to do basic jobs?” Here’s our answer:

Today is National Lemonade Day. For many Americans a lemonade stand was their first experience in entrepreneurship. But unfortunately, this time honored tradition that teaches the value of hard work, entrepreneurship, and innovation may be under threat from overzealous grown-ups.

Should we really force kids to get licenses to start lemonade stands, sell bottles of water outside a ballpark, or mow lawns for a little extra money? And wouldn’t it be better to teach them the value of hard work and entrepreneurial effort instead of threatening them with penalties for not getting costly permits to do basic jobs?

Recent news stories have highlighted examples of kids being confronted with local regulations that essential tell them not to be entrepreneurial until they’ve gotten someone’s blessing–or else face fines or other penalties for those efforts.

Out in San Francisco, for example, a neighbor threatened to call the police on an eight-year-old girl selling water to raise money for a trip to Disneyland after her mother had lost her job. The neighbor berated the little girl for “illegally selling water without a permit.” Luckily, national outrage seems to have fallen in favor of this rogue entrepreneur instead of “Permit Patty.” But this is far from an isolated case.

Another story went viral earlier this year involving kids and lemonade stands. Country Time lemonade pledged to pay the fines received or the permit cost for children’s lemonade stands. Who thought we’d reach the day when we need a Lemonade Legal Defense Fund? But just prior to the launch, Stapleton, Colorado police were called to shut down the lemonade stand of  four and six year-old brothersfor failing to have a business license. Kids who probably can’t read or fill out the necessary forms are expected to obtain a formal license for a tradition that dates back about 120 years.

Kids are confronted with other meddlesome local permitting rules even when they aren’t selling food or beverages. The town of Gardendale, Alabama made news last year after attempting to charge a teenager $110 for a business license for mowing neighbors’ lawns during the summer to earn money for a mission trip. A local professional lawn service had apparently pressured local parents about the need for kids to have licenses to mow. The city later clarified teenagers would be allowed to mow lawns for a little extra money without needing a license to do so as long as the work was part-time and they were students.

Should we have expected kids to seek permits in these cases? Some sticklers might say yes, we should. After all, it’s the law!

But complying with the law is costly in two important ways. First, the actual fees can be exorbitant. In San Francisco, for example, the filing fee for a “peddler’s permit” costs $330-$525 depending on whether you are selling non-food or food items. Then, if you get the city’s blessing, you have to pay an additional $166-$624 annually for a license to serve the community. It’s safe to say that most kids and their parents probably could not afford that expense.

But the more important cost might be the mental transaction costs or general hassles associated with navigating the labyrinth of red tape that entrepreneurs must confront to get new ventures started. The very act of going through a laborious, confusing, and time-consuming permitting process will be too much for many to bear, especially kids. When a mother tried to get a license for a lemonade stand in Texas, she was told that an inspection by the health department would also be necessary because of the “bacteria that can grow in lemonade.” As a result some children and parents have gotten creative by not “selling” these dangerous products but instead offering it “free” but accepting donations.

The costs of permitting have important real-world implications. They are sending a clear message to kids and their parents: Don’t even bother trying to be entrepreneurial unless you are willing to deal with a world of regulatory pain. Worse yet, to the extent they learn anything by attempting to comply with such silly rules, it’s probably only a lesson in how to manipulate a political process for your own gain. All too often, many incumbent businesses who already worked their way through the system figured out how to exploit it for their own gain to keep competitors out. They then become the guardians of the licensing systems

This is what Philip K. Howard, chair of Common Good, calls this  The Death of Common Sense, in a book of the same name. “Like sediment in a harbor,” he argues, rules and regulations in the US have accumulated, “until most productive activity requires slogging through a legal swamp. “It’s degenerative,” he says. Indeed, laws and regulations like these sap the entrepreneurial spirit of young Americans and discourage them from taking the initiative and learning important skills they will use throughout their lives.

