July 2008

Google Search Won’t Return Links to cato-at-liberty.org

by Jim Harper on July 24, 2008 · 28 comments

I’ve run across the most curious thing today.

Searches on Google that should turn up the Cato@Liberty blog (at http://www.cato-at-liberty.org) do not return any result with that URL in it.

Berin took great care the other day to report on the temporary demotion of some Progress & Freedom Foundation content by the Google search engine. I want to do a similar, careful job with this because it’s a sensitive area.

Could I ask you, our visitors, to check what you get from Google? Visit Cato@Liberty and then craft the Google search that you think is most likely to return that Web site. (I’ve tried searching “site:cato-at-liberty.org the” for example, which would return instances of the word “the” on the cato-at-liberty.org domain, and gotten no results.)

Next, if you have any technical knowledge, please opine on what might be causing this to occur. Cato@Liberty is a fairly high-traffic site with a large following. Its disappearance from Google search results is unusual. Any ideas on how to get it restored would be welcome.

Update: It’s a problem with robots.txt on the site.

28 comments

Google and Comcast, sitting in a tree…

by Jerry Brito on July 24, 2008 · 2 comments

Tom Hazlett’s latest column in the FT tries to make us all pay more attention to the Clearwire deal. Even those of us here at the TLF have been remiss in following the venture. As Tom points out, the fact that open-spectrum and net-neutrality stalwarts such as Google and Intel are in bed with Comcast and Sprint tells us a lot. He writes:

Municipal Wi-Fi Adieu. When local government networks were the rage, circa 2003, their loudest corporate backer was Google. Broadband for all via “free” unlicensed spectrum, smart radios and just a gentle nudge from City Hall. Politicians from Philadephia to Portland drank the Kool-Aid. But Google just paid $500m to jump to the Clearwire ship. The change in strategy speaks volumes: municipal wi-fi is considered small opportunity for Google and no threat to Clearwire.

Fleeing the “Spectrum Commons”. Five years ago, Intel was pressuring US regulators for more unlicensed bands. It won – the Federal Communications Commission dumped hundreds of MHz into the market. The bump was little noticed – short-range apps continued to work, but not much else developed. Meanwhile, wireless phone networks – providing wide area, mobile service – were booming. But regulators held off new allocations for a decade, starving the sector just when it was upgrading to high-speed data networks.

New Clearwire boasts WiMAX, “wi-fi on steroids”, as its technological innovation, but note: this WiMAX runs on licensed frequencies. That is an economic choice, not a technical one. Only with the control afforded by exclusivity will these companies invest in the networks that, they hope, will make consumers sing. The “spectrum commons”? Been there, done that. This wireless broadband innovation aims to do what no one has done in unlicensed – and betting $14bn on it.

Net Neutrality Not. Clearwire consortium members are not passive investors. Buying in, they become network friends with benefits. The cable ops will retail service. McCaw’s NextNet is the lead gear maker. Motorola supplies handsets. Intel’s chips are plugged in. And Google’s search engine gets its own button on the phones, a cute efficiency copied from the wildly popular DoCoMo network in Japan. If the NTT model, where the carrier extracts payment from mobile apps for a preferred spot on the wireless web, is “open” – then “open” all capitalists must be. Richly, NTT is a member in good standing in Google’s Open Handset Alliance.

Now, the question my friends on the other side will rightly ask is, where’s the beef? Here it is. Any ideas how fast it will grow?

2 comments

The “Coburn Omnibus”

by Jim Harper on July 24, 2008 · 7 comments

The WashingtonWatch.com blog has a breakout of all 36 bills in the “Coburn Omnibus.”

#36: a greenhouse in Suitland, Maryland!

7 comments

COPA Falls Again; Is Historic 3rd Trip to Supremes Coming?

by Adam Thierer on July 24, 2008 · 13 comments

Another chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) of 1998 was written this week when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling striking down COPA, which would require Web operators to restrict access to large amounts of online speech and expression. [The Third Circuit’s full decision is here. And I penned a 3-part series on the lower court ruling by Judge Lowell Reed Jr., senior judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, here, here, and here].

