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.
Rich Karlgaard, publisher of Forbes, had an excellent editorial in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal commenting on the silly lawsuit that a New York woman has filed against Apple for supposedly violating price discrimination laws when the price of the iPhone dropped by $200 bucks. Apparently, this woman believes she is the victim of some sort of grave cosmic injustice because she shelled out $600 clams to be an early adopter, only to see the lesser mortals among us get their iPhones for $400 just a few months later.
Karlgaard points out that this is just the way a world governed by Moore’s Law works:
What’s going on here? Did Mr. Jobs gouge early technology adopters just for a couple extra (billion) bucks? I don’t think so. After a long streak of successes, Mr. Jobs and Apple — whose stock is up more than 20-fold since 2002 — have collided with two forces stronger than they are: One is the cheap revolution; the other is the global economy. Together they forced Apple to drop the price of the iPhone and offend its geeky customer base.
To illustrate the power of “the cheap revolution” in action within our new digital economy, Karlgaard provides this wonderful example:
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Legislation has been proposed in the House of Representatives that would regulate “violent entertainment” shown during airline flights. Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC) and several co-sponsors argue that a “Family Friendly Flights Act” is needed to protect kids from such fare while they are flying. In my latest editorial for the City Journal, I point out why it would be a mistake to empower federal regulators to become “Long-Range Censors” and show that many voluntary alternatives exist. Read on…
Long-Range Censors
We don’t need government regulations on in-flight programming.
by Adam Thierer
City Journal
October 3, 2007
Any parent who travels regularly with young children knows that fidgety kids and long, cramped airline flights are a bad mix. And when the kids start pulling each other’s hair or running up and down the aisle, a good movie or TV program can serve as the perfect sedative. But not all in-flight shows are okay for kids. When airlines show programming with violent content on the overhead screens—a bloody gunfight, say, or King Kong ripping apart a dinosaur’s jaws—it can terrify children, and disturb mom and dad.
Some in Congress are suggesting that new regulation is the answer. Democratic representative Heath Shuler of North Carolina, along with several cosponsors, recently introduced the Family Friendly Flights Act, which demands that airlines create “child safe viewing areas”: no publicly viewable TV screens would air violent programming within ten rows of the designated zones. The act defines “violent programming” as any movie originally rated PG-13 or above, or any television show rated PG-V or PG-14-V or above. In other words, the pre-edited versions of films or TV shows that studios produce especially for the airlines would still face a ban, based on their original ratings.
Despite the best intentions behind it, such regulation is unwarranted. Enforcement of the FFFA would spawn a needless and expensive regulatory apparatus, and given the ambiguity surrounding what constitutes “violent programming,” constitutional challenges would certainly follow, too.
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The New York Times editorializes today about “The Verizon Warning,” which refers to the incident last week involving Verizon blocking text messages from NARAL, an abortion rights organization. Verizon quickly admitted they had made a mistake and changed its policy. As my TLF blogging colleague Tim Lee pointed out, “the market worked: Verizon’s decision sparked a consumer outcry, which in turn caused Verizon to re-consider its decision within barely 24 hours of its coming to public attention. This is hardly a good example of the need for greater regulation.”
Indeed. But that didn’t stop some regulatory activists from using the incident as their latest rallying cry for Net neutrality mandates. But the
New York Times actually goes much further in today’s editorial suggesting that Verizon’s mistake constitutes “textbook censorship.” The Times goes on to say that, “Any government that tried it would be rightly labeled authoritarian. The First Amendment prohibits the United States government from anything approaching that sort of restriction.”
Whoa. The Times apparently needs a First Amendment 101 lesson. While it is certainly true that any government action restricting speech in this fashion would constitute a violation of the First Amendment rights of the citizenry, what Verizon did in this case is not on par with that. When government censors, it censors in a
sweeping and coercive fashion; it prohibits (at least in theory) the public from seeing or hearing everything it disapproves of, and it punishes those who evade such restrictions with fines, penalties, or even jail time. Not so for Verizon or any other private carrier.
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In his latest FT.com article, Tom Hazlett, professor of law and economics at George Mason University, points out that despite all the talk about the need for mandatory “openness” or wireless Net neutrality, Apple’s “walled garden” i-Phone model has spawned some serious innovation. He argues:
“One million customers bought iPhones in the first 79 days; analysts project 4.5m units sold in the first year. Hosting this Apple party is a curious way for carriers to lock out innovation. It is even more remarkable that critics could configure Apple’s entrepreneurship as an attack on creativity. They claim that only a device that is optimised for any application and capable of accessing any network is efficient.
They are wrong. What works best for consumers is a competitive process in which independent developers, content owners, hardware vendors and networks vie to discover preferred packages and pricing. When decision-makers compete for customers and answer to shareholders, a sophisticated balance obtains. The alternative proposition, business models voted on by regulators, is a recipe for stasis.”
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Building on what Braden said yesterday about education being the key to online safety… I just released a short new paper about “Two Sensible, Education-Based Legislative Approaches to Online Child Safety.” The paper focuses on S. 1965, the “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act,” and H.R. 3461, the “Safeguarding America’s Families by Enhancing and Reorganizing New and Efficient Technologies Act of 2006,” or “SAFER NET” Act. These bills wisely adopt an education focus to online safety concerns instead of the same old regulatory approach that members of Congress usually recommend.
Both bills would require that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC):
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In today’s Wall Street Journal, Ben Charny has an article discussing why “Free Wi-Fi [is] Still an Elusive Goal.” He notes:
The same forces slowing development of single-city wireless Internet networks are now overwhelming their supersize versions that cover thousands of square miles and scores of municipalities. A telling example of the malaise can be found in Silicon Valley, where plans to provide free, high-speed wireless Internet access to 42 cities in an area of more than 1,500 square miles have come to a standstill, says Russell Hancock, the man in charge of the effort.
