Kudos to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales for cracking down on child sexual exploitation, but it’s troubling he’s still considering whether to ask Congress for legislation to require communications companies to store things like search queries and which web sites their customers visit. Proposals like this endanger the civil liberties of the innocent and risk creating a police state. They are a dangerous substitute for adequately-funded law enforcement and prisons, and for a higher priority on children’s safety than on second- and third-chances for dangerous criminals.
Jim discussed some of the problems with government-mandated data retention here and Adam added his thoughts here. I would add that when Congress held hearings on protecting children from sexual predators in 2005, it emerged that protecting children didn’t used to be a very high priority for some public officials. Consider these findings:
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The Washington Post reports that the president’s “national security agenda”–that is, its campaign to undermine the Fourth Amendment (and the Geneva Convention)–is faltering:
Frist surprised senators yesterday on the warrantless wiretapping issue, sending surveillance legislation already approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee to the intelligence committee for further review. With one week left to consider the bill on the Senate floor, Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), an intelligence committee member, said passage before the election would be “extremely ambitious.”
The intelligence committee is considered hostile to legislation worked out between Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and the White House. That bill would allow but not order the administration to submit its warrantless surveillance program to a secret national security court for constitutional review. The program involves monitoring overseas phone calls and e-mails of some Americans when one party is suspected of links to terrorism.
Three Republicans on the intelligence committee–Snowe, Sen. Mike DeWine (Ohio) and Sen. Chuck Hagel (Neb.)–have co-authored competing legislation that would give Congress considerably more oversight of the program.
It’s good to see Republicans standing up to the president in defense of civil liberties. I wish I could have said the same for a certain “moderate” senator from Pennsylvania.
Hat tip: EFF
For those of you following the potentially historic legal battle currently unfolding in the courts dealing with broadcast indecency regulation, you might be interested in the comments I filed at the FCC today.
Just by way of brief background, on September 7, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit issued a brief stay of the Commission’s latest round of indecency fines and remanded them back to the agency. (The case is Fox Television Stations v. FCC, 2nd Cir., No. 06-1760). The FCC had requested the stay to allow the broadcast networks (and others) more time to provide input on the agency’s fines. (In essence, the FCC wanted to make sure that the networks couldn’t claim that they didn’t have plenty of time to provide input to the agency.)
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More bad news for Sen. Steven’s struggling telecom bill this week, as the Congressional Budget Office toted up the price tag for the 200+ page measure: $5.2 billion over the next ten years. That’s worth saying again. $5.2 billion. That’s billion. With a “b”.
Most of the cost comes from extending communications subsidies to broadband. CBO pegs the cost of the proposed new “Broadband Service Fund” at nearly $4.5 billion. Other provisions–such as permanently exempting the Universal Service Fund from the Anti-deficiency Act (allowing grants to exceed fund revenue)–expansion of rural health care spending, among others–make up the rest of the new spending. (Among the others are, presumably, the provision expanding subsidies to “States that are comprised entirely of islands”. See this post.)
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Matt Yglesias makes a good point about the Birdmonster story:
I have to think it would be odd to see tons of folks want to follow down this particular path over the long haul. Just because technological changes may make it easier to do publicity, marketing, distribution, etc. on a DIY basis doesn’t necessarily make doing things that way appealing or advisable. After all, there’s no particular reason to think people ready and able to produce music people want to hear are going to have enormous aptitude or inclination to do this other stuff once they’re in a position to get someone else to do it for them in exchange for money. That could be the case even if, in some sense, the numbers “don’t add up.” The simple added convenience of outsourcing functions outside one’s core areas of interest/competency has value. More likely, you’ll just see the nature of services that bands get in exchange for a chunk of their earnings will shift as the structure of the music industry shifts with it.
I think this is obviously right. Division of labor is a good thing. The guy who’s good at playing the guitar is probably not the same guy who’s good at writing press releases, booking shows, or handling media inquiries. Labels have traditionally handled those functions, and clearly there will be continued demand for people to do that.
