Interesting lunchtime forum taking place this coming Monday, Nov. 2nd about “Media, Kids, and The First Amendment.” It’s being co-hosted by Georgetown Law Center and Common Sense Media. Here’s the event description:
The rapidly changing world of digital media – including TV, videogames, the Internet and mobile devices – creates many opportunities for children, but also presents potential dangers, from cyber-bullying to exposure to inappropriate content. The Supreme Court has remanded FCC v. Fox Television back to the Third Circuit for further consideration. The Senate recently held a hearing on the Children’s Television Act in the digital age. Is new legislation or regulation imminent?
Panelists include:
Daniel Brenner, Partner, Hogan and Hartson
Angela Campbell, Professor, Georgetown Law Center
Kim Matthews, Attorney Advisor, Media Bureau, Policy Division, Federal Communications Commission
Douglas Gansler, Attorney General of Maryland
Jim Steyer, CEO & Founder, Common Sense Media [moderator]
Location is the Gewirz Student Center, 120 F Street, NW, 12th Floor. Start time = 12:00 Noon.
It’s an open event but those interested should RSVP via email to: rsvp2@law.georgetown.edu and indicate that they are replying for the Nov 2nd event. I have already told my friends at Common Sense Media I will be there to cause some trouble! (and get a free lunch, of course).
Well, I don’t often get a chance to sing the praises of Hillary Clinton, so let me take the opportunity to loudly applaud her stand on religious defamation policies, which are becoming a growing international concern. According to The Washington Post, while unveiling the State Department’s 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton criticized on Monday an attempt by Islamic countries to prohibit defamation of religions, saying such policies would restrict free speech. … While unnamed in Clinton’s speech, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a group of 56 Islamic nations, has been pushing hard for the U.N. Human Rights Council to adopt resolutions that broadly bar the defamation of religion. The effort has raised concerns that such resolutions could be used to justify crackdowns on free speech in Muslim countries.
some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion. I strongly disagree. The United States will always seek to counter negative stereotypes of individuals based on their religion and will stand against discrimination and persecution. But an individual’s ability to practice his or her religion has no bearing on others’ freedom of speech. The protection of speech about religion is particularly important since persons of different faiths will inevitably hold divergent views on religious questions. These differences should be met with tolerance, not with the suppression of discourse.
Quite right. Thank you, Secretary Clinton, for this bold stand. Freedom of religious worship and expression — including the criticism of religion — is essential. Now, can we talk about your old positions on video game regulation?!
So declared the Party in George Orwell’s classic novel 1984. The corruption of language with a constant theme of Orwell’s work, most notably his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” So Orwell would not have been surprised to see the term “Internet Freedom” captured by those who advocate an increased role for government (i.e., Big Brother) online. Nor would Orwell had been surprised to see these advocates claim Orwell for themselves, insisting that opponents of government regulation are the ones corrupting language. There is perhaps no better example of this than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s comments in an interview with Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin about the divisive issue of “Net Neutrality” regulations:
Rachel Maddow [dripping with sarcasm]: Sen. McCain’s bill, as you mentioned, is actually called the “Internet Freedom Act of 2009,” and he’s deriding the government effort to keep telecoms from walling off the Internet as “government intrusion” and “trying to regulate the Internet.” What that means is that he’s picked better branding, he’s picked better names. It doesn’t really relate the facts of what he’s doing. I’m wondering if it’s too late for a rebranding of the other side here. We need to get better about talking about this, because the language seems sort of corrupt at this point.
What makes Maddow’s comments so stunning is not her view that corporate America, rather than government, is the real enemy of freedom. That view is simply part of the long-regnant political orthodoxy. No, what’s stunning is that she actually thinks that her side is losing the “war of words” just because Sen. McCain had the gall to use the term “Internet Freedom” as a rallying-cry for the outdated, bourgeois notion that “freedom” means the absence of coercion by the one entity that can enforce its commands at the point of a gun and call it “justice”: that coldest of all cold monsters, the State. That’s precisely what “liberalism” used to be about until people like Rachel appropriated that word and words like “liberty” and “freedom” as slogans for control. Xeni Jardin picks up where Rachel left off by appropriating the concept of rights, too:
Xeni Jardin: the Internet really is a basic right, it’s a necessity,such a fundamental way for communicating and accessing information now. Telecoms shouldn’t be able to throttle, to block, to slow down our access to something that might not be in their corporate interests.
This is pure, unadulterated cyber-socialism: Rights become not the sacred defense of the individual, but a positive assertion of entitlement to a vaguely defined principle of access: by guaranteeing this access through ever-expanding “neutrality regulation”, government gains unlimited control over the Internet itself.
