Want to read about a market-based institution that can improve on copyrights and patents? Check out my paper, “Prediction Markets for Promoting the Progress of Sciences and the Useful Arts,” 14 George Mason Law Review __ (2006) (forthcoming). You can download a copy here. The abstract:
Copyrights and patents promote only superficial progress in the sciences and useful arts. Copyright law primarily encourages entertaining works, whereas patent law mainly inspires marginal improvements in mature technologies. Neither form of intellectual property does much to encourage basic research and development. Essential progress suffers.
Prediction markets offer another way to promote the sciences and useful arts. . .
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I realize this is not a gadget blog, and that I probably should not be using it to seek out personal advice but…
I’m about to upgrade my cell phone and to get one with better multi-media capabilities, especially so I can avoid carrying around both a cell phone and my MP3 player everywhere I go. I’ve been looking at this new Verizon “Chocolate” phone made by LG.
It’s getting mixed reviews, but it has a lot of nice features including expandable memory up to 2 GB, which is important because I want as much room for my music playlists as possible. (I wish cell phones could carry even more memory than that. I’ve already maxed out my 20GB Creative Zen player and looking to upgrade it too).
Anyway, here’s the one question I have not been able to get anyone else to answer for me about the Chocolate phone: Any idea if there is any screwy, ham-handed DRM issues to deal with on this phone? Are there any sites that look into this aspect of cell phone music players? I store most of my music in WMA but have some files in MP3. I just want an easy plug-play-and-transfer experience.
Any advice from TLF readers would be appreciated.
Oh brother, I have heard some pretty silly censorship tales in my time, but this one is a real doozy. Last week, U.K. telecom and media regulator Ofcom announced that, in the wake of an investigation prompted by the anonymous viewer’s complaint, it had pressured the children’s cable TV channel Boomerang to edit out scenes in two “Tom & Jerry” cartoons that were deemed to glamorize or condone smoking. “We note that, in ‘Tom and Jerry’, smoking usually appears in a stylised manner and is frequently not condoned,” reported Ofcom.
The complaint focused on two episodes–“Texas Tom” and “Tennis Chumps.” I seem to remember them from childhood, but my memory is a little fuzzy, so here’s a description from The Guardian: “In Texas Tom, Tom tries to impress a female cat by making a rollup cigarette while Tennis Chumps sees Tom’s opponent in a match smoking a large cigar.”
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There were many excellent keynote speeches and panel discussions during last week’s annual PFF Aspen Summit, and the videos for most of them can now be found online here. But I thought that TLF readers might be particularly interested in the very entertaining net neutrality debate that took place there. It featured the following cast of characters:
* Tod Cohen, Deputy General Counsel and Vice President, Government Relations, eBay
* David Drummond, General Counsel and Senior Vice President for Corporate Development, Google, Inc.
* Carolyn Brandon, Vice President, Policy, CTIA – The Wireless Association
* James Cicconi, Senior Executive Vice President, External and Legislative Affairs, AT&T
* Lawson Hunter, Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Officer, Bell Canada and Bell Canada Enterprises, Inc.
… and it was moderated by Michael Gallagher a Partner at the law firm of Perkins Coie, LLP, and also an Adjunct Fellow with the Progress & Freedom Foundation. The discussion lasts about 1 hour and 20 minutes and it gets really entertaining toward the end when Mike Gallagher lets the panelists ask each other questions.
Again, just go to the following link and scroll down to the Tuesday 10:30am panel discussion and click on the title:
http://www.tvworldwide.com/events/pff/060822/archives.cfm
In case you didn’t hear, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein made some provocative remarks last week at PFF’s annual Aspen Summit, especially on the subject of broadcast indecency enforcement. In his speech, Adelstein had some very interesting things to say about the debates over a la carte regulation and multi-cast must carry mandates (both of which he vehemently opposes) and media ownership regulation (which he strongly supports). But when he got the sensitive subject of indecency regulation, none of us there could have guessed what was coming.
