Celebrities and artists defending the First Amendment is nothing new. After all, they have the most to lose if speech and artistic expression are censored. But when I hear most celebs defend the First Amendment these days, it just makes me cringe. They typically come off sounding like complete morons.
That’s why I miss Frank Zappa so much. When he was with us, he was one of the most passionate and articulate defenders of freedom of speech–not just in the entertainment industry–but in all of America. And this man knew his history. He understood why the First Amendment was so important to America’s founding and why it remains one of the cornerstones upon which all other human liberties rest.
Just check out this amazing performance of his on CNN’s “Crossfire” back in 1986 defending the music industry from would-be censors. He truly was in the crossfire here as all three of the other clowns on the show ganged up on him. But in the end, he blew them away.
(And how about those old “Crossfire” sets! Looks like this was shot in someone’s basement).
Legislation in the House of Representatives would require Internet service providers to store subscriber data specified by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. The Attorney General would also get to decide how long the data would be stored. The bill, H.R. 837, provides:
SEC. 6. RECORD RETENTION REQUIREMENTS FOR INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS.
(a) Regulations- Not later than 90 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Attorney General shall issue regulations governing the retention of records by Internet Service Providers. Such regulations shall, at a minimum, require retention of records, such as the name and address of the subscriber or registered user to whom an Internet Protocol address, user identification or telephone number was assigned, in order to permit compliance with court orders that may require production of such information.
(b) Failure To Comply- Whoever knowingly fails to retain any record required under this section shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, and imprisoned for not more than one year, or both.
Giving law enforcement the tools to protect our children and put creeps behind bars obviously sounds appealing. And I gather it polls very well in Republican suburbs, too. But as I have pointed out here, the real problem is inadequate prison terms for child molesters and the fact that, once released, child molesters have been allowed to evade registration and notification requirements. Data retention is an attempt to outsource the enforcement and supervision burden.
But I can – to be the first to link to Mike Masnick’s very interesting post on the “can’t compete with free” meme.
It seems like a genuine problem content producers have, competing with those who would share content without regard to copyright law. But Mike points out that they have the same problem as the producer of any good. Competition drives their profits to zero, forcing them to innovate, which content producers seem reluctant to do.
In the comments, Mike is defending himself against some meritorious challenges, though. The marginal cost of distributing intellectual goods may be (effectively) nothing, but the marginal cost of the goods themselves is something above that. Content producers are looking at competion from those who would offer the same products at below marginal cost.
Terrestrial radio broadcasters and satellite radio operators (XM & Sirius) continue to square off in the marketplace but their battle in the political arena is almost as heated of an affair. Rep. Gene Green (D-TX) and Rep. Chip Pickering (R-Miss.) have reintroduced the “Local Emergency Radio Service Preservation Act of 2007.” (H.R. 983) The legislation would limit satellite radio companies to just national programming and disallow any attempt by them to provide more “localized” content, such as local news, weather, traffic and sports reports.
Supporters of the measure argue that local radio broadcasters offer “services critical to the public,” especially “in times of emergencies or disasters when other means of communications may not be available.” Moreover, because “radio is the most ubiquitous of all mass media, with receivers located in almost every home and automobile in the country” the sponsors argue that “There is a substantial governmental interest in ensuring [the] continuation” of free, over-the-air local radio services. In other words, supporters argue that terrestrial radio broadcasting is somewhat akin to a “life line” service or mass media “carrier of last resort” for some local communities.
In late 2005, I penned a study on “The Future of Radio Regulation” in which I discussed the earlier version of this bill. In my study, I argued that the best way to solve this issue is not through line-of-business restrictions on new players or technologies, but rather though the comprehensive liberalization of the traditional terrestrial radio broadcast sector to give those operators more flexability to compete in the new media marketplace without one arm tied behind their backs. I argued:
Self-determination and self-ownership are essential in a free society. Actual physical material such as tissue samples or actual genes taken from a person’s body should not be acquired or used without informed consent–that includes not using a patient’s tissue to develop and market cell lines or to develop and market medical therapies without the patient’s express consent. It is dishonest to provide patients with misleading consent forms. Some give the impression a patient’s tissue is medical waste that the hospital or doctor should be free to dispose of as necessary. Other consent forms acknowledge that a patient’s tissue may be used to gain knowledge but say nothing of the potential profits to be gained either from that knowledge or from the actual use of the tissue itself.
