We’ve all heard someone use the phrase “making a federal case out of” something. Often it’s used when people overreact–as in stop making a federal case out of this! And that’s the reaction we should have to the complaint filed by EPIC, Center for Digital Democracy, and others with the FTC. Because they have literally made a federal consumer protection case out of what should be a a customer relations issue between Facebook and its users.
Facebook’s users are quick and vocal about Facebook’s privacy practices. And Facebook has been quick to respond. The Facebook blog on privacy highlights all its recent undertakings to respond to privacy concerns, including the Facebook Site Governance page, the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities, an open letter and other blog posts from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. There’s even Facebook Principles that highlight the site’s mission. How many other companies have been so transparent and responsive?
Indeed, you could say that Facebook has been the gold standard of responding to consumers. In this most recent change to privacy settings, users were prompted to revisit their privacy settings. Facebook made some recommended changes based on where it sees its service going. Users (like me) could change these if they wanted.
And change is what the Internet and new web services are all about. Forcing Facebook or any other online site to perpetually maintain original settings prevents new and innovative business models and services (just ask Microsoft about how backward compatibility makes Windows innovation so difficult). Web 2.0 services like Facebook have to experiment with the ways that users publish and share information. If these sites go too far, their customers will leave–which is the best check on privacy compared to any law or regulation.
So that’s why I’m disappointed why these privacy groups are complaining to the FTC. There’s a high bar of specificity for FTC action, so it would have been far better to petition the Facebook community and let them unleash whatever fury they have. But my hunch is that these complaining groups don’t think that the FTC will actually do anything here. After all, making a federal case of actions by high visibility companies makes for a good publicity opportunity even if there’s no sound legal case.
Unfortunately–now that it’s a federal case–customer relations is now confused with consumer protection.
So the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Intel yesterday charging the company with violations of Sect. 5 of the FTC Act (unfair or deceptive trade practices). What you may have missed yesterday, however, is the rather ironically timed announcement from the Obama administration that it is launching new policies to spur more manufacturing it the United States. In a statement, Vice President Biden said:
“We need legal, tax and regulatory regimes that promote American manufacturing and do not place an undue burden on those who wish to manufacture products in America.”
Over at the ACT blog, Mark Blafkin writes why this is ironic:
Intel is one of the last great American manufacturers. While Intel does some manufacturing abroad, the vast majority of its chips are built by its 40,000 American workers. Most of Intel’s fabrication facilities are in the United States, including Arizona, California, Colorado, Massachusetts and Oregon, and the company has announced that it will spend $7 billion to build more facilities here.
The FTC filed its case on behalf of AMD and Nvidia, two companies who have decided to offshore nearly ALL of their manufacturing. AMD’s most advanced manufacturing facility is in Germany, and is “more of a German government fab than an AMD fab” after the German government invested more than $1.5 billion to build it.
When the European Competition Commissioner decided that Intel abused European antitrust law, she crowed that Intel should change its tagline from “Sponsors of Tomorrow” to “Sponsors of the European Taxpayer.” One would hope that the American government would not have similar designs on taking down a company that provides so many high paying American jobs.
I’ve ranted in past blog posts about the inconvenience of Ticketmaster’s paperless tickets and have even called them the highway to ticket hell (a nod to AC/DC’s paperless tickets use). I’m in a ranting mood again today, particularly when I was thinking about how they’d frustrate a Christmas gift to my parents for a play or show (my parents love attending concerts & theater).
Ticketmaster may call it innovation, but I call it frustration. You can resell your townhouse, Toyota, or textbooks online. But there’s one product, that thanks to new technology, can’t be bought and resold–“paperless tickets“.
That almost anything can be bought and resold is a benefit to consumers, particularly in tough economic times. But with paperless tickets, instead of getting a paper ticket (or an email that you print up at home) you have to present 1) the credit card used to purchase the tickets, and 2) a government-issued photo identification for admittance. Paperless tickets have been used throughout the recent Miley Cyrus tour this year. She performed at the Verizon Center last month in Washington, DC and a local news story reported on the hardship it created for many fans:
A photo ID is also required, meaning Talia Levin couldn’t just take her mom’s credit card to the concert. Her mom had to swipe her through. “If you are older, then you can go by yourself, so it’s hard to have to go with your parents,” stated Talia Levin. “I refuse to buy into any artist who does this ever again,” said Talia’s mom, Melanie Levin. “I won’t do it.”
So what if I wanted to go online to buy concert tickets for my parents as a Christmas Gift? Would I have to go down to the arena to get them in–down in Atlanta?? Continue reading →
ACT represents the interests of software companies, but today we’ve released a new paper trumpeting the virtues of hardware.
We highlight how software developers and computer chip makers increasingly depend on one another for better products. This symbiotic hardware/software relationship is crucial for the sort of exponential innovation we’ve grown accustomed to in the IT industry. And it is something ACT recently highlighted in a letter to the FTC signed by 37 software developers.
The old days of understanding computer processors and its effect on software was easy. Chips increased in clock speed (first in MHz, then in GHz) and this made software run faster. This worked well for years, but then it became apparent that high clock speed processors often ran idle because other system components couldn’t keep up. These processors also ran very hot, consuming lots of power and creating heat problems.
Today’s chips take a different approach. Chips now have processors with multiple cores (or CPUs) to separately but simultaneously handle independent tasks. In a survey of ACT members that we conducted for the paper, 58% of the respondents identified multicore technology as the processor advancement that has most improved their software products. One member said “multicore makes programming harder, but when my apps leverage it, they can do more.”
But how do programmers know what to do so they can better leverage processor designs such as multicore? Every major chip manufacturer worth a grain of sand has established support programs and created tools for the developer community. Sun has its Sun Developer Network, Intel has a Software Partner Program (and just announced a new software development kit (SDK) for its mobile Atom processor), and AMD has the CodeAnalyst Performance Analyzer to analyze software performance and help developers optimize applications.
In some ways it seems like chip manufacturers are sucking up to software developers. Continue reading →
What are the consumer protection issues of online social media sites and what’s the right regulatory balance? That was the focus of today’s Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC) event called “Social Media and Consumer Protection: Finding a Balance.” The breakfast event featured Tim Sparapani of Facebook, Pablo Chavez of Google, and Ari Schwartz of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT).
But the event wasn’t about consumer protection (in the traditional sense), it was about privacy. Privacy online is today’s issue du jour, whether it is marketing to children or collecting and sharing data for targeted ads. The FTC has devoted a series of roundtable discussions toward privacy, with the first one beginning Dec. 7.
Privacy’s getting so hyped-up that I believe it to be the next “online safety” sort of issue where isolated and particularized incidents become sensationalized in the media and among regulators, creating counterproductive techno-panics that other commentators have described. This shift is apparent as many policymakers and advocacy groups become increasingly hostile toward targeted online advertising.
But are social media and privacy at odds such that there needs to be a “balance”–whatever that entails? While this question was never explicitly asked, it is clear that Ari Schwartz would say yes because he asserts that consumers don’t know what information is