Commissioner Adelstein took FCC Chairman Martin and the rest of the agency to task for their over-zealous enforcement of indecency regulations: “I don’t believe the Commission has provided broadcasters a coherent and principled framework that is rooted in commonsense and sound constitutional grounds,” argued Adelstein. “While we often spend most of our time taking about economic freedom, freedom from governmental intrusion into speech is just as important.” Adelstein then detailed some of the problems with the agency’s recent indecency rulings and concluded that “the Commission’s last batch of decisions dangerously expands the scope of indecency and profanity law.”
Importantly, however, Adelstein noted that he is still a believer in some underlying authority for the agency in terms of broadcast speech regulation. He didn’t bother justifying that outside of using the usual tagline about “protecting the children.” And he didn’t bother explaining why these unique speech constraints should only be imposed on broadcasters while all the kids are bolting to new media outlets.
Regardless, Adelstein pointed out that the FCC’s recent actions threaten to undermine the basic foundations of the FCC’s regulatory regime:
“the Commission’s careless approach endanger[s] the very authority we so delicately retained to enforce broadcast decency rules. . . if the Commission’s zeal leads it to overstep its statutory authority, the Commission could find its authority circumscribed by the courts. We may forever lose the ability to prevent the airing of indecent material, barring an unlikely constitutional amendment setting limits on the First Amendment.”
Of course, some of us are hoping (and predicting) that that’s exactly what will happen!
The current Cato Unbound, Mexicans in America, is the usual provocative and wide-ranging fare. There’s no lack of issues – or passion – in the debate about immigration.
One item in the current discussion that piques my interest – indeed, concerns me – is the formative consensus that “internal enforcement” of the immigration laws is a good idea.
University of Texas at Austin economics professor Stephen Trejo writes:
Given that most illegal immigrants come to the United States to work, why don’t we get serious about workplace enforcement? Retail stores are able to verify in a matter of seconds consumer credit cards used to make purchases. Why couldn’t a similar system be put in place to verify the Social Security numbers of employees before they are hired? . . . I suspect that we could do much more to control illegal immigration by directing technology and other enforcement resources toward the workplace rather than toward our porous southern border.
Doug Massey, co-director of the Mexican Migration Project at the Office of Population Research, Princeton University, has interesting information and ideas for reform to which he would adjoin “a simple employment verification program required of all employers to confirm the right to work.”
It does sound simple – until you step back and realize that the simple idea they’re talking about is giving the federal government the power to approve or disapprove every Americans’ job application. Does anyone think that this power, once adopted – and the technology put in place to administer it – will be limited to immigration law enforcement?
To do this, all people – not just immigrants, all people – would have to be able to prove their identity to federal standards, likely using some kind of bullet-proof identity document (even more secure than current law requires). That will soon be in place thanks to the REAL ID Act. Once we’re all carrying a bullet-proof identity document, do you think that its use will be limited to proof of identity for new employees?
It’s easy to see how facile acceptance of internal immigration law enforcement adds weight to arguments for expanded government control and tracking of all citizens. There are plenty of reasons to be concerned with internal enforcement, and the national ID almost certainly required to make that possible. Many of them are discussed in my book, Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood.
I’ve been sick as a dog and stuck in bed for several days now and just now had the energy to get back in front of my computer and catch up with the blog. And I must say, what I’m reading here in response to Hance Haney’s arrival at the TLF makes me sick in a different way because is so remarkably venomous and unfair.
Let’s start with some obvious facts. As I made abundantly clear in the very first “Welcome to the TLF” post on this blog two years ago, the TLF is a “technology policy blog” that focuses on “[the] dangerous trend of over-regulation of the Internet, communications, media and high-technology in general.” That’s it. Our focus is narrow and our intent is clear: Advancing the cause of liberty as it pertains to this very narrow set of public policy issues.
We have brought together a diverse collection of minds to advance that cause, and it is a group that most assuredly would not agree on several other policy issues out there. For example, not everyone here necessarily agrees with the Heritage Foundation’s position(s) on national security issues, or Cato’s on drug legalization, or PFF’s on certain copyright issues, but we invite technology policy scholars from those institutions into the fold because they have something thoughtful to say about tech issues from a shared, liberty-loving perspective.
