May 2006

A Correction on Linux DVD Players

by on May 8, 2006 · 10 comments

Solveig Singleton has posted about an error she spotted in my Cato paper: Linspire does in fact sell a licensed DVD player. So it looks like I was wrong when I said that there are no software DVD players available for the Linux operating system.

I’m unhappy that I missed this. I spent several hours researching available DVD players, and I asked a friend of mine who administers Linux computers for a living, and while I found extensive informaiton about several players that required the (probably illegal) libdvdcss library, I didn’t find any information about Linspire’s player. My apologies for not researching the issue more thoroughly.

I have some thoughts about how the existence of Linspire affects my argument, and I want to comment on her analysis of the CSS issue, but I’m going to wait for her to post part two of her analysis before I do so. Singleton also says that I’m guilty of “breaches of professional ettiquette,” so I’m anxious to learn more about that.

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How Net Neutrality Regs Could Threaten Online High-Def Video

by on May 8, 2006 · 4 comments

Last week, Slate ran an article my friend (and frequent intellectual sparring partner) Tim Wu entitled “Why You Should Care About Network Neutrality.” Ironically, the best answer is not found not in Tim’s essay, but instead in this Slate article today by Sean Captain entitled “Forget YouTube: Your Laptop Will Never Replace Your TV.”

Captain’s essay laments the second-rate quality of today’s online video content & delivery systems and suggests some alternatives to improving the situation as high-definition offerings proliferate. As someone who appreciates the beauty of high-resolution (720p or 1080i) HDTV on the big screen in my house (I have a HD projector that beams a beautiful 8-foot picture on the wall), like Sean Captain, I am troubled by the quality of current Internet video offerings. I enjoy watching short Net films & videos on iFilm and other sites, but it pains me as I squint to see the tiny screen with its horrendous picture and frequent interruptions.

Consumers deserve better, and as the quality of the home theater experience continues to improve, they will demand it. Net neutrality regulation is not going to help bring it about. We need multiple business models and pricing plans to put the right incentives in place to deliver high-quality cyber-video.

Although I think I will always prefer watching a movies and shows on the big screen in my home, I might be willing to watch them on my wonderful Toshiba multi-media laptop if the feed was good enough. After all, the monitor on my laptop actually sports a higher resolution than any of the TVs in my home! So I’m itching to use it to its full potential, but right now about all I can get in terms of true high-def video online is the stuff over at Microsoft’s “WMV HD Content Showcase.” But it takes forever and a day to download that stuff. (Moreover, I can only take so many IMAX movies before I doze off from the boredom!)

If Net neutrality mandates are slapped on broadband service providers and they are prohibited from configuring or prioritizing Net traffic to accommodate higher-bandwidth video applications, the only other realistic alternative left is for them to charge consumers significantly higher fees for big bandwidth applications & content. Personally, I don’t have any problem with that. In fact, I think a metering solution may present the best way to solve this issue. But I think there are two obvious downsides: (1) Many consumers will cry foul and vociferously protest higher fees for higher-definition online video applications; and, (2) Policy makers will hear those cries and claim the metering of the pipe is unfair or will lead to a new “digital divide.” They might even suggest price regulation in response.

This is why I believe that Net neutrality regulation is worst than a solution in search of a problem. It is a problem in its own right in that it might forbid exactly the sort of marketplace experimentation and innovation we so desperately need today.

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The RFID cookie monster

by on May 8, 2006

It looks like RFID panic is percolating a bit again. Wired has an article in the current issue about how easy it will be to hack RFID tags, and Gizmodo recently reported ominously hat Levi’s will be tagging its jeans. Most of the privacy concerns are the same as those I’ve refuted in the past; RFID is not GPS and it won’t let you pinpoint someone’s position. However, I’m curious about one new claim the Wired article raises:

Grunwald has recently discovered another use for RFID chips: espionage. He programmed RFDump with the ability to place cookies on RFID tags the same way Web sites put cookies on browsers to track returning customers. With this, a stalker could, say, place a cookie on his target’s E-ZPass, then return to it a few days later to see which toll plazas the car had crossed (and when). Private citizens and the government could likewise place cookies on library books to monitor who’s checking them out.

