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.
According to Julia Angwin of The Wall Street Journal, social networking giant MySpace.com will soon be offering parents free monitoring software to help them keep tabs on their child’s online activities.
“Parents who install the monitoring software on their home computers would be able to find out what name, age and location their children are using to represent themselves on MySpace. The software doesn’t enable parents to read their child’s e-mail or see the child’s profile page and children would be alerted that their information was being shared. The program would continue to send updates about changes in the child’s name, age and location, even when the child logs on from other computers.”
MySpace is in a difficult position right now and I think this was a wise move. The company has been under intense pressure from lawmakers, especially state AGs, to take more steps to protect kids online. But it remains unclear whether this move will satisfy the AGs since they are more interested in forcing MySpace to age-verify all their users using public databases and then raising the minimum age of those who can use the site at all.
Last summer, I debated two of the AGs mentioned in the WSJ story–Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal and North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper–and explained why age verification is misguided and just won’t work anyway:
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Lee Gomes of the Wall Street Journal has a fun piece in today’s paper about the amazing gains that have been made in the field of digital storage technology. He notes that we reached another amazing milestone in the computing business with the annoucement of several terabyte-capacity disk drives from Hitachi, Seagate and others. (I saw some of these at CES this year. Very cool stuff.) The last time we reached a major storage milestone like this, he points out, was back in 1991 when we crossed the gigabyte threshold.
I’ll never forget when those first 1-gig drives came out how I thought to myself “Geez, who in the hell would ever need that much capacity?” What an idiot I was. Of course, I could not have envisioned the explosion of so much downloadable digital content, the rise of digital photography / camcorders, and the coming of storable HD video. I recently maxed out an old 100-gig hard drive on a PC at my house and started stacking external hard drives to store all my digital content. And my wife and I have been holding off on upgrading to an HD camcorder because we fear we don’t have enough storage space for all the home movies of the kids.
But hopefully that will now change for me. As Gomes points out, back when those old 1-gig drives where announced, they were priced in the $2000 range. By contrast, the new 1-terabyte drives are hitting the market at just $400 bucks. This means that, on a cost-per-byte basis, the old 1-gig models were 5,000 times as expensive as the newer models.
You gotta love capitalism!
In between all the great panels I was covering this week at CES, I spent time on the floor walking endless laps around the massive Las Vegas convention center. (Seriously, I have blisters on my feet right now). There were tons of cools gadgets and new services being showcased. Here are a few things that really stood out for me:
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High-def format war solutions: LG announced a dual format high-def DVD player called the “Super Multi Blue Player” that will play both next-generation high-def DVD formats (HD-DVD & Blu-Ray). I think that’s great news and other dual players are likely to follow now. Also, Warner Brothers will start developing dual-format “Total High Def” hybrid movie discs that have both the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD versions of the movie on them.
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Cell phones that double as TVs: I visited a few wireless booths where manufacturers were highlighting cell phones that could show live TV. At the Qualcomm booth I actually got to play with an upcoming Verizon phone that will be powered by Qualcomm’s MediaFlo technology. The picture looked very good and the channel surfing was on par with what we’ve come to expect from most cable boxes.
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This afternoon at the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin spent an hour talking about his public policy priorities with Gary Shapiro, the head of the Consumer Electronics Association.
The only real news from the discussion was Martin’s disappointing announcement that the Commission would not be granting the cable industry’s request for relief from the set-top box “integration ban,” which prevents cable and telco video providers from providing set-top boxes with integrated security features. (My PFF colleague Tom Lenard penned an excellent essay on this silly regulatory industrial policy if you need more background). These rules just retard sensible market innovation and drive up consumer costs.
Chairman Martin also used the opportunity to put in another plug for a la carte regulation. “It would be positive for consumers” and “a good thing” he said. He cited the FCC’s second report on the matter which he commissioned and ignored the agency’s earlier report which came to opposite conclusion. (Details here).
On other issues, Chairman Martin waffled back-and-forth and didn’t seem to come to any definitive conclusions. For example:
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I have come to the conclusion that the Net neutrality issue has become for tech policy what Angelina Jolie is to the world of Hollywood celebrity: big crowds; a caravan of reporters and photographers; swarms of groupies and gawkers… all these things follow wherever they go. That was the case again today in Las Vegas when a panel discussion took place at CES about Net neutrality.
Before a jam-packed room (many of whom were Washington lobbyists, reporters and analysts), Paul Misener, VP of Public Policy for Amazon, Tom Tauke Executive VP of Public Affairs for Verizon, and Deborah Platt Majoras the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission debated the future of Net neutrality (NN) regulation. Mike Feazel of Communications Daily moderated.
Feazel began by asking if there will be a Telecom Act in the new Congress and whether NN will be a part of it. Amazon’s Misener said that we will get a Telecom Act in this Congress and NN will be front and center. And it will pass. But Verizon’s Tauke disagreed saying that it is very unlikely we will see passage of a bill this session because “we don’t have the dynamics to pass a Telecom Act.” There is no major issue or compelling reason for action, Tauke said. Moreover, energy and environmental issues will trump telecom policy issues in the relevant committees of Congress now that the Democrats are in charge. And the franchising issue has largely been resolved with the FCC’s latest franchise reform order, he said. Plus, don’t forget about the Iraq debate, he noted. But Paul Misener said that Senators Dorgan and Snowe have already reintroduced their non-partisan NN bill this week and that legislation is expected shortly in the House.
