My legislative tracking project/site has welcomed 1,000,000 visitors so far this year, a nice threshold to cross.
Oh, and the Senate economic stimulus bill amounts to about $750 per U.S. family in spending.
Tim Lee has been taking some heat here from Richard Bennett and Steve Schultze about various aspects of his new Net neutrality paper. I haven’t had much time this week to jump into these debates, but I did want to mention one important portion of Tim’s paper that is being overlooked. Specifically, I like the way Tim took head-on some of the silly free speech arguments being put forth as a rationale for net neutrality regulation. As Tim notes in the introduction of the paper:
Concerns that network owners will undermine free speech online are particularly misguided. Network owners have neither the technology nor the manpower to effectively filter online content based on the viewpoints being expressed, nor do profit-making businesses have any real incentive to do so. Should a network owner be foolish enough to attempt large-scale censorship of its customers, it would not only fail to suppress the disfavored speech, but the network would actually increase the visibility of the content as the effort at censorship attracted additional coverage of the material being censored.
I think that’s exactly right and, later in his paper (between pgs 22-3), Tim nicely elaborates about the “Herculean task” associated with any attempt by a broadband provider to “manipulate human communication.” Not only is it true, as Tim argues, that “no widescale manipulation would go unnoticed for very long,” but he is also correct in noting that the public and press backlash would be enormous.
Again, I agree wholeheartedly with all these sentiments, but I think Tim missed another important angle here when discussing the unfounded fears about corporate censorship and the misguided attempts to use free speech as a justification for imposing net neutrality regulations.
The idea of an Obama Administration CTO has captured the hearts of many. I am generally skeptical of the idea, which is likely to be more symbolism than substance. But I’m really skeptical of the priorities being suggested for a government CTO on ObamaCTO.org.
Top of the list? “Ensure the Internet is Widely Accessible & Network Neutral.”
The Internet is one of the most valuable technical resources in America. In order to continue the amazing growth and utility of the Internet, the CTO’s policies should:
Improve accessibility in remote and depressed areas.
Maintain a carrier and content neutral network.
Foster a competitive and entrepreneurial business environment.
I’ve got some news or you: These are policy proposals that would be beyond the purview of any CTO. Policy proposals go through Congress and the President, advised by his policy staff. They do not go through a CTO.
If the Baltimore Ravens asked the team physician to kick field goals, the results would be about what you’d get from asking a federal CTO to carry out these policies.
Radley Balko has nominated me to head the Transportation Security Agency. It’s a kind compliment. His column this week has some good ideas in it, too.
Fellow nominee Bruce Schneier doesn’t want the job. Of Bruce’s refusal, Radley says:
[I]t sorta’ reminds me of what a retired police chief once told me about how he staffed his SWAT team. He said he’d ask for volunteers, then disqualify every officer who raised his hand. He added, “The guys who want the job are the last ones who should have it.”
That leaves John Mueller, whose excellent 2004 Regulation magazine article “A False Sense of Insecurity?” has stood the test of time. His insight into the strategic logic of terrorism will eventually turn around our country’s maladjusted approach to securing against terrorism.
Brian Boyko at Network Performance Daily has a thorough interview with yours truly about The Durable Internet. Brian asked some really sharp questions and helped to flesh out some of the thornier aspects of my argument. Check it out.
Richard Bennett and Matt Sherman explain why it’s a bad idea. (And here are a few of my old rants on the issue.)
Bennett:
If we’ve learned anything at all about from the history of Internet-as-utility, it’s that this strained analogy only applies in cases where there is no existing infrastructure, and probably ends best when a publicly-financed project is sold (or at least leased) to a private company for upgrades and management. We should be suspicious of projects aimed at providing Wi-Fi mesh because they’re slow as molasses on a winter’s day.
I don’t see any examples of long-term success in the publicly-owned and operated networking space. And I also don’t see any examples of publicly-owned and operated Internet service providers doing any of the heavy lifting in the maintenance of the Internet protocols, a never-ending process that’s vital to the continuing growth of the Internet.
Sherman:
Pursuing a public utility model while also desiring competition are fundamentally contradictory goals. Utilities are designed not to compete. Do you, or does anyone you know, have a choice of providers for water, sewage or electricity?
My second question would be: is there anyone in the technology world who sees public utilities as a model for innovation? A 1.5 megabit connection (T1) was an unimaginable luxury when I started in tech in the mid-90’s. It was for well-funded companies only. Today, it is a low-end consumer connection and costs around 80% less. Has your sewage service followed a similar trajectory?
A public utility is designed to be “good enough” and little more. There is no need, and little room, for differentiation or progress. Your electricity service is essentially unchanged from 20 years ago, and will look the same 10 years from now. Broadband, on the other hand, requires constant innovation if we are to move forward — and it has been delivering it, even if we desire more.
