Cyber Crime Convention

by on August 3, 2006 · 18 comments

EFF highlights a very bad treaty being pushed for ratification in the Senate:

The Convention on Cybercrime is a sweeping treaty that has been waiting in the wings of the Senate for nearly three years. Now the administration is putting pressure on the Senate to ratify it in the next two days. If it does, it would mean the U.S. would enforce not just our own, but the rest of the world’s bad Net laws. Call your Senator now, and ask them to hold its ratification.

The treaty requires that the U.S. government help enforce other countries’ “cybercrime” laws – even if the act being prosecuted is not illegal in the United States. That means that countries that have laws limiting free speech on the Net could oblige the F.B.I. to uncover the identities of anonymous U.S. critics, or monitor their communications on behalf of foreign governments. American ISPs would be obliged to obey other jurisdiction’s requests to log their users’ behavior without due process, or compensation.

Apparently, the treaty is being held up by an anonymous Republican Senator:

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We Want the Whole Loaf

by on August 3, 2006 · 6 comments

Derek Slater and Tim Armstrong have been having a debate over the merits of agitating for better digital rights management technologies rather than agitating for outright repeal of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention rules. I think Derek’s take on the question is dead on:

I am not a lawyer, but last time I checked, Title 17 is the Copyright Act–it’s meant to encouarge creation and distribution of artistic (and related) works insomuch as it benefits the public. Title 17 is not the Medical Privacy Act, nor the Privacy in Embarassing Pictures And Emotional Distress Act, nor the Confidentiality Agreement Enforcement Act. It’s the Copyright Act, and it shouldn’t be turned into a Christmas tree on which everyone hangs a pet project that they think technical restrictions might achieve.
Tim already knows this, and when he teaches his students about the Lexmark and Skylink cases, I suspect this is roughly his sentiment will be. Why this insight doesn’t apply in Tim’s cited examples, I don’t know.

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For Shame!

by on August 3, 2006

Matt Stoller thinks my New York Times op-ed is “just disgraceful.” Why?

Timothy B. Lee comes from the ‘Show-Me Institute’, a fake think tank that defends the teaching of Intelligent Design and is funded by corporate interests and foundations with a right-wing ideological slant. As a 501(c)3, they don’t have to release their donor list, but you can get a sense of who they are from reading the bios on the Board of Directors page.

Ok, so the corporatists dug up a shill from an ideologically oriented corporate funded think tank, had this guy write an Op-Ed rehashing fake arguments about competitiveness and broadband, and weirdly enough, his name sound almost exactly like world-reknowned expert Tim Berners Lee, who takes the opposite position.

For the record, I’ve had the name “Timothy B. Lee” since before Mr. Berners Lee invented the World Wide Web. Of course, that doesn’t rule out the possibility that the vast right-wing conspiracy contacted my parents in anticipation of the network neutrality debate and convinced them to name me Timothy B. Lee.

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Technology Beats Law, Part Deux

by on August 3, 2006

A few weeks ago, I blogged on Cato@Liberty about how technology beats law for curtailing video voyeurism. (You may have come across it here in my recent cavalcade of cross-posting.)

Now a TechDirt post shows how technology can beat law for promoting net neutrality. Broadband Reports cites technology to test how neutral a network is, putting users in a position to gauge what they’re getting from their ISP. A watchdog press (inculding folks like TechDirt) stands ready to amplify consumer concerns, adding seasoning to the stew that is a competitive marketplace.

This doesn’t solve the whole problem, but it solves an important part of the problem. As Tim points out, the alternative – public utility regulation of broadband – may address problems in the near-term while tying knots that take decades to unravel.

Alas, Dan Kaminsky, who’s debuting this tool at BlackHat this week, sees it as an adjunct for regulation. But it is just as powerful as a tool for consumers. Take some advice from the people who’ve seen Washington (not) work, people! Stay as far away as you can!

Speaking of which, I have nothing but sympathy for observers like TechDirt Mike, who rarely fails to note the dishonesty, truth-bending, disingenuousness, and astro-turfing that goes on in the net neutrality debate. My first job in politics/policy was advocating against single-payer health care (read socialized medicine) in California. Advocates on each side came to directly opposite conclusions about what the proposed law would do. Each side honestly believed that the other was composed of complete liars.

Repeat: Run as fast as you can from coercive society! (politics) Run toward cooperation. (markets)

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Railroad Network Neutrality and New Technologies

by on August 3, 2006 · 2 comments

I’ve got a new op-ed over at the New York Times in which I compare today’s Internet regulation debate to the big “network neutrality” debate of the 19th Century: whether the federal government should regulate the railroad industry. As I explain, the pro-regulatory side won that debate, creating the Interstate Commerce Committee. And the results were not good: by the 1920s, the ICC was helping the railroads restrict entry and raise prices. In 1935, as a result of railroad and ICC lobbying, Congress gave the ICC authority over the trucking industry. And the surface transportation industry was uncompetitive for the half-century that followed. As a Ralph Nader report put it in 1970, the commission became “primarily a forum at which transportation interests divide up the national transportation market.”

Space constraints prevented me from elaborating very much on the history of the ICC, but there are a lot of striking parallels between the debate of the 1880s and today’s debate. One of the biggest issues was discriminatory pricing. Smaller farmers and merchants complained that the railroads offered larger shippers discounts that put the little guy at a disadvantage. There were even some arguments that railroad monopolies threatened democracy: the railroads tended to give politicians and prominent business leaders free passes on the trains, and there was even an accusation that a railroad refused to ship newsprint to a newspaper that was critical of the railroads.

