On this week’s podcast, Rob Carlson, principal at Biodesic, an engineering, consulting, and design firm in Seattle, and author of the book, Biology is Technology: the promise, peril, and new business of engineering life, discusses his book. Carlson explains what he means by “biology is technology” and gives a few examples of how humans have been using biology as technology for thousands of years. He then discusses a few modern biotechnology applications, like antibiotics, biologics, genetically modified organisms, fuels, and plastics. Carlson also talks about why more biotech garage innovators are needed, what the industry might be able to learn from open source software and hardware, and how legal and regulatory barriers to innovation in biotechnology might be minimized.
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This week, my colleague Jerry Brito asked me to guest lecture to his George Mason University law school class on regulatory process. He asked me to talk about one of my favorite topics: the sad, sordid history of regulatory capture. Regular readers will recall the compendium I posted here a few months ago [and that I continue to update] of selected passages from books and papers penned by various economists and political scientists who have studied this issue.
Again, it doesn’t make for pretty reading, but the lesson that history teaches is vital: No matter how noble the “public interest” goals of regulatory advocates or their specific proposals, the only thing that really counts is what regulation means in practice. Regrettably, all too often, regulation is “captured” by various interests and used to their advantage, or at least to the disadvantage of potential competitors, new entrants, and innovation.
While I was gathering some materials for the case study portion of my lecture — which incorporates the history of telecommunications monopolization, broadcast industry regulatory shenanigans, and transportation / airlines fiascos — I figured I had to post a passage from one of my favorite books on regulation of all-time: Thomas K. McCraw’s brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning 1984 book, Prophets of Regulation. In his chapter on the late great Alfred Kahn, the father of airline deregulation, McCraw recounts the history of the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) from its creation in the 1940s up until the time of Kahn’s ascendency to CAB chairman in the Carter Administration (and then the CAB’s eventual deregulation and abolition). Here’s the key passage from that history: Continue reading →
…says Nick Schulz, in partial answer to the question why regulators want to control telecom and wireless even though those sectors currently enjoy “rising customer satisfaction, falling prices, enviable investment levels, and greater innovation—even during the Great Recession.”
In my latest Forbes column, “Keeping The Video Revolution Going Strong,” I argue that we’ve been blessed to live through a veritable information revolution but that “many scarcity-era regulations remain on the books and threaten this ongoing revolution — especially in the video marketplace. So long as Washington continues to enforce regulations dating to the days of I Love Lucy, the old regulatory norms and edicts threaten to roll over onto emerging video technologies, stifling innovation and consumer choice.”
I go on to briefly discuss a few flashpoints in the ongoing video wars, including: the fights over “retransmission consent,” so-called “AllVid” tech mandates, and the broader battle to liberalize spectrum. “While the video revolution will hopefully continue apace, a light-touch from Washington will be essential to keep it going strong,” I conclude. “To the extent policymakers are looking to ‘level the (regulatory) playing field’ between the old and new video worlds, they should do so in the direction of freer markets, not more tech mandates.”
Anyway, read the whole thing over at the Forbes site.
There’s a nice piece of reporting from Ian Shapira in today’s Washington Post entitled, “Once the Hobby of Tech Geeks, iPhone Jailbreaking Now a Lucrative Industry.” In the article, Shapira documents the rise of independent, unauthorized Apple apps (especially tethering apps) and points out that what was once a small black market has now turned into a booming, maturing business sector in its own right. In fact, Sharpia notes, there are already “market leaders” in the field:
At the top of the jailbreaking hierarchy sits Jay Freeman, 29, the founder and operator of Cydia, the biggest unofficial iPhone app store, which offers about 700 paid designs and other modifications out of about 30,000 others that are free. Based out of an office near Santa Barbara, Calif., Freeman said Cydia, launched in 2008, now earns about $250,000 after taxes in profit annually. He just hired his first full-time employee from Delicious, the Yahoo-owned bookmarking site, to improve Cydia’s design. “The whole point is to fight against the corporate overlord,” Freeman said. “This is grass-roots movement, and that’s what makes Cydia so interesting. Apple is this ivory tower, a controlled experience, and the thing that really bought people into jailbreaking is that it makes the experience theirs.”
In another sign this black market is now going mainstream, advertisers are apparently flocking to it:
In what might be the ultimate sign that the jailbreak industry is losing its anti-establishment character, Toyota recently offered a free program on Cydia’s store, promoting the company’s Scion sedan. Once installed, the car is displayed on the background of the iPhone home screen, and the iPhone icons are re-fashioned to look like the emblem on the front grill.
Interestingly, however, some people now complain that Cydia is getting too big for its britches and has come to be “as domineering as Apple is in the non-jailbreak world.” What delicious irony! Yet, I do not for one minute believe that Cydia has any sort of “lock” on the “unlocking” marketplace. This is an insanely dynamic sector that is subject to near-constant fits of disruptive technological change. Continue reading →
San Francisco’s Entertainment Commission will soon be considering a jaw-dropping attack on privacy and free assembly. Here are some of the rules the Commission may adopt for any gathering of people expected to reach 100 or more:
3. All occupants of the premises shall be ID Scanned (including patrons, promoters, and performers, etc.). ID scanning data shall be maintained on a data storage system for no less than 15 days and shall be made available to local law enforcement upon request.
