Articles by Adam Thierer

Adam ThiererSenior 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.


Thoughts on Recent Video Policy Wars

by on April 11, 2011 · 0 comments

In my latest Forbes column, “Keeping The Video Revolution Going Strong,” I argue that we’ve been blessed to live through a veritable information revolution but that “many scarcity-era regulations remain on the books and threaten this ongoing revolution — especially in the video marketplace. So long as Washington continues to enforce regulations dating to the days of I Love Lucy, the old regulatory norms and edicts threaten to roll over onto emerging video technologies, stifling innovation and consumer choice.”

I go on to briefly discuss a few flashpoints in the ongoing video wars, including: the fights over “retransmission consent,” so-called “AllVid” tech mandates, and the broader battle to liberalize spectrum. “While the video revolution will hopefully continue apace, a light-touch from Washington will be essential to keep it going strong,” I conclude. “To the extent policymakers are looking to ‘level the (regulatory) playing field’ between the old and new video worlds, they should do so in the direction of freer markets, not more tech mandates.”

Anyway, read the whole thing over at the Forbes site.

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Again, It’s Really Hard to Bottle Up Digital Generativity / Openness

by on April 8, 2011 · 17 comments

There’s a nice piece of reporting from Ian Shapira in today’s Washington Post entitled, “Once the Hobby of Tech Geeks, iPhone Jailbreaking Now a Lucrative Industry.” In the article, Shapira documents the rise of independent, unauthorized Apple apps (especially tethering apps) and points out that what was once a small black market has now turned into a booming, maturing business sector in its own right.  In fact, Sharpia notes, there are already “market leaders” in the field:

At the top of the jailbreaking hierarchy sits Jay Freeman, 29, the founder and operator of Cydia, the biggest unofficial iPhone app store, which offers about 700 paid designs and other modifications out of about 30,000 others that are free. Based out of an office near Santa Barbara, Calif., Freeman said Cydia, launched in 2008, now earns about $250,000 after taxes in profit annually. He just hired his first full-time employee from Delicious, the Yahoo-owned bookmarking site, to improve Cydia’s design. “The whole point is to fight against the corporate overlord,” Freeman said. “This is grass-roots movement, and that’s what makes Cydia so interesting. Apple is this ivory tower, a controlled experience, and the thing that really bought people into jailbreaking is that it makes the experience theirs.”

In another sign this black market is now going mainstream, advertisers are apparently flocking to it:

In what might be the ultimate sign that the jailbreak industry is losing its anti-establishment character, Toyota recently offered a free program on Cydia’s store, promoting the company’s Scion sedan. Once installed, the car is displayed on the background of the iPhone home screen, and the iPhone icons are re-fashioned to look like the emblem on the front grill.

Interestingly, however, some people now complain that Cydia is getting too big for its britches and has come to be “as domineering as Apple is in the non-jailbreak world.”  What delicious irony! Yet, I do not for one minute believe that Cydia has any sort of “lock” on the “unlocking” marketplace. This is an insanely dynamic sector that is subject to near-constant fits of disruptive technological change. Continue reading →

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Kinsley on Cyber-Politics & “How Microsoft Learned the ABCs of D.C.”

by on April 5, 2011 · 0 comments

Jack Shafer brought to my attention this terrific new Politico column by Michael Kinsley entitled, “How Microsoft Learned ABCs of D.C.”  In the editorial, Kinsley touches on some of the same themes I addressed in my recent piece here “On Facebook ‘Normalizing Relations’ with Washington” as well as in my Cato Institute essay from last year on”The Sad State of Cyber-Politics.”  Kinsley notes how Microsoft was originally bashed by many for not getting into the D.C. lobbying game early enough:

there even was a feeling that, in refusing to play the Washington game, Microsoft was being downright unpatriotic. Look, buddy, there is an American way of doing things, and that American way includes hiring lobbyists, paying lawyers vast sums by the hour, throwing lavish parties for politicians, aides, journalists and so on. So get with the program.

