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.
PFF’s 2007 “Aspen Summit” featured some amazing panels and keynote addresses, and now they have all been posted online. Here are some of the highlights:
We’ve done a lot of writing about Internet gambling issues here at the TLF over the years. (Complete archives here). One of the things that always intrigues me about these debates is how passionate some policymakers can get about the supposed “evils” of private online gambling even though many of them support state-run lotteries.
What got me thinking about this again was an article in Sunday’s
Washington Post entitled, “Officials Laud D.C. Lottery as Success.” The D.C. Lottery turns 25 this week and, in the article, one local lawmaker after another celebrates the fact that more than $1.4 billion has been generated by the lottery for the city treasury. “Every time you buy a lottery ticket, the city wins,” says the current DC Lottery director. And former DC mayor Marion Barry, who currently serves as a DC council member, argues that, “Nobody makes anybody play the lottery… It’s a voluntary contribution to the D.C. treasury. It was a great vision.”
OK, so what’s wrong with people playing for their own enjoyment? Nobody makes anyone play private games of chance either. But because the money goes to private interests instead of the State, apparently it’s immoral and “evil.” Stupid.
Progress & Freedom Foundation hosted its 13th annual “Aspen Summit” this week and, as always, it featured some of the leading thinkers in the field of technology and media policy. This year, we were also lucky enough to be joined by one of America’s leading constitutional scholars, Prof. Laurence H. Tribe of Harvard University Law School.
I invited Prof. Tribe to Aspen to deliver a keynote address on the future of the First Amendment in an age of rapid technological change and media convergence. It was an amazing speech and I thought I would share a few highlights from his address with you here. I hope to transcribe the complete address and publish it sometime soon. [
Update 8/27: The video is now online.]
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Seth Schiesel of the New York Times seems to be channeling me in his piece yesterday entitled, “Courts Block Laws on Video Game Violence.”
As video games have surged in popularity in recent years, politicians around the country have tried to outlaw the sale of some violent games to children. So far all such efforts have failed. Citing the Constitution’s protection of free speech, federal judges have rejected attempts to regulate video games in eight cities and states since 2001. The judge in a ninth place, Oklahoma, has temporarily blocked a law pending a final decision. No such laws have been upheld.
I’ve been doing a lot of writing on this subject in recent years and have pointed out that every single court that has reviewed the constitutionality of video game regulation has concluded that:
(1) Video games are a form of expression protected by the First Amendment.
(2) Not a single court in America has supported the theory that a causal link exists between exposure to video games and real-world acts of actual violence.
(3) Parents have many less-restrictive means of dealing with underage access to potentially objectionable games—such as the industry’s private rating and labeling system, third-party ratings and info, console-based controls, and the fact that they don’t have to buy the games in the first place! [See my paper and book for more details on all these things.]
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My boss Tom Lenard of PFF penned an editorial for the Wall Street Journal yesterday about the Google-DoubleClick deal. The essay was co-authored by Paul Rubin, a PFF adjunct fellow and a professor of economics and law at Emory University. Lenard and Rubin argue that the fears about the Google-DoubleClick deal have been overstated:
Those who complain about Google’s purchase of DoubleClick make two claims. Both are flawed. The first argument is that, since both firms have a large market share of their respective spheres, a merger would be monopolistic. The flaw is that the two companies undertake activities that don’t overlap. Google places text ads mainly on its own Web sites and search-result screens. DoubleClick delivers display ads from advertisers to Web sites. It creates no ads and controls no Web sites. Even if we believe that Internet advertising is a distinct market (debatable, since it comprises only about 5% of all advertising) the combined firms will not gain any market power since they do not have any business in common.
The second argument comes from privacy advocates who have filed a brief with the FTC. They say the merger “could impact the privacy interests of 233 million Internet users in North America.” The FTC’s antitrust function and its consumer protection function are fundamentally different. Indeed, the more information markets have, the more competitive they are. If “privacy” advocates have their way, there would be less information and markets would not work as well.