I’m curious for more information on how this is done. To my knowledge, cookies are just static strings of text that can be used to uniquely identify a browser each time it comes back to a site. In that sense, an RFID chip is itself a cookie. An HTTP cookie isn’t written to and doesn’t contain a list of all the sites you’ve visited, so how can an RFID cookie tell a stalker all the toll plazas you’ve been to? Also, can all RFID tags take cookies? Beyond those questions, I’m not sure how a stalker is helped by knowing where his target has been. He would only know which toll plazas were crossed, not what a target’s ultimate destination was, and certainly not their current location. With the library book example, the same questions apply. But assuming that the RFID chip is written to, is the patron’s name inserted into the surreptitious cookie whenever the book is checked out? Why would the library’s software do this? Why would it insert a name and not an ID number? If it’s an ID number, then wouldn’t the stalker need access to the library database to cross-reference the patron’s name? If the stalker has access to that database, why not just look up the check out information there?

At least I’m glad to see that both the Gizmodo and Wired stories acknowledge a privacy threat from government and not just from retailers and other private companies. Privacy activists have concentrated on the perceived threat of commercial RFID use when the real threat is their use in government-mandated IDs.

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Opposite Day

by on May 7, 2006

I’ve got a new article on the deceptive campaign to regulate the Internet over at Brainwash:

Last month, Rep. Ed Markey warned that “We’re about to break with the entire history of the Internet.” He’s right, but not in the way he intends. The Internet has evolved without significant government oversight for over a decade, and it has never had the kind of comprehensive bureaucratic control envisioned by network neutrality advocates. That has left questions about Internet architecture and evolution in the hands of engineers and entrepreneurs, not lawyers, lobbyists and bureacrats. Network neutrality regulations would change all that, placing decisions about the Internet’s architecture under the control of bureaucrats at the FCC.

Of course, a “Put Bureaucrats in Charge of the Internet” campaign would be unlikely to catch the popular imagination. So instead of making a serious case for their proposal, advocates of new regulations are pretending that it’s opposite day: those who want to maintain the status quo are pushing “radical” laws, a coalition led by Microsoft and Yahoo is a “rag tag band,” and one tiny ISP’s attempt to block Internet voice services is a looming threat to the Internet’s future. There might be good arguments for government regulation of the Internet, but if we’re going to have a meaningful discussion of the idea, we need to start by calling a spade a spade.

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This one’s not an urban legend

by on May 6, 2006 · 10 comments

For a long while I’ve been bemused by the running rivalry over intellectual property issues between some of the writers on this blog and the folks at PFF. While sometimes entertaining, I often shake my head when Tim takes the time to painstakingly refute an argument from Jim DeLong that on the surface was already patently erroneous. Now, as I prepare to take the bait myself, I think I understand the feeling of exasperation that prompts such replies.

Yesterday DeLong posted an entry entitled “Another Urban Legend Shot Down.” He wrote that “One of the arguments against extended copyright terms, made in Eldred and other places, has been the charge that there are piles of books, films, etc., moldering away unseen because no one can get permission to look at them and the copyright holders are too oblivious to find and exploit useful items.” He then says that the fact that Amazon sells DVD packs that contain 50 classic movies for just $16.47 refutes the idea (or “urban legend” as he puts it) that there are other movies out there that are being harmed by extended copyright terms. He goes on, “Would such treasures be available if there were no money to be made from making them so? Doubtful.”

FIrst DeLong implies that there are no such works disintegrating out of sight and hints that such an idea is just an “urban legend.” I would point him to the Library of Congress’s report on film preservation. It catalogs precisely the fact that a great number of films are literally disintegrating. It is a fact, not a myth.

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Net Neutrality: Urban Legend # 5

by on May 5, 2006 · 10 comments

One of the most useful websites I know of is snopes.com, which provides information and analysis of e-mails circulating on the Internet, from the “Bill Gates is Giving Away Money” hoax to the famous 602B e-mail tax bill. Among other things, Snopes ranks the e-mails based on circulation and other factors. Currently, the number five hottest email–beating out warnings about ether-laced perfume and the dangers of rat urine on soda cans–is a missive in support of net neutrality regulation circulated by Move.on org.

