GetUnvarnished.com: Should We Allow User Feedback about Personal Reputation?

by on April 6, 2010 · 15 comments

I got a call today from CNBC asking me to appear on a program to discuss the rising controversy surrounding GetUnvarnished.com, which CNBC called “the scariest website ever” and an “online reputation killer.”  For those of you not familiar with the site, it bills itself as “an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews.”  More specifically, the site says:

Unvarnished reviews help you get the inside scoop on other business professionals, providing candid assessments of coworkers, potential hires, business partners, and more. By contributing Unvarnished reviews, you can share your knowledge of other professionals, giving credit where credit is due, and valuable feedback where needed. Lastly, your own Unvarnished profile, which you may create yourself or claim one that has been created for you, helps you take control of and build your own professional reputation. Get recognition for your accomplishments and actively manage your career growth.

In essence, the site is like other online product or service review sites except in this case the product or service being reviewed is you!  By letting people comment on other people’s reputation anonymously, the theory is that Unvarnished can become “a central hub for community-contributed reviews regarding an individual business professional,” according to the site.

However, as you can well imagine, the site raises all sorts of thorny questions about anonymity, free speech, privacy, personal reputation, libel, child safety, cyberbullying, intermediary liability, and so on. If you read these two TechCrunch articles [1, 2], you’ll get a good feel for the heated debate that will follow, which I’m sure we’ll be talking about more here on this blog in the months to come. I can see this becoming the next AutoAdmit or JuicyCampus case, and raising some of the same questions that came to the fore during the “skank” blogger case last year. For now, here’s the video from the CNBC show, and down below I have included some talking points I put together before I went on the air.

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The FCC Lacks Jurisdiction over “Neutrality” Rules

by on April 6, 2010 · 4 comments

(Adam beat me to the punch (he’s on East Coast time, after all), but I wanted to make a few preliminary remarks about the FCC loss today anyway.)

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion today in Comcast’s appeal of sanctions issued in 2008, rejecting the FCC’s authority to issue the sanctions in the first place.  (Brent Kendall of The Wall Street Journal has already reported the story, see “Court Strikes at Net Neutrality.”)

The ruling punished the cable company’s efforts to throttle peer-to-peer traffic over its network of some customers using the BitTorrent application, a network management principle the FCC said violated its “policy” on open and transparent Internet or “net neutrality.”   Since Comcast agreed to more subtle forms of traffic management and to make such decisions more transparent, the FCC left them with a slap on the wrist.  Comcast appealed nonetheless.  (Appeals of FCC adjudications go directly to the D.C. Circuit.)

I’ve read through the court’s 36-page opinion, which will serve as an important marker in the “net neutrality” debate.  It largely follows the harsh line of questioning taken during the oral arguments for the case back in January, where the panel challenged the FCC to identify a specific statutory provision that gave them authority to impose the neutrality principles—in this case, in an adjudication that Comcast had failed to follow the rules.

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FCC Loses Comcast Case: End of Line for FCC’s Creative Claims of Authority?

by on April 6, 2010 · 152 comments

The decision in Comcast v. FCC is out and it’s a resounding defeat for the Federal Communications Commission and the agency’s creative interpretations of “ancillary jurisdiction.”  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia just wasn’t buying the FCC’s claim that it had “ancillary jurisdiction” to enforce amorphous policy principles against Comcast under past case law or, more amazingly, via some deregulatory-minded passages from the Telecommunications Act of 1996. [For all the background on this case and the definitive refutation of the agency’s jurisdictional assertions, see this paper and this filing by my colleague Barbara Esbin. Barbara practically wrote the script for the Court’s decision today through her meticulous debunking of each of the agency’s creative theories of law.]

I’m just working my way through the decision for a second time and will likely have more to say about it in coming days, but I just had to reprint this one passage from the decision on pg. 23-4, in which the Court notes that the FCC is basically asking for “anything goes” authority over all networks and the Internet:

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event: “Digital Power and Its Discontents” (4/21 at Georgetown U.)

by on April 6, 2010 · 0 comments

Interesting upcoming event on April 21st at Georgetown University about “Digital Power and Its Discontents.” It’s described as: “A one-day conference exploring the ways digital technologies disrupt the balance of power between and among states, their citizens and the private sector.” Evgeny Morozov of Georgetown’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, which is organizing the event, was kind enough to invite me to participate on the first panel of the day. And I see that my fellow TLF blogger Jerry Brito of the Mercatus Center will be on another panel. Other panelists include: John Morris of CDT, Micah Sifry of the Personal Democracy Forum, Mark MacCarthy of Georgetown Univ., Rebecca MacKinnon, Joel Reidenberg of Fordham Law, Amb. Philip Verveer, and several others.

