Via Luis, here’s a good analysis of the ominous aspect of the Microsoft-Novell deal:
This is not a religious argument about open source, it’s a matter of respect for a community that works together, and the wishes of creators. If I write something and put it under the GPL, then I want it under the GPL where all of us working on it can use it. I don’t want it to be made proprietary, for someone else’s benefit, due to some shady deal and legal technicality. Commercial yes (and encouraged), proprietary no.
In Novell’s world, if I write something and GPL it, Novell will try to convince customers to buy support from Novell instead of from me (the original author) because of some nebulous, unspecified, almost-certainly-bullshit “IP issues” hinted at by Microsoft and legitimized by Novell for the price of $348 million.
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Reader Steve R. points out David Pogue’s scathing review of the Zune:
PlaysForSure bombed. All of them put together stole only market-share crumbs from Apple. The interaction among player, software and store was balky and complex–something of a drawback when the system is called PlaysForSure.
“Yahoo might change the address of its D.R.M. server, and we can’t control that,” said Scott Erickson, a Zune product manager. (Never mind what a D.R.M. server is; the point is that Microsoft blames its partners for the technical glitches.)
Is Microsoft admitting, then, that PlaysForSure was a dud? All Mr. Erickson will say is, “PlaysForSure works for some people, but it’s not as easy as the Zune.”
So now Microsoft is starting over. Never mind all the poor slobs who bought big PlaysForSure music collections. Never mind the PlaysForSure companies who now find themselves competing with their former leader. Their reward for buying into Microsoft’s original vision? A great big “So long, suckas!”
And he doesn’t much care for the WiFi sharing feature:
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PJ, our webmaster, has installed the Akismet comment spam filter, which appears to have largely solved our spam problem. Which is a good thing, because we got about 1000 spam comments in the last 24 hours. Before, a couple hundred per day were getting through. So far today, it’s been catching all of them.
The downside is that it seems to occasionally catch a legitimate comment. I can’t actually blame the software. I mean, commenters like “Jim Harper” sure sound sketchy–it’s no wonder the filters were confused. But if your comment gets caught in the filter, please let me know by emailing tlee -at- showmeinstitute.org and I’ll see if I can fish it out of the spam folder for you.
Also, this is a good time to mention that our web hosting is generously provided by PJ Doland Web Design, which is also responsible for the site design. (The content is entirely our fault) PJ is fanatical about things like standards compliance, clean designs, open source software, and reliability, so please check him out next time you’ve got a web design or web programming project.
CNN has a round-up of voting problems with yesterday’s elections. There seem to be a lot of problems like this:
The New Jersey Republican Committee said Republican voters filed four affidavits saying that they weren’t able to vote for Republican Senate candidate Tom Kean because the Sequoia voting machines they were using were already programmed to vote for Democrat Bob Menendez, according to NJRC Counsel Mark Sheridan. Michelle Schaffer at Sequoia told CNN, “We have been in close communication with the New Jersey attorney general’s office, and we are not aware of any issues that are problematic nor have they raised any to ask us about. “
As tempting as it is, I think it would be a mistake for critics of e-voting to highlight these sorts of problems in their arguments against paperless voting machines. They’re closely analogous to, say, the butterfly ballot debacle from 2000. Human error is inevitable in any election. And it’s a big country, so even if there are dozens of reports of scattered e-voting problems in particular precincts, that probably just reflects the fact that e-voting is new, so both people and the news media are more likely to report e-voting related problems.
What makes e-voting uniquely bad is two things: first, they’re brittle. Paper ballots are not subject to problems like software bugs, power outages, incorrect equipment setup, etc. Under almost any circumstances, it’s still possible for a voter to mark his or her ballot and go on his way. In contrast, with e-voting, the voter’s got to wait around until the machine is fixed, and the poll workers most likely won’t know how to fix it. If the downtime is significant, a lot of voters will get frustrated and leave the polling place. So the system is much less resilient to unexpected problems. We saw several of this kind of problem in Ohio, Indiana, Delaware, and elsewhere.
Secondly, and far more importantly, in precincts without voter-verified paper trails, we can’t be confident that the vote totals represented the actual votes that were cast in each precinct. I haven’t seen any evidence that foul play of this kind occurred. My guess is that none did. But if an election were stolen by hackers, we wouldn’t necessarily find out about it, because there’s no way to audit the result in precincts without paper trails.
Jim Lippard notes that HBO’s “Hacking the Vote” special is available for viewing on Google Video here. I haven’t had time to watch it yet, but if Diebold hates it, it must have some merit.
On an unrelated note, am I blind, or does Google video still not have an “embed this video” feature? That seems to have been one of the most important factors in YouTube’s rise to prominence, and it can’t possibly be a difficult feature to clone. Why hasn’t Google implemented it yet?
John Dingell wasted no time in reasserting his authority over the FCC today. One day after the election that put the Democrats back in charge of the House after 12 years, DIngell–who is expected to take back his old reins as Commerce Committee Chairman–sent a message to the FCC that it should hold off on approving the BellSouth-AT&T merger until next year.
“I think it would be in their interest” said the incoming chairman, adding it “would be in the interest of the [Commerce] Committee” and “in the broad public interest”.
Dingell said that delay was needed to make sure the Department of Justice was “doing its responsibility” and that FCC was ensuring the public interest was served.
Never mind that the merger has already been pending eight months, and has been approved by DOJ and 18 state commissions already. FCC approval in fact was expected last week, until it was pulled from the FCC agenda at the last minute. Dingell would now like the transaction to stew for a few more months. Although later today he backed off the statement a bit, denying he had asked for a postponement, the message was clear, saying he wanted the Commission to avoid “ill will” in dealing with the Commerce Committee.