But after doing exactly that, Kinsley notes, the company got blasted for for being too aggressive in D.C.!
So that’s what Microsoft did. It moved its “government affairs” office out of distant Chevy Chase and into the downtown K Street corridor. It bulked up on lawyers and hired the best-connected lobbyists. Soon, Microsoft was coming under criticism for being heavy-handed in its attempts to buy influence.
“But the sad thing is that it seems to have worked. Microsoft is no longer Public Enemy No. 1,” Kinsley notes, and he continues on to reiterate a point I made in my last two essays: Google is the Great Satan now! Continue reading →

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The Precautionary Principle in Information Technology Debates

by on April 4, 2011 · 12 comments

I’m currently plugging away at a big working paper with the running title, “Argumentum in Cyber-Terrorem: A Framework for Evaluating Fear Appeals in Internet Policy Debates.” It’s an attempt to bring together a number of issues I’ve discussed here in my past work on “techno-panics” and devise a framework to evaluate and address such panics using tools from various disciplines. I begin with some basic principles of critical argumentation and outline various types of “fear appeals” that usually represent logical fallacies, including: argumentum in terrorem, argumentum ad metum, and argumentum ad baculum.  But I’ll post more about that portion of the paper some other day. For now, I wanted to post a section of that paper entitled “The Problem with the Precautionary Principle.” I’m posting what I’ve got done so far in the hopes of getting feedback and suggestions for how to improve it and build it out a bit. Here’s how it begins…

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The Problem with the Precautionary Principle

“Isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?” That is the traditional response of those perpetuating techno-panics when their fear appeal arguments are challenged. This response is commonly known as “the precautionary principle.” Although this principle is most often discussed in the field of environment law, it is increasingly on display in Internet policy debates.

The “precautionary principle” basically holds that since every technology and technological advance poses some theoretical danger or risk, public policy should be crafted in such a way that no possible harm will come from a particular innovation before further progress is permitted. In other words, law should mandate “just play it safe” as the default policy toward technological progress. Continue reading →

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What Progress Looks Like

by on April 4, 2011 · 5 comments

Kudos to Mashable for collecting these “10 Hilarious Vintage Cellphone Commercials” from the past two decades. Strangely, I don’t remember ever seeing any of these when they originally aired [although some are foreign], but it might have been because I flipped the channel when they came on. Most of really horrendous.  My favorite is the Radio Shack ad shown below, not just because of the phone, but because of the Bill Gates-looking kid at the end.  And speaking of Radio Shack, check out the ad down below, which I originally posted here a few years ago, for a 1989 Tandy machine, then billed as its “Most Powerful Computer Ever.” Accordingly, you would have had to practically mortgage your house to own it with a price tag of $8500!  Whether its phones or computers — which are increasingly one in the same, of course — it’s amazing how much progress we’ve seen in such a short period of time.

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The Google Buzz Privacy Settlement as a Possible Public Choice Study

by on April 4, 2011 · 3 comments

PaidContent.org has posted a chart showing “Who’s Getting Buzz Settlement Money.” This refers to the $9.5 million payout following the Federal Trade Commission settlement with Google a class action suit over its “Buzz” social networking service. Last week, the Federal Trade Commission entered into a consent decree with Google over its botched rollout of Buzz saying the search giant violated its own privacy policy. Google will also pay out to various advocacy groups according to the distribution seen in the chart as part of a separate class action. Payouts to advocates like this are not uncommon, although they are more often the result of a class action settlement than a regulatory agency consent decree. [Update/Correction 5:13 pm: I should have made it clear that this payout was the result of a class action lawsuit against Google and not the direct result of the FTC settlement. Apologies for that mistake, but still interested in the questions raised below.]

But that got me wondering whether this might make for good fodder for a case study by a public choice economist or political scientist. There are some really interesting questions raised by settlements like this that would be worth studying.

Continue reading →

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On Facebook “Normalizing Relations” with Washington

by on March 29, 2011 · 5 comments

The New York Times reports that, “Facebook is hoping to do something better and faster than any other technology start-up-turned-Internet superpower. Befriend Washington. Facebook has layered its executive, legal, policy and communications ranks with high-powered politicos from both parties, beefing up its firepower for future battles in Washington and beyond.”  The article goes on to cite a variety of recent hires by Facebook, its new DC office, and its increased political giving.

