Here’s my take on the MPAA lawsuits against individual file sharers:
http://www.cato.org/tech/tk/041104-tk.html
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.
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The New Deal-esque “chicken-in-every-pot” mentality continues to win converts in municipal government circles. Yesterday, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said the city will now seek to provide free wireless Internet access for the entire public. “No San Franciscan should be without a computer and a broadband connection,” he said.
We’ve had numerous rants about this issue here before, so I won’t get into what’s wrong about this thinking. In fact, I think I’m just going to give up an get on the gravy train of high-tech entitlements. Toward that end, I’m starting a list of all the freebees that I think I have an inalienable right to FREE-OF-CHARGE from government. I think I’m entitled to:
- free broadband (both fiber and Wi-Max, thank you very much);
- a free computer (and a really fast one, damnit!);
- 3 free HDTVs for my home (including one of those sweet new DLP or LCOS projectors that usually cost about $10,000 bucks. And I’ll need you to pay for someone to help me install it.);
- 3 free new TiVO recorders;
- a free subscription to DirecTV (with all the premium channels and sports packages… and don’t forget the Playboy Channel!);
- a free lifetime subscription to NetFlix;
- free internal wi-fi for my home;
- free cell phone service; and,
- free tech support when all this crap breaks down.
Hey, it’s all FREE when the government provides it, right? So why not load up on tech entitlements and give the public all these gadgets and services that they are clearly entitled to under the plain language of the Constitution. Clearly there’s some language in there about all this stuff being a birthright entitlement. God I love Big Government.
Here’s yet another another article documenting the growing substitution of wireless for wireline services in America and across the globe. A new Yankee Group report says that 6 percent of households have now “cut the wire” entirely and gone wireless for all their communications needs.
The Yankee report notes that the wireless-oriented households are skewed to urban, young and single users. That’s not surprising, but I’ve seen plenty of anecdotal evidence that people in rural communities are making the leap to wireless as well. As wireless systems become more robust and reliable in those rural communities, this revolution will really start to pick up steam.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, the regulators continue to regulate as if we all still live in a one-wire world dominated by monopolists. Just silly.
The FCC has just fined Nickelodeon and ABC Family for the heinous crime of showing too many commercials during kids’ programming.
Apparently FCC regulations say that children’s programming may contain no more than 10 1/2 minutes of advertising per hour on weekends and 12 minutes per hour on weekdays. And apparently Nickelodeon and ABC Family exceeded those limits quite a few times. In promulgating the new fines, the FCC gave them a tongue-lashing and warned all media outlets that the agency, “will continue to take swift and appropriate enforcement action to protect the interests of children.”
The video archive of yesterday’s Induce Act debate at the Cato Institute is now online here:
http://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=1670
It was a great debate.
Our long national nightmare is over. Under intense pressure from many politicians and other groups, Sinclair Broadcasting has caved in to demands that they not air a documentary critical of presidential candidate John Kerry’s Vietnam War record.
Wheh! Thank God for that. I mean, can you imagine how awful it would have been if this film would have ever seen the light of day. We might have been forced to debate the merits of the film. We might have been forced to exchange passionate views about the issues raised in the film. We might have been forced to.. to… to think!
Thank God our benevolent censors in Congress have our best interests in mind and are protecting us from the airing of such controversial viewpoints. I hope they take steps to make sure that Michael Moore documentaries never get aired before the election either. Perhaps we can put a stop to further distribution of “Fahrenheit 9/11” before anymore people see it and are forced to think about it’s message.
OK, now that this national catastrophe has been averted, I can go back to my easy chair and watch some legitimate, politician-approved programming that is certain to tell me everything I need to know about the candidates and the issues before election day. You know, like those remarkably informative campaign commercials. I saw one the other day in which Mr. Kerry said he believed in our future and wanted to make a better America for our children. That’s nice. Funny thing is, Mr. Bush appears to be airing the exact same ads right now too. They both REALLY love our children. And the future. Good things to love, I guess.
OK, perhaps I should instead go back and watch those exciting debates one more time. I’m sure there’s some really informative stuff in there right after both candidates get past the first 20 minutes of personally thanking every single member of the audience for coming and telling the moderator how much they love him. Boy, these candidates REALLY love people. That’s good, I guess.
Hey, I’m just looking for someone to tell me what to think here. I just want to be part of the “informed electorate.” But please don’t let me see any reports or documentaries critical of these two guys. That might lead me to think that there are alternative viewpoints out there. Or, worse yet, it might lead me and others to think that not everyone loves these guys as much as they supposedly love us. And from what they tell us or allow us to hear, we just know that can’t be true. Right?
In case you missed it, the FCC released two very important broadband policy orders yesterday, one on broadband over powerline systems and one on “last mile” fiber deployment by telco operators. The thrust of both orders was quite deregulatory or “hands-off” in nature. In response to the fiber freedom order, Bell companies immediately announced plans to deploy more fiber-to-the-curb across America. This is not surprising; if you give companies firm property rights in their own lines and networks, they will deliver more services to customers. If you make them share their systems with all their competitors, they will be slow to innovate and deploy new networks and services to the public. Luckily, FCC regulators are finally learning this lesson.
For those of you in the Washington area, on October 20th at 11:00, I will be moderating a debate about the Induce Act and contributory liability theories in copyright law. The event will take place at the Cato Institute (1000 Massachusetts Ave., NW) in our auditorium. It is open to the public.
The event will feature David Green of the MPAA and Mitch Glazier of the RIAA versus Markham Erickson of NetCoalition and Gigi Sohn of Public Knowledge. Should be a good debate. Please RSVP if you plan to attend because seats are going fast. Here’s the link to do so.
(By the way, for those of you too far away to join us, a few days after the event we’ll likely have a video of the event online).
According to this AP report, Chinese officials are now encouraging the entire population to rat each other out to stamp out online porn.
“Some 445 people have been arrested and 1,125 Web sites shut down with the help of public tips since July,” the story notes. The Ministry of Public Security gives people rewards of $60 to $240 for becoming good little servants of the state and infomring on their fellow citizens.
It’s all quite sad, but also somewhat silly. How far can this approach really take them? As many authors noted in the last book I co-edited, Who Rules the Net? Internet Governance and Jurisdiction, these geographic-based cyber-regulatory regimes are doomed to fail in the long-run. Barring a government mandate requiring all Net traffic to flow through centralized state servers (which is the approach Saudia Arabia has adopted), there’s no way to entirely bottle up the free flow of information (especially porn!) As wireless & satellite technologies proliferate, this will certainly be the case. But even in a predominately wireline world, the censors will have their hands full.
Some groups and politicians are making a big stink about Sinclair Broadcasting’s decision to air a supposedly anti-Kerry documentary with the presidential election quickly approaching. Critics assert that:
(1) Sinclair is just another big media, pro-Bush lackey hell-bent on influencing the outcome of the election by airing this so close to voting day.
(2) It’s unfair for Sinclair to demand that its TV affiliates preempt other programming to air the documentary.
(3) It might be illegal for Sinclair to air the documentary less than 60 days before the presidential election since it could be considered “electioneering communication.” Under our current post-McCain-Feingold campaign finance election laws, “electioneering communication” refers to any form of communication that mentions candidates for federal office and is distributed within 60 days before a general election. Such forms of communication are banned on the theory that they “corrupt” our political system. News coverage is exempted from this ban, but debate over what constitutes “news” leaves the door open to much interpretation, as is the case here.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.