Well I think many of us here can appreciate Lawrence Lessig’s call to “blow up the FCC,” as he suggested in an interview with National Review this week. But I wonder, who, then, would be left to enforce his beloved net neutrality mandates and the media ownership rules he favors? He’s advocated regulation on both those fronts, but it ain’t gunna happen without some bureaucrats around to fill out the details and enforce all the red tape.
Regardless, I whole-hearted endorse his call for sweeping change. Here’s what he told National Review:
One of the biggest targets of reform that we should be thinking about is how to blow up the FCC. The FCC was set up to protect business and to protect the dominant industries of communication at the time, and its history has been a history of protectionism — protecting the dominant industry against new forms of competition—and it continues to have that effect today. It becomes a sort of short circuit for lobbyists; you only have to convince a small number of commissioners, as opposed to convincing all of Congress. So I think there are a lot of places we have to think about radically changing the scope and footprint of government.
Amen, brother. If he’s serious about this call, then I encourage Prof. Lessig to check out the “Digital Age Communications Act” project that over 50 respected, bipartisan economists and legal scholars penned together to start moving us down this path.
I used to be better about posting short reviews of the books I was reading, but I’ve gotten lazy and stopped doing so. I’m going to try to get back in that habit. For now, I’ll just post a few links for some interesting books I’ve read recently, or just started digging into:
* The Future of Reputation: Gossip, Rumor, and Privacy on the Internet, by Daniel J. Solove. As a rabid free speech advocate, I found Solove’s book quite challenging because he points out the occasional downsides of uninhibited speech when it comes to reputation. I generally subscribe to the “your-privacy-is-over, get-over-it” camp, but Solove makes a powerful case regarding the dangers of that position when innocent people get caught up in an online war of words and have their reputations ruined for years, or perhaps even life. Jim Harper posted a review of Solove’s book last October and pointed out that these occasions are probably more rare than Solove suggests, but they still do exist. The question is: How much of a role should the law play in countering or correcting those “wrongs”? Solove has some interesting answers. [Note: You can read the book online here.]
* Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering, edited by Ronald J. Deibert, John G. Palfrey, Rafal Rohozinski, and Jonathan Zittrain. This is essential reading for anyone studying the methods governments are using to stifle online expression. The contributors provide a regional and country-by-country overview of the global state of online speech controls and discuss the long-term ramifications of increasing government filtering of online networks. Even if you don’t read the whole thing, this is a must-have title for your bookshelf since there is no other resource out there like this. [Note: It also contains a very helpful chapter on the mechanics of Net filtering.]
* Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, by Henry Jenkins. I finished this one several months ago but thought I would plug it here anyway. Jenkins is one of my favorite writers, and in many ways he follows in the footsteps of Marshall McLuhan and Ithiel de Sola Pool, who wrote my favorite technology policy book of all time, Technologies of Freedom. I really like Henry’s definition of convergence: “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want.” He goes on to argue that, “In the world of media convergence, every important story gets told, every brand gets sold, and every consumer gets courted across multiple media platforms.”
Continue reading →
Most of us think of watch-listing as a fool’s errand in the air travel context. Well, here’s a story of how it can wreak havoc (more accurately, deny free speech and due process) in the context of Web domains.
The U.S. Treasury Department’s OFAC list (for Office of Foreign Asset Control) is a list of people and entities that U.S. entities can’t do business with. Because doing business with them would be support for the terrorists.
Oh, and support for travel agents specializing in getting Europeans to Cuba.
Arrington reports that a G-mail archiver called G-Archiver, which backs up all of your Gmail emails to your hard drive, sends every user’s email address and password to the creator’s own email account, giving him access to all of their Gmail messages. And he observes:
That has led a number of experts to conclude that Google Apps can never be a real threat to Microsoft Exchange and Sharepoint. All of the sensitive business information of a company, if stored on Google’s servers, is just a password guess, or in this case what is effectively a phishing scam, away.
This reprises his earlier observation (which I amplified here) that “unauthorized document access is a simple password guess or government ‘request’ away.”
Looking down the horizon, I don’t see why it’s better to have computing and storage done remotely. Better security (for the corporation and individual alike) will come from owning and physically controlling your storage and computing. The winners won’t be the providers of computing in the cloud (think Google); it’ll be the ones who make the portable and easy-to-use devices (think Apple).
