October 2008

The Bailout: Secret Payments?

by Jim Harper on October 23, 2008 · 7 comments

Just two weeks after the passage of the bailout bill, and one day after a Treasury Department official declared, “we are committed to transparency and oversight in all aspects of the program,” the Treasury Department began covering up the amount it would pay to New York Mellon Bank to act as a financial agent in the bailout.

Spending $700,000,000,000.00 in taxpayer money is not business as usual. And hiding the terms of government contracts shouldn’t be business as usual anyway.

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“Less Filling, Tastes Great!” – TLF Now on Twitter

by Berin Szoka on October 22, 2008 · 6 comments

Want an easy way of keeping up with the TLF? Follow us on Twitter! Each new TLF posting will show up as a Tweet that starts with “TLF Blog: ” followed by the subject line of the blog piece and a link back to the blog entry so you can read the whole piece if you want to. TLFers may also Twitter links to news stories and events that don’t merit a full blog entry. Think of it as TLF-lite!

For PC users, I highly recommend the open source Digsby as a client that can support Twitter, Facebook and just about any instant messaging protocol you might use (except, sadly, Skype).

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What do we do about Privacy and Security? (according to the next President…and me)

by Braden Cox on October 22, 2008 · 4 comments

Online and IT privacy is a ripe issue for President Obama’s or McCain’s administration. It often takes a confluence of concerns and momentum to elevate an issue to the national forefront, and with privacy we have concerns related to targeted ads, ID theft, government snooping, electronic health records, and to be blunt — Google. There will be pressure for policymakers to enact a “comprehensive privacy policy” — but what does that mean?

I heard that question raised last week. Last Friday the Technology Policy Institute held an event that featured Peter Swire, Obama’s privacy/security advisor, and Orson Swindle, McCain’s privacy/security advisor.

Swindle downplayed the notion of “comprehensive” privacy, because the need for privacy is contextual. Sometimes you’ll want more, other times less. If Congress were to enact privacy legislation back in 2000, when concerns over “cookies” were raging, it would have stunted the growth of the Internet and new business models. What we have now isn’t perfect, he stressed, but regulation is even more imperfect.

Swire ducked the question about whether Obama would favor “comprehensive” privacy legislation. Obama has been silent on the issue, he said. He did discuss what he called “market failure” that occurs when new technologies pose new risks. He brought up electronic health records as an example…shouldn’t government help protect people’s medical information?

Swindle said that the FTC is in a perfect position to respond to the privacy challenges posed by new technology. Swire said that the FTC is necessary but not sufficient to get the job done.

My two cents, which I wrote in my recent paper on cyber security: Continue reading →

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A Major Victory for Space Commercialization

by Berin Szoka on October 22, 2008 · 12 comments

Congress has very wisely cancelled the National Reconnaissance Office’s proposed Broad Area Space-Based Imagery Collection (BASIC) satellite system. The proposal to build two new imaging satellites at a cost to taxpayers of $1.7 billion would have represented a major break from what is possibly the U.S. government’s most successful effort to promote space commercialization to date: buying the imagery it needs from commercial providers, who can also sell imagery to other buyers.

Five years ago, the idea that Internet users could pull up a satellite image of just about any location on the planet at a whim would have seemed ludicrous. Yet that’s precisely what websites like Google Maps and Microsoft’s Live Search offer today—for free! Desktop applications like Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Google Earth offer even more advanced geospatial tools—again, for free. But of course this library of incredibly rich imagery didn’t just “fall out of the sky,” as they say. It was collected by a handful of expensive commercial remote sensing satellites whose construction was made possible by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency‘s (Wikipedia) extraordinarily successful “Nextview” program implemented under the Commercial Remote Sensing Policy of 2003. Rather than having the Federal government build its own satellites—and pay for the entire cost of the satatellites—the NGA very wisely chose to buy imagery from commercial providers in two ~$500 million, 4-year contracts with U.S. satellite imagery companies: DigitalGlobe in 2003 and OrbImage (now GeoEye) in 2004.

