Articles by Adam Thierer 
Senior Fellow in Technology & Innovation at the R Street Institute in Washington, DC. Formerly a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, President of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, Director of Telecommunications Studies at the Cato Institute, and a Fellow in Economic Policy at the Heritage Foundation.
Dr. Kourosh Dini is a Chicago-based adolescent and adult psychiatrist who has just published a new book entitled, Video Game Play and Addiction: A Guide for Parents. [You can learn more about him and his many talents and interests at his blog, “Mind, Music and Technology.“] Dini’s book arrives fresh on the heels of the fine book, “Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do,” by Drs. Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson. [See my review of that book here.]
Like Kutner & Olson’s book, Dini’s provides a refreshingly balanced and open-minded look at the impact of video games on our kids. One of the things I liked about it is how Dr. Dini tells us right up front that he has been a gamer his entire life and explains how that has helped him frame the issues he discusses in his book. “I have played games both online and off since I was about six years of age, and I have also been involved in child psychiatry, so I felt that I would be in a good position to discuss some inherent positives and negatives associated with playing games,” he says. Dini goes into greater detail about his gaming habits later in the book and it makes it clear that he still enjoys games very much.
Some may find Dini’s gaming background less relevant than his academic credentials, but I think it is important if for no other reason than it shows how we are seeing more and more life-long gamers attain positions of prominence in various professions and writing about these issues using a sensible frame of reference that begins with their own personal experiences. For far too long now, nearly every book and article I have read about video games and their impact on society at some point includes a line like, “I’ve never really played many games” or even “I don’t much care for video games,” but then–without missing a breath–the author or analyst goes on to tell us how imminently qualified they are to be discussing the impact of video games on kids or culture. Whenever I read or hear things like that, I’m reminded of the famous line from an old TV commercial: “I’m not a doctor, but I play one on TV.” Seriously, why is it that we should continue to listen to those critics who denounce video games but who have never picked up a controller in their lives? It’s really quite insulting. Would you take automotive advice from someone who’s never tinkered with cars in their lives but instead based their opinions merely upon watching them pass by on the road? I think not.
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Yesterday, I was a guest on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, which airs on WAMU 88.5 radio (Washington, DC’s NPR affiliate), and had the chance to take part in an excellent discussion about the ins-and-outs of student online speech. Specifically, we discussed the sticky issues surrounding online privacy, anonymity, defamation, cyber-bullying, and so on.
The entire show can be heard on Kojo’s site. The other guests were John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Parry Aftab, the Executive Director of WiredSafety.org, and Reg Weaver, the President of the National Education Association. We attempted to provide parents and educators with some helpful advice about how to deal with these issues when they pop up. We also got into the controversies raised by the anonymous comments left on sites like JuicyCampus.com and RateMyTeachers.com.
[Incidentally, this show was part of Kojo’s excellent ongoing “Tech Tuesday” series. Each Tuesday he dedicates his show to “putting technology in context and assessing its relevance in your life.” It’s a great program. In encourage you to listen.]
Bruce Everiss, a UK-based video game industry veteran, and author of the blog Bruce on Games, has penned a comprehensive essay on video game piracy through the years. I recommend you read the entire piece, but here’s the take away:
And the game industry continues to grow and prosper, despite the piracy. This is because the proliferation of platforms allows publishers to more easily abandon platforms that are pirated to the point of being uneconomic. Instead they concentrate on platforms where there are windows of opportunity to run a viable business. Either because the anti piracy technology is on top or because there is a sufficient number of honest customers to get a return, even sometimes with a heavily pirated platform. Games with an online element can often be made very pirate proof which has been a major incentive for developers to go down this route.
So for 25 years or so game players have been stealing games in truly massive numbers with zero chance of being caught and punished for their crime. Very often far more copies of a game title have been pirated than have been bought. This self evidently causes harm to the games industry, ultimately leading to less money being invested in games for the pirated platform. So, the game player suffers for his theft by having less games and lower quality games. All pretty obvious to anyone but the pirates who make all sorts of feeble excuses to justify their stealing.
[My own views on video game piracy can be found here and here.]
The Britannica Blog has been running an absolutely terrific series of essays on “Newspapers & the Net,” which is examining the questions: “Are newspapers dead? Should we care?” The series kicks off with essays from three of my absolute favorite bloggers: Nick Carr, Clay Shirky and Jay Rosen, who is the author of the amazing blog, PressThink. I highly recommend that you read all the installments, however. Here’s the rundown of participants and essays in the series thus far:
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For those of you who aren’t avid WWE wrestling watchers, the 3 leading presidential candidates all offered up videos for the professional wrestling crowd recently. McCain’s freakish one is right below and Hillary and Obama’s are down below the fold. They all cracked a bunch of jokes and used what were obviously scripted remarks that integrate in the requisite number of wresting analogies. And they all talked all sort of stupid smack, just like pro wrestlers do. [It reminded me of former candidate Mike Huckabee’s bizarre cultural politics].
http://www.youtube.com/v/mWeZvuRZkIg&hl=en
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So there’s another Net neutrality hearing today. I’m beginning to think we’ll have to endure one every week for the rest of time. Anyway, today’s took place in the Senate Commerce Committee and it featured the testimony of 1980s TV star Justine Bateman, who was in the sitcom “Family Ties.”
