William Patry discusses an important copyright issue:
…there were lengthy pubic meetings at WIPO…
The jokes write themselves.
Seriously, though, this ACTA business is bad news, for all the reason Patry enumerates.
June 2008
The Registered Traveler program, you might recall, is a fairly new initiative by which air passengers can pass through expedited security lines by paying a $100-ish yearly fee to one of several private firms that then run regular background checks. If enroll you pass through faster lines, and eventually you may be allowed to do things like keep your shoes on or your laptop in your bag. It’s meant for frequent travelers, and we, the public, are assured that the fees will provide additional lines and personnel — there should be no effect on those who don’t enroll.
This was not our experience. The young woman brought by the TSA employee was allowed to cut in front of us, and was then personally led through the security process like a blind baby kitten. That was irritating, but not a particularly large inconvenience — like I said, the lines weren’t long. But there also wasn’t much of a point to plopping that lady’s patrician ass in front of us and escorting her through — it probably made her feel special, and us less so, but nobody was saved or cost any meaningful amount of time. Still, if this is the system they use during busy periods, it really is going to make air travel worse for everyone who doesn’t pony up $100/year to gain entry into the program.
Now of course there’s nothing wrong with charging more for better service. But I think there’s at least a little something wrong when that service is a government-mandated barrier to travel, and more so when it’s one powered by secret lists and standards about which appeal is nearly or completely impossible. It also seems like a bad idea to give richer — and therefore more influential — passengers a way out of a system that, without some sort of opposing pressure, will inevitably become more and more irritating and inhumane as bureaucrats try to save their jobs by figuring out up ways to prevent plots that no one can anticipate.
It has crossed my mind that the liquid ban probably improves sales at concession stands inside the security perimeter. I’m not quite cynical enough to think that there’s a concessionaire’s lobby that pushed for the liquid ban, although I wouldn’t be shocked to learn some vendors are subtly encouraging TSA not to lift the ban.
But it’s much easier to imagine how a program like RT could be corrupted. The value of RT flows directly from the inconvenience imposed on non-customers, and revenue from the RT program apparently helps hire more TSA agents. So the net effect is to give the TSA both a vested interest in making the inspection process more obnoxious and a cluster of private interests with the same incentives. If the revenues become significant, it’s not hard to imagine a revolving door between mid-level TSA officials and the private company who administer these programs.
And the point about opting out is the most important one, in my view. Our only hope of someday having a sane airport security system is that the system inconveniences a significant number of wealthy, well-connect people. If those wealthy, well connected people are allowed to buy their way out of the system, it will be that much harder to fix things.
Of course, the really rich and influential people are flying on private jets, and not surprisingly, they’ve already arranged to bypass airport security entirely. So we may already be out of luck.
The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance represents a program of sorts, one designed to run on human brains and to output obedience. Like any program, however, the Pledge can suffer from bugs and submit to hacking. I thus offer you an upgraded Pledge, v. 2008:
I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statuory, with liberty and justice for all.
For the coder’s notes, click on over to Agoraphilia.
As Jim has mentioned, Google stands accused of violating a California law that requires a website operator to “conspicuously post” a link to its privacy policy on its “home page or first significant page after entering the Web site” with the word “Privacy” in a larger font than the rest of the page’s text.
Are we not fortunate to have state laws that make it possible for customers to actually find website privacy policies? With all the billions of documents floating out there in the dark and mysterious pipes and tubes of the so-called “Internet,” how on earth would any simple user ever find the Google privacy policy if Google were not required by law to include an obvious link to that policy on its homepage? Some modern-day da Vinci would have to invent a technology that could magically index every single webpage in existence and let users find—or “search,” to use a classic science-fiction term—for that particular webpage by typing the words “Google privacy policy” and clicking a button.
Until such fantastic Jules Verne-style technologies are developed in some distant century, it is obviouslyvital that each and every state government develop its own requirement as to how website operators—especially those that purport to offer fantastic-but-as-yet-clearly-impossible “search” services—must clutter their websites’ homepages with links to information that no user could ever possibly find on his or her own with today’s crude technology.
Of course, even if such “search engines” (to coin an unlikely phrase) actually existed, the burden on consumers of typing seventeen (17!) letters—plus two (2) spaces and perhaps even two (2) more quotation marks for a total of up to twenty-one (21!) agonizing-to-type characters—would have to be reduced dramatically through some additional innovation or Esperanto-like simplification of the English language before we could reasonably expect that average consumers might be able to find privacy policies on their own without the benefit of California’s enlightened net-paternalism. Continue reading →
. . . in the communications world.
This recent TechKnowledge by James Plummer makes the case for more freedom in the use of the radio spectrum. This will bring more voices to the media marketplace, fostering competition and diversity in ideas and culture.
“Low-Power FM: Freedom is Diversity” concludes: “The FCC and Congress are both poised to further open up the FM spectrum. Both should ignore the pleadings of special interests on all sides as they do so. “
Time Warner Cable is rolling out a system for metering bandwidth, according to PC World, TechCrunch, and the Associated Press. GigaOm posts a poll — “Will Metered Broadband Make You Switch Your ISP?” — and concludes: “get ready to pay more and get less for broadband. Will this spur into action, and switch ISPs or look for alternatives.” Many bloggers, such as Boztopia.com, view Time Warner’s move as a distinct regression. But not Cord Bloomquist, on Tech Liberation Front, who says:
“Bandwidth metering is probably a fairer and more transparent way to deal with the vast disparities in usage amongst broadband subscribers. Rather than claiming “unlimited” service and then proceeding to restrict access in a few dozen ways, metering gives unlimited use to a point, and then asks heavy users to pay their fair share.”
