Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin used to refer to commercial alternatives to NASA’s Ares rockets as “Paper Rockets,” but commercial vehicles like Atlas V, Delta IV and Falcon 1 are quite real and available today, while Ares 1 and 5 are grossly over-budget and way behind-schedule:
NASA should buy commercial space services whenever possible from NewSpace companies like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic and Bigelow Aerospace. The Commercial Spaceflight Revolution is happening now!
Google today unveiled the Data Liberation Front, a team of engineers in Chicago dedicated to ensuring that Google build “liberated products”—ones that have “built in features that make it easy (and free) to remove your data from the product in the event that you’d like to take it elsewhere.” We’ve spent a lot of time here warning about the dangers of Googlephobia, but now that Google has brazenly appropriated the TLF’s unique mock-Communist iconography, we’re starting to think that Jeff Chester and Scott Cleland may be right: Maybe Google really is trying to take over the world!
So we regret to announce our filing of a lawsuit in the Twelfth Circuit Court of Appeals to challenge Google’s infringement of our mark. We demand 50% of the $0.00 Google earns every time they “allow” users to port their application data out of Google to a competitor’s services! We will, of course, dedicate these royalties to the important project of educating and empowering users about how they can determine their own destiny online.
But seriously… We heartily agree with our Data Liberation Front comrades that users should be fully empowered to switch from one service to another online. This kind of competition is clearly the best protection for consumers in the Digital Age. Making switching easy should assuage not just antitrust concerns, but also concerns about how much privacy or security each web service offers to its users, no matter how big its market share: If you don’t like what a service offers, just take your data and leave! Who needs the government micro-managing the Internet when users have that kind of control?
Viva la (Technology) Revolution!
P.S. In case you haven’t seen it the Monty Python video we’re all riffing on:
It’s my pleasure to welcome Julian Sanchez to the Technology Liberation Front as a regular contributor. Julian recently joined the Cato Institute as a Research Fellow and he previously spent time at Reason and Ars Technica, where he served as Washington Editor.
Although he won’t be spending all his time writing about technology policy issues at Cato, he will still be active on that front. With his impressive knowledge of digital technology and his formidable journalistic skills, Julian will make an excellent addition to our merry band of cyber-libertarian rebels here at the Tech Liberation Front.
You can learn more about Julian at his personal blog, from his Cato bio page, and his Wikipedia entry.
We very much look forward to his contributions to the TLF. Welcome aboard Julian!
Interesting list here from the UK Telegraph about “50 Things That Are Being Killed by the Internet.” I have a personal item to add to the list of things the Internet has destroyed: My eyesight. My ophthalmologist has told me that 25 years of excessive screen time (computers, TVs, video games, etc) has left my eyeballs in a very bad state — as in eye surgery is in my near-term future. Damn Internet! We need a “Safeguarding America’s Vision Enforcement against the Internets Act” — get it? the “SAFE-I’s Act”! — that will place a tax on all monitor manufacturers and Internet operators to fund my eye surgery. Is that part of ObamaCare yet?
I cannot in strong enough terms recommend that everyone read Gordon Crovitz’s latest Wall Street Journal column, “Free Speech, Now that Speech is Free.” It perfectly encapsulates everything we stand for here and makes the case that I have made again and again: Speech regulation — of all flavors — makes less and less sense in a world of information abundance and user empowerment, and it is a complete affront to our First Amendment rights. As Crovitz argues:
The Constitution was drafted at a time when there were few media outlets, and few people could be heard. Since then, technology has made it possible for everyone to express their views. The cost of expressing opinions continues to fall. Now that speech is no longer expensive, it’s time to return to the Founders’ intention that speech be free and that Congress not abridge anyone’s right to speak.
Amen brother! In his essay today, Crovitz specifically takes on America’s increasingly insane campaign finance laws, which make a mockery of the First Amendment. In the wake of last week’s Supreme Court arguments in the Citizens United case, Crovitz points out the insulting stupidity and sheer futility of these analog era, scarcity-oriented laws:
Who among us does not like the bitch about their least favorite journalists, or reporting that we find disagreeable? Indeed, we Americans are all armchair media critics at heart. That’s generally a healthy thing in a democracy, but how often do we step back and appreciate those who provide us with in-depth reporting and journalistic excellence? Not enough, I dare say. Perhaps my early pursuit of a career in journalism and a college degree in the subject has left me more sensitive to this, but I think it is important on occasion to send out a big “thank you” to those whose investigative reporting — especially on niche subjects — contributes greatly to societal knowledge and a better understanding of important issues.