As Adam Thierer and I have warned, that way lies madness: Inviting the government to regulate online content and services in the name of “neutrality” (or “privacy” or any of the many “glittering generalities” ending in “-y” Orwell would have denounced) would be the death of real Internet Freedom, which requires a strict “Separation of Web and State.” Continue reading →
In the last issue of The New Republic, Lawrence Lessig published the unfortunately titled article “Against Transparency.” In it he criticizes what he calls the “naked transparency movement.”* The article has drawn several responses, with Ellen Miller and Michael Klein’s being the best and most direct. I’d like to offer a libertarian perspective.
Lessig’s thesis is that the revolution in government transparency that modern information technology makes possible is a double-edged sword because what it uncovers is simply the general corruptibility of government–and he speaks of Congress in particular. Tools like MAPLight.org show that there is a strong correlation between campaign contributions and legislative votes. Some of these may indeed be corrupt bargains, and some may not. But the fact is that “the contributions are corrupting the reputation of Congress, because they raise the question of whether the member acted to track good sense or campaign dollars.”
Because citizens are prone to rational ignorance (although Lessig insists on relabeling the concept “lack of attention-span”), they will not investigate individual votes or other actions very deeply, and they will unfairly ascribe a certain susceptibility to influence to all in Congress. As a result, the naked transparency movement won’t inspire reform, but instead “will simply push any faith in our political system over the cliff.” Lessig writes:
At this time the judgment that Washington is all about money is so wide and so deep that among all the possible reasons to explain something puzzling, money is the first, and most likely the last, explanation that will be given. It sets the default against which anything different must fight. And this default, this unexamined assumption of causality, will only be reinforced by the naked transparency movement and its correlations. What we believe will be confirmed, again and again.
His solution? “A system of publicly funded elections would make it impossible to suggest that the reason some member of Congress voted the way he voted was because of money.” Take the money out of politics, Lessig argues, and you also take away the cynicism that forestalls change.
Lessig’s solution reminds me of airline regulation in the 60s and 70s. Prices where set by government, so airlines were forced to compete on other margins. First came the elaborate meals, then the in-flight bar lounges and later piano bars, and then “the musicians, magicians, wine-tasters, and Playboy bunnies.”
Die-hard Halloween fans can find a hearse-load of ghoulish party supplies on the Internet, from Freddie Krueger window silhouettes to a severed arm that hangs from a car trunk. You could even order a casket; maybe use it as a beer cooler.
One casket hawker on eBay named morbid611 boasted, “Will make a great Halloween prop and even keep it around the house and have fun with it when you have company over [!] When your neighbors have their cardboard caskets or home made bulky looking box caskets they won’t be able to compare to your real casket.” (Emphasis added. In case you’re curious, the winning bid was $285.)
Unfortunately, in my home state of Virginia, it’s questionable whether I can order one via the Internet. That’s because Virginia is one of a handful of states that prohibit anyone other than licensed funeral directors from selling caskets. I’m not sure how strictly this prohibition is enforced, though. Some online casket sellers claim they will ship anywhere, but Costco’s casket supplier won’t ship to Virginia.
The evidence is mixed on whether these restrictions increase overall funeral prices. In a 2008 study published in the Journal of Law & Economics, Judith Chevalier and Fiona Scott Morton found that funeral directors who face competition from independent casket retailers simply lower their casket prices and increase their prices for other services by about the same amount. But the funeral directors’ casket prices still don’t match online prices. The authors calculate that a simple funeral with a wooden casket would cost about $360 less if the customer purchased the casket online.
Dan Sutter, in an article published in the Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy in 2007, reached similarly mixed conclusions. He found that casket sales restrictions do not affect average receipts per death in the funeral industry (one measure of funeral prices). However, three states that had their casket sales restrictions invalidated by federal courts saw receipts per death fall more rapidly between 1997 and 2002 than states where these regulations remained in effect. In a 2005 study published in the Journal of Private Enterprise, Sutter found that Oklahoma funeral homes charged an average of 68 percent more than an Oklahoma-based Internet retailer charged for the same caskets.
It’s clear that consumers could save money by buying caskets online. Since not many consumers do, researchers have not found that the online competition has reduced funeral directors’ overall revenues in states where this competition is legal.
But this may change over time. Personally, I plan to haunt my family mercilessly if they end up drinking cheap booze at my wake because they overpaid for my casket!
There are a lot of interesting weekly roundups on the ‘Net. A search on “this week in” using Google reveals these weekly segments (among the top 50 results) on:
My colleagues at ACT aim to join the Poconos and Palestine by adding “antitrust” to the list! Per the ACT blog:
Today, we’re kicking off a new feature on the blog, a weekly round up of the tech industry’s various antitrust cases and “potential” antitrust concerns. While last week’s antitrust news was dominated by competition concerns outside the technology industry (health insurers and the BCS), there were a few notable stories coming out of the world tech competition.