Before I get to the “substance” of her arguments, I have to say that celebrity testimony has long been a fascination of mine. Whenever a celebrity or pop star shows up in the hollowed halls of Congress, the collective knees of lawmakers simply melt like butter as they fawn over them and all rush to get snapshots and autographs for their office walls.
It would be tough for me to single out my favorite celebrity testimony moment. Kim Basinger on banning animal research? Meryl Streep on banning Alar? Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys on coal and water regulation? While those were all certainly great moments in the history of our republic, my favorite celebrity testimony of all-time had to be from 1993, when Sheri Lewis and her sock puppet “Lamb Chop” testified in favor of the Children’s Television Act, a law regulating educational TV programming. What made is so special was not that Ms. Lewis testified alone. Lamb Chop testified too! I wish I had the video of that to post here. I mean, there was a woman with a hand in a sock making it talk to elected members of Congress… and they were listening. Awesome.
Anyway, if you ever want to read a fun paper about the softball treatment these celebs get when they go up to the Hill to impart their wisdom on the masses, you’ll want to check out Harry Strine’s “Your Testimony Was Splendid: The Treatment of Celebrities and Non-Celebrities in Congressional Hearings.” After studying celebrity testimony over the past few decades, Strine concluded that:
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L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, has started what has the potential to be a terrific new column for the Journal called “Information Age.” In it, he says, he will focus on how the Information Age “affects us as consumers, businesspeople and citizens” and “the accelerating impact of new technology.” In particular, he plans on dealing with the public policy issues surrounding this space.
His first column, entitled “Optimism and the Digital World,” is excellent. In it, he argues that:
[T]echnologists are optimists, for good reason…. as information becomes more accessible, individuals gain choice, control and freedom. Established institutions – governments, large companies and special-interest groups – need to work harder to justify their authority. As information and knowledge spread, financial and human capital become more global and more competitive. The uncertainties and dislocations from new technology can be wrenching, but genies don’t go back into bottles.
The First Law of Technology says that “with every change in technology that affects consumer behavior, we always overestimate the impact in the short term, but then underestimate the full impact over the long term.” The original dot-com era a decade ago was overhyped, but by now the Web has become a utility, increasingly available anywhere for any purpose. This is the Information Age, yet we’re just beginning to gather the information and understanding to know how it changes our lives.
This sounds very much in line with our thinking and coverage here at the TLF. [In fact, I would be remiss if I did not point to some of my own work on “The Media Cornucopia” and my ongoing “Media Metrics” series of essays, which I am about to tie it all together into a big PFF special report.] Anyway, I for one will be eagerly awaiting Mr. Crovitz’s future columns.
Ben Worthen explains why. (I am much better about guarding my privacy. I usually only give out my password if the chick is topless and offering ice cream!)
There are a lot of disturbing things out there on the Internet. I don’t think I need to provide an inventory. Occasionally, some of the more despicable sites (think pro-suicide sites or bomb-making sites) capture the attention of public policymakers and bans are proposed. It was only a matter of time, therefore, before “pro-ana” sites made the regulatory radar screen as they did this week when lawmakers in France proposed a measure, “aimed at fighting incitement to extreme thinness or anorexia.”
The pro-ana movement, which refers to people and websites that justify or glorify anorexia or an excessively “thin look” or lifestyle, came to my attention last year when an academic was interviewing me for a new book he was writing about online responsibility. He was asking me what I thought about the idea of liability being imposed on website developers who glorify potentially harmful lifestyles or activities. In other words, an “aiding and abetting” standard for hateful or “harmful” online speech. I expected our discussion to focus on the truly sick or stupid stuff out there—like the bomb-recipe nutjobs or the suicide fans—but, instead, the academic mentioned pro-ana sites, like House of Thin (which no longer seems to be around) and others. The danger of these sites is that they offer young girls, which seems to be the primary audience, very unhealthy advice about how they can use various techniques (fasting, vomiting, laxatives, etc) to become super-thin. Needless to say, that can lead to extreme weight loss and serious health disorders for these girls.
Should sites be banned, or held liable in some fashion, for the harm they cause? We could nitpick about whether of not pro-ana sites cause serious harm to girls, but let’s assume that they do cause
some harm. Does that mean the site administrators should be held responsible for the actions of others who read those sites? The French law says “yes.” It would, according to Reuters:
impose penalties of two years plus a fine of 30,000 euros ($47,450) for “incitement to excessive thinness by publicizing of any kind.” The penalties would rise to three years in jail plus 45,000 euros fine in cases where a death was caused by anorexia. The bill was adopted by the lower house of parliament on Tuesday and must go before the Senate before it becomes law.
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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.