A common refrain of just about every generation of adults is that the younger generation doesn’t work as hard as their generation did. Such “kids-these-days!” complaints are almost always off-base. But they are particularly outlandish when it’s the adults who are acting juvenile by refusing to reform illogical and costly rules that do nothing to protect the public but make it harder for young people to pursue their dreams and engage in entrepreneurial activities.

We shouldn’t actively encourage kids to break the law, of course. But what happens when rules and regulations utterly defy common sense, as these and countless others do today? Perhaps a little “evasive” entrepreneurialism and civil disobedience is the answer. Luckily, public interest law firms like the Institute for Justice, the Goldwater Institute, and the Pacific Legal Foundation already exist to defend our general right to earn a living. Sometimes it will be necessary to push our luck against what Goldwater’s Timothy Sandefur calls “the Permission Society” if we hope to get policymakers to wake up to the illogical and unfair nature of archaic old licensing regimes.

Luckily some states have started to realize that these burdensome licensing and permitting requirements may have gone too far and at least in some cases are not serving their original purposes. For example, Utah recently passed a law that exempts lemonade stands and other similar child-run businesses from permitting requirements. And recently health inspectors helped a Minneapolis 13-year-old get the necessary permits and paid the costs of the licenses to keep his hotdog stand open. But on a broader front, the right to earn a living is tied both to the value of entrepreneurship and the right to innovate. It is far too easy for incumbents to use licensing schemes to keep out new innovations like ride-sharing and home-sharing. Instead of focusing on raising requirements to prevent new innovations and protect existing industries, we should look to the right to earn a living as a way to even the playing field by reducing the burdens for everyone.

Kids are used to asking permission from their parents, but what are we teaching them when every attempt to do a job or earn a little money also requires endless permission slips from the government? Studies have shown that helicopter parenting makes children struggle emotionally and behaviorally later in life. Imagine how much worse that problem is when the government serves as the ultimate helicopter parent, demanding constant permission to engage in any kind entrepreneurial acts? It seems if we want to stay a nation of innovators and entrepreneurs, the least we can do is tell the kids to stick to asking “Mother may I?” of just their mothers.

Additional Reading:

• Jennifer Skees, “Do You Need a License to Innovate?”, The Bridge , June 29, 2018.
• Adam Thierer, “Making the World Safe for More Moonshots,” The Bridge , February 5, 2018.
• Jennifer Skees & Trace Mitchell, “Will The Electric Scooter Movement Lose Its Charge?” The Bridge , July 18, 2018.
• Jennifer Skees, “Should You Be Able to Fix Your Own iPhone,” Plain Text , June 18, 2018.
• Andrea O’Sullivan & Adam Thierer, “3D Printers, Evasive Entrepreneurs and the Future of Tech Regulation,” The Bridge, August 1, 2018,
• Adam Thierer, “The Pacing Problem and the Future of Technology Regulation,” The Bridge , August 8, 2018. 
• Adam Thierer, “Evasive Entrepreneurialism and Technological Civil Disobedience: Basic Definitions,” The Bridge , July 20, 2018.

Over at the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Privacy Perspectives blog, I have two “Dispatches from CES 2015” up. (#1 & #2) While I was out in Vegas for the big show, I had a chance to speak on a panel entitled, “Privacy and the IoT: Navigating Policy Issues.” (Video can be found here. It’s the second one on the video playlist.) Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairwoman Edith Ramirez kicked off that session and stressed some of the concerns she and others share about the Internet of Things and wearable technologies in terms of the privacy and security issues they raise.

Before and after our panel discussion, I had a chance to walk the show floor and take a look at the amazing array of new gadgets and services that will soon hitting the market. A huge percentage of the show floor space was dedicated to IoT technologies, and wearable tech in particular. But the show also featured many other amazing technologies that promise to bring consumers a wealth of new benefits in coming years. Of course, many of those technologies will also raise privacy and security concerns, as I noted in my two essays for IAPP. The first of my dispatches focuses primarily on the Internet of Things and wearable technologies that I saw at CES.  In my second dispatch, I discuss the privacy and security implications of the increasing miniaturization of cameras, drone technologies, and various robotic technologies (especially personal care robots).