Marketers use information. Some people have a cockeyed notion that if this information benefits marketers, it is to the detriment of consumers. Wrong. Consumers benefit when marketers provide them with information about products, especially new products, that they may want. A free flow of information enabling more efficient “targeting” of consumers is to their advantage.
They go on to conclude that: “Both the antitrust and the consumer protection branches of the FTC should leave this acquisition alone. It will create benefits with no increase in market power and no harmful reduction of privacy.” Read the entire piece here.
A reporter from Education Week called me today to get my comments about the supposed persistence of the “digital divide” among U.S. schools and school children. Apparently a speaker at a conference that this reporter had attended recently had made the point that although the divide in computer use and basic Web access has been bridged, a new divide is emerging in Web 2.0 applications, high-speed Internet, and laptops and mobile technologies The reporter asked for my comments.
Back in the late 1990s, I used to do a lot of work on this issue and the same point I made during those old debates is still true today. Namely, although the pace of technological diffusion is never perfectly even, the good news is that digital technology is getting out to the masses faster than every previous media or communications technology known to man. In fact, children are gaining access to digital technology and software and a breakneck pace. The problem that many parents (and schools) will face in the near future is not too little technology being available to children, but rather, too much!
But there was another point I used to always make in those old digital divide debates that still holds true today as well: We should be careful not to confuse the debates over ”
goods-based divides” versus “skills-based divides.” Debates about what goods and gadgets kids have access to are interesting and at times can be important since some gaps can persist longer than others. But, again, when it comes to digital technologies, those gaps tend to close very quickly. That’s because the market for digital technologies continues to expand rapidly and costs fall almost as quickly. A lot of it is even free, of course.
But skill-based divides are another matter entirely. There are deep and persistent divides in our educational system. The basic skills our children need to take full advantage of digital technologies are not always being instilled in them. But let’s not pretend that this has anything to do with access to technology or the supposed existence of a “digital divide.” This is about an broken, state-run education system that has short-changed our children in terms of basic skills. Let’s find ways of fixing that mess and stop pretending that digital hardware or software has anything to do with this.
More bad press for the muni wi-fi movement. It seems like each week brings another story of how things haven’t quite turned out as planned. This week, it’s Business Week with a story about “Why Wi-Fi Networks Are Floundering.” In the piece, author Olga Kharif argues that:
The static crackling around municipal wireless networks is getting worse. San Francisco Wi-Fi, perhaps the highest-profile project among the hundreds announced over the past few years, is in limbo. Milwaukee is delaying its plan to offer citywide wireless Internet access. The network build-out in Philadelphia, the trailblazer among major cities embracing wireless as a vital new form of municipal infrastructure, is progressing slower than expected.
These potholes in the nation’s wireless rollout of civic ambition—criticized by many as an improper use of tax dollars—are hardly the exception. For the road is getting bumpier for cities and the companies they have partnered with in a bid to blanket their streets with high-speed Internet access at little or no cost to users.
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Well this terribly off-topic, but I just had to share this. The Mattel toy recall is making big news this week and part of the recall includes some toys that include small magnets. Apparently some kids are sticking the magnets in their mouths and swallowing them. Lesson: Magnets + intestines = bad mix. Who knew!
Anyway, one of the toys being recalled is the “Barbie and Tanner” playset which–and I am NOT making this up–lets your child experience the joys of picking up dog poop! You see, Tanner is Barbie’s yellow labrador retriever and all he does is eat and then go poo. You put little brown food pellets in Tanner’s mouth, push his tail down, and then he poops them right out. Tanner is one well-balanced little doggie and his poop is always solid, which is helpful because the Barbie in this set comes with a pooper-scooper to clean up after him!
How do I know all this? Because this damn pooping dog is my 5 year old daughter’s favorite toy! She keeps this dumb dog in her dollhouse with all her dolls and even lets the dog sleep in the bed with Barbie. But now it’s being recalled because these little poo pellets are a hazard to a kid’s health. Honestly, I’m not really concerned with my daughter putting these little pellets in her mouth. Perhaps that’s because she understands that they represent fake dog poop and it would be gross to put them in her mouth!
