This review is terribly late, but I finally got around to watching the DVD of Kirby Dick’s documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated,” which goes after the MPAA’s movie rating system. Dick tries to paint the MPAA’s private, voluntary ratings board as a “star chamber” that sits in judgment of visual arts and routinely “censors” content it finds at odds with the desires of the studios, government, the military, churches, and so on. But to me, the whole film is much ado about nothing and, worse yet, it fails to adequately address the very real risk of a government censorship popping up in the absence of a private ratings system.
By way of quick background, the MPAA’s familiar ratings system was created by former MPAA president Jack Valenti back in 1968. It was partially a response to the growing pressure for film censorship. Back then – – and this is one of many things Dick’s documentary largely ignores – – there were local censor boards who sat in judgment of films and decided if they could be shown in their communities. And there were ongoing efforts by many lawmakers at all levels to impose regulation on movies or at least strong-arm movie makers into changing content in certain ways.
And so the MPAA ratings system was born. A crucial feature of the MPAA system was that those doing the ratings would be anonymous. The reason this was done was to protect them from being pressured by both those who made the films (who obviously want less restrictive ratings) and those in government or the public who critique the films (many of whom would want stricter ratings).
But keeping raters and the rating process secretive has always had one obvious downside: The system lacks transparency. Why is it that two films with very similar content get two different ratings? Sometimes it’s obvious, other times it’s not. And this is what has Kirby Dick, and the many directors or film critics he interviews in the documentary, up in arms.
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Carlo of TechDirt has posted a detailed deconstruction of the Wu “Wireless Net Neutrality” paper and Skype “Carterfone for Wireless” petition that we have spent so much time writing about here. I highly recommend you read the entire thing because Carlo is covering some new ground that we haven’t hit here yet. Specifically, Carlo picks up on a theme that I was planning on discussing in a follow-up post this week, namely, the myth that the wireless sector is dominated by walled gardens that restrict content flows, and which will only disappear with regulation. Carlo destroys this argument:
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True story: The (New York-based) North County Gazette reports that the mummified body of a man was discovered in his Hampton Bays home this week. He had been dead for a year, but his television was still running and showing programming! The story notes:
When Southhampton police responded to the two story home earlier this week to answer a report about burst water pipes, they found the mummified body of 70-year-old Vincenzo Riccardi, 70, sitting in a chair in front of his television, dead for more than a year, the television still playing.
According to the Suffolk County medical examiner’s office, Riccardi appears to have died of natural causes. It was reported that his body was well-preserved, his features and hair intact due to the dry air in the house… The electricity was still on in the home although apparently the power bills had not been paid in over a year. The last he was heard from was December 2005, according to authorities.
I hate to make light of this tragic (and somewhat creepy) story, but I just have to ask: Where can I find a cable company and an electrical provider that will let me watch TV for a year without making payments?! (Or is this only some sort of special deal for the dead?)
People seem to be not very good at tooting their own horns around here, so I just wanted to note that Adam was prominently quoted in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal editorial $ on the XM-Sirius issue:
Beltway critics of the deal see a media monopolist around every corner, scheming to limit the public’s access to content. And it’s true that the merger would create a lone satellite radio company. But a pure monopoly is one that exists in a market where there are no close substitutes. By contrast, a combined Sirius-XM would have to compete not only with free broadcast radio but also with MP3 players, online radio and even music channels offered by cable providers.
Heaven only knows what the cellular companies will bring to the party. They’re already gearing up to provide more video options, but there’s nothing stopping Verizon or Cingular from coming up with a device that includes a couple of dozen radio stations to compete with satellite.
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Harold Feld has a long screed accusing “the Libertarian/anti-dereg crowd” (which I assume includes us, although I kind of thought we were the pro-dereg crowd) of failing to be suitably awestruck by the awesome power of regulations to improve consumer welfare.
I think it’s quite fitting that he invokes “the New Deal-type ideal of using regulatory power,” because he clearly hasn’t learned anything since the New Deal. Not, for example, the lesson of the ICC, which corporate shill Ralph Nader attacked in 1970 for operating a cozy transportation cartel at the expense of consumers. Nor the lesson of the CAB which that notorious right-winger Jimmy Carter (and a Democratic Congress) abolished in 1978. Nor, I suppose, the way that the broadcasters’ cartel has used its power with the FCC to enrich itself at the expense of competitors and consumers.