I open the first column by noting that “as I was walking the floor at this year’s massive CES 2015 tech extravaganza, I couldn’t help but think of the heartburn that privacy professionals and advocates will face in coming years.” And I close the second dispatch by concluding that, “The world of technology is changing rapidly and so, too, must the role of the privacy professional. The technologies on display at this year’s CES 2015 make it clear that a whole new class of concerns are emerging that will require IAPP members to broaden their issue set and find constructive solutions to the many challenges ahead.” Jump over to the Privacy Perspectives blog to read more.

Robert Scoble, Startup Liaison Officer at Rackspace discusses his recent book, Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy, co-authored by Shel Israel. Scoble believes that over the next five years we’ll see a tremendous rise in wearable computers, building on interest we’ve already seen in devices like Google Glass. Much like the desktop, laptop, and smartphone before it, Scoble predicts wearable computers represent the next wave in groundbreaking innovation. Scoble answers questions such as: How will wearable computers help us live our lives? Will they become as common as the cellphone is today? Will we have to sacrifice privacy for these devices to better understand our preferences? How will sensors in everyday products help companies improve the customer experience?

Download

Related Links

• Age of Context: Mobile, Sensors, Data and the Future of Privacy , Amazon
• Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, Amazon
• The Rackspace Blog & Newsroom, Scoble

Last month, it was my great pleasure to serve as a “provocateur” at the IAPP’s (Int’l Assoc. of Privacy Professionals) annual “Navigate” conference. The event brought together a diverse audience and set of speakers from across the globe to discuss how to deal with the various privacy concerns associated with current and emerging technologies.

My remarks focused on a theme I have developed here for years: There are no simple, silver-bullet solutions to complex problems such as online safety, security, and privacy. Instead, only a “layered” approach incorporating many different solutions–education, media literacy, digital citizenship, evolving society norms, self-regulation, and targeted enforcement of existing legal standards–can really help us solve these problems. Even then, new challenges will present themselves as technology continues to evolve and evade traditional controls, solutions, or norms. It’s a never-ending game, and that’s why education  must be our first-order solution. It better prepares us for an uncertain future. (I explained this approach in far more detail in this law review article.)

Anyway, if you’re interested in an 11-minute video of me saying all that, here ya go. Also, down below I have listed several of the recent essays, papers, and law review articles I have done on this issue.

Some of My Recent Essays on Privacy & Data Collection

Testimony / Filings:

• Senate Testimony on Privacy, Data Collection & Do Not Track – April 24, 2013
• Comments of the Mercatus Center to the FTC in Privacy & Security Implications of the Internet of Things
• Mercatus filing to FAA on commercial domestic drones

Law Review Articles:

• “The Pursuit of Privacy in a World Where Information Control is Failing” – Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy
• “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle” – Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology
• “A Framework for Benefit-Cost Analysis in Digital Privacy Debates” – George Mason University Law Review

Blog posts:

• A Better, Simpler Narrative for U.S. Privacy Policy – March 19, 2013
• On the Pursuit of Happiness… and Privacy – March 31, 2013
• Let’s Not Place All Our Eggs in the Do Not Track Basket (IAPP Privacy perspectives blog)
•  Can We Adapt to the Internet of Things? – June 19, 2013 (IAPP Privacy perspectives blog)
• Isn’t “Do Not Track” Just a “Broadcast Flag” Mandate for Privacy? – Feb. 20, 2011
• Two Paradoxes of Privacy Regulation – Aug. 25, 2010
• Privacy as an Information Control Regime: The Challenges Ahead – Nov. 13, 2010
• When It Comes to Information Control, Everybody Has a Pet Issue & Everyone Will Be Disappointed – Apr. 29, 2011
• Lessons from the Gmail Privacy Scare of 2004 – March 25, 2011
• Who Really Believes in “Permissionless Innovation”? – March 4, 2013
• The Problem of Proportionality in Debates about Online Privacy and Child Safety – Nov. 28, 2009
• Obama Admin’s “Let’s-Be-Europe” Approach to Privacy Will Undermine U.S. Competitiveness– Jan. 5, 2011