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ID-Based Security is Broken – and Can’t be Fixed

by on August 2, 2006

The Government Accountability Office testified to the Senate Finance Committee today that investigators were easily able to pass through borders using fake documents. Indeed, sometimes documents were not checked at all.

“This vulnerability potentially allows terrorists or others involved in criminal activity to pass freely into the United States from Canada or Mexico with little or no chance of being detected.”

That’s true, but shoring up that vulnerability would add little security while devastating trade and commerce at the border.

Identity-based security works by comparing the identity of someone to their background and determining how to treat them based on that. To start, you need accurate identity information. That’s not easy to come by from people who are trying to defeat your identity system.

Here’s a schematic of how identification cards work from my book Identity Crisis.

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AOL and Open Standards

by on August 2, 2006

The relentless march of open standards online continues, as AOL effectively abandons its paid, premium offerings in favor of a free, advertising-supported model:

Besides e-mail, AOL will give away its proprietary software for accessing the once-premium offerings, as well as safety and security features such as parental controls.

Millions of subscribers are likely to drop their paid accounts, making the strategy risky for Time Warner and AOL. Subscriptions still account for about 80 percent of AOL’s revenues, contributing to 19 percent of Time Warner’s revenues in the first half of the year.

But AOL has little choice. As of June 30, AOL had 17.7 million U.S. subscribers, a 34 percent drop from its peak of 26.7 million in September 2002. AOL lost 976,000 subscribers in the past quarter alone.

Nick Gillespie notes that he called this trend years ago, in a 2000 article suggesting that the AOL Time Warner merger was nothing to sweat about:

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Another First Amendment Victory for Video Games

by on August 1, 2006

The electronic gaming sector chalked up another impressive First Amendment victory on Monday in the case of Electronic Software Association v. Hatch. [Here’s the full decision]. James M. Rosenbaum, Chief District Judge of the District Court of Minnesota, struck down as unconstitutional a Minnesota law that passed in May of this year. The Minnesota law was unique in that it sought to impose fines on the buyers rather than the sellers of games rated either “M” for Mature or “AO” for Adults Only under the industry’s voluntary ratings system. Other state and local laws that have been struck down in recent years imposed penalties mostly on game retailers who sold games rated M or AO to minors.

But the unique Minnesota approach met the same legal fate as those other laws. Echoing the previous video game industry decisions, Judge Rosenbaum declared that “video games are a protected form of speech under the First Amendment.” In response to the State of Minnesota’s plea that, when balancing the interests in this matter, the Court should consider “the lesser societal value” of “worthless, disgusting” video games, Judge Rosenbaum cut loose with this wonderful rejoinder: “The First Amendment… was certainly established to keep the government from becoming the arbiter of what constitutes ‘worthless’ or ‘disgusting’ speech. The Court declines the State’s invitation to enter into an evaluation of this kind.”

That’s pretty powerful stuff. But wait… it gets even better.

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Getting to Government Transparency

by on August 1, 2006

There’s technology policy, and there’s how technology affects policy.

That’s why I found my Cato Institute colleague Chris Edwards’ recent Tax & Budget Bulletin so interesting.  He discusses a number of federal databases that bring some transparency to federal spending, including the Federal Assistance Award Data System and the Federal Audit Clearinghouse.  Between them, they reveal quite a bit of information about federal spending and the staggering number and amount of subsidies and grants handed out by the federal government each year.

Edwards also hails a proposal by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) to create a comprehensive Internet database of federal contracts, grants, and other payments.  It would be a great leap forward in terms of transparency about spending, like the Thomas system was for the legislative process.

Advocates from across the political spectrum want a government that “works.” Most believe that their perspective would “win” if the politics and government worked.  Whatever the case, transparency is widely agreed to be good–the more the better.

Thomas was an improvement.  Yet it hasn’t transformed the legislative process the way some might have hoped.  Lawmaking remains murky and confusing to the vast majority of the public.  Even if it was done well, a federal spending database probably wouldn’t transform the politics of government spending either.

Information technology will surely help, but transparency isn’t enough.  The twin problems that must be overcome are rational ignorance and rational inaction.  It’s hard to learn about government, and hard to affect it, so people make better uses of their time.  Operating a lemonade stand would be far more lucrative and enjoyable for most people than campaigning for a tax reduction.  (The piece linked here is a good discussion of rational ignorance.)

There are some efforts to defeat the twin plagues of ignorance and inaction.  GovTrack.us, for example, attacks ignorance with more information presented more accessibly than Thomas.  Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales recently took after inaction with a wiki devoted to campaigns. 

My favorite–because I run it–is WashingtonWatch.com.  It displays pending legislation with its price-tag per person, per family, etc. and it gives visitors a chance to air their views.  A little run at ignorance, a little run at inaction.  Given time, it could blossom into transformed government.  In the meantime, the more transparency the better.

(Cross posted from Cato@Liberty)

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A Cavalcade of Cross-Posting

by on August 1, 2006

For those of you who don’t read the variety of interesting posts over at Cato@Liberty – you really should broaden your horizons – I thought I’d briefly review some of the tech-relevant posts I’ve had over there recently. Most of them relate to the REAL ID Act:

But others deal with more general topics:

Thanks for tolerating this cavalcade of cross-posting.

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