The whole thing evokes a sense of deja vu. In his long tenure as committee chairman before 1994, Dingell was famous for vigorously asserting authority over the FCC. Of course, Dingell was far from the only chairman to do so. Quaint theories that the FCC is an “independent agency” aside, the Commission has long been considered a “creature of Congress” by members from both parties. But no chairman protected that particular turf more jeolously than Dingell. He brought it almost to the level of an art form.
No one doubts, of course, that agencies are ultimately accountable to lawmakers. But there is something disturbing about the “creature of Congress” theory, especially when the decisions in question is a quasi-judicial one such as a merger approval. Certainly, there would be howls of protest if Congress asked the Justice Department to delay its legal process in a particular case. But the FCC’s processes are apparently fair game.
Don’t expect the Commission to buck Big John on this one. But it provides yet another reason to re-examine the FCC’s status an an “independent” agency, and how that works in practice.
Meanwhile, settle in for an interesting few years.
The State Department has a notice of proposed rulemaking out on the “card format passport.” They are laying the groundwork for a card-style passport Americans would use when they travel to Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.
What’s special about it?: “Vicinity read technology would allow the passport card data to be read at a distance of up to 20 feet from the reader.” That’s right: a promiscuous RFID chip would make your serial number widely available to whomever with a reader might want to know your whereabouts. (The system would not put personal data beyond this identifier on the card.)
If you have concerns about it, the comment period lasts until December 18, 2006. You can e-mail— wait, there’s no e-mail address.
Instead, it says, “Comments by Internet are to be sent to http://www.regulations.gov/index.cfm.” So you must go there and search for the Federal Register notice and submit your comment— wait, they are not accepting comments online either.
This Agency does NOT accept electronic comments for this Federal Register document. You must print out this comment and submit it to the agency by any method identified in the Federal Register document for the rule you are commenting on. The agency’s contact information will also appear on the printed comment form. Your comment will not be considered until this agency receives it. For further information, follow directions in the specific Federal Register document or contact the specific agency directly.
That’s right. The State Department is proposing to put RFID-chipped passport-lite documents in our hands – an ill-considered technological leap forward – without using basic, proven technologies to make its actions open to public participation or criticism.
So, after the jump, a six-step instruction guide for sharing your thoughts about RFID-chipped ID cards with the apparently indifferent State Department:
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WIlliam Patry writes today about what the election could mean for copyright. Bottom line, either Howard Berman or Rick Boucher will take over the IP subcommittee in the House, and Patry thinks there’s a good chance it will be Boucher. Boucher is no friend of the DMCA and seems to understand fair use.
Mr. Boucher is viewed by content owners as generally less sympathetic to their interests, although I would phrase the matter quite differently. Mr. Berman will always play an important role in the House on IP matters even if he is not chair of the subcommittee. In the past, he has taken great interest in international issues, and that may be the way he goes. The idea that he would pass on a different chairmanship solely at the urging of content owners is an idea that doesn’t reflect Mr. Berman’s overall interests or his role as a member of Congress. This isn’t to say he won’t take the IP subcommittee, it is only to say that I doubt the matter is as settled as some think.
In general, I don’t think elections have a big effect on technology issues, as they don’t tend to break down along partisan lines. One possible exception is network neutrality regulation. It seems that Democratic control of Congress is likely to make it easier for the pro-regulation folks to get their preferred legislation through Congress. On the other hand, the issue probably isn’t at the top of the Democratic agenda, and it’s complicated enough that the Democrats might find it hard to reach a consensus. Personally, I’m still rooting against Congress passing any telecom legislation.
Congress still has the opportunity to come back for a lame duck session, where it might still pass NSA white-washing legislation. I hope the Republicans have enough shame not to do that, but I wouldn’t put it past them. When the new Congress starts, it would be nice if they repealed the gambling bill, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
One race that makes me a little bit sad is Mark Kennedy’s loss in the Minnesota Senate race. Kennedy was a strong supporter of DMCA-reform legislation. I met with one of his staffers back in April, and he struck me as a smart guy genuinely interested in promoting good policies. It would have been nice to have an articulate DMCA critic in the Senate.
Yesterday the FCC did something a little weird. One week after putting up for public comment Cyren Call’s proposal to revamp public safety communications, it rejected the petition but also decided to keep the commenting open. Quite admirably, the Commission cites lack of authority from Congress. What’s weird is that they didn’t decide to reject the petition during the three months they sat on it before putting out for comment. Also weird are the post-decision comments, which will now have another audience: Congress.
In the new issue of Regulation magazine I explain the depth of the public safety interoperability problem and how we might go about tackling it.
In some parts of Europe, private enterprise builds and maintains the public safety network and sells interoperable communications capacity to the agencies there. A similar approach could be pursued in the United States. The government could allow private carriers to build advanced networks on frequencies that it now restricts to public safety use. Instead of building their own incompatible and duplicative networks, agencies and jurisdiction could purchase their communications needs from the private carriers. Because public safety communications typically use very little communications capacity, the carriers could sell space on the network to private entities without interfering with emergency communications.
This a warm-up to a paper I’m writing for FCLJ symposium on public safety interoperability that the Mercatus Center and GMU’s Tech Center are co-sponsoring. The event will take place Dec. 8 at GMU School of Law. Cyren Call’s Morgan O’Brien will be one of the panelists. Event details here.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.