It goes on to list antitrust discussion around Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle/Sun. Given the hard line talk from Christine Varney, head of DOJ’s antitrust division, this could be an ACTive weekly blog.
A recent article by Lisa Carley in the New York Wine Examiner reports that Amazon is suspending plans that would have allowed wine producers to sell direct to consumers. The culprit? State regulations:
One of the main reasons why this program has been put on hold is the complexity of wine-shipping laws within the United States, and that fact that the major wholesalers spend millions of dollars on the state level to keep it difficult for the consumer to have access to wine they want at good prices.
About 35 states permit some form of direct shipment to consumers, but laws vary greatly. In Virginia, consumers can order wine from any winery or retailer licensed in any state, as long as the seller registers with the state of Virginia and collects taxes. In Maryland, direct shipment of wine to consumers is still a felony. Montana limits the total amount of wine any consumer can order to 12 cases per year, which means most wineries won’t ship there because an individual winery has no way of knowing how much wine the consumer has ordered from other sellers. I’m not making this stuff up; check the Wine Institute’s compendium of state laws.
In several studies, Alan Wiseman and I found that consumers can enjoy significant savings on higher-priced wines if they order online. (The savings disappear for wines priced under $20 per bottle because of shipping costs.) The Internet also gives consumers access to wines that they might not find by simply walking into a store.
It would be a shame to see Amazon’s idea die. Currently, a winery or retailer that wants to ship directly to consumers has to figure out and comply with each state’s laws. It makes a lot of sense that a single retail sales portal could consolidate and continuously update this information, then set up a system that lets any seller market its wine direct to consumers in states where that’s legal, in compliance with all state laws.
Just a reminder about this week’s event on the 50th anniversary of Ronald Coase’s seminal article, “The Federal Communications Commission.” As Jerry noted here before, Coase’s critique of the political allocation of radio spectrum, and his arguments for achieving efficient allocation by allowing the government to sell rights to the spectrum, has had a profound effect on the course of communications policy. This event will explore the impact of Coase’s ideas and the legacy of his article and life’s work on communications and media policy.
This event will take place on Thursday morning at 9:00 in Hazel Hall, Room 121 (ground floor) at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington. The event is being co-hosted by The Mercatus Center at George Mason University and The Progress & Freedom Foundation and Jerry Brito and I will be co-moderating the session.
Opening remarks will be given by Commissioner Robert M. McDowell of the Federal Communications Commission and his remarks will be followed by a panel discussion that includes:
Prof. Thomas W. Hazlett, George Mason University School of Law
Dr. Jeffrey A. Eisenach, Empiris LLC & George Mason University School of Law
Dr. Evan Kwerel, Federal Communications Commission
CNET reports that Amazon has halted plans to sell wine online. The reason: too many inconsistent state laws. Per the article:
Since the Supreme Court ruled in May 2005 that states must grant the same shipping rights to out-of-state and in-state wineries, winery-to-consumer shipping has become legal in 35 states, according to wine advocacy group Free the Grapes. But state laws governing direct wine shipping vary greatly, creating an onerous task in managing compliance.
Amazon has become a great marketplace for countless products–it’s a shame to see wine makers shut out from this market due to regulatory barriers to e-commerce.
The imagination of the open source community never ceases to amaze me. But these days the sheer number of people using open source solutions makes the previous statement akin to saying “people never to cease to amaze me,” which they don’t. However, with thousands of a developers adapting open platforms to problem I never knew existed, I should get used to the constant stream of innovations.
WordPress has become an especially vibrant community that often throws total curve balls my way when I’m looking at lists of plugins, which I all-to-frequently do. Today, I discovered two particular gems worth sharing.
TextImage and Censortive, two plugins compatible with the most current versions of WordPress, are ingenious little bits of programming for skirting around the “Great Firewall” and any other attempts to censor the Net. The two plugins work by turning some or all of the text of a blog post into .PNG images of those words—making them readable by humans, but not by machines set to filter out web pages featuring forbidden words like “Falun Gong” and “Dalai Lama.”
While TextImage will image-ify your whole post—the fail-safe way around the censors—Censortive allows users to create a list of likely-to-be-censored terms which will then be replaced with images of those words. This means that text is still search-able, but words considered off-limits by big brother won’t set off any flags at your local office of the cultural ministry. Simply Brilliant!
Recent history has shown us that regimes in Egypt, Iran, and Australia can’t control content for long, thanks to quick and easy workarounds like these. It’s a shame that they keep trying.
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 →
In the last issue of The New Republic, Lawrence Lessig published the unfortunately titled article “
The imagination of the open source community never ceases to amaze me. But these days the sheer number of people using open source solutions makes the previous statement akin to saying “people never to cease to amaze me,” which they don’t. However, with thousands of a developers adapting open platforms to problem I never knew existed, I should get used to the constant stream of innovations.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.