Yahoo! has seen better days, but it’s still a profitable company with a market cap of $16 billion, something that many tech companies that began in the 1990s can’t say (mainly because they no longer exist). Even though Yahoo! continues to be a profitable company, it is no longer viewed as an innovator, which is hurting its stock value immensely. It’s also hard to say exactly what Yahoo! does, even its employees and executives can’t figure out what the company is all about.
All of this added up to yesterday’s resignation of Jerry Yang.
Yang’s tenure at the helm began when he stepped in for Terry Semel in June 2007. Since that time Yang, one of the co-founders of Yahoo!, has been seen as the man who couldn’t do anything right. He passed up an offer from Microsoft to buy Yahoo! for $33 dollars a share, claiming the company was worth $37.
Matt Yglesias gets through the TSA checkpoint with a Swiss Army Knife and the agents don’t bat an eye. But God help him if he tries to bring a can of shaving cream that’s more than 3 oz onto an airplane.
I’ve just finished reading Blown to Bits: Your Life, Liberty, and Happiness After the Digital Explosion, by Hal Abelson, Ken Ledeen, and Harry Lewis, and it’s another title worth adding to your tech policy reading list. The authors survey a broad swath of tech policy territory — privacy, search, encryption, free speech, copyright, spectrum policy — and provide the reader with a wonderful history and technology primer on each topic.
I like the approach and tone they use throughout the book. It is certainly something more than “Internet Policy for Dummies.” It’s more like “Internet Policy for the Educated Layman”: a nice mix of background, policy, and advice. I think Ray Lodato’s Slashdot review gets it generally right in noting that, “Each chapter will alternatively interest you and leave you appalled (and perhaps a little frightened). You will be given the insight to protect yourself a little better, and it provides background for intelligent discussions about the legalities that impact our use of technology.”
Abelson, Ledeen, and Lewis aren’t really seeking to be polemical in this book by advancing a single thesis or worldview. To the extent the book’s chapters are guided by any central theme, it comes in the form of the “two basic morals about technology” they outline in Chapter 1:
The first is that information technology is inherently neither good nor bad — it can be used for good or ill, to free us or to shackle us. Second, new technology brings social change, and change comes with both risks and opportunities. All of us, and all of our public agencies and private institutions, have a say in whether technology will be used for good or ill and whether we will fall prey to its risks or prosper from the opportunities it creates. (p. 14)
Mostly, what they aim to show is that digital technology is reshaping society and, whether we like or it not, we better get used to it — and quick! “The digital explosion is changing the world as much as printing once did — and some of the changes are catching us unaware, blowing to bits our assumptions about the way the world works… The explosion, and the social disruption that it will create, have barely begun.” (p 3)
In that sense, most chapters discuss how technology and technological change can be both a blessing and a curse, but the authors are generally more optimistic than pessimistic about the impact of the Net and digital technology on our society. What follows is a quick summary of some of the major issues covered in Blown to Bits.
Tomorrow evening, I’ll be participating in an IQ2US debate arguing against the proposition that “Google violates its ‘don’t be evil’ motto.” The venue is Caspary Auditorium at The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue at 66th Street, in New York City.
Jeff Jarvis, Esther Dyson and I will be debating Harry Lewis of Harvard, Randall Picker of the University of Chicago Law School, and Siva Vaidhyanathan from the University of Virginia. Jarvis’ blog post on the subject has gotten some interesting discussion.
As with any company, one can complain about the details of how Google does business. I think I call it like I see it with respect to Google, having derided their gaming of the regulatory system in the 700 MHz auction and lauding their generally good corporate citizenship on privacy.
You have to drain the word “evil” of meaning to apply it to Google. But even in the casual, slightly anti-corporate sense that the founders probably meant it, Google isn’t evil.
Though publishers and holders of copyrights protest (often from ignorance of the modern media landscape), Google makes their material more available, more useful, and more profitable.
Owners of trademarks may object, but Google AdWords brings new products and better prices to consumers.
Surely Google should avoid censorship on behalf of the Chinese government, but exiting China would abandon the Chinese people to government-approved information sources only.
Google Earth, Maps, Street View, and basic search challenge privacy, but Google has made itself a model corporate citizen by working to educate users, by making its products transparent, and by openly resisting government subpoenas.
Some say Google’s search monopoly makes it the most powerful company on earth, but it’s always one misstep (and one click) away from handing its customer base to a challenger.
Disruptive technologies and businesses always make life uncomfortable for the old guard. These complainers should be ignored. Google earns a rightful profit as it makes people around the world more aware, educated, and informed. Evil? Hardly.
Discuss.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.