The event will be held on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Georgetown University Mortara Center for International Affairs. (3600 N Street, N.W.) Go to the website to RSVP. You’ll find the complete agenda down below. It sounds like a terrific event. RSVP here.
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Podcast about Spectrum Taxes as Tool to Subsidize Public Media

by on April 6, 2010 · 0 comments

In the latest PFF TechCast, I discuss the issues considered in the second essay in our ongoing series, “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media.”  In this 6-minute podcast, PFF’s press director Mike Wendy chats with me about proposals to impose taxes on broadcast spectrum licenses to funnel money to public media or “public interest” content.  In my paper and this podcast, I make the case again socially engineering media choices and outcomes through the tax code.

MP3 file: PFF TechCast #2 – Saving the Media Through Broadcast Spectrum Taxes (4/5/2010)

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Do You Know Anyone Who Would Like to be PFF President?

by on April 6, 2010 · 2 comments

As I mentioned before, I’ve been actively seeking a replacement in my role as President of The Progress & Freedom Foundation.  I’ve already grown tired of managerial duties, fundraising responsibilities, and so on.  More importantly, it is slowly but surely destroying my ability to be a full-time policy wonk and focus all my energies on making the case for free minds, free markets, and free speech. I’m quite ready and willing to hand over the keys to someone else so I can spend all my time fighting the good fight. I just need to find the right person.

So, if you know of someone who would make a great leader, has strong free-market credentials, and extensive experience in the field of high-tech policy and media/communications law, please let me know.  They can contact me at: athierer[at]pff.org  or call PFF at 202-289-8928

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Broadband is great but, magical? really?

by on April 5, 2010 · 0 comments

The city of Bellingham, Washington lies close to the Canadian border. It is a sleep town of 70,000 or so with a decent sized University, a pleasant waterfront and charming downtown. (Full disclosure, the author attended said University a decade ago)

The town’s motto is, “the city of subdued excitement,” something that probably better fits a description of this author than the town, but whatever.

I did, however, get a kick out of the video that city leaders spent $5K putting together to accompany the Google fiber rollout project application. I love a good broadband connection as much as the next guy, but the video, while done in a very professional manner, made my hair stand up on end. For one thing, Bellingham has good broadband networks, including Clear’s WiMax, numerous coffee shops with complimentary WiFi, a networked university system, etc. We’re not dealing with backwood hicks here or stone-cobbled streets.

But I suppose a video looks less desperate than changing the name of your city.

Google Fiber: Put the G in Bellingham

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RIP Ed Roberts, creator the Altair 8800

by on April 2, 2010 · 0 comments

Ed Roberts, designer of the first commercially successful personal computer, died yesterday in Georgia at the age of 68.

Roberts founded the MITS company in 1970 and in 1975 developed the first personal computer, the Altair 8800.  Soon Bill Gates and Paul Allen came calling, and later sold their first commercial software to Roberts.  The Altair also served as the catalyst for the Homebrew Computer Club whose members included Apple Computer co-founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Roberts took a risk on an untested market and launched the PC revolution.  He was a true entrepreneur and will continue to be a hero to geeks like me.

Harry McCracken at PC World has posted some very kind words about Roberts.  Bill Gates and Paul Allen have also posted a statement at thegatesnotes.com.

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Why the startup visa is a good idea

by on April 2, 2010 · 4 comments

This is a hot topic in the Valley at the moment, and for good reason.  Here’s an excerpt from my column on the issue:

Silicon Valley is known for innovative ideas in technology, and now some of the area’s greatest minds have come up with a new way to solve one of their biggest operational problems: securing foreign talent. It’s called the “startup visa” and it’s getting a lot of attention in both California and D.C., because it would help create new jobs.

The idea is to issue a work visa to foreign entrepreneurs who start a company in the U.S., provided that they raise at least US$250,000 from qualified U.S. investors. Then, within two years, the startup must create five new jobs, raise at least $1 million, or generate at least $1 million in revenue. If one of those goals is achieved, the founder gets a green card. If not, the entrepreneur must leave the country. Anyone who knows what it’s like to be an immigrant understands that such a scenario would provide a serious incentive to work hard at making the new company grow.

For years, the tech industry has struggled with caps on H-1B visas, but this new idea has sparked hope for a better reception. Far from “stealing jobs” from Americans, the visas would require the creation of new jobs that stimulate the economy.

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New America: Can You Hear Me Whining Now?

by on April 2, 2010 · 4 comments

In a Cato@Liberty post, “Cell Phones and Ingratitude,” David Boaz reproaches the New America Foundation for today’s complaint-fest, “Can You Hear Me Now? Why Your Cell Phone is So Terrible”:

This is an old story. Markets, property rights, and the rule of law provide a framework in which technology and prosperity soar, and some people can only complain. I was reading some of Deirdre McCloskey’s forthcoming book Bourgeois Dignity this week. She points out that the average person lived on the equivalent of $3 a day in 1800. Today there are six and a half times as many people, but the average person earns and consumes 10 times as much, far more than that in the most capitalist countries. And yet some people, most leftist intellectuals, continue to ignore what McCloskey calls “the gigantic gains from bourgeois dignity and liberty” and to denounce the markets, economic liberalization, and globalization that have liberated billions of people from eons of back-breaking labor.

This is an event I’m not going to attend. I mean, like, they’re not even serving food!

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