In section 7.3, the EC FLOSS Report tells us that firms working on FLOSS are not only faster, they’re also richer. Geez, faster and richer? Are they better looking too? Yet despite the authors’ assertions, I’m not sure we should be green with FLOSS envy just yet.
The authors are trying to erect a foundation upon which to rest the report’s main argument: to grow European economies, the EU should bolster the European ICT sector by betting big on FLOSS. In 7.1 and 7.2 they claimed that FLOSSers work faster (are more productive). As I discussed in my last blog post, FLOSS: The Software Hare that Beats the Proprietary Turtle?, the data didn’t really support the claim. But we were willing to give the authors the benefit of the doubt because FLOSSers should work faster, given the often imitative nature of most FLOSS projects. In this section, however, they are starting to knowingly fill the foundation with hollow claims.
Friend-of-a-friend Tom Lee offers another example of the evils of the unregulated cell phone market. Apparently, AT&T, Sprint, and Qwest are all blocking a free conference call service he uses, in order (Tom speculates) to twist his arm into switching to a paid conferencing service—the idea, presumably, to get them to sign up for one of those companies’ products.
Instead of punishing the companies that have screwed up, we’ll be forced to switch conferencing providers. Which, if the freeconference.com people are to be believed, is exactly what the networks are conspiring to accomplish.
Now compare the situation to my VoIP vendor. If I’m using an open protocol (and, since my home Asterisk server speaks SIP, I am), the decision to switch vendors is as simple as googling for a new provider, filling out a web form and altering a configuration file to match the credentials that will have been emailed to me. That’s how it ought to be: if Cingular starts screwing you over, forward your calls to the T-Mobile trial account you just set up — all it’d take is changing a few settings on your handset. If you like it, switch for good for whatever the current, reasonable number-portability fee is.
I find this a little bit puzzling because I would think that the FCC would already have some authority to deal with this sort of thing, since the PSTN is firmly under the commission’s control. I would think this would be a case where the FCC would have full authority to step in, as they did in the Madison River case, and tell them to knock it off. I wonder if one of the actions in the email is to call the relevant FCC commissioners’ offices.
But let me address Tom’s more general point about our collective skepticism about government regulation.
Do television sets have rights? Apparently so, according to the National Association of Broadcasters. Communications Daily, reporting today on the planned subsidy for analog televisions, quotes a broadcast industry spokesman as saying” [O]ur priority is that no TV set and no consumer gets disenfranchised.” Let’s read that again. “[O]ur priority is that no TV set and no consumer gets disenfranchised.”
It’s odd enough to say to talk about consumers being “disenfranchised” due to the digital transition. But TV sets? Can TV sets be “disenfranchised”? Somehow I missed the provision in the Constitution granting rights to televisions, or any electronic appliances for that matter. I’m not even sure how such rights would be defined. Would only analog televisions be protected? Perhaps any device with a cathode ray tube? What about computer monitors? Are they entitled to equal protection under the law?
I’ve got a review of Wikinomics up over at The American. Here’s the meat of it:
If Wikinomics has one weakness, it’s that the authors fail to fully appreciate the extent to which market mechanisms lose their salience in the context of peer production. For example, they urge Yahoo! to set up a profit-sharing scheme within its Flickr photo-sharing site and its del.icio.us social bookmarking site, in which the creators of the most popular content would get paid for their contributions. This seems entirely unnecessary. The sites must already be offering users sufficient incentives to participate, or they never would have signed up in the first place.
Moreover, introducing payments could create new problems. Paying a handful of the most popular contributors could create feelings of envy and resentment among the vast majority of users who would continue to be unpaid. The lure of cash payments might also induce some users to attempt to game the system. Paying contributors would be highly inefficient, as there would be substantial overhead in locating, authenticating, and mailing (fairly small) checks to thousands of people. The money would be far better spent hiring more programmers to further improve the site, making it more valuable for all users.
This points to a more general principle: peer production succeeds largely because it eliminates the frictions that accompany commercial activities. Proprietary software companies face a variety of costs, including finding and hiring programmers, finding and hiring sales and support personnel, supervising and evaluating employees, negotiating contracts with other software companies, filing patent applications, renting office space, and so forth. Peer production eliminates most of these costs, as contributors self-select the parts of a project that interest them most (which will, more often than not, be the parts to which they’ll have the most to contribute) and contribute their changes directly to the project, without the substantial overhead that would be required to keep track of who contributed what and how much each contributor was owed. Introducing financial payments into the equation can often undermine the very efficiencies that make the system work in the first place.