The surprising appearance of net neutrality–which until very recently was a term known only to hopeless tech geeks and policy wonks–is a worrying evidence of the efforts being made by Move.on and others in support of Internet regulation. And, unfortunately, for most who get this e-mail, and forward it on–it may be the only thing they hear of the controversy.

Of course, the issue is not fictional–unfortunately the push for regulation is no urban legend. Although Snopes classifies it as “true,” the e-mail does get some important facts wrong. For instance, it says Congress is considering “a radical law” to eliminate net neutrality. In truth, there currently are no neutrality rules in place. Moveon.org is asking for new regulations to be imposed. At the same time, the letter warns darkly of “giant corporations” who are fighting these rules, but doesn’t mention the rather large firms–including Microsoft–who are fighting to have these restrictions imposed on their potential rivals.

Its hard to follow up on mass-forwarded e-mails like this to explain the other side of the debate. (Though it wouldn’t hurt if sympathetic readers forward\ed on relevant posts from TLF–such as this, this, this, this, this, this or this–or perhaps this from Heritage, as a counter-point.)

In any case, it is clear that this debate has passed beyond the small world of telecom wonks, and is now squarely in the public eye–or at least the public’s inbox. And the outcome of this battle over Internet regulation may depend upon the Internet itself, and all of its advantages and flaws as a medium of mass communication.

Stay tuned. This should be interesting.

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Recherche de l’Internet, Partie Deux

by on May 5, 2006 · 2 comments

Once again, some comic relief from France. A year ago, I wrote about French efforts to create a French search engine for the Internet, a kind of Gaullist Google. The idea, presumably, was to create a search tool consistent with French rather than Anglo-Saxon values. (And I thought Google just let people find what they are looking for.)

It all sounded like a bad joke. But, according to a a report today in MIT’s Technology Review, the French government is still serious about the project, and last week made a grant to Thomson, the French electronics manufacturer, to develop the product. The 90 million Euro grant was one of many given to big French companies for high-tech products.

“It is essential,” said French president Jacques Chirac in announcing the grants, “for us to rediscover a taste for risk and pride in innovation.” But he has certainly chosen an odd way to achieve that–government grants to large corporations. Meanwhile, some observers noted, France’s (less politically powerful) start-ups remain starved of capital.

It’s a good sign that France’s leaders are asking why Europe has yet to produce an infotech success story like Google,” the article quotes French IT consultant Alexis Mons saying. But, he says, the top-down approach is the wrong one. As he puts it: “There is no innovation iin innovation management in Europe.”

The bottom line, according to Bernard Buisson, coauthor of a recent book on innovation: “Instead of enabling the creation of new companies, the [French] state is going to waste several billion euros in large projects that won’t deliver.”

The French government wasting money on large projects that won’t deliver? Stop the presses. We have news here.

Somehow, I suspect Google isn’t worried.

(Oh, by the way, the title of this post was translated into French by, of course, Google’s translator tool.)

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Just Say No to a Telecom Bill

by on May 5, 2006

Danny O’Brien of EFF gives us another reason we should just say no to a new telecom bill:

the broadcast flags, both video and audio, have been wandering the halls of Congress, looking to smuggle themselves into law, like tramps looking for an empty boxcar. For nearly a year, neither the MPAA and RIAA have been able to find them a ride. The MPAA failed to introduce the broadcast flag language into an appropriations bill, or the reconciliation bill, nor could they sneak it into last year’s urgent digital television transition bills. The RIAA’s audio flag has been rebuffed at every turn.

But early this week, Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) introduced a long awaited 125-page draft reform of the Communications Act to the Senate Commerce Committee last week, and both flags found their lift. With telecom reform likely, it’s critical that you take action now to stop these dangerous proposals from coming along for the ride.