While I’m critiquing random aspects of my air travel experience, I have a question: why are airline attendants such control freaks? I’ve gotten used to the “seat backs and tray tables in their upright and locked positions” restrictions, which could have some safety implications in cases of turbulence. And it’s at least conceivable that the ban on cell phones could be necessary to avoid interference with air traffic control systems. But I’m totally baffled by the rule that was in force between the time we landed the plane and the time we reached the gate: cell phones were OK but other portable electronic devices were not. I can’t think of any plausible safety reason—scratch that, any reason at all—for this restriction, especially when the opposite rule is in force while the plane is at cruising altitude. Weirdest of all, the flight attendant announced, and then diligently enforced, the rule that window shades must be up during takeoff and landing. I’ve wracked my brain and I can’t think of any reason it would matter what position the window shade is in. Do flight attendants (or airline executives) get off on making up totally arbitrary rules to impose on their passengers?
I’m stuck in the Charlotte airport, and I wanted to give some kudos to the good people of Charlotte for making WiFi access available in their airport for free. In this case, I’m stranded in Charlotte for a couple of hours, so I probably would have plunked down the requisite $7.99 if they’d asked for it. But in the vast majority of cases, where I’m in the airport for an hour or less before my flight, the fee discourages me from using the connection. This is a pure deadweight loss for the world, denying Internet access to a lot of people in order to squeeze a few dollars out of the handful willing to pay an inflated price for access. It’s good to see Charlotte buck the trend, and I hope my own airport follows Charlotte’s lead.
An EFF release issued Thursday tells of another telecom employee who has revealed government access to Americans’ communications.
Babak Pasdar, a computer security consultant, has gone public about his discovery of a mysterious “Quantico Circuit” while working for an unnamed major wireless carrier. Pasdar believes that this circuit gives the U.S. government direct, unfettered access to customers voice calls and data packets. These claims echo the disclosures from retired AT&T technician Mark Klein, who has described a “secret room” in an AT&T facility.
Given the lack of information available to Congress on this and other allegations, three House Committee Chairmen have written their colleagues arguing against a “vote in the dark” on FISA reform and telecom immunity.
At the Burton Group Identity Blog, Mark Diodati has a write-up of Microsoft’s acquisition of Credentica.
Microsoft’s Kim Cameron and Stefan Brands of Credentica are two people I know to be doing important work in the identity area. I featured Stefan in the final chapter of my book, Identity Crisis. I believe both are working to make identity and credentialing systems that support secure transacting without promoting surveillance – no easy task.
Perhaps this summer, I will have time to translate the technical details of their work into libertarian English and report more about it.
Bret Swanson had a great post plugging Chris Anderson’s upcoming book Free, which I expect to be every bit as interesting as his first book. But he then concluded his post with what seems to me like a totally gratuitous swipe at Larry Lessig’s brilliant book, Free Culture, which he characterizes as “about the demonization of property and profits” and “imposing a radical new utopian and quasi-socialist agenda on our imperfect but highly productive and creative capitalist economy.”
This left me wondering if we’d read the same book. Lessig of course criticizes large companies who have lobbied for changes in copyright law that benefit themselves at the expense of consumers. But I would regard that as “criticizing rent-seeking,” not “demonizing profits.” When Cato attacks corporate welfare, nobody thinks that’s anti-capitalist.
And I have absolutely no idea what “radical new utopian and quasi-socialist agenda” Lessig is advocating, or upon whom Swanson thinks it would be “imposed.” The changes Lessig advocates would mostly undo the changes to copyright law that the content industries have pushed over the last three decades: longer terms, abandonment of formalities, anti-circumvention rights, harsher penalties, erosion of fair use. For the most part, Lessig’s “radical new utopian and quasi-socialist agenda” is also known as “American copyright law circa 1975.”
Now, Lessig certainly has some ideas I disagree with. Some of them might even be characterized as anti-property or anti-profit. But the ideas in Free Culture certainly aren’t among them. To the contrary, as the Wall Street Journal‘s review of Free Culture pointed out, the central theme of Free Culture is something conservatives normally celebrate: reducing the role of government and lawyers into Americans’ ordinary lives. Over the last quarter century, the regulatory regime that is copyright law has intruded on more and more aspects of our daily lives. While there may very well be good policy arguments for some of these changes, as Swanson’s own colleagues have forcefully argued. But there’s certainly nothing unlibertarian about worrying that increased government involvement in peoples’ lives will have negative consequences.
But don’t take my word for it. Listen to Milton Friedman, Kenneth Arrow, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase, and Thomas W. Hazlett, all of whom weighed in on Lessig’s side in the Eldred decision, a case Lessig discusses extensively in Free Culture. Listen to noted libertarian scholar Richard Epstein, who agrees with Lessig that copyright law has been applied too aggressively to documentary filmmakers. Free culture is about what its title suggests: freedom. One can (and Swanson’s colleagues have) make a coherent argument that the freedoms Lessig champions are less important than the need to create incentives for the production of creative works. But it’s inaccurate to describe a book about freedom as “utopian and quasi-socialist.”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.