Interesting article here (“Not All Information Wants to Be Free“) by Jack Shafer of Slate. He notes that many people focus on why “pay wall” business models don’t work online, but few people discuss those models that do (i.e., the ones that successfully get customers to pay for access to content behind the wall). Shafer walks through some of the ones that have worked and concludes:
Not all successful paid sites are alike, but they all share at least one of these attributes:
1) They are so amazing as to be irreplaceable.
2) They are beautifully designed and executed and extremely easy to use.
3) They are stupendously authoritative.
Succinctly stated, the pay-per-view sites are damn unique, offering content or a service that consumers are unlikely to find elsewhere. Of course, that’s a pretty small universe of sites, and unless you content is extraordinarily unique and time-sensitive, I have a hard time believing that a pay wall model will work for most sites.
Yesterday I wrote about some of the questions left open at the launch of Recovery.gov. Today some of these questions are answered in a memo issued by OMB to all agency heads, giving guidance on implementing the Recover Act (PDF). Among other things, the memo lays out their obligations regarding accountability and transparency.
First, I asked yesterday whether the Recovery.gov site being run out of the White House is in fact the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board website mandated by the Act. The answer seems to be that it is. Everything in today’s OMB memo points to Recovery.gov being treated as the one and only site to comply with the Act’s requirements. I’m not sure this poses a problem for transparency, but we need to be clear that Recovery.gov is not in the Board’s control per se as the Act seems to mandate.
More importantly, however, I asked yesterday how deep reporting would go, and whether reports from stimulus money grantees would be standardized and centrally housed. I wrote:
The problem is that a federal grant could be $10 million to Miami from DoT for roads, and that’s it. There is no requirement that the city then publish its contractors and subcontractors on the Board site. This is a big gap; if the only that must be disclosed on the Board site is the contract or grant award, then the trail will run cold very quickly.
Well, today the OMB helpfully answers me directly:
On this episode “Tech Policy Weekly,” Technology Liberation Front contributors Ryan Radia and Berin Szoka join me for a discussion of the flare-up over Facebook’s recent changes to the data retention provisions of its Terms of Use agreement and whether there are any serious privacy issues in play here—or if this is all much adoabout nothing. [Ryan blogged about it here, and I did here.]
Earlier this month, Facebook announced changes to the way it handled or retained user data on its site after a user quits Facebook, raising questions about who actually owns that data and whether any privacy issues were raised by the company’s new policy. Following some intense scrutiny in the blogosphere, Facebook decided this week to revert to their old terms of service until they figured out a new approach to data management and ownership.
You can begin listening by downloading the MP3 file here or by just clicking the play button below. Or subscribe to our Podcast ( iTunes, other).
“As the president stated during the campaign, he does not believe the Fairness Doctrine should be reinstated,” White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said.
If this is indeed the Obama administration’s official stance, the news couldn’t have come at a better time. Just last week FCC officials met with Rep. Henry Waxman’s staff to discuss resurrecting the Fairness Doctrine under a new name. Waxman, the head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has also been looking into “fairness” issues on the Internet—creating an expanded, Fairness Doctrine 2.0.
The American Spectator reported on this reanimation of the long-dead doctrine and brought us this great quote from a Waxman staffer:
“It’s all about diversity in media,” says a House Energy staffer, familiar with the meetings. “Does one radio station or one station group control four of the five most powerful outlets in one community? Do four stations in one region carry Rush Limbaugh, and nothing else during the same time slot? Does one heavily trafficked Internet site present one side of an issue and not link to sites that present alternative views? These are some of the questions the chairman is thinking about right now, and we are going to have an FCC that will finally have the people in place to answer them.”
It doesn’t seem that Waxman’s real concern is having an FCC that can answer questions, but an FCC that will ignore its obligation to uphold the Constitution and sacrifice our freedom of speech on the alter of “fairness.”
Of course, none of this has anything to do with fairness, but has everything to do with politicians controlling what we can say, write, or otherwise express.
If Congress is somehow able to dupe the American people into accepting such speech restrictions—and President Obama doesn’t block a Fairness Doctrine 2.0—we can look forward to websites being patrolled by federal fairness cops, radio stations being staffed by stop-watch-toting FCC agents, and a presidential appointee sitting on the editorial board of every newspaper and magazine that still chooses to publish.
Let’s hope the President takes his oath seriously and defends the Constitution. Our basic freedom to speak our mind—the most fundamental of all freedoms—may rely on Mr. Obama’s resolve.
Facebook sparked a major user uprising when it amended its terms of service earlier this month to grant the social networking site greater licensing rights over user-submitted content. The implications of Facebook’s amended Terms of Use were originally uncovered by The Consumerist this past Sunday in a story entitled, “Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: ‘We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.'” The title pretty much sums up what the controversy was all about: under Facebook’s amended Terms of Use, even after a user deletes his Facebook account, Facebook would retain its license to distribute nearly all types of user-submitted content including photos and videos.