Cord himself uses the “f”-word: fraud. “Claims of ‘unlimited’ anything should be met with suspicion, especially unlimited bandwidth,” he writes. “In a fraud-free world, we can have networks advertised as metered, managed, or really unlimited (total free-for-alls).”
Here at BroadbandCensus.com, we’ve been expecting this move toward increased metered pricing.
The core motivation behind BroadbandCensus.com is to provide consumers with a central place to which they can go to obtain as-accurate-as-possible information about local broadband availability, competition, speeds and prices.
Tracking the presence or absence of broadband in different parts of the country is one step. Offering speed tests to check a particular connection at a particular time is another step. BroadbandCensus.com aims to put the entire package together, by providing consumers with ability to obtain the objective information about a particular carrier’s service plans — within a local area, like a ZIP code — and also to obtain pricing, promised speeds, and how actual Internet speeds and network connections compare. Test your connection, and help us map out the world of better broadband. You can help out: Take the Broadband Census and speed test!
URL: http://broadbandcensus.com/blog/?p=12
I’m please to welcome Berin Szoka to the TLF as a new contributor. Berin is currently serving as a Visiting Fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and working closely with me to create a new Center for Internet Freedom within PFF. At PFF and here on the TLF blog, Berin will be sounding off on a wide variety of Internet policy issues such as online free speech, intermediary immunity and Sec. 230 issues, online advertising, behavior marketing, privacy policy, e-commerce taxation/regulation, Internet jurisdictional matters, and much more.
Berin also has a great deal of experience on the traditional communications / spectrum law front and will be sounding off on those issues as well. Before joining PFF, he practiced communications, Internet and satellite law as an Associate in the Communications Practice group at Latham and Watkins LLP. Prior to his time with Latham, he practiced at Lawler Metzger Milkman & Keeney, LLC, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington, and he also clerked for the Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
Finally, Berin has a keen interest in space technology and the policy and legal issues affecting space commercialization. He has been an Advocate of the Space Frontier Foundation since 2005. On occassion, he will be commenting on space law issues here at the TLF.
Berin hasa degree in economics from Duke University and his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Submissions Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology. We look forward to his contributions to the TLF!
No.
Google stands accused of violating California law by failing to link to its privacy policy prominently enough. Linking to privacy policies on home pages was an experiment that failed long ago. People don’t read them. People who are interested in reading them can find them so long as they’re placed sensibly on the Web site.
What a strange kabuki dance, to fret about whether Google links to its privacy policy on its home page. Google does better than most – which is, in truth, only kinda good – at informing the public about its privacy practices and the privacy consequences of its products.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Update: I’ve written a little bit more on this at Cato@Liberty.
WASHINGTON, June 3 – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Tuesday that his company’s attempt to acquire Yahoo was an effort to bring greater competition to the media business and the advertising industry.
“We are trying to give good competition to the market leader in that category,” Ballmer said about Google, his voice rising to a pitch as he addressed a question about changes in the market for online advertising.
Continue reading CEO: Microsoft-Yahoo Will Bring Competition to Media Business
Time Warner rolled out data metering in Beaumont, Texas on Thursday, a development that might inspire many in the pro net neutrality regulation camp to cry foul. However, bandwidth metering is probably a fairer and more transparent way to deal with the vast disparities in usage amongst broadband subscribers. Rather than claiming “unlimited” service and then proceeding to restrict access in a few dozen ways, metering gives unlimited use to a point, and then asks heavy users to pay their fair share.
I had an exchange with Robert X. Cringely over email recently. He was responding to a newsletter released by CEI about network neutrality regulation. Amongst his many helpful insights in our exchange he made a keen observation about the real issue in this debate, namely fraud:
The carrier sells me something he claims is unrestricted and unlimited within specific bandwidth guarantees then it turns out that’s not true. It’s unlimited and yet there is a limit. It is unrestricted and yet there are restrictions. Not even the bandwidth is what it is claimed to be. That’s not network management, it is fraud. It is not capitalism, it is fraud. The alternative isn’t socialism but simple contract compliance.
I agree wholeheartedly with Cringely on this issue. Claims of “unlimited” anything should be met with suspicion, especially unlimited bandwidth. However, instead of mandating that restrictions be lifted and some management methods be outlawed, why don’t we just outlaw these fraudulent claims?
Were we to make claims of “unlimited” bandwidth in advertising illegal, we’d face a far better future than one with mandated neutrality. In a fraud-free world, we can have networks advertised as metered, managed, or really unlimited (total free-for-alls). It’s likely that consumers will drift away from truly unlimited networks if BitTorrent and other bandwidth-hogging protocols continue to chew up networks.
In a mandated neutrality world, however, consumers will have fewer choices. Managed networks that provide reliable access to average consumers won’t be able to exist depending on the regulatory regime. If shaping, throttling, outright blocking, or any combination of management techniques are banned, it may be that the service that best fits your needs won’t be allowed to exist.
Cringley is right when he says what we need is contract compliance. We also need to ban the bait and switch routine of “unlimited” for managed and limited. Honesty and honoring contracts is at the heart of any free-market system. So, the alternative to today’s system shouldn’t be a government controlled one, but rather one that is actually much more capitalist.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.