But my 3 year old son? Well, he’s not quite as sharp as his sister. (Perhaps it’s because of all the lead paint he’s licking off those other Mattel toys!) Moreover, he’s got a little Beavis and Butthead in him and his first response upon seeing the Tanner dog do his duty was to say something to the effect of “Heh-heh, huh-huh…pooooooop!” So God only knows what that kid might do if he ever got his hands on those dog poo pellets.
Regardless, I’m probably gunna have to get rid of that pooping dog, and that’s going to make my daughter utterly hysterical. It’ll be like the final scene out of “Old Yeller.” She’ll be sobbing and uttering lines like, “No Pa, please don’t put Old Tanner down!” And I’ll have to come up with some BS story about Tanner’s time on Earth coming to an end and how he’s going to doggie heaven. I’ll probably have to bury him in a shoebox in the backyard with a formal gravestone before it’s all over. And what makes it all the more insulting is that, as I am going out back to bury the toy dog, I will have to navigate my way through a minefield of actual dog sh*t from our family’s 10 year old lab who poops–not so solidly as Tanner, I might add–just about anywhere and everywhere he can find a patch of living grass. That stupid Tanner toy hasn’t helped me a damn bit when it comes to getting my daughter interested in picking up real doggie doo-doo, which my daughter describes as “just nasty.”
Damn you Tanner. Damn you to Hell.
(P.S. I wrote about other killer toys last December in this essay).
If you’re following the ongoing debate over efforts to mandate a la carte regulation for cable and satellite TV, there’s an interesting piece in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal entitled, “TV Channels Move to Web, Think Outside the Cable Box” [subscription only] that deserves your attention. Author Bobby White argues that “The Internet is offering a new outlet for voices — including those of ethnic minorities — that weren’t heard from as much under old media.” He highlights how the Black Family Channel and some other new networks that haven’t found a home on the cable dial have decided to give it a go online instead:
Across the cable TV industry, other independent channels are also turning away from TV to the Internet. The Lime Channel, which focuses on healthy living, pulled out of cable last year and now offers its programming online and as video on demand. The Employment and Career Channel, which began streaming online in 2002, has junked its attempts to be a cable TV channel to be an online-only outlet. Others, like the Horror Channel and HorseTV (which revolves around equestrian events), have also opted to go online.
The shift illustrates how the Internet is offering a second chance to certain segments of old media. Web-based TV is now becoming a more viable business route, and Internet video is exploding. Running an online-only video channel, which doesn’t require expensive cameras and broadcasting gear, is cheaper than operating a cable TV channel. While starting a new cable channel today takes an initial investment of $100 million to $200 million, a broadband channel needs just $5 million to $10 million to get going, says Boston-based research firm Broadband Directions.
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Susan Landau, an engineer at Sun Microsystems and the author of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, has an op-ed in today’s Washington Post that builds on the FISA issues we discussed in our Tech Policy Weekly podcast yesterday. Her editorial is entitled, “A Gateway for Hackers: The Security Threat in the New Wiretapping Law.” In it she argues that:
Grant the NSA what it wants, and within 10 years the United States will be vulnerable to attacks from hackers across the globe, as well as the militaries of China, Russia and other nations.
Such threats are not theoretical. For almost a year beginning in April 2004, more than 100 phones belonging to members of the Greek government, including the prime minister and ministers of defense, foreign affairs, justice and public order, were spied on with wiretapping software that was misused. Exactly who placed the software and who did the listening remain unknown. But they were able to use software that was supposed to be used only with legal permission.
The United States itself has been attacked. … [and] U.S. communications technology is fragile and easily penetrated. While advanced, it is not decades ahead of that of our friends or our rivals. Compounding the issue is a key facet of modern systems design: Intercept capabilities are likely to be managed remotely, and vulnerabilities are as likely to be global as local. In simplifying wiretapping for U.S. intelligence, we provide a target for foreign intelligence agencies and possibly rogue hackers. Break into one service, and you get broad access to U.S. communications.
I have no idea if she is right, but this is scary stuff. I’d be interested in hearing what others think.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.