Jennifer Medina of the New York Times penned an article yesterday on the debate over social networking fears leading to calls for age verification mandates. She noted that measures are moving in several states that would require social networking sites to age-verify users before they are allowed to visit the sites or create profiles there. But Medina also noted that there are many difficult questions about how age verification would work and how “social networking” would even be defined. (I summarize these questions in my recent PFF report, “Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions.”)
Ms. Medina was also kind enough to interview me for the story and she summarizes some of what I had to say in her piece. In a nutshell, I stressed that the most effective way to deal with this problem is to get serious about dealing with sex offenders instead of trying to regulate law-abiding citizens. We need to be locking up convicted sex offenders for a lot longer in this country to make sure they behind bars instead of behind keyboards seeking to prey on our children.
I also stressed the importance of online safety education as part of the strategy here. But my comments on that didn’t make the cut in the story. But you can read my big recent paper on this issue for additional details.
Some lawmakers at the federal, state and local level have advocated video game industry regulation in the name of protecting children from potentially objectionable content, usually of a violent nature. In my opinion, the better approach–and one that doesn’t involve government censorship or regulation of games–is to empower parents to better make these decisions for their own families. And the key to that effort is an effective rating / labeling system for game content that parents understand and use.
Luckily, there are good signs that the video game industry’s voluntary ratings system–the ESRB (the Entertainment Software Rating Board)–is doing exactly that. The game industry established the ESRB in 1994 and it has rated thousands of games since then. (The ESRB estimates it rates over 1,000 games per year). Virtually every title produced by major game developers for retail sale today carries an ESRB rating and content descriptors. Generally speaking, the only games that do not carry ESRB ratings today are those developed by web amateurs that are freely traded or downloaded via the Internet.
The ESRB applies seven different rating symbols and over 30 different content “descriptors” that it uses to give consumers highly detailed information about games. Thus, by simply glancing at the back of each game container, parents can quickly gauge the appropriateness of the title for their children.
So, how effective is this system, as measured by parental awareness and usage of the ESRB ratings and labels? Since 1999, the ESRB has asked Peter D. Hart Research Associates to study that question and conduct polls asking parents if they are aware of the ESRB ratings and if they use them. As this chart illustrates, the results are impressive with both awareness and use growing rapidly since 1999:
Better yet, all gaming platforms and most PCs can read these ratings and labels and allow parents to block games rated above a certain level they find unacceptable. But the real strength of the ESRB’s ratings system lies in the content descriptors, which give parents plenty of warning about what they will see or hear in each title. That way, parents can talk to their kids about those games or just not buy them for their kids until they think they are ready.
The game industry deserves credit not only for creating such an excellent content rating / labeling system, but also putting significant resources into public education / awareness efforts to ensure parents know how to take advantage of it. So then, why are lawmakers continuing to waste millions of taxpayer dollars litigating unneeded regulatory efforts?
Previous installments (1, 2, 3 & 4) in this series have documented how our government seems to have a difficult time keeping tabs on laptops and personal information. The latest on this front comes from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Last week, the TSA informed us that a computer hard drive containing the personal, payroll and bank information of 100,000 current and former TSA workers has apparently gone missing and is assumed stolen. The FBI and the Secret Service have apparently opened a criminal investigation into the matter.
I was about to launch into another rant on this front, but then I picked up this morning’s Washington Post and their editorial on this issue really nails it:
Continue reading →
The Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Cord Blomquist also doesn’t approve of the Digg protesters:
Websters are calling the ‘revolt’ at Digg an online Boston Tea Party. This is offensive to anyone who knows the history of the Boston Tea Party. The Sons of Liberty destroyed someone else’s property, a very non-libertarian thing to do, but they did so to protest the unjust taxation of their own hard earned dollars and the tyrannical British rule. Besides, the British East India Company was nothing like what we would call a private enterprise. Before it was dissolved in the middle of the 19th century the East India Company had many governmental and military functions and virtually ruled India. The revolutionaries were against this kind of government granted monopoly and unjust use of power.
Digg users posting HD-DVD encryption keys is no Boston Tea party. These rogue digg users are referencing a proprietary code, which is not their property, and they’re using a private website, which is also not their property. This attack on private property is more like an online October Revolution. The people at Digg can exercise control over their own property, while the users claim that controlling a private site is equivalent to theft. (They should read What’s Yours is Mine). It all smacks of Marxism to me.
So in other words, it’s OK to destroy private property if you’re protesting a law Blomquist disagrees with, but it’s not cool to even “reference” private property if you’re protesting a law Blomquist likes.