Like James Gattuso, I have a lot of questions about the Federal Trade Commission’s new “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising,” especially as they apply to bloggers. (And over at Silicon Angle, Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins has been doing a great job keeping tabs on the many questions and hypothetical situations that others have been posing about the new rules). But the one thing I just can’t wrap my head around is how the FTC plans to enforce these rules against those speakers or media outlets who have print publications which are fully protected by the First Amendment.  So, I was pleased to see my favorite press critic Jack Shafer of Salon, ask the same question in his latest column on “The FTC’s Mad Power Grab”:

Because of a pesky thing called the First Amendment, the guidelines don’t apply to news organizations, which receive thousands of free books, CDs, and DVDs each day from media companies hoping for reviews. But if the guidelines don’t apply to established media like the New York Review of Books, which also happens to publish reviews on the Web, why should they apply to Joe Blow’s blog? Regulating bloggers via the FTC while exempting establishment reporters looks like a back-door means of licensing journalists and policing speech.

Exactly.  Is the FTC just going to ignore such speakers or media organizations but enforce against everyone else?  Isn’t that just a bit silly and radically unfair?  Moreover, might such a policy end up incentivizing some folks to create token print publications to get around such the regulations?  I doubt it, but you never know.

Regardless, as Shafer notes, the rules are so hopelessly open-ended and arbitrary that they are bound to pose problems for whomever they are enforced against:

The guidelines have to be read to be believed. They are written so broadly that if you blog about a good and service in such a way that the FTC construes as an endorsement, the commission has a predicate to investigate. The only way stay on the FTC’s good side is with a “clearly and conspicuously” posted disclosure of the “sponsors” who provided you with the good or service (or money) to blog about the good or service. As I read the guidelines, the FTC could investigate you if you did disclose but it was not satisfied with the disclosure.

I really do wonder if the FTC realized what they’ve gotten themselves into here.  The enforcement nightmare associated with all this cannot be underestimated.

I wonder, now that the FCC has a blog, shouldn’t the Fairness Doctrine apply? I want my equal time on that soapbox!  Every citizen should be given a chance to have their say.  It’s only fair, right?

A major new online child safety task report by the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” Blue Ribbon Working Group has just been released. First, some background. In June 2007, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the principal trade association of the cable industry in the United States, announced “Cable Puts You in Control: PointSmart. ClickSafe.” a new campaign by its members to offer parents assistance in keeping their children safe online.   As part of the initiative, the NCTA hosted a major online child safety summit and also announced the formation of the “Point Smart. Click Safe. Blue Ribbon Working Group” in partnership with the Internet KeepSafe Coalition (iKeepSafe) and Common Sense Media. These three organizations, along with the cable industry’s “Cable in the Classroom” program, agreed to bring together a collection of online safety experts from many disciplines to study these issues and develop a set of “best practice” recommendations that could be implemented across the Internet industry. [Disclosure: It was my pleasure to serve as a member of this blue ribbon working group.]

Today, the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” working group produced its final report and concluded that:

Ensuring children’s online safety is a difficult and complex task that calls for input from and action by a wide variety of stakeholders. There is no “silver bullet”—no single technology or approach that has proved effective. Rather, what is required is:

• A combination of different technologies,
• Continuing digital literacy education for parents, educators, and children, and
• Active participation by all concerned companies, groups and individuals.

Similarly, a singular focus on safety is insufficient. Children must learn to minimize risks but also learn appropriate and ethical behaviors in this digital world. In addition, they need an understanding of media literacy, in order to be able to think critically about the content they consume and increasingly create. Therefore, best practices must be part of a larger effort to provide an entertaining, educational, and safe experience for children.

Compared to previous online child safety task forces, which I will discuss in a subsequent post, the major contribution of this task force was its focus on detailed industry best practices that various online providers could adopt to help parents, policymakers, and law enforcement better keep kids safe online. As the working group’s final report noted:

It should be easy for parents and others to find clear and simple explanations of what information and safety elements exist, how they function, and what a user can do in various circumstances. Therefore, best operating practices should:

• Use clear and common language,
• Be consistent and transparent, and
• Provide information and tools that can vary by age and stage of the user.