Predictably, news of Facebook’s expanded licensing rights made many users angry, with several Facebook groups against Terms of Use modifications popping up, attracting thousands of members overnight. As is often the case with juicy reports like this one, news of the Facebook fiasco spread throughout the blogosphere rapidly, eventually making its way to major tech sites and even the main page of CNN.com. By yesterday afternoon, a snapshot of Mark Zuckerberg‘s face was plastered on Fox News Channel, next to an excerpt of an entry he posted to Facebook’s blog in defense of the social networking site’s new terms.
Facebook’s explanation of its new terms seemed reasonable enough: even after a user quits Facebook, material that user has posted on friends’ walls and other messages the user has sent to others may remain available. Facebook also noted that its perpetual license only allowed the site to use material in accordance with departed users’ privacy settings (presumably at the time of their departure). Under the new terms, therefore, Facebook would still be required to respect albums marked as private–and ensure they stay that way.
But the seemingly stark contrast between Facebook’s attempts to justify the changes to its terms of use and, well, the actual language of terms themselves left many observers dissatisfied. In theory, if a user who had a Facebook photo album open to her entire network were to delete her account, Facebook would retain license to make those photos available to members of her network in perpetuity. And depending on how you parse the amended terms, Facebook could even use your profile pic in ads for the social network long after you terminated your Facebook account.
Matt Lasar of Ars tells us not to worry about the Fairness Doctrine being revived, only to go on and cite several lawmakers who have said they’d like to revive it. Meanwhile, over at the American Spectator, somebody called “The Prowler” seems to have all sorts of unnamed sources on the Hill telling him the Fairness Doctrine will be revived any day now.
Who knows what to believe. But let’s keep our eye on the real issue here. The danger is not that the Fairness Doctrine gets back on the books in the same form; it’s that versions of it sneak in through the back door via other regulatory initiatives. As Cord Blomquist pointed out here last April, “localism is the new Fairness Doctrine.” There are a lot of people are running around Washington today insisting that government must intervene in the marketplace to “save media localism” and “strengthen the public interest obligations” of local TV and radio broadcasters. There’s been an FCC proceeding open on this issue for some time, and everything about it reeks of the Fairness Doctrine in drag.
This effort is being spearheaded by the media reformistas whose short-term goal is to reinvigorate the amorphous “public interest standard” such that the FCC has open-ended powers to regulate everything under the sun going forward. That’s why a key part of the “localism” battle is their effort to breathe new life into “ascertainment rules,” which used to be more formal and required broadcasters to strictly report everything they aired and did in their communities. There’s lots of talk of ensuring more “accountability” from broadcasters regarding how they serve their local communities, and there’s even rumblings of “local community boards” who will sit as mini-free speech Star Chambers and pass judgment on whether local media outlets are doing their job. Again, it’s all just the Fairness Doctrine by another name. Continue reading →
On one hand, I just don’t see what the big deal is. People act like Facebook is taking away all their “rights” or possessions, which is just silly. They were just clarifying how information would be used. In one sense, I feel like saying ‘Chill out. And if you don’t like Facebook’s policies, go use some other social networking site for God’s sake!’
On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that some people are far more sensitive about these things and are seeking to collectively pressure Facebook to change its approach to information use and ownership, and I’m fine with that. In fact, like the Beacon hullabaloo, it’s an example of what Berin Szoka and I have argued is the power of voluntary persuasion and social pressure to remedy privacy concerns before we call on government to adopt coercive, top-down, ham-handed, one-size-fits-all regulatory solutions. As we noted in our recent paper about the looming threat of online advertising regulation:
there are many indirect pressures and reputational incentives that provide an important check on the behavior of firms and the privacy policies they craft. Just as the Internet increases the ways advertisers can reach audiences, it increases the power audiences have to influence advertisers. For example, when Facebook introduced its Beacon program in 2007, which shared users’ online purchases with their friends without sufficient warning about how the program worked and the ability to opt-out of the program, the response was swift and effective: Users “collectively raised their voices” and “the privacy pendulum [swung] back into equilibrium” [according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau.] Within two weeks of the Beacon program being first deployed, Facebook had created an opt-out procedure.
Here’s a great new video on economic growth from my friend and colleague Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute and the Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
One of the innovations in this video that I love is the real-time score that it provides on how intelligent and persuasive Dan is being. The needle visible over his right shoulder indicates zero in the due north position (12:00). Improvements in Dan’s work are reflected by the movement of the needle clockwise around to the 9:00 position, which equals 100% informative and persuasive. So take a look at the video and watch how Dan does as he makes his case!
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
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The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.