Mark Blafkin has an puzzling take on this week’s Digg/AACS business:
The real story here is about the ephemeral nature of Web2.0 companies. When your value is based on the people you attract more than the value of any product or service you provide, your grasp on success is tenuous at best. You will always be at the mercy of 5-10 percent of your users that are most active and usually most crazy. Web2.0 has a lot of promise, but it also has some potential pitfalls. We’ve just seen one of them. When you’re relying on “mobs,” well, you’re relying on MOBS.
I’m at a loss what point Blafkin’s trying to make here. Let’s keep in mind that a “Web 2.0 business” is just a website whose contents are controlled by users rather than the site administrator. Or in other words, it’s a website that gives users the freedom to exchange information without having to first seek the permission of the authorities. As a libertarian, that seems to me as an almost unalloyed good.
If the DMCA effectively says that Digg had to choose between breaking the law or shutting down, that seems to me like evidence that there’s something wrong with the DMCA. Digg is not profiting from piracy the way Napster and Grokster were. They’re a legitimate news site whose users happen to have strong anti-censorship views.
Blafkin seems to have the opposite reaction: that if user-generated content is incompatible with the DMCA, then so much the worse for user-generated content. But libertarianism is not about slavishly obeying the law, regardless of the consequences. If copyright law starts effectively outlawing legitimate websites, then copyright law has gone too far.
The Miami Herald reports that Florida has passed legislation ditching touch-screen voting machines. The entire state will switch back to the tried-and-true technology of optical-scan paper ballots. Good for Florida
The rapid shift in the conventional wisdom is kind of stunning. Remember that the primary reason the nation adopted touch-screen voting machines in the first place was the widespread negative publicity surrounding “butterfly ballots” in Florida’s 2000 election. When the Help America Vote Act passed in 2002, there were only a handful of people raising concerns about computerized voting, and they tended to be dismissed as cranks.
Now the shoe is on the other foot. Although it will take some more work (either action by Congress or a lot more legislation at the state level) to replace all the touch-screen voting machines in the country, it’s starting to look like a matter of when, not if.
It’ll be interesting to see how many other states follow Florida’s lead. My guess is that Florida is unique, since they’re the state that had the biggest problems this year, and they’re already sensitive to the issue after the debacle in 2000. But I’m sure people in at least some other states are paying attention. Avi Rubin has been following a paper ballot bill making its way through Maryland’s legislature, so hopefully they’ll be joining Florida in the near future.
Tech Policy Weekly from the Technology Liberation Front is a weekly podcast about technology policy from TLF’s learned band of contributors. The shows’s panelists this week are Jerry Brito, Braden Cox, Hance Haney, Tim Lee, and Ben Klemens of the Brookings Institution. Topics include,
- The Supreme Court smacks down the Federal Circuit in two major patent decisions
- the latest in the Vonage vs. Verizon patent saga
- Digg and the AACS encryption key
There are several ways to listen to the TLF Podcast. You can press play on the player below to listen right now, or download the MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the podcast by clicking on the button for your preferred service. And do us a favor, Digg this podcast!
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Here’s Congress siding with Boston’s idiotic public officials. The Terrorist Hoax Improvements Act of 2007 would allow government officials to sue people who fail to promptly clear things up when those officials mistakenly think that they have stumbled over a terrorist plot.
There’s nothing in the bill allowing individuals or corporations to sue government officials when hare-brained overreactions interfere with their lives and business or destroy their property.
Good article in this week’s Economist on last week’s Supreme Court decisions on patent law. The magazine compares the KSR decision to a decision by the Privy Council 435 years ago:
“In 1572 the Privy Council of Elizabeth I, the queen of England, refused to grant patent protection to new knives with bone handles because the improvement was marginal. It is only natural that things progress, the council reasoned; minor ameliorations do not cut it. This week America’s Supreme Court decided likewise.”
That’s what I call historical perspective. Worth reading.
Are TV antennas making a comeback? It may be hard to believe, but according to Joe Milicia of the Associated Press, there’s a mini-boom going on in the antenna business. And it’s not just technophobes who are buying them. 
According to Milicia: “…some consumers are spending thousands of dollars on LCD or plasma TVs and hooking them up to $50 antennas that don’t look much different from what grandpa had on top of his black-and-white picture tube.”
According to the head of an antenna company: “Eighty-year-old technology is being redesigned and rejiggered to deliver the best picture quality. It’s an interesting irony.” The reason is that quite a few people believe HD signals are actually better over-the-air, and with digital technology snow and other interference is less of a problem. “Over-the-air everything is perfect,” said one consumer.
It’s a controversial point, to say the very least. And it hard to imagine the general public returning to the world of over-the-air. Most people, one researcher is quoted as saying, don’t even know they can get HD over-the-air. And many — as Gary Shapiro has pointed out — just don’t care. Still, if there is even a short-term boom in antennas, this is a rare bit of good news for the beleagured broadcast industry.
Perhaps rotary-dial phones will come back next…
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.