These long-term purchase agreements essentially made the U.S. Government the “anchor tenant” in a new class of remote sensing satellites, providing the initial funding for both companies to build and operate their satellites. But because the companies sell roughly half of imagery to foreign governments and commercial buyers like Google and Microsoft, these deals have saved U.S taxpayers money for the purchase of imagery for a wide variety of needs, ranging from agricultural monitoring to military intelligence. At the same time, the Nextview contracts have given birth to a vibrant geospatial industry whose immediate benefits should be obvious to anyone who’s ever pulled up a satellite map online and whose macroeconomic impact is potentially enormous.

So why mess with success? Continue reading →

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ACLU, EFF, and AU’s CSM take on TV News, YouTube

by Cord Blomquist on October 22, 2008

A swarm of acronyms descended on other acronyms on Monday. The ACLU, EFF, and AU’s Center for Social Media (CSM) wrote an open letter (PDF) to CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, and other acronymed networks asking that each of them think twice before sending takedown notices to YouTube for what they see to be fair use content concerning the election. The letter notes that:

Not only are such notices contrary to the law, but they also threaten to silence an exciting new source of political expression.

TechDirt seemed to miss the point by reacting to the letter with this statement in a recent story:

If the law is the problem, fix the law — don’t ask everyone else to play by different rules. That just sweeps the problems of the law under the rug, where they’ll get a lot less attention.

But the trifecta of concerned acronyms aren’t asking for TV networks to play by a different set of rules, or even to restrain themselves from excercising their legal right to file a takedown for infringement, they’re asking for the networks to follow the letter of the law and recognize blatant cases of fair use. This seems fair and totally reasonable.

What I take issue with and what seems to be asking a lot in terms of legality, is the coalition’s second letter sent on Monday (PDF), this one addressed to YouTube. It asks YouTube for two things:

Continue reading →

Should Government Funding Be Part of a Broadband Plan? Have Your Say on November 18

by Drew Clark on October 22, 2008 · 7 comments

Readers of Tech Liberation Front may be interested in a new breakfast series that BroadbandCensus.com has recently begun.

The next event in this series, “Should Government Funding Be Part of a National Broadband Plan?” will be held on Tuesday, November 18, from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m., and will include Stan Fendley, the director of legislative and regulatory policy for Corning, Inc., Kyle McSlarrow, CEO of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA), and John Windhausen, Jr., president of Telepoly Consulting. I will moderate the discussion.

Two weeks after Election Day, this Broadband Breakfast Club meeting will consider one of the hottest topics in telecom: can and should funding for broadband work its way into a pending fiscal stimulus package?

Future meetings of the breakfast club (December 2008 through March 2009) will consider the role of broadband applications in harnessing demand, how the universal service fund will be changed by high-speed internet, the role of wireless in universal broadband, and the extent of competition in the marketplace.

The Broadband Breakfast Club meets monthly at the Old Ebbitt Grill, at 675 15th Street, NW, in Washington. (It’s right across the street from the Department of the Treasury.)

Beginning at 8 a.m., an American plus Continental breakfast is available downstairs in the Cabinet Room. This is followed by a discussion about the question at hand, which ends at 10 a.m. Except for holidays (like Veteran’s Day), we’ll meet on the second Tuesday of each month, until March 2009. The registration page for the event is http://broadbandbreakfast.eventbrite.com.

Continue reading →

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3rd Annual “National Freedom of Speech Week”

by Adam Thierer on October 21, 2008 · 6 comments

National Freedom of Speech Week is here again. As I point out each time it comes around, it’s good opportunity for those of us in America to remember how lucky we are to live in a country that respects freedom of the press, speech, and assembly. In my essay commemorating the first Freedom of Speech Week, I explained why I felt this way:

what speech critics consistently fail to appreciate is that in a free society different people will have different values and tolerance levels when it comes to speech and media content. It would be a grave mistake, therefore, for government to impose the will of some on all. To protect the First Amendment and our heritage of freedom of speech and expression from government encroachment, editorial discretion over content should always remain housed in private, not public, hands.

However, there will always be those who respond by arguing that speech regulation is important because “it’s for the children.” […] Personally, I think the most important thing I can do for my children is to preserve our nation’s free speech heritage and fight for their rights to enjoy the full benefits of the First Amendment when they become adults. Until then, I will focus on raising my children as best I can. And if because of the existence of the First Amendment they see or hear things I find troubling, offensive or rude, I will sit down with them and talk to them in the most open, understanding and loving fashion I can about the realities of the world around them.

