Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
There will be votes today and tomorrow on the REAL ID provisions in the Senate immigration bill.
The good folks at unRealID.com have put together a page to facilitate your communication with your Senators about these issues. If you have an opinion – and you should – this would be a good time to express it.
In late April, the Federal Communications Commission released a new report recommending that the government assume a great role in regulating violent video content on television.In response to that report, I penned a lengthy essay entitled, “FCC Violence Report Concludes that Parenting Doesn’t Work.”
I wasn’t kidding. Flipping through that report, one is struck by the fact that the FCC seems to think that parents are completely incompetent and that only benevolent-minded bureaucrats can save the day from objectionable fare that enters the home. And now Congress is ready to get into the game as well. During the House Commerce hearing I testified at last Friday on “The Images Kids See on the Screen,” Rep. Ed Markey, Chairman of the Telecommunications & Internet subcommittee, said that “I believe Big Father and Big Mother are better able to decide what is appropriate for their kids to watch, rather than Big Brother.” Yet, almost in the same breath, he went on to note that he was prepared to give the FCC greater authority to regulate certain things on television “for the children.” Several others members of the subcommittee made similar statements, professing on one hand to believe in parental responsibility, but then quickly listing several caveats and calling for government to regulate media content in some fashion. Not to be outdone, the Senate Commerce Committee plans a hearing tomorrow on “The Impact of Media Violence on Children.”
For those of us who continue to believe in personal responsibility (as well as that little thing called the First Amendment), this is all very frustrating. As I pointed out in my recent book, “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods,” there has never been a time in our nation’s history when parents have had more tools and methods at their disposal to help them decide what is acceptable in their homes and in the lives of their children. Parents have been empowered to make decisions for themselves and their families. And parents seem to be growing more comfortable with the idea of making these decisions for themselves instead of turning to government to do it for them. Two new public opinion polls reflect that reality.
Steven Levy’s column for Newsweek bemoans the trouble that some fellow has gotten himself into, selling mash-ups of hip-hop songs without licensing. Fair use? Transformative use? Why bother with the technicalities? Levy and a legislator likes the fellow, so they weigh in on the side of legislating (yet another) exception. Maybe jam transformative and fair uses together into a whole new category, “rave” use, with a safe harbor for “hipster” use and for the older set “cool” uses? The principle behind it might be that if you offend only a little, you are liable, but if you offend multiple players a lot, you are home free.
The problem of how to license a whole bunch of stuff (167 artists in this case) all at once for a reasonable fee is a daunting one. Not so daunting that one ought not to try. But is proposing yet another exemption or exception or compulsory license or combination thereof really an intelligent approach to the problem? It is not. It is flatly embarrassing that legislators and experienced commentators on copyright cannot do better than this perpetual handing out of legal privileges to the favorite information cause du jour, simultaneously screwing creators and leaving the next innovative
Very nifty demonstration of binary logic:
Based on my hazy recollection from the one computer architecture class I took, this is very close to how addition in real computers works, only the rockers are replaced by a sequence of NAND gates.
Hat tip to Cord Blomquist, who doesn’t appear to believe in permalinks.
More details here.
Here’s the first reporting I’ve seen on Title III of the Senate immigration bill. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carolyn Lochhead writes:
A government that cannot issue passports to 3 million U.S. citizens in time for summer holidays is expected to create a vast work-authorization system for more than 7 million U.S. employers and eventually all 146 million U.S. workers that is quick, accurate and safe.
Up to now, there has been almost no public discussion, much less analysis, of this part of the Senate bill, though the House Immigration Subcommittee held a hearing on issues in electronic employment elgibility verification in April. There, I testified on the privacy and civil liberties concerns with such a system. Even yesterday, though, Senator Ted Kennedy appearing on Fox News Sunday touted the strong employment eligibility verification system in the Senate bill.
Broad immigration reform is needed, especially with increased legal avenues for immigration, but electronic employment eligibility verification will fail. The only question is how much damage will be done to law-abiding Americans’ privacy in the process.
In the latest issue of TechKnowledge, I explain why free software should give libertarians a warm, fuzzy feeling inside.
And over at Ars, I analyze Google’s network neutrality position and argue that Congress should take a wait-and-see posture on the issue.
I was afraid the latter column would get a hostile reaction from the Ars readership, but the response at the Ars forums has been fairly positive.
