Joe Karaganis on public attitudes toward piracy

by on March 5, 2013 · 2 comments

Joe Karaganis, vice president at The American Assembly at Columbia University, discusses the relationship between digital convergence and cultural production in the realm of online piracy.

Karaganis’s work at American Assembly arose from a frustration with the one-sided way in which industry research was framing the discourse around global copyright policy. He shares the results of Copy Culture in the US & Germany, a recent survey he helped conduct that distinguishes between attitudes towards piracy in the two countries. It found that nearly half of adults in the U.S. and Germany participate in a broad, informal “copy culture,” characterized by the copying, sharing, and downloading of music, movies, TV shows, and other digital media. And while citizens support laws against piracy, they don’t support outsized penalties.

Karaganis also discuses the new “six-strike” Copyright Alert System in the U.S., of which he is skeptical. He also talks about the politics of copyright reform and notes that there is a window of opportunity for the Republican Party to take up the issue before demography gives the advantage to the much younger Democratic Party. 

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Forbes commentary on Susan Crawford’s “broadband monopoly” thesis

by on March 4, 2013 · 3 comments

Over at Forbes we have a lengthy piece discussing “10 Reasons To Be More Optimistic About Broadband Than Susan Crawford Is.” Crawford has become the unofficial spokesman for a budding campaign to reshape broadband. She sees cable companies monopolizing broadband, charging too much, withholding content and keeping speeds low, all in order to suppress disruptive innovation — and argues for imposing 19th century common carriage regulation on the Internet. We begin (we expect to contribute much more to this discussion in the future) to explain both why her premises are erroneous and also why her proscription is faulty. Here’s a taste:

Things in the US today are better than Crawford claims. While Crawford claims that broadband is faster and cheaper in other developed countries, her statistics are convincingly disputed. She neglects to mention the significant subsidies used to build out those networks. Crawford’s model is Europe, but as Europeans acknowledge, “beyond 100 Mbps supply will be very difficult and expensive. Western Europe may be forced into a second fibre build out earlier than expected, or will find themselves within the slow lane in 3-5 years time.” And while “blazing fast” broadband might be important for some users, broadband speeds in the US are plenty fast enough to satisfy most users. Consumers are willing to pay for speed, but, apparently, have little interest in paying for the sort of speed Crawford deems essential. This isn’t surprising. As the LSE study cited above notes, “most new activities made possible by broadband are already possible with basic or fast broadband: higher speeds mainly allow the same things to happen faster or with higher quality, while the extra costs of providing higher speeds to everyone are very significant.”

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Who Really Believes in “Permissionless Innovation”?

by on March 4, 2013 · 587 comments

[Note: I later adapted this essay into a short book, which you can download for free here.]

Let’s talk about “permissionless innovation.” We all believe in it, right? Or do we? What does it really mean? How far are we willing to take it? What are its consequences? What is its opposite? How should we balance them?

What got me thinking about these questions was a recent essay over at The Umlaut by my Mercatus Center colleague Eli Dourado entitled, “‘Permissionless Innovation’ Offline as Well as On.” He opened by describing the notion of permissionless innovation as follows:

In Internet policy circles, one is frequently lectured about the wonders of “permissionless innovation,” that the Internet is a global platform on which college dropouts can try new, unorthodox methods without the need to secure authorization from anyone, and that this freedom to experiment has resulted in the flourishing of innovative online services that we have observed over the last decade.

Eli goes on to ask, “why it is that permissionless innovation should be restricted to the Internet. Can’t we have this kind of dynamism in the real world as well?”

That’s a great question, but let’s ponder an even more fundamental one: Does anyone really believe in the ideal of “permissionless innovation”? Is there anyone out there who makes a consistent case for permissionless innovation across the technological landscape, or is it the case that a fair degree of selective morality is at work here? That is, people love the idea of “permissionless innovation” until they find reasons to hate it — namely, when it somehow conflicts with certain values they hold dear. Continue reading →

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“Creepiness” is not a bug, it’s *the* feature

by on March 4, 2013 · 2 comments

Geordi

Yesterday I explained why I’m not too worried about Silicon Valley’s penchant for “solutionism,” which Evgeny Morozov tackles in his new book. Essentially I think that as long as we make decisions about which technologies to adopt via market processes, people will reject those applications that are stupid or bad. Today I want to explore one reason why I’m optimistic that, in the long run, the public will get the technology it wants, despite the perennial squeamishness of some intellectuals.