Also, don’t miss the latest edition of The American’s new podcast, which features yours truly discussing the basics of peer production with managing editor David Robinson.
Herb Vest, CEO of the online dating service True.com, is still working hard to get the government to push background checks for those seeking love on the ‘net. The New York Timesreports:
True, which conducts criminal background checks on its subscribers, is the primary force behind a two-year-old campaign to get state legislatures to require that social Web sites prominently disclose whether or not they perform such checks….
The company then tried to have laws passed in several states that would require other sites to conduct background checks or disclose that they do not…. True has had little political success so far, but is backing bills that legislators are considering in Florida, Texas and Michigan.
As the Times reports, Vest is no newcomer to lobbying government to gain an advantage over competitors.
As I noted two years ago, Vest’s preferred legislation would require matchmaking sites not conducting background checks “stamp this stark warning atop every e-mail and personal ad, in no less than 12-point type: ‘WARNING: WE HAVE NOT CONDUCTED A FELONY-CONVICTION SEARCH OR FBI SEARCH ON THIS INDIVIDUAL.'”
Is this really necessary? When I want to know for sure whether my online date is a felon, I just visit this site.
Yesterday I noted that I have a new study out entitled “Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions.” In yesterday’s post, I highlighted the general conclusions of my paper. Today I want to discuss how much of the push for age verification of social networking sites is being driven by unfounded fears and irrational myths about the nature of social networking and the severity of online child abuse.
Indeed, although I set out to write my entire paper about age verification, I ended up spending the first third of the paper just debunking myths about social networking websites and online predation. That’s because I found that this debate is being driven almost entirely by myths and irrational fears.
For a lawyer-in-training, watching the commenters on Slashdot, Digg, and similar techie forums debate fine points of law is a special treat–finally, a group that knows less about that law than I do. Faster than you can type “IANAL,” some dope has posted that the income tax is unconstitutional, that breaking into government computers cannot be lawfully prosecuted, or that one has a good case against Comcast when the cable installer came a day late.
Non-lawyers often treat the law as intuitive; does it seem like this is illegal or improper?, they ask. The answer, of course, frequently justifies their own behavior.
Although I think it make some good points, I think it gets a couple of things wrong. One is the point about “smart” networks. I’ve discussedthatindetailbefore, so I won’t belabor it here. The other thing that seemed off to me is this notion that we’ve got an “exaflood” on its way, and if we don’t have enough bandwidth, the Internet’s architecture won’t be able to “keep up” with the demand.
Don Marti fires back at our own Solveig Singleton and her post on “deconstructionism” and DRM:
“Fiddling with the language” won’t win the DRM debate, but getting the right terms into common use will help keep it from being harder than it has to be.
Framing does work. Archer Daniels Midland’s lobby groups help keep sugar quotas in force in the USA, even though they raise prices for sugar customers and hurt opportunities for mutually beneficial trade with sugar exporters. The winner? The corn syrup industry. Archer Daniels Midland can’t run its high-fructose corn syrup business at a profit unless the government puts heavy-handed restrictions on trade in sugar. And, no, this Decatur, Illinois company is not wasting its money on “deconstruction”.
Though many didn’t think it possible – and even more didn’t notice – the TechLiberationFront team outdid itself yet again at last night’s Alcohol Liberation Front event. The room was buzzing with excitement as the brightest tech policy lights on the . . . um . . . first floor of the Science Club gathered to imbibe and share their latest thinking on . . . um . . . stuff.
More than a few people were trying to place estimates on attendance. It was clear that the number of TLF fans – dare we call them “groupies”? – had at least doubled compared to prior events, possibly tripled, and maybe even quadrupled. Let’s just say TLF begoogled its prior showings. Because that doesn’t really mean anything, but it sounds awfully impressive and kind of techie too.
Joining in the fun – or at least aware of our presence (some of them) – was the D.C. Mobile Monday chapter. D.C. MM had hosted drinks on the second floor which almost made it worthwhile to hear a presentation from Working Assets on how they used text messaging in the last election cycle.
The event ended consistent with the old line, “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.” Some people’s wives were out of town. Others are just red-blooded Americans. You see, Science Club is not far from some finediningestablishments . . . .
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 →
In section 7.3, the EC FLOSS Report tells us that firms working on FLOSS are not only faster, they’re also richer. Geez, faster and richer? Are they better looking too? Yet despite the authors’ assertions, I’m not sure we should be green with FLOSS envy just yet. 
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.