In the case of journalist Dennis McCauley, long-time editor of Game Politics.com, I wish I would have gotten around to thanking him publicly sooner, because he has just announced his departure from Game Politics and the journalism profession in general. That’s a shame because Dennis was a trailblazer in a field that desperately needed attention from serious journalists. Until Dennis came on the beat, no wait, strike that… until Dennis created the beat, most journalists just didn’t bother taking a serious look at “where politics and video games collide,” which is the motto of Game Politics.com (which is now part of the Entertainment Consumers Association). Before Dennis, most journalists looked a video games as a “kiddie” thing, and to the extent they reported on developments in this field at all, their stories where typically relegated to the back pages of most papers or magazines. And there wasn’t much serious reporting by online sources either.
As I’ve been saying, search is “Getting Better All the Time,” with constant innovation like Bing’s new integrated social functionality. I’m eagerly awaiting Microsoft’s new Bing 2.0. Here’s another small but very cool innovation from Google:
Finally, the courts are starting to take notice of the growing ease with which we all share information online: “Twenty-somethings have a much-reduced sense of personal privacy,” as an NYU law professor put it. Unfortunately, this slow realization of the utterly obvious is happening in the narrow area of legal ethics: Courts are punishing young lawyers who say unkind things about the court on social networking sites or say something inconsistent with what they’ve told the court. It’s a must-read for all young lawyers!
Gilder explains the true meaning of the microcosm with his uniquely poetic prose:
As Peter Drucker said. “What one man can do, another can do again.” Distilling discoveries of science, a set of technologies, and a Philosophy of enterprise, the microcosm is far too big for any one country. Even its products are mostly made of ideas—waves that suffuse the mindscape of the world. (p.127)
The vital importance of ideas in all aspects of the microcosm, including hardware, is a central theme of the book:
Computer hardware thus is another form of information technology like books, films, and disks. The value resides in the ideas rather than in their material embodiment. The chip design is itself a software program. Even the design of the computer’s plastic chassis and keyboard may well have begun as a software program. Like a book, a spreadsheet financial package, even a film on a videocassette, a microchip design is conceived and developed on a computer screen and takes form in a storage device that costs between 80 cents and $2 to manufacture. The current dominance of such products in the world economy signifies the end of the industrial era and the onset of the age of the microcosm. (p. 159)
Consider debate over handset exclusivity: Those who insist that AT&T be forced to relinquish its exclusive rights to the iPhone ignore the fact that the iPhone is not so much a device as a brilliant idea—actually, a cluster of innovations made possible because AT&T was willing to partner with Apple on the risky venture of developing the expensive device and bringing it to market. Speaking of ideas made reality, I can’t wait to get my hands on a Microsoft Surface!
In a past life — that is, from roughly 1994-2004 — I spent an enormous amount of time countering the proponents of “open access” regulation for communications and high-tech networks. My work in that field culminated in the publication of a 2003 book with my old Cato colleague Wayne Crews entitled, What’s Yours is Mine: Open Access & the Rise of Infrastructure Socialism. We aimed to counter the efforts of bureaucrats and central planners to command technology companies and industry sectors to share networks, facilities, or specific technologies with rivals in the name of “competition.” Simply stated, sharing is not competing, and competition in the creation of networks is just as important as competition in the goods, services, and information that move across those networks. Moreover, there are property right considerations that come into play when governments seek to commandeer networks or take over network management decisions.
But let’s just stick to the economic issue here regarding the incentives created by the network-sharing mentality of the “forced access” movement and the fiction associated with the belief that network sharing can create competition. My old PFF colleague Randy May, who currently serves as President of the Free State Foundation, continues to cover developments in this field far closer than I do, and has always done much better work on the subject than me. Recently, Randy addressed some new fictions put forth by the radical Leftist activity group, the (Un-)Free Press who are, once again, spinning a revisionist history of telecom and media policy. Specifically, Free Press has recently suggested that in the late 1990s we lived in a veritable communications nirvana, with thousands of Internet Service Providers and/or “competitive exchange carriers” hotly “competing” for our business. Here’s how Randy May addresses this:
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