The problem some thinkers and pundits have with my sanguine let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom approach is that inevitably the public will embrace some technologies that the thinkers don’t like. The result is usually a lot of fretting and hand-wringing by public intellectuals about what the scary new technology will do to our brains or society. Eventually, activists take on the cause and try to use state power to limit the choices the rest of us can make—for our own good, rest assured.

Today it seems that the next technology to get this treatment will be life-logging and personal data mining, as I discussed in my last post. Squarely in the crosshairs right now is Google Glass.

In this CNN op-ed about Glass Andrew Keen waits only seven words before using the adjective “creepy”—the watchword of nervous nellies everywhere. His concern is that those wearing Google Glass will be spying on anyone in their line of sight. Mark Hurst expresses similar concerns in a widely circulated blog post that also frets about what happens when we’re all not just recording but also being recorded.

This time around, though, I think the worrywarts face an uphill battle. That’s because in the case of life-logging and personal data mining, the “creepy” parts of the technologies are one in the same with the technologies themselves. The “creepiness” is not a bug, it’s the feature, and it can’t be severed without destroying the technology.

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People are smarter than they look (or, why I’m not worried about solutionism)

by on March 3, 2013 · 6 comments

solutionism

In the New York Times today, Evgeny Morozov indicts the “solutionism” of Silicon Valley, which he defines as the “intellectual pathology that recognizes problems as problems based on just one criterion: whether they are ‘solvable’ with [technology].” This is the theme of his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here, which I’m looking forward to reading.

Morozov is absolutely right that there is a tendency among the geekerati to want to solve things that aren’t really problems, but I think he overestimates the effects this has on society. What are the examples of “solutionism” that he cites? They include:

  • LivesOn, a yet-to-launch service that promises to tweet from your account after you have died
  • Superhuman, another yet-to-launch service with no public description
  • Seesaw, an app that lets you poll friends for advice before making decisions
  • A notional contact lens product that would “make homeless people disappear from view” as you walk about

It should first be noted that three of these four products don’t yet exist, so they’re straw men. But let’s grant Morozov’s point, that the geeks are really cooking these things up. Does he really think that no one besides him sees how dumb these ideas are?

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New free online course on the economics of media

by on March 1, 2013 · 0 comments

MRUniversity, the “massive open online course” project of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, has just launched several new courses today, including one on the economics of the media, featuring guests lessons by yours truly and Adam Thierer. From the site:

>In the Information Age, media is everywhere. This course will help you make sense of it all, providing insight into the structure of media firms, the nature of their products and how they make money.

>Is media biased? Is consolidation of media companies bad for consumers? This course will address those questions as well as how the government effects the structure of media through policies such as net neutrality, copyright, TV regulation and spectrum allocation.

>This course will provide a general background on the research from economists on media and journalism. There will be a lot of economics and not too much math.

>If you pass the final exam, you will earn our “Economics of the Media” certificate on your profile.

Putting together a couple of 5-minute lessons was a lot harder than it sounded when we were asked to contribute, and it’s given me greater appreciation for what Tyler and Alex are doing with this project. It worth the hard work, though. They are reaching thousands of students for much the same effort that would go into a regular university course.

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The copyright reform agenda is a natural fit for the G.O.P.

by on February 27, 2013 · 0 comments

In a recent article in National Review, Joe Karaganis of American Assembly notes that copyright law is increasingly out of step with social norms. His polling suggests that it’s only a matter of time before a majority supports a broad copyright reform agenda.

As I’ve noted before, copyright has for too long been a bipartisan issue, but it will soon become a partisan one. The question is, which party will take up the winning copyright reform issue?

Karaganis:

How would an Internet politics emerge in the Democratic party? The answer is probably simple: It is impossible in the short term because of the power of Hollywood and inevitable in the long term because of the power of time. Most of the young are already Democrats.

How would an Internet politics emerge in the Republican party? Given the decades of rhetorical entrenchment around property rights and law enforcement, it would probably require the recasting of intellectual-property rights as government monopoly, of SOPA-style bills as crony capitalism, and of Internet enforcement as part of a digital-surveillance state.

Such views in favor of recasting IP rights already have a home on the right, and are supported by congressmen such as Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz. Tactical considerations alone could produce Republican-led majorities on these issues, galvanized by the prospect of wounding the Democrats’ Hollywood money base or splitting Silicon Valley libertarians.