4. High visibility cameras shall be located at each entrance and exit point of the premises. Said cameras shall maintain a recorded data base for no less than fifteen (15 days) and made available to local law enforcement upon request.
Would you recognize a police state if you lived in one? How about a police city? The First Amendment right to peaceably assemble takes a big step back when your identity data and appearance are captured for law enforcement to use at whim simply because you showed up. (ht: PrivacyActivism.org)
This morning, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard key administration officials testify about the statute that governs law enforcement access to private information held electronically by third parties. Several leading lawmakers are currently working to bring this law—the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA)—into the information age so that it reflects Americans’ reasonable privacy expectations in the era of webmail, mobile services, cloud computing and the like.
TechFreedom has led, in conjunction with the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Americans for Tax Reform‘s Digital Liberty Project, a coalition of leading free market public interest in a letter to the committee voicing their strong support for overhauling the quarter-century-old ECPA. The coalition—also including FreedomWorks, the Campaign for Liberty, the Washington Policy Center, Liberty Coalition, the Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights, and Less Government—is urging Congress to extend traditional Fourth Amendment protections to Internet-based “cloud” and mobile location services while preserving the building blocks of law enforcement investigations.
The coalition letter explains that framers of the Bill of Rights ratified the Fourth Amendment to protect individuals from unreasonable, unwarranted searches and seizures by government officials. But since courts have not consistently applied these Constitutional protections to private information stored with cloud and mobile providers, many Americans’ private information is vulnerable to warrant-less access by law enforcement. To remedy this, the letter proposes four reforms to ECPA that would resolve legal ambiguities and affirm Constitutional protections by establishing electronic privacy standards that are consistent with the Fourth Amendment.
“Major decisions regarding the future architecture of cloud computing are being made right now,” explains the letter, calling for urgent action. “If Congress fails to enact ECPA reform, cloud computing services may be designed to rely on servers outside the U.S. Not only would this harm U.S. competitiveness, it could also, ironically, deny U.S. law enforcement access to cloud data—even with a lawful warrant.”
Read the full coalition letter here or below. Continue reading →
The Competitive Enterprise Institute and TechFreedom are hosting a panel discussion this Thursday featuring intellectual property scholars and Internet governance experts. The event will explore the need for, and concerns about, recent legislative proposals to give law enforcement new tools to combat so-called “rogue websites” that facilitate and engage in unlawful counterfeiting and copyright infringement.
Video of the event will be posted here on TechLiberation.com.
| What: |
“What Should Lawmakers Do About Rogue Websites?” — A CEI/TechFreedom event |
| When: |
Thursday, April 7 (12:00 – 2:00 p.m.) |
| Where: |
The National Press Club (529 14th Street NW, Washington D.C.) |
| Who: |
Juliana Gruenwald, National Journal (moderator)
Daniel Castro, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Larry Downes, TechFreedom
Danny McPherson, VeriSign
Ryan Radia, Competitive Enterprise Institute
David Sohn, Center for Democracy & Technology
Thomas Sydnor, Association for Competitive Technology
|
Space is very limited. To guarantee a seat, please register for the event by emailing nciandella@cei.org.
Juliana Gruenwald, National Journal (moderator)
Daniel Castro, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation
Larry Downes, TechFreedom
Danny McPherson, VeriSign
Ryan Radia, Competitive Enterprise Institute
David Sohn, Center for Democracy & Technology
Thomas Sydnor, Association for Competitive Technology
Jack Shafer brought to my attention this terrific new Politico column by Michael Kinsley entitled, “How Microsoft Learned ABCs of D.C.” In the editorial, Kinsley touches on some of the same themes I addressed in my recent piece here “On Facebook ‘Normalizing Relations’ with Washington” as well as in my Cato Institute essay from last year on”The Sad State of Cyber-Politics.” Kinsley notes how Microsoft was originally bashed by many for not getting into the D.C. lobbying game early enough:
there even was a feeling that, in refusing to play the Washington game, Microsoft was being downright unpatriotic. Look, buddy, there is an American way of doing things, and that American way includes hiring lobbyists, paying lawyers vast sums by the hour, throwing lavish parties for politicians, aides, journalists and so on. So get with the program.
But after doing exactly that, Kinsley notes, the company got blasted for for being too aggressive in D.C.!
So that’s what Microsoft did. It moved its “government affairs” office out of distant Chevy Chase and into the downtown K Street corridor. It bulked up on lawyers and hired the best-connected lobbyists. Soon, Microsoft was coming under criticism for being heavy-handed in its attempts to buy influence.
“But the sad thing is that it seems to have worked. Microsoft is no longer Public Enemy No. 1,” Kinsley notes, and he continues on to reiterate a point I made in my last two essays: Google is the Great Satan now!
Continue reading →
On the podcast this week, Kevin Poulsen, a senior editor at Wired News, former hacker, and author of Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground, discusses his new book. Poulsen first talks about how he became interested in hacking and why he was eventually sent to prison for it. He then discusses his book, a true crime account of Max Butler, a white hat hacker turned black hat who went from security innovator to for-profit cyber criminal to hacker of other hackers, eventually taking over the cyber crime underground. Poulsen finally comments on cyber security policy, noting that while many security vulnerabilities exist today, he suspects that legislation is not the answer.
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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.