It was once thought that municipal wireless networks of all sizes could be supported through the sale of advertisements that appear during the free Internet sessions and the small fee paid by those who want a faster, ad-free Internet service. However, many cities with wireless networks say that there’s been little demand for their premium services and that technology issues have limited the networks’ reach. Moreover, while businesses were willing to invest in advertising on these single-city networks, they complain about very little return on their investment.
So, once again, we see that
demand counts when it comes to broadband diffusion. That’s been a point that many of us made in the past when critiquing grand plans for muni wi-fi nirvana that all seemed to be premised on the “if-you-build-it-they-will-come” theory of economics. We’re now realizing the cost of that hubris. It’s one thing for private companies to be forced to eat the expense of over-estimating demand, it’s quite another when taxpayers might be on the line for the mistake.
Back in 2005, I wrote a book called Media Myths and one of the myths I attempted to debunk in the book dealt with the power of new media outlets and technologies relative to the old mass media. Specifically, I made the argument that, contrary to what many media critics claimed, new media could provide both a credible alternative to many traditional mass media providers as well as a powerful check on them and their power.
That argument was certainly harder to advance back in 2005 when the general public was just beginning to gain an appreciation for the power of the Internet, blogs, and so on. Today, however, I think most people “get it.” I remember back then how many people would stare at me funny when I explained to them how I started my day by reading Google News and checking my Bloglines account for updates to my favorite blogs. But now I seem almost old fashion when I say that to an audience as many have moved on to even more sophisticated ways of gathering news and information daily.
And with each passing week, I continue to discover new and exciting ways that new media outlets and technologies are shaking things up and providing a credible alternative to old media. Last week, for example, provided us with two powerful examples:
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Last week I posted another installment in my ongoing series about the possibility of metering bandwidth in the future (“Why Not Meter Broadband Pipes?”) Make sure to read the comments to that post because the essay provoked an interesting discussion and some outstanding suggestions from our savvy TLF readers.
On a related note, Mark Desautels, Vice President of Wireless Internet Development at the CTIA (the wireless industry’s trade association) has an editorial in RCR Wireless News today entitled, “Paying for the Bandwidth We Consume.” Mark poses a question that I have raised in some of my posts on this issue:
Much is made of the fact that consumers prefer flat-rate pricing because they know what it is going to cost each month, and that is understandable. But it also creates (potentially) huge subsidies between users. My question is: If consumers were aware of the amount of the subsidies they might be paying, would they be as opposed to paying for the bandwidth they actually use as is generally believed?
That really is an interesting question and the guys over as
DSL Reports point out that there are tools that users can download to help us answer that question. They are also running a poll right now asking people how much bandwidth they use per month.
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A few weeks ago, I outlined the amazing keynote address that Harvard University law professor Laurence H. Tribe delivered at PFF’s annual Aspen Summit. Now you can read it for yourself. PFF has just published the transcript of his speech, which was entitled, “Freedom of Speech and Press in the 21st Century: New Technology Meets Old Constitutionalism.”
Professor Tribe provides a 14-part indictment of new government proposals to regulate “excessively violent” content. But he also speaks more broadly about the importance of defending the First Amendment from attacks on many different platforms, and for many different types of content. Here’s one of my favorite passages from the concluding section of his remarks:
The broad lesson of this discussion of television violence is the centrality of the First Amendment’s opposition to having government as big brother regulate who may provide what information content to whom, whether or not for a price. The large problem that this exposes is that especially in a post-9/11 world, where grownups understandably fear for themselves and for their children and worry about the brave new world of online cyber reality that their kids can navigate more fluently than they can, it is enormously tempting to forget or to subordinate the vital principles of constitutional liberty. Even if, after years of litigation and expenditure, the First Amendment prevails, it can be worn down dramatically by having to wage that fight over and over and over.
Amen to that. And that, in a nutshell, describes what much of my research agenda at PFF has been focused on. It is a pleasure to add Prof. Tribe’s address to our growing body of research on the sanctity of freedom of speech and centrality of the First Amendment to our democratic republic as we continue “to wage that fight over and over and over.”
The Parents Television Council has a new report out this week about the supposed decline of the TV “Family Hour.” The City Journal has just posted my response to that PTC report here. It begins as follows…
Who Killed TV’s “Family Hour”?
It’s not who you think.
by Adam D. Thierer
7 September 2007
The nonprofit Parents Television Council (PTC) released a report this week lamenting the supposed death of broadcast television’s “family hour.” Though neither the Federal Communications Commission nor Congress ever mandated it, 8 to 9 PM Monday through Saturday (Eastern time), and 7 to 9 PM on Sunday, have traditionally been devoted to family-friendly programming. But the PTC’s new report claims that these blocks of time are now “no place for children,” because “corporate interests have hijacked the family hour” and “have pushed more and more adult-oriented programming to the early hours of the evening.”
One might respond to this claim by questioning the PTC’s methodology, particularly its definitions of foul language. Simon Vozick-Levinson of Entertainment Weekly’s “PopWatch Blog” takes this approach, accusing the PTC of “cooking the numbers” to suit its cultural agenda. But I don’t want to engage in methodological nit-picking, since it quickly devolves into a subjective squabble about acceptable language and appropriate programming. Instead, I want to point out the fundamental flaw in the report’s premise. The family hour may well be dead—but parents, not broadcasters, were the ones who killed it.
… read the rest at the City Journal’s website.
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