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In an increasingly digital world filled with intangible products and instantaneous downloads, does the world really need packaged media anymore? That was the theme of an interesting panel I sat in on this morning at CES in Las Vegas. Panelists debated the future of packaged, physical media (CDs, DVDs, tapes, etc) and generally concluded that it was not dead just yet.
For example, DVDs as a form of packaged media are not dead but growth is slowing, argued Stephanie Ethier, an analyst with market research firm InStat. As broadband speeds grow, however, this could change. Homes need to have roughly 10 Megs of bandwidth to have a satisfactory movie downloading experience, she said, and that world could be upon us soon. 18% of music will be distributed electronically by 2010, she said, but there is still value in the CD due to the “collection value” many users place on having the actual physical disc in their home somewhere. Don Patrican of Maxell agreed saying that “people are collectors by nature” and that they love the idea of having a small personal and physical library in their home that they can see and feel. I thought that was a very good point which I can certainly relate to since I do that myself.
But I then asked a question about whether or not this was all just a generational thing and wondered if my kids would have ANY physical media / storage devices or formats when they are adults in the 2020’s. In response, Don Patrician said we shouldn’t confuse early adopters with the mass market. “Many demographic groups will not embrace all this new technology for some time.” Rich Lappenbusch of Microsoft generally agreed saying that “Many families still don’t trust technology” and want the security that comes along with a physical backup copy.
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I spent most of the day yesterday at CES covering video game panel discussions. Today, I attended several panel discussions on the future of video distribution over TV, cable, satellite, the Web and mobile devices. Two of these panels were entitled “Television 2.0: As Cable, Telco, Satellite, OnDemand and Broadband Redefine the Future of Entertainment & Communications” and “Embracing the Connected Consumer: Entertainment, Content and Technology–From Home to the Mobile and Wi-Fi Universe.” Later I attended a panel featuring TV industry heavyweights from DirecTV, EchoStar, Time Warner, Hearst-Argyle and Cox Communications. Here are some highlights from those discussions:
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This week I’m out in Las Vegas covering the grand-daddy of all industry trade shows–the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). It’s an amazing spectacle to behold and it’s impossible to even begin to summarize all the great gadgets I’m seeing and issue panels that I’m covering. But over the next few days I’ll try to share a few highlights.
Although things really don’t get into full swing until Monday morning of the event, Sunday featured several panel discussions about the future of the gaming industry. Faithful readers will recall my love of video games and my many columns on gaming issues.
I attended 5 different panel discussions. The first two proved the most interesting to me. They were entitled “Broadband Games Expand: From Casual to the Networked PC Universe” and “Entertainment as Franchise: Games Cross over into Music, TV, Cable, Movies, Mobile, Advertainment & Custom Branded Experience.” The other panels were on massive, multiplayer online games, mobile gaming, and cross-platform branding / advertsing. Here are few highlights:
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There are all sorts of year-end / best-of / Top 10 lists being put together right now, but I haven’t seen anyone offer up a “Most Important Tech Policy Developments of 2006” list. Geez, isn’t everyone else on the planet as interested in this nerdy stuff as we are?!
Anyway, I’d don’t have a top ten list, but I do have a nomination for the story that I think belongs on the top of such a list. I think the biggest tech policy story of 2006 was the heated political battle over Net Neutrality regulation and the fact that Congress did NOT pass legislation mandating it. It was a hell of a battle, pitting titans of industry against each other. And in intellectual circles it had policy wonks foaming at the mouth. (You can find all our rumblings on the topic here).
I don’t think this debate is over, but I’m not sure it will ever be as heated of an affair as it was this year. I also doubt that Net Neutrality mandates have nearly as good of a chance of passing through Congress this coming session since it is less likely there will be a major communications reform bill to attach it to. And there’s no way Net Neutrality regulation will pass as a stand-alone measure. There’s just too much opposition to it. It would have to be passed as part of some grand communications law reform compromise measure.
Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing what others think was the biggest tech policy story of 2006, or at least belongs on the Top 10 list.
In a few of my previous essays, I’ve been wondering about the future of virtual reality worlds and specifically how property rights might get defined within those worlds. Alan Sipress of the Washington Post penned an excellent story yesterday on this subject which I thought I’d bring to your attention. In his lengthy front-page story, “Where Real Money Meets Virtual Reality, The Jury Is Still Out,” Sipress notes that:
“As virtual worlds proliferate across the Web, software designers and lawyers are straining to define property rights in this emerging digital realm. The debate over these rights extends far beyond the early computer games that pioneered virtual reality into the new frontiers of commerce. … U.S. courts have heard several cases involving virtual-world property rights but have yet to set a clear precedent clarifying whether people own the electronic goods they make, buy or accumulate in Second Life and other online landscapes. …
The debate is assuming greater urgency as commerce gains pace in virtual reality. In Second Life, where nearly 2 million people have signed up to create their own characters and socialize with other digital beings, the virtual economy is booming, with total transactions in November reaching the equivalent of $20 million. Second Life’s creator, Linden Lab, allows members to exchange the electronic currency they accumulate online with real U.S. dollars. Last month, people converted about $3 million at the Lindex currency market.”
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