These best operating practices should be crafted so that they can be:

• Modified for a specific service or application (e.g. ISP, blog, chat, social network),
• Scaled based on the number of intended or actual users,
• Designed and created as part of the product development cycle, and
• Continuously updated to reflect growth and change in the application or service.

The task force then provided a detailed outline of the many tools and strategies that industries could use to accomplish these goals. I encourage you to check out the “Recommendations for Best Practices” section of the report for more detail since there are far too numerous to itemize here.

As I will point out in a related post later, the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” working group’s findings and recommendation were very much in line with what 4 previous online safety task forces have concluded.  Again, more on that later.  For now, read this report!

Update: Here’s a few links to what others are saying about the report:

• Tech Daily Dose
• PC Magazine
• Broadcasting & Cable
• Internet News.com
• Education Week

• Statements from various members of Congress
• David Burt of Filtering Facts
• iKeepSafe
• Paul Rodriguez of Cable Tech Talk
• Microsoft
• Google
• Verizon
• Family Online Safety Institute

This is just a quick reminder to both faithful and fair-weather readers that there are many ways to keep up with what we’re saying here at the Technology Liberation Front, including:

(1) RSS

Subscribe in a Reader

(2) Twitter

(3) Facebook

(4) Daily email alert

(5) Podcast

… Or just make the TLF your browser’s welcome page!  What better way to start each day? Finally, as always, we appreciate your support, attention, tolerance of our rants.

Mark Cuban penned a sharp piece over the weekend entitled “Who Cares What People Write?” in which he explains why people shouldn’t get too worked up about what they might read about themselves (or their organizations) online since, chances are, very few people are ever going to see it anyway.  To explain why, Cuban identifies two kinds of “Outties” (which is shorthand for someone who publishes on the web): (1) “professional outties” (or “Those that attempt to publish in a limited number of locations to a maximum number of readers or listeners, with a reasonable expectation of building a following.”) and (2) “amateur outties” (“Those that attempt to publish in as many places as possible hoping they are “discovered.”)  But those “amateur outties… really [have] no impact on 99.99pct of the population,” Cuban argues, “[and the] vast majority of what is written on the web goes unread and even that which is read, is quickly forgotten.”  Moreover, “even when something is heavily commented on, it  is usually just an onslaught by the ‘amateur outties.’”

Thus, Cuban concludes:

Fragmentation applies to 100pct of media. We have gotten to the point where it is so easy to publish to the web, that most of it is ignored. When it is not ignored and it garners attention, the attention is usually from those people, the amateur outties, whose only goal is to create volume on the web in hopes of being noticed. That’s not to say there are no sites that people consume and pay attention to. There obviously are.  That’s where the “professional outties” come in. They are branded. They have an identity that usually extends beyond the net.  They are able to make a living publishing, even if its not much of one.  They are the sites that people consume and may possibly remember. The moral of the story is that on the internet, volume is not engagement.  Traffic is not reach.  When you see things written about a person, place or thing you care about,  whether its positive or negative, take a very deep breath before thinking that the story means anything to anyone but you.

This is an important insight and, in a roundabout way, Cuban is basically reminding us that “power laws” govern all media, especially online media. Power laws, which are also sometimes always referred to as the “80-20” principle or the “Pareto principle,” refers to an uneven distribution of outcomes in which a small percentage of inputs or causes result in a very large percentage of outputs or effects.  This is where Chris Anderson got his famous “Long Tail” theory [more on that in a moment].

But, again, here’s the really important thing to remember: Power laws rule all media, and with a vengeance. There’s never been anything close to “equal outcomes” when it comes to the distribution or relative success of music, movie, book sales, theater tickets, etc.  A small handful of titles have always dominated, usually according to an 80-20 distribution, with roughly 20% of the titles getting 80% of the traffic / revenue.  And this trend is increasing, not decreasing, for newer and more “democratic” media like blogs.