I would hope that the critics of the First Amendment would do the same instead of seeking to undercut our nation’s rich history of freedom of speech and expression. It is one of our Founders’ enduring gifts to future generations and a precious freedom worth fighting for.

Happy Freedom of Speech Week everyone.

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Loud TV Ads: No Need for Regulation

by Adam Thierer on October 21, 2008 · 24 comments

This summer, I posted a tongue-and-cheek piece thanking policymakers for taking steps to save us from loud television ads. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) have proposed H.R. 6209, the “Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act.” (the “C.A.L.M. Act”) to address the supposed scourge of “volume manipulation” in TV ads by making sure that TV ads are not “excessively noisy or strident.” The FCC would be empowered to regulate “the average maximum loudness” of ads to make sure they “shall not be substantially higher than the average maximum loudness of the program material that such advertisements accompany.”

Ken C. Pohlmann, one of my favorite A/V columnists, offers his thoughts on the Calm Act in his monthly column for Sound & Vision magazine in the November issue. “This bill is a totally dumb idea,” he argues, “and it has the added advantage of being unenforceable. What are we supposed to do? Levy a $550,000 fine when Janet Jackson has a volume-control malfunction?” Good question. As I pointed out in my essay on this, the thought of FCC bureaucrats sitting around squandering their time and taxpayer money on this nonsense is really appalling, and I can’t wait to see the reams of paperwork they would spit out when they have to open an proceeding about how “excessively noisy or strident” ads will be defined, measured, and then penalized.

“Fortunately,” Pohlmann points out, “practical solutions are already available from the private sector” such that regulation is unnecessary. He elaborates:
Continue reading →

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Has anyone ever said “yes” to airline security questons like these?

by Adam Thierer on October 21, 2008 · 13 comments

So, I was just checking in online for a flight tomorrow and got this typical warning message.

It made me wonder: in the entire history of questions like these being asked by airlines, has anyone ever said “yes”? After all, if you’re an actual bad guy carrying these things, you’re going to lie about it. (As an aside, I notice that most airlines have stopped asking the questions: “Has anyone giving you anything to carry” and “Have your bags been in your possession the entire time”? Perhaps they just got tired of hearing the same answers over and over again. I always wanted to respond sarcastically with a line like: “Why yes, in fact, a very menacing-looking man just gave me a heavy package in a plain brown wrapper and asked me to carry it on the plane.” But I knew nothing good would come of that — probably result in a complete body cavity search or something like that — so I always chickened out.)

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Comcast set to double broadband speeds

by Ryan Radia on October 21, 2008 · 34 comments

Major speed enhancements are rumored to be coming soon from Comcast, which has been spending serious cash to upgrade its network to the DOCSIS 3.0 standard. Customers in many markets who now pay $42.95 a month for 6mbps/1mbps service will be upgraded to 12/2 — a doubling of both upstream and downstream speeds — with no corresponding price increase. This follows Comcast’s pattern of enhancing speeds without hiking prices. And the price point of the standard tier has remained unchanged in nominal terms for several years, so when you factor in inflation, it’s fair to say Comcast has actually been dropping prices.

It’s amazing to consider how broadband speeds have evolved in a relatively short period of time. Comcast’s highest tier was a mere 4mbps/384kbps just four years ago, when DSL speeds typically topped out at 3/768. For consumers who live in a competitive ISP market, DSL now offers 20/1, Fiber offers 30/5, and Cable will soon offer 22/5. All of these tiers are priced under $100 per month.

Though we may not be amidst a “price war” among ISPs per se, as Mike Masnick recently argued, there is simply no denying that price per megabit is declining rapidly. This is all thanks to competition, of course, which has pushed providers to invest in newer technologies that allow for faster broadband connectivity.

Market skeptics will assuredly respond to my optimism by pointing out that so long as Comcast sticks with its 250GB monthly usage cap, consumers are really just getting the same service with shinier packaging. Yet that fact hardly means we should scoff at Comcast’s new performance tiers.

As I’ve discussed on several occasions, I churn through a lot of file transfers each month, so I’m all for Comcast raising its cap (or, alternatively, implementing reasonable overage fees). But even with Comcast’s fairly generous limits, who isn’t ecstatic about being able to download any file in half as much time as before? Caps will surely evolve over time as demand for 1080p content delivered over the Internet grows, but for now, speed is a bigger concern than usage for most consumers.

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