So it should really be no different for Hance Haney. Hance has nothing to do with the intelligent design debate at Discovery and he will certainly not be saying anything about the issue on this blog. Hance is blogging with us because he has solid credentials in the field of technology / telecommunications policy and has been a long-time friend to many of the other TLF bloggers. (Moreover, I am sure that if Hance ever dared to even mention the term intelligent design on this site, many of you would respond with all the formidable intellectual weight you bring to every discussion here and have a damn good time doing so!)
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By now, you’ve seen some of his contributions. On behalf of the gang [though it’s too late],* I thought I would introduce the newest TLFer, Hance Haney.
Hance is Director and Senior Fellow of the Technology & Democracy Project at the Discovery Institute in Washington, D.C. As you’ve already seen, he’s mighty well versed in telecom issues. He’ll bring another dimension to our current discussions of net neutrality, and much more in the future.
I bumped into Hance on the street today and encouraged him to engage with our commenters whose disagreements with us are welcome – indeed, essential to making TLF a worthwhile endeavor.
And hopefully Hance will help counterbalance the prolific Tim Lee so his DRM obsession doesn’t make TLF “all DMCA all the time”! ;-P
*[I was just about done writing this when Adam’s post went up, so I’m posting it anyway. I don’t want to have wasted my time – but I will waste yours, reader.]
I wanted to take a moment to welcome Hance Haney to the Tech Liberation Front blog and introduce TLF readers to our newest contributor. Hance is the director of the Discovery Institute’s “Technology & Democracy” project and a frequent blogger on Discovery’s excellent “Disco-Tech” blog. He’ll be cross-posting many of his Disco-Tech essays here on the TLF now.
I first met Hance over 10 years ago when he was a staffer for Rep. Bob Packwood in the years leading up to the passage of the Telecom Act of 1996. For those who might not remember, Bob Packwood was about as principled as they come on communications, media and First Amendment issues when he was in Congress. Hance and I used to enjoy coming up with radical pieces of legislation that would gut heavy-handed telecom regs and cut the FCC down to size… and, amazingly, his boss would introduce every one of them! (Needless to say, Sen. Packwood and Hance didn’t make a lot of friends with the Big Government crowd in the Senate in those days!)
After leaving his Senate position, Hance worked with the U.S. Telecom Assoc. and Qwest Communications before finally landing at Discovery. As you can see from some of the blog entries he’s already posted here, Hance does solid research on the issues we care about and will make a fine contributor to the TLF.
Welcome aboard Hance!
Ed Felten points to a Boing Boing post giving details about Microsoft’s decision to drop HD video support from the 32-bit version of Vista. An anonymous Microsoft employee says:
Media Player won’t play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but you’ll still be able to play them (on XP, even) with third-party programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD, in full HD.
Why? Because the media companies are willing to certify WinDVD and PowerDVD, but they won’t certify Windows, basically for the reasons described. The other problem is indemnity – Microsoft has much deeper pockets and the risks of someone hacking Windows and getting the Microsoft keys is too high; Microsoft’s payouts to the studios would be enormous. The DRM contracts essentially say that you forfeit all money lost to the studios if your key is hacked. The money “lost” to the studios is of course calculated using the estimate most favorable to the studios – i.e. every copy downloaded off LimeWire is a full-price loss. Intervideo (WinDVD) and Cyberlink (PowerDVD) are small companies and figure they’re not the largest targets, or they’ll just go bankrupt and start again as a new company. Cyberlink is based in Asia, and suing them would be pricey.
The screwball thing about all this is that essentially the same risks of hacked drivers and whatnot exist with PowerDVD and WinDVD; there’s no good reason for the studios to certify them if they really are worried about people using the PC to copy movies.
This guy and Felten both speculate on why the policy is so confused, but I don’t actually think it’s that mysterious. What we’re seeing here is a case study in what happens when you create a large bureaucracy and charge it with performing an impossible task. In this case, Hollywood executives are trying to accomplish two fundamentally incompatible goals: (1) Make their products widely available and (2) make sure no illicit copies get release to peer-to-peer networks. When you charge a bureaucracy with performing an impossible task, it’s inevitable that the resulting policy will be incoherent. The best the bureaucracy can do is make various token decisions in the directions of accomplishing the stated goal–some of which will inevitably be inconsistent or flatly contradictory to others.
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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.