This month, as part of “National Internet Safety Month,” I have been posting a series of essays about how parents can deal with potentially objectionable online content or contacts. In my new book, Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods, I argue that the best way to deal with concerns about online child safety is through a “3-E Solution,” which stands for “education, empowerment, and enforcement.” The empowerment and education components have already been discussed extensively in previous installments in this series. (See parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8).
But, to reiterate, it is essential that parents take steps to mentor and monitor their children as they enter the world of cyberspace. And industry should empower parents with more and better tools to help them do that job. But the tools discussed throughout my book provide a great deal of assistance already.
As essay #7 in this series made clear, education is even more important. “You need to take a holistic approach” to such problems, notes Ron Teixeira, executive director of the National Cyber Security Center.” Teixeira argues that it is essential that we drill basic lessons into our children–the digital equivalent of “don’t take candy from strangers,” for example–to ensure that they are prepared for whatever technologies or platforms follow social networking sites. “Education is the way you teach children to be proactive, and that will stay with them forever,” he rightly concludes. As Parry Aftab of Wired Safety argues, it’s about teaching our kids to “use the filter between their ears” and “make responsible decisions about their use of technology.” Critical thinking, in other words, is the best form of self-protection.
As will be discussed next, the final “E” in the 3-E Solution is enforcement, as in stepped up law enforcement efforts to find and adequately prosecute child predators.
The original:
The parody:
The lawyer letter.
But Warner/Chappel Music Inc. of Los Angeles said the video infringes on its copyright to “We Are the World.” The song raised money for famine relief the video featured some of U.S. music’s biggest stars, including Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder and Bruce Springsteen.
“According to our records, no request has been made to use the Composition, no authorization has been granted nor has any license been issued for the use of the Composition on the website,” Kelly Isenberg, the company’s director of legal and business affairs wrote in a May 8 letter to the church.
The fair use claim:
Inasmuch as any use of “We Are the World” constitutes a parody and other fair use; given the parodic purpose and character of “God Hates the World;” its transformative elements; the complete lack of any commercial use; and the complete lack of any market substitution or confusion; your demands are respectfully denied. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc. “God Hates the World” is clearly a parody of “We Are the World,” targeting that work with criticism and commentary, including commentary with critical bearing on the substance, style, nature, approach, marketing-of-an-idea-purpose, and various other aspects of the original work, in many particulars. The nub of the parody is to mimic the worldwide unity the song purports to reflect and encourage, and criticize that unity as God-defying and the heart and soul of why God hates the world, in our view of the matter.
The guy has a point; fair use permits bigoted parodies as much as any other kind.
Over at the Google Public Policy Blog, there’s an interesting post about recent efforts by Google to lobby the State Department and USTR to treat censorship as a trade barrier. Andrew McLaughlin writes:
Just as the U.S. government has, in decades past, utilized its trade negotiation powers to advance the interests of other U.S. industries, we would like to see the federal government take to heart the interests of the information industries and treat the elimination of unwarranted censorship as a central objective of our bilateral and multilateral trade agendas in the years to come.
But my hope is that the U.S. government can begin to move – incrementally, agreement-by-agreement, over the coming decade and beyond – to include in our bilateral and, eventually, multilateral trade agreements the notion that trade in information services should presumptively be free, absent some good reason to the contrary.
I can see how censorship hurts U.S. IT companies, especially if entire sites like YouTube are blocked when governments object to some user-generated content. But good luck to our trade negotiators in getting China or other repressive governments to loosen their grip over information!
Identity card producer Digimarc has hired Janice Kephart to lobby for the REAL ID Act. That doesn’t surprise me. Indeed, I assumed she was working for them.
Kephart has worked to cash in on her service to the 9/11 Commission by opening a boutique ‘security’ lobbying firm. In my testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, I characterized her as part of the “do-overs” school of REAL ID advocacy. ‘If we could just do 9/11 again, maybe someone would have gotten suspicious and stopped the attack.’
The article in the Portland Business Journal about it was interesting because it points out that Digimarc is a Beaverton, Oregon company. And look at who is one of the few governors in the country supporting REAL ID: Ted Kulongoski of Oregon!
Worried about national security? Immigration control? Identity fraud? No, the governor is working to help an in-state company feed from the federal trough.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
