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DOT’s Driverless Cars Guidance: Will “Agency Threats” Rule the Future?

by on September 20, 2016 · 2 comments

Today, the U.S. Department of Transportation released its eagerly-awaited “Federal Automated Vehicles Policy.” There’s a lot to like about the guidance document, beginning with the agency’s genuine embrace of the potential for highly automated vehicles (HAVs) to revolutionize this sector and save thousands of lives annually in the process.

It is important we get HAV policy right, the DOT notes, because, “35,092 people died on U.S. roadways in 2015 alone” and “94 percent of crashes can be tied to a human choice or error.” (p. 5) HAVs could help us reverse that trend and save thousands of lives and billions in economic costs annually. The agency also documents many other benefits associated with HAVs, such as increasing personal mobility, reducing traffic and pollution, and cutting infrastructure costs.

I will not attempt here to comment on every specific recommendation or guideline suggested in the new DOT guidance document. I could nit-pick about some of the specific recommended guidelines, but I think many of the guidelines are quite reasonable, whether they are related to safety, security, privacy, or state regulatory issues. Other issues need to be addressed and CEI’s Marc Scribner does a nice job documenting some of them is his response to the new guidelines.

Instead of discussing those specific issues today, I want to ask a more fundamental and far-reaching question which I have been writing about in recent papers and essays: Is this guidance or regulation? And what does the use of informal guidance mechanisms like these signal for the future of technological governance more generally? Continue reading →

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Thoughts on Wu’s Master Switch, Part 6 (His Audacious Information Industrial Policy)

by on November 2, 2010 · 602 comments

I’m going to close out my series of essays about Tim Wu’s new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, by discussing his proposed solutions.  In the first five essays in the series, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] I’ve critiqued Wu’s look at information history as well as his use of terms like “market failure,” “laissez-faire” and “open” vs. “closed.”  I argued there’s a great deal of over-simplification, even outright distortion, in his use of those terms throughout the book.

Anyway, let’s run through the basics of the book once more before getting to Wu’s proposed solutions.  By my reading of The Master Switch, Wu’s argument essentially goes something like this:

  • Information industries go through cycles. After a period of “openness” and competition, they tend to drift toward “closed,” corporate-controlled, anti-consumer models and outcomes.
  • The resulting “monopolists” then block much innovation, competition, and free speech.
  • Consequently, “the purely economic laissez-faire approach… is no longer feasible.”
  • Moreover, information industries are more important than all others (“information industries… can never be properly understood as ‘normal’ industries”) and even traditional forms of regulation, including antitrust, “are clearly inadequate for the regulation of information industries.” (p. 303).
  • Thus, special rules should apply to information-related sectors of our economy.

Again, I’ve challenged some of these assertions in my previous essays, specifically, Wu’s incomplete history of cycles and the fact that he greatly underplays the role of governments in “locking-in” sub-optimal market structures or, worse yet, creating those structures through misguided public policies or regulatory capture.  Wu discusses some of those factors in his book, but he tends to regard them as secondary to the inquiry, whereas I believe they are crucial to understanding how most “closed” or anti-competitive scenarios develop or endure. Instead, Wu simplistically suggests that “the purely economic laissez-faire approach… is no longer feasible,” even though no such state of affairs has ever existed within communications or media industries. They have been subjected to varying levels of indirect influence or direct control almost since their inception.

Regardless, what does Tim Wu want done about the problems he has (mis-)diagnosed? Continue reading →

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Allegations of a Dead Man

by on May 17, 2009 · 6 comments

According to respected Guatemalan lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg, Guatemala’s government is infested with corruption. His message is carried very powerfully to fellow Guatemalans and the world in a video he taped before his murder last week.

YouTube has a role as a powerful engine of dissent and government transparency. It’s a commercial, profit-making business, and it is laying bricks on the path to human rights and the rule of law worldwide.

http://www.youtube.com/v/mC_ODpxMA10&hl=en&fs=1 http://www.youtube.com/v/DB3FZozmNAE&hl=en&fs=1

The Cato Institute’s Juan Carlos Hidalgo writes briefly about developments since then on the Cato@Liberty blog.

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TPW 43: Public Access to Court Records

by on March 6, 2009 · 13 comments

Conversations about how the Internet can be used to increase the openness and accountability of government usually focuses on the Executive and Legislative branches of the Federal government.  But on this week’s episode of Technology Policy Weekly, I hosted a discussion of the equally vital issue of public access to court records, joined by:

We discussed a wide range of issues, including:

  • Why lay people should care—this is ultimately about reducing the legal profession’s monopoly over access to the courts!
  • The philosophical reasons why better access to court records is important – little things like democracy, fairness, consistency, equality, the rule of law, etc.
  • The copyrightability of legal records
  • The history of the problem & what can be done about it

There are several ways to listen to the TLF Podcast. You can press play on the player below to listen right now, or download the MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the podcast by clicking on the button for your preferred service. And do us a favor, Digg this podcast!

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The Right Way to Allow Cell Phone Jammers – And the FCC’s Way

by on January 8, 2009 · 40 comments

Adam Thierer noted in mid-December that the FCC was considering allowing the experimental use of cellphone jammers in prison.  The FCC just issued (PDF) a Special Temporary Authorization to allow the DC Department of Corrections to test a cell phone jamming technology.

This technology sounds like an excellent solution to a serious problem:  The illicit use of cell phones inside correctional facilities by prisoners across the country.  In particular, the technology appears to be “directional,” meaning that unlike traditional jammers, which simply block signals within a certain radius around the jammer, this technology appears to be capable of blocking signals inside the confines of a particular room or building.  In fact, I’m sure millions of Americans would love to see such technologies implemented in cinemas, theatres, and other performing arts venues across the country.  I, for one, am tired of having the exquisite acoustic delicacies of Bach interrupted by annoying ring tones, such as  the (painfully) immortal “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

So Much for The Rule of Law

But there’s one important problem: The FCC isn’t waiving a rule here against cell phone jammer. unless I’m missing some subtle statutory quirk, they’re essentially “waiving” a statute—specifically 47 U.S.C. 333:

No person shall willfully or maliciously interfere with or cause interference to any radio communications of any station licensed or authorized by or under this chapter or operated by the United States Government.

You don’t need to be an administrative lawyer to know that agencies can’t just ignore acts of Congress—no matter how good the policy reason for the waiver is. That’s a big part of what the “rule of law” means.  Period.  Do not pass ‘Go’.  Do not collect $3,101.09 (today’s equivalent of $200 in 1935, when Monopoly debuted).

Fortunately, as noted in the WSJ article Adam cited, at least one legislator realizes this and thinks it’s worth fixing:  U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Texas) told the Journal that his office is “drafting the necessary legislation to remove this outdated FCC roadblock.”  The FCC, of course, sped right past that particular roadblock.  But then, what should we expect from an agency that has, under its outgoing (and none-too-soon!) chairman Kevin Martin, simply disregarded statutory limits on its authority when it found Comcast in violation of the agency’s non-binding net neutrality principles this summer?  (My PFF colleague Barbara Esbin has eloquently condemned this violation of the rule of law in, “The Law is Whatever the Nobles Do: Undue Process at the FCC” (PDF).)

Now, when Congress considers this question, let us hope that they draw the right lesson from this episode:   Whatever the wisdom of outright bans on particular technologies, writing such bans into statutes is a really bad idea.  At least if such decisions were left up to regulatory agencies, they would have the flexibility to decide when to depart from a general ban.  Thus, the best approach would be to repeal the ban altogether.   Continue reading →

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