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Ed Felten has responded to Diebold’s criticism of his paper. Felten emphasizes that the most interesting thing about Diebold’s response is what they don’t say. They cite a lot of supposed security measures–tamper-evident seals, encryption, digital signatures, etc–but at no point in the response does Diebold specifically claim that any of those measures actually would have prevented the attacks Felten describes in his paper. Diebold waves their arms a lot in the hope you won’t notice this. But the bottom line is that Diebold has given us no reason to believe that the vulnerabilities documented in the paper have been corrected.
The Long Tail has an interesting example of the phenomenon I described a couple of weeks ago, in which bands are increasingly finding fans without the labels as intermediaries. Anderson tells the story of Birdmonster, a band fronted by a former Wired staffer. He describes their climb through the ranks of the indie music scene:
Birdmonster courted Internet radio stations, which have none of the constraints of traditional broadcast. As it happened, it was “Ted,” the owner of San Francisco’s BagelRadio.com, who convinced the booker to give Birdmonster its first big break, an opening gig for Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. That (and a batle-of-the-bands contest) led to an opening for the White Stripes, which was at that moment the pinnacle of indie rock. Birdmonster had arrived.
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Variety reports that Yahoo’s lobbying effort to get the labels to ditch DRM reached another milestone:
In a first for mainstream pop music, Yahoo! will sell Jesse McCartney’s new album “Right Where You Want Me,” from Disney-owned Hollywood Records, in the unprotected MP3 format. That means consumers will be able to play it on any digital music device, including Apple’s iPod. MP3 files are the only type that will play on an iPod besides those downloaded from iTunes.
But because they have no copy protection, MP3 files can be easily traded on peer-to-peer networks, emailed to friends or burned onto an endless number of CDs.
“We’re trying to be realistic,” said Ken Bunt, senior VP of marketing at Hollywood Records. “Jesse’s single is already online and we haven’t put it out. Piracy happens regardless of what we do. So we’re going to see how Jesse’s album goes (as an MP3) and then decide on others going forward.”
Yahoo! previously sold an exclusive version of Jessica Simpson song “A Public Affair” as an MP3, but it has never offered a major-label album for sale elsewhere without copy restriction, nor have any of the other digital music stores.
That’s the most sensible quote about DRM I’ve seen from the recording industry in… well, probably ever. I’ve never heard of Jesse McCartney, but I’m tempted to buy a copy of his album on principle. If it sells well, maybe that will encourage other labels to be equally realistic.
Hat tip: Derek
Update: I poked around on Yahoo’s site for a little while, but couldn’t find an easy way to buy the album. Perhaps you have to do that through their client software, which doesn’t appear to have a Mac version. If anyone knows of a straightforward way to buy the MP3 version of the music, please let me know.
I’ve recently discovered the “Geek and Poke” site, a truly unique blog that uses cartoons to talk about technology issues and Internet policy developments. Here’s two that I really enjoyed:
… and this one about the popular online multi-player video game Second Life…
So here’s an interesting legal question that involves the First Amendment, copyright law, technology policy, and property / contractual rights: Who has the right to film videos at a professional football game? I’m not talking about the live video feed of entire games; that’s clearly copyright-protected. Instead, I’m just talking about select video clips of portions of games for journalistic purposes.
Here’s why I ask. Ten days ago, David Rehr, the head of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) sent a letter to the National Football League’s (NFL) new commissioner Roger Goodell inquiring about a recent NFL policy change regarding local television station coverage of games. Last year, for reasons I have not been able to determine, NFL team owners decided to reverse a long-standing policy that allowed local broadcasters to film video clips from the sidelines during football games. Apparently, local TV broadcasters will now have to get that footage from the TV network that broadcasts the game or from NFL Films, which is owned and operated by the National Football League.
I’m going to attempt to fairly weigh the arguments on both sides of this dispute even though I have a particular (and admittedly peculiar) bias in this matter that I will admit to at the end of the essay. (See * below).
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.