The flags are stuck in a crowded carriage with a handful of other controversial causes: net neutrality, universal service, municipal broadband. The bill is already a product of much behind-the-scenes wrangling, and there will be jostling and bargaining before a vote takes place. Though supposedly bi-partisan, Senator Inouye gave it the most unenthusiastic endorsement a sponsor could give.

Many members of Congress still don’t understand the danger to innovation and fair use posed by these government technology mandates. Experts agree that neither flag mandate will prevent continued leakage of music and TV onto the Internet, but it will give FCC bureaucrats, acting in the interests of the entertainment industry, the power to meddle in what you do with bits in your own home.

Whatever your views on DRM more generally, I think it’s clearly bad policy for Congress to mandate the use of a particular DRM technology or to give the FCC the power to set DRM standards. There are a handful of good things Congress could do with a new telecom bill, but as the sausage-making process grinds on, it’s becoming more and more clear that the best we can hope for is for Congress to leave well enough alone.

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Why Communications and Media Markets Will Probably Never Be Deregulated

by on May 5, 2006 · 20 comments

There was a time in my life when I was actually quite optimistic about the prospects for getting the heavy hand of government regulation out of telecommunications and media markets. This was around 15 or so years ago when I first started covering policy developments in this area. I’d go to work each day thinking that some day soon our lawmakers would come to appreciate the amazing technological and marketplace changes happening around us and then take steps to liberalize these markets, just as they had for other over-regulated sectors before (like airlines, railroads, banking, and so on).

That illusion was shattered one day long ago when a copy of the Federal Communications Bar Association (FCBA) directory first landed on my desk. The FCBA is the organization that was originally made up of the lawyers who practice telecom and media law. Since the early 1990s, however, many others (economists, consultants, lobbyists, engineers, etc.) have also been allowed to join. I don’t remember how many people were included in that first FCBA directory I saw years ago, but I just got the 2006 edition and it contains over 2,700 names. (And there’s also a huge directory of all the companies and organizations that cover these issues–including my own–included in the book).

Now don’t get me wrong; the FCBA is not some sinister group with nefarious intentions. Indeed, quite the opposite is the case. As I flip through the pages of the annual FCBA directory, I see the names of countless friends and even current and former work colleagues. I go to the annual FCBA dinner each year and hang out with these folks on a regular basis (even in my free time). They’re all good people. They have noble intentions. But the problem is that they all have different interests and the combination of those interests typically leads to the expansion of government control over the communications and media sectors.

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Keeping Abreast of Objectionable Content

by on May 4, 2006 · 4 comments

Personally, I’m not sure I believe children will be scarred for life if they see a virtual bare breast before the age of 17. But, some parents apparently disagree, and I’m glad to see that the Entertainment Software Ratings Board is doing a good job of keeping such parents abreast (so to speak) of what’s in the latest video games. When it was discovered that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion could be modified to remove the female players’ tops, it was quickly yanked from the shelves for re-labeling:

When game publishers submit upcoming releases to the ESRB, they also must include videos of a game’s most intense sexual or violent content. Because games like Oblivion can be played for dozens of hours without players seeing everything in them, the organization depends on publishers to send them the most potentially objectionable content.

The company said that it did not hide anything from the ratings group and that its pre-release submission on Oblivion was “full, accurate and comprehensive.”

Bethesda blamed the partial nudity of some characters on tampering by third parties who have modified the game’s art files and said it appeared in only Oblivion’s PC version. The company said it did not “create a game with nudity and does not intend that nudity appear in Oblivion” and added that it was taking steps to protect the game’s art archive from tampering.

Local game designer Brian Reynolds, head of Big Huge Games Inc. in Timonium, Md., said, “It would be a disaster for us” if the ESRB re-designated one of his titles after its release.

“That’s something you never want to see, games getting pulled off shelves,” he said.

Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association, said pulling games and re-stickering them is an expensive process.

“Many people see the ESRB as a tool of the industry–but, in fact, developers fear it,” he said. “They are tough as nails.”

Tough as nails? Don’t tell that to Hillary Clinton. It might get in the way of her grandstanding.

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