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I’ve got a new article up at Ars on AT&T v. Microsoft:
The Software Freedom Law Center filed an amicus brief urging the court to take this line of reasoning even further. The courts have long held that laws of nature, abstract ideas, and mathematical algorithms are not eligible for patent protection. Software is nothing more than a description of a mathematical algorithm. Therefore, the center asks the courts to declare that software is not eligible for patent protection on that basis.
The brief, written by SFLC counsel Eben Moglen, argues that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has had jurisdiction over all patent cases since it was created in the 1980s, has gone off the rails in recent years. Moglen claims that the federal circuit has misread the Supreme Court’s precedents on the patentability of software from the 1970s and early 1980s in a way that removes almost any limit on the scope of patentable subject matter.
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Welcome to the first episode of TLF’s new podcast! Tech Policy Weekly from the Technology Liberation Front is a weekly discussion about technology policy from TLF’s learned band of contributors. It features some of the brightest and most provocative minds in the field of technology public policy commenting on the regulation of the internet, media, privacy, intellectual property, and all things tech.
The shows’s panelists this week are Jerry Brito, Tim Lee, Adam Thierer, and PJ Doland. Topics include,
- Skype’s petition to the FCC asking for wireless net neutrality rules a la Tim Wu
- The antitrust and media implications of the proposed XM-Sirius satellite radio merger
- Is a spectrum commons really a third way between regulation and privatization?
There are several ways to listen to the TLF Podcast. Press play on the player to listen right now, download the MP3 file, or subscribe to the podcast by clicking on your preferred service below. And do us a favor, Digg this podcast!
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Philips, one of the amici in Microsoft v. AT&T, demonstrates some of the same conceptual confusions as Seth Waxman did in oral arguments:
[Not] every computer program is a component of a patented invention. But a program that has the same technical effect as an electronic hardware component surely is. In particular, there are two factors that illustrate that executable software or firmware code is in fact a component of a patented invention.
First, executable code is distributed in its final form such that it cannot be changed. The software developer designs the software in the form of source code, and then fixes it in an executable form by compiling it. The act of compiling manufactures the executable code. In order to modify the executable code, it must be decompiled, modified, then recompiled–a process similar to using a sample to manufacture new copies of a gear. Although the software developer may allow the installer to customize certain parameters, the installer is not allowed to modify the executable code. For example, Microsoft requires original equipment manufacturers (“OEMs”) to attach a Certificate of Authenticity to each fully assembled computer system. This
certificate assures customers that they have acquired “genuine Microsoft Windows software.”
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Skype’s petition seeking wireless net neutrality regulation lists a couple specific “abuses” the company claims justify FCC intervention. The first one is handset subsidies. All of the leading cellphone carriers heavily subsidize cellphones, because up-to-date handsets utilize spectrum more efficiently. The carriers recoup the subsidies via two-year service contracts. Criticized for discouraging consumers from switching providers, these arrangements nevertheless do help hold down the cost of service. Skype doesn’t like the fact that the subsidies put the carriers in a position to control the software that can be loaded onto the phones. Cellphones will soon roam seamlessly between 3G, Wi-Fi and DSL. Skype would like to cut deals with manufacturers to embed its software as a default setting.
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Today I released a new PFF study entited “Rep. Bean’s ‘SAFER Net Act’: An Education-Based Approach to Online Child Safety.” The short paper argues that education, not increased governmental regulation, is the most effective method of ensuring online child safety going forward. Luckily, there finally exists a piece of federal legislation that embodies that philosophy.
Rep. Melissa Bean (D-IL) recently introduced H.R. 1008, the “Safeguarding America’s Families by Enhancing and Reorganizing New and Efficient Technologies (SAFER NET) Act of 2006.” The bill would create an Office of Internet Safety and Public Awareness at the Federal Trade Commission, establish federal grants to promote Internet safety programs and create a national public awareness campaigns. While I’m not usually in favor of new government programs and spending (and I’m certain that my colleagues will give me hell for doing so in this case!), I think the government can play a constructive role here in terms of informing parents and kids about how to deal with objectionable material online or other cyber-threats.
More practically, I think it is essential that we have an education-based vehicle to counter all the regulation-based approaches coming out of Congress these days. Congress always wants to do something on this front, so it is certainly better that they do something that is both constitutional and likely to have lasting impact like safety education. Read my entire paper for the details.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.