The DOJ will likely appeal the decision, yet again, to the Supreme Court. I can’t be certain, but I know of no other free speech-related law that has made THREE trips to the Supreme Court for review. (If readers know of any laws that can match that record, please let me know). It really is quite amazing, and even a little outrageous, when you think about it. After all, just think of all the time, energy and money that has gone into this 10-year legal fiasco. I know it is the DOJ’s job to defend congressional enactments before the courts, but how might we have spent that time and money if all this litigating wasn’t going on?? Regulation always has opportunity costs and in this case those costs have been 10 years of wrangling among lawyers. Those resources could have been used to educate parents and kids about online safety; to create and disseminate more and better private screening tools; and so on. Alas, we instead have mounds of paper piling up in the courts and millions being spent with nothing to show for it.
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13 comments

“What Matters is Freedom”

by Jim Harper on July 23, 2008

This YouTube video nearly brought me to tears. At minute 8:31, Dan Mitchell utters the words, “What matters is freedom” . . . .

Why the tears, though? Because I’d been watching and listening to Dan Mitchell for over eight minutes! You’d cry too.

Might learn something, though. It’s about Social Security taxes or something. And nobody has objected to me putting these videos up. Hey, it’s a new, exciting, “online” way of talking about public policy.

The NY AG’s Anti-Free-Speech Shakedown Racket

by Jim Harper on July 23, 2008 · 9 comments

Here’s a good article by Declan McCullagh on New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s outrageous vendetta against Usenet. The article is good not only because yours truly is quoted.

I’ve been looking, and haven’t found a single advocate from the left or critic of Comcast’s network management practices that has said a word of support for Comcast on this subject. This is where Internet freedom is really in peril – and nothing?

9 comments

World of World of Warcraft

by Tim Lee on July 22, 2008 · 15 comments

Awesome:

‘Warcraft’ Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing ‘Warcraft’

15 comments

e-gold Settles Criminal Charges, Goes Back to Work

by Jim Harper on July 22, 2008 · 14 comments

I wrote here sometime back about e-gold, a very interesting value-transfer business suffering through some difficult legal troubles. They have now pled guilty to criminal charges.

A blog post by e-gold’s Douglas Jackson calls it a “new beginning.” The company will pay some fines, get square with U.S. regulatory law, and go on providing its services.

Payments is an interesting business. Once value is de-linked from a physical asset, representations of it can be transferred electronically, by “wire” or over the Internet. As is already happening with intellectual property, people will eventually create value transfer systems that operate outside the control of any government.

Whether the Secret Service and the Justice Department like it or not, e-gold is the next step in the beginning of the end of government-controlled currency. I don’t expect governments to lose control of payments quickly or to give it up easily, but they will.

14 comments

“Scientific” Media Ratings & Labels: What Exactly Does That Mean?

by Adam Thierer on July 22, 2008 · 19 comments

A few days ago I posted an open letter to New York Gov. David Patterson about a measure that recently passed through the New York legislature and was awaiting his signature. The bill proposes a new regulatory regime for video games that would include greater state-based oversight of video game labels and console controls as well as an advisory board to monitor the industry. Unfortunately—but quite unsurprisingly—Gov. Patterson signed the bill last night. And so I am certain that another legal battle will ensue regarding the constitutionality of the measure, and it will likely be struck down like every other measure on this front because it violates the First Amendment. Regardless, let’s talk a little more about what animates this specific legislative effort, because I think it is very important and foreshadows the heated debate to come over video games and all media in coming years.

The New York measure is notable in that, unlike most of the other state or local measures that had been stuck down in recent years that proposed penalties for the sale of games to youngsters which were labeled by the ESRB to be intended for an older audience, it simply proposed more “oversight” of the ratings process and parental control technologies by the state. Specifically, it mandated that all games be rated and that all consoles contain screening controls. The response to that proposal has generally been: “So what?” After all, all video games are rated already and all game consoles contain parental controls. The measure also mandated a 16-member oversight board to monitor the industry and this process. Again, that proposal was not regarded by many as a serious threat to the video games or free speech.

But I fear that many are missing the big picture here. The New York bill is actually far more important that many people suspect because of what it foreshadows: A day when politicians will claim that we can make rating systems more “scientific” by putting public health bureaucrats or university social scientists in charge of them. Indeed, last night on Bloomberg TV, this became the focus of a debate between me and Dr. Michael Rich, Director of the Center for Media and Child Health at the Harvard Medical School. After you watch the clip, I’ll have much more to say about this issue down below the fold.

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19 comments

It’s Never Been More Clear

by Tim Lee on July 22, 2008 · 21 comments

Want to know why copyright lobbyists never seem to have any real arguments? Because they describe those of us who defend the traditional contours of copyright law—including “limited terms”—as “copyright opponents.”

I mean, really.

21 comments

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