Seems to me like the case is strong for a Republican-led movement, but time is of the essence. Will the G.O.P. squander this opportunity?

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Legislative Data and Wikipedia Workshop—March 14th and 15th

by on February 26, 2013 · 0 comments

In my Cato paper, “Publication Practices for Transparent Government,” I talked about the data practices that will produce more transparent government. The government can and should improve the way it provides information about its deliberations, management, and results.

“But transparency is not an automatic or instant result of following these good practices,” I wrote, “and it is not just the form and formats of data.”

It turns on the capacity of the society to interact with the data and make use of it. American society will take some time to make use of more transparent data once better practices are in place. There are already thriving communities of researchers, journalists, and software developers using unofficial repositories of government data. If they can do good work with incomplete and imperfect data, they will do even better work with rich, complete data issued promptly by authoritative sources.

We’re not just sitting around waiting for that to happen. Continue reading →

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Do we need a special government program to help cybersecurity supply meet demand?

by on February 26, 2013 · 1 comment

Today, the House Science Committee is holding a hearing on “Cyber R&D Challenges and Solutions.” Under consideration is a bill reintroduced by Rep. Mike McCaul that takes numerous steps purported to increase the network security workforce. The bill passed overwhelmingly last year.

I have no doubt that, as we move more of our lives online, we need to draw more people into computer security. But just as we need more network security professionals, we need more programmers, geneticists, biomedical engineers, statisticians, and countless other professions. We will also continue to need some number of doctors, lawyers, mechanics, plumbers, and grocery clerks. Does it make sense to introduce legislation to fine tune the number of practitioners of every trade?

Of course not. Which raises the question: what is so special about computer security? And the answer, I think, is “nothing is so special about computer security.” More people will get trained in computer security if the returns to doing so are higher, and fewer people will get trained in computer security if the returns to doing so are lower. Entry into the computer security business is simply a function of supply and demand.

The Washington Post reports, “The median salary for a graduate earning a degree in security was $55,000 in 2009, compared with $75,000 for computer engineering.” Is it any surprise, then, that more smart, tech-savvy students have pursued the latter route in recent years?

Intervening in a market that shows no signs of failing can have lots of unintended consequences. Most obviously, subsidies would run the serious risk of drawing *too many* workers into the computer security workforce. Those workers might find that they spent years investing in specialized skills without as much of a payoff as they expected. Tinkering could also affect the composition of people drawn into the field, with ill effect, for example by lowering the equilibrium salary and reducing the incentive for those with natural talent and without the need for training to work in security.

The bottom line is that a shortage of a particular kind of worker is a problem that solves itself. As salaries for security workers get bid up, more people will get training in security. The supply and demand dynamic is completely sufficient to get people into the correct professions in sufficient numbers.

The McCaul bill works through various subsidies and governmental reports to try to accomplish the same thing that the market would do if left to operate on its own. If the government wants to hire more computer security professionals, let them pay the money needed to draw people into this field. But let’s not jump through needless hoops to accomplish what should really be a straightforward task.

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Joseph Reagle on the gender gap in geek culture

by on February 26, 2013 · 0 comments

Is geek culture sexist? Joseph Reagle, Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northeastern University and author of a new paper entitled, “Free as in Sexist? Free culture and the gender gap,” returns to Surprisingly Free to address geek feminism and the technology gender gap.

According to Reagle, only 1% of the free software community and 9% of Wikipedia editors are female, which he sees as emblematic of structural problems in the geek community. While he does not believe that being a geek or a nerd is in any way synonymous with being a sexist, he concludes that three things that he otherwise loves—geekiness, openness, and the rhetoric and ideology of freedom–are part of the problem inasmuch as they allow informal cliques to arise, dominate the discussion, and squeeze out minority views. Reagle also comments on a unintentional androcentricity he has observed even amongst free software community heroes, highlighting the ways in which this behavior can be alienating to women and prevents geek culture from growing beyond its traditional base.

Reagle prescribes a 3-step solution to sexism in geek culture: talking about gender; challenging and expanding what it means to be a geek; and not allowing the rhetoric of freedom to be used as an excuse for bad behavior.

Reagle further supports efforts to form female-only subcultures within the geek community, which opponents argue goes against the free software value of openness. Instead of the balkanization of their movement that opponents fear, these closed-group discussions actually strengthen geek culture at large, according to Reagle.

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