Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Over the years, a number of people have asked me which technology policy books have had the greatest impact on my thinking, or what I would recommend to others just getting started in the field. Toward that end, here’s my list of the 5 books on tech policy that changed my life:
I’d have sworn this was an Onion article if I hadn’t seen it in the Washington Post. According to the article, the Chinese government is going to get rid of all Internet pornography in the country by October 1st, in what it’s calling a “people’s war against electronic pornography.” As if the futility of that wasn’t funny enough, the name of the man tasked with leading the porno crusade, China’s Information Industry Minister, is Wang Xudong. (Yes, I’m still in fifth grade.)
Today, my wife and I were blessed to witness the birth of our second child, a beautiful and very healthy boy we’ve named Tobias Vaughn Thierer. Toby weighed in at just 7.2 pounds and took an immediate liking to his big sister, who suddenly realized she’s no longer the baby in the family. (I could already see the look in her eyes as she began plotting years of revenge in the form of random beatings of her kid brother).
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals handed down a decision today in the Grokster case. It’s a significant victory for developers of decentralized peer-to-peer file-sharing systems, whom cannot now be held liable for the copyright infringing activities of users.
The last paragraph of the ruling, however, will undoubtedly prompt today’s losers to direct even more resources toward the INDUCE Act:
Indeed, the Supreme Court has admonished us to leave such matters to Congress. In Sony-Betamax, the Court spoke quite clearly about the role of Congress in applying copyright law to new technologies. As the Supreme Court stated in that case, “The direction of Art. I is that Congress shall have the power to promote the progress of science and the useful arts. When, as here, the Constitution is permissive, the sign of how far Congress has chosen to go can come only from Congress.” 464 U.S. at 456 (quoting Deepsouth Packing Co. v. Laitram Corp., 406 U.S. 518, 530 (1972)).
Some economic insight to the post by James on intercarrier compensation is found in a paper by Jay Atkinson and Chris Barnekov, senior economists at the FCC. Don’t let the weighty title of the paper distract you, “A Coasian Alternative to Pigovian Regulation of Network Interconnection” is based on a simple core concept – well-defined property rights. The paper explores what default rules might be appropriate for intercarrier compensation so that interested parties in the market, and not the FCC, can work out efficient resolutions. Earlier this week, the authors received the third annual FCC “Excellence in Economic Analysis” award for their work on this paper. Whatever the resolution regarding the reform plan recently submitted by the Intercarrier Compensation Forum, it will be analyzed in light of the Atkinson and Barnekov analysis. Their proposal:
“The rule is first to identify those facilities that are solely incremental to interconnection, then to split the cost of providing these facilities equally between the two carriers. Each carrier would recover these and all its other costs from end user customers, not from interconnecting networks. For several basic types of networks, we demonstrate below that this simple default rule results in efficient, competitively neutral interconnection. We argue that this result can also be generalized to more complex networks. We believe this rule provides a conceptual solution to the problem of interconnection between dissimilar networks in the presence of market power, and that it provides a default that can enable interconnectors to reach competitively neutral and, with respect to interconnection, efficient outcomes.”
And hey, you have to like any paper that begins with this quote from Ronald Coase:
“The kind of situation which economists are prone to consider as requiring corrective Government action is, in fact, often the result of Government action.” – R.H. Coase, 1960
The BBC reports on a new effort by ISPs in Great Britain to rid their networks of spam: pull the plug on the sites using spam to advertise, or “spamvertise”. Though this policy may result in some collateral damage and is unlikely to stop spam from sites outside of the UK, it shows that private, self-help measures are possible and may prove to be quite effective. If successful, it will be interesting to see if ISPs in other countries follow suit.
Via /.
Those of you who know the musical “1776” will remember John Adam’s complaint about the Continental Congress–“Piddle, twiddle and resolve, not one damn thing do they solve.” Seems that might apply to the 21st century FCC as well. The FCC is now in the process of considering reconsideration (awkward, but true), of its decision to require “line-sharing,” i.e. requiring telcos to allow competitors to lease certain frequencies of a single wire. This requirement was to be dropped according to last year’s unbundling order, and was upheld by the D.C. circuit earlier this year. Issue settled? No, Chairman Powell is reported now to be pushing to put line-sharing back into effect, or more precisely reverse the decision to eliminate the rule. (Still with me?) One can only assume the guiding maxim at the FCC seems to be “no decision left behind,” and that the goal is maximum uncertainty in telecom markets. More important, the rule isn’t needed, with competition in telecom going full steam. Stay tuned for the musical version of this FCC folly.
Producers of the new NBC boxing reality show “The Contender” are currently in court trying to get a restraining order to prevent the Fox television network from airing its own boxing reality show “The Next Great Champ.” In this case, NBC most certainly does not believe that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In fact, at least in this case, they think imitation constitutes the theft of their intellectual property.
That’s the tally for commissioners on the Antitrust Modernization Commission (AMC). With a vague charter to “examine whether the need exists to modernize the antitrust laws and to identify and study related issues,” the AMC has been tasked with preparing a report for Congress and the president. The twelve commissioners are appointed by the president and Congress for purposes of political balance and the report is to be delivered within three years of the first meeting, which was last month. Deborah Garza has been appointed chair of the commission.
One potential area of interest is the impact of technology on markets and antitrust policy. Network industries and technological change may generate calls for new definitions of markets and competition, particularly in the wake of the Microsoft case and current debate over the merger between Oracle and PeopleSoft. Economists have long been wary of antitrust laws, identifying potential harmful effects that such policies can have in the marketplace. Efficient practices and mergers have been disallowed in the past on antitrust grounds, and in many instances these cases are filed by competitors who are threatened rather than consumers who are harmed. Let’s hope these lessons are not lost in the current debate over modernization.
Recently, the AMC issued a request for public comment, asking interested parties to identify areas that the commission should include in its review. Comments are due September 30.
A lot of policymakers at both the federal and state level are still running around regulating telecom markets as if nothing has changed in the past decade. Well, when they can find time to put down their cell phones and Blackberrys for a minute, they might want to take a look at what the Atlanta-based Fonix Corporation announced yesterday.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