Back in 2003, in one of my all-time favorite web essays, Clay Shirky popped the over-hype bubble that was developing around blogging by pointing out just how horrendously anti-egalitarian blog traffic was, with an infinitesimal number of blogs getting the overwhelming volume of aggregate attention.  The reason, Shirky pointed out, is that:

In systems where many people are free to choose between many options, a small subset of the whole will get a disproportionate amount of traffic (or attention, or income), even if no members of the system actively work towards such an outcome. This has nothing to do with moral weakness, selling out, or any other psychological explanation. The very act of choosing, spread widely enough and freely enough, creates a power law distribution.

And that’s not only true for blogs and traditional websites, but also for Wikipedia and Twitter, too.  New research reveals that “the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets” and  “the top 15% of the most prolific [Wkipedia] editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits.”

There are several reasons that power laws always exist in all media contexts. We used to think it was because the economics of media are quite different than most other industries. Namely, media industries typically exhibit “public good” qualities; high fixed (production costs), but lower distribution costs.  But the primary reason why power laws are probably more prevent in media industries than other sectors of the economy is because the creation and consumption of news and popular culture is a truly social phenomenon. Think of it as the economics of popular choice and the sociology of fashion and fads. People (and consumers) react to what others are reading or watching. Word-of-mouth counts. Bandwagon effects exist. First-mover advantages are significant. And so on.  The end result is a hopeless imbalance of outcomes or outputs.  Media egalitarianism is simply an impossibility.

And despite what Chris Anderson said in The Long Tail, the “future of all business” most definitely does not lie mostly in the 80% part of the tail.  While the long tail of the curve certainly is more profitable than in the past, that “fat head” of the tail is still where most profits (or at least eyeballs) are at.  And this also explains why Cuban says you need not worried about what the “amateur outties” have to say.

Importantly, however, as I pointed out here before, all this misses a very important point: More citizens than ever before are now engaged in an ongoing conversation. Much of that conversation is simple editorializing, but much of it represents a new and distinct form of “informational inputs” that were simply not available to us in the past. That’s a good thing. We can have the best of both worlds. In other words, inequality is not that big of a deal. At least everybody now has a chance to be heard, which is more than we could have said even just a decade ago.

However — and getting back to Cuban’s insight and why he may be a little bit off-the-mark (excuse the pun) — the other differentiating factor between media now versus then is that modern digital media is highly persistent and retrievable. I remember the first time my Dad had a letter to the editor published in our local paper back in the 1970s. It was such a big deal to “see his name up in lights” that he clipped the letter and saved like it was something truly valuable.  He’d even show it to neighbors and friends when they came over. I know it sounds pathetic now, but that’s how hungry we were to have our views heard back then.  (Of course, this was Indiana and we were all dumb hillbillies!)

Today, by contrast, we have moved from a world of information scarcity to one characterized by information abundance.  And not only does everyone have a soapbox that they can stand on to preach to the world or fire off daily equivalents of letters to the editor, but all their views are fully searchable and will be for many years to come.

Thus, in a world of cheap data storage and instantaneous information retrieval, one could argue that Cuban’s insight holds less weight. That is, perhaps people should care about what others write because even if it does not affect them today, it could come back to haunt them in the future as it becomes easier to tie many diverse comments and conversations back to haunt a person when they or others search for their name.

That being said, my general sympathies lie with Cuban for other reasons: (A) People just need to grow a thicker skin; and (B) People have plenty of ways now to respond and set the record straight.  As always, the best respond to “bad speech” is more and better speech.

Eric Goldman is the man.  His “Technology & Marketing Law Blog” is must-reading for cyberlaw geeks; packed with indispensable updates and insights about breaking development in the world of Internet law.

Anyway, he’s just published his “2008 Cyberlaw Year-in-Review,” which provides a comprehensive overview of the major developments and cases from the past year. This is the sort of compendium that I used to have to spend big bucks to get from DC law firms.  And Eric just gives it away as a public resource.  God bless him.