You should bookmark The American, a new daily online and quarterly print magazine from AEI. In the few weeks I’ve followed it, it has surprised me with lots of good stories and ideas, usually by young writers, and quite often about technology. Just this week there’s a piece by Jens Laurson and George Pieler nominating Milton Friedman as the patron saint of blogging since the blogosphere is a free market of ideas where “price signals” abound in the form of links and comments and the best commentary rises to the top. Then there’s this piece by Joshua Tauberer on his Open House Project, which seeks to put Congressional records on the web and as structured data so they’ll be subject to computer-aided scrutiny. From the print magazine, Amy Cortese did some reporting on why internet wine sales are still in regulatory hell even after Granholm v. Heald. Otherpieces are brilliant, too, so check it out.
TLF contributor Jim Harper squares off with a national ID advocate on MSNBC:
I find Joan Messner’s argument baffling. “If the terrorists had not had drivers licenses, there probably would not have been an attack on 9/11,” she says. True enough. But what does that have to do with anything?
The point is that at the point when the 9/11 terrorist applied for drivers licenses, they hadn’t done anything illegal. They got their drivers licenses the same way the rest of us do: they went to the DMV and signed up for them. It’s not obvious on what basis we could or should have denied them licenses.
So Messner’s argument just seems like a non sequitur. I don’t see any way that a more secure drivers license would prevent another 9/11. Can anyone explain how this argument is supposed to work?
Today Lawrence Lessig released the second in his series of presentations about what Congress should do on internet policy. The first installment was about orphan copyrights, and I addressed it here. Today, Lessig writes about “deregulating spectrum,” which is an apt title if by deregulating you mean regulating. Lessig likens the current command-and-control system of spectrum regulation to communism, and I think he’s right. He goes on, however, to argue that a property system is no longer the right alternative to regulation.
Instead, Lessig suggests a market not in spectrum, but in devices that use free spectrum without causing interference to any other user. As he says in his presentation, this system would require “minimal rules governing the devices.” What he doesn’t say is who would set these “minimal rules” and what exactly would guarantee that these rules would remain minimal or even rational. The answer, as I explain in my new paper out this week from the Stanford Technology Law Review, is that government will set the rules, and the only tools that government has to make rules is its inefficient command-and-control processes. A “commons” model is not a third way between regulation and property, it is just another kind of regulation.
Lessig also exhibits lots of outrage at the fact that the current regulatory system is manipulated by special interests to suit their own purposes and not the interests of consumers generally. Well, how will things be any different when government goes about setting his “minimal rules”?
Phil Windley points to an interesting site called HowManyOfMe.com that shows the inutility of names for distingushing among people (when there are lots of them).
I was struck when visiting it, though, that the site requires users to declare their age. The reason? The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
COPPA is one of my favorite superfluous laws. It starts from the premise that parents can’t or shouldn’t be responsible for their children’s online experiences, and it has probably diminished the availability of educational content online for children, particularly children on the margins.
The COPPA declaration on this site illustrates well how dumb regulation gums up the Internet (and other media too). Someone with an interesting idea had to spend a bunch of extra time on his or her project to put it in compliance with a federal law (that I think probably doesn’t actually apply in this case). And just as importantly, millions of people will have to click an extra couple of clicks (I had to go back and do the age declaration) just to get a couple of interesting tidbits of info.
Take these modest inconveniences and multiply them by thousands of Web sites, then by millions or billions of clicks. Then, consider that two or three such gummy inconveniences are added to the burdens Web businesses carry every year. You start to realize that fresh, invigorating ideas and entertainments we could be enjoying are being slowly but surely sapped of energy and vigor. All so the government can do stuff like insinuate itself into the rearing of children.
The House has passed legislation allowing judges to volunteer to receive special training in patent law, after which, other judges could voluntarily defer to those judges when patent cases come along.
Better trained judges are a good thing, right? Not so fast, says Mike Masnick:
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.