This isn’t at all surprising and, in one sense, it’s almost impossible to argue with the logic of Facebook deciding to beef up its lobbying presence inside the Beltway. In fact, later in the Times story we hear the same two traditional arguments trotted out for why Facebook must do so: (1) Because everyone’s doing it! and (2) You don’t want be Microsoft, do you?   But I’m not so sure whether “normalizing relations” with Washington is such a good idea for Facebook or other major tech companies, and I’m certainly not persuaded by the logic of those two common refrains regarding why every tech company must rush to Washington.

Continue reading →

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The Problem with Paul Ohm’s Suggestion to Regulate Inferences to Protect Privacy

by on March 28, 2011 · 0 comments

Here’s an interesting SmartPlanet interview with Paul Ohm, associate professor of law at the University of Colorado Law School, in which he discusses his concerns about “reidentification” as it relates to privacy issues.  “Reidentification” and “de-anonymization” fears have been set forth by Ohm and other computer scientists and privacy theorists, who suggest that because the slim possibility exists of some individuals in certain data sets being re-identified even after their data is anonymized, that fear should trump all other considerations and public policy should be adjusted accordingly (specifically, in the direction of stricter privacy regulation / tighter information controls).

I won’t spend any time here on that particular issue since I am still waiting for Ohm and other “reidentification” theorists to address the cogent critique offered up by Jane Yakowitz in an important new study that I discussed here last week. Once they do, I might have more to say on that point. Instead, I just wanted to make some brief comments on one particular passage from the Ohm interview in which he outlines a bold new standard for privacy regulation:

We have 100 years of regulating privacy by focusing on the information a particular person has. But real privacy harm will come not from the information they have but the inferences they can draw from the data they have. No law I have ever seen regulates inferences. So maybe in the future we may regulate inferences in a really different way; it seems strange to say you can have all this data but you can’t take this next step. But I think that’s what the law has to do.

This is a rather astonishing new legal standard and there are two simple reasons why, as Ohm suggests, “no law… regulates inferences” and why, in my opinion, no law should.  Continue reading →

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Why My New Forbes Column is Called “Technologies of Freedom”

by on March 27, 2011 · 3 comments

I’m very excited to announce that I now have a regular Forbes column that will fly under the banner, “Technologies of Freedom.” My first essay for them is already live and it addresses a topic I’ve dealt with here extensively through the years: Irrational fears about tech monopolies and “information empires.” Jump over to Forbes to read the whole thing.

Regular readers of this blog will understand why I chose “Technologies of Freedom” as the title for my column, but I thought it was worth reiterating. No book has had a more formative impact on my thinking about technology policy than Ithiel de Sola Pool’s 1983 masterpiece, Technologies of Freedom: On Free Speech in an Electronic Age.  As I noted in my short Amazon.com review, Pool’s technological tour de force is simply breathtaking in its polemical power and predictive capabilities. Reading this book almost three decades after it was published, one comes to believe that Pool must have possessed a crystal ball or had a Nostradamus-like ability to foresee the future.

For example, long before anyone else had envisioned what we now refer to as “cyberspace,” Pool was describing it in this book. “Networked computers will be the printing presses of the twenty-first century,” he argued in his remarkably prescient chapter on electronic publishing. “Soon most published information will disseminated electronically,” and “there will be networks on networks on networks,” he predicted. “A panoply of electronic devices puts at everyone’s hands capacities far beyond anything that the printing press could offer.” Few probably believed his prophecies in 1983, but no one doubts him now! Continue reading →

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Lessons from the Gmail Privacy Scare of 2004

by on March 25, 2011 · 6 comments

Last night, Declan McCullagh of CNet posted two tweets related to the concerns already percolating in the privacy community about a new Apple and Android app called “Color,” which allows those who use it to take photos and videos and instantaneously share them with other people within a 150-ft radius to create group photo/video albums. In other words, this new app marries photography, social networking, and geo-location. And because the app’s default setting is to share every photo and video you snap openly with the world, Declan wonders “How long will it take for the #privacy fundamentalists to object to Color.com’s iOS/Android apps?” After all, he says facetiously, “Remember: market choices can’t be trusted!”  He then reminds us that there’s really nothing new under the privacy policy sun and that we’ve seen this debate unfold before, such as when Google released its GMail service to the world back in 2004.

Indeed, for me, this debate has a “Groundhog Day” sort of feel to it.  I feel like I’ve been fighting the same fight with many privacy fundamentalists for the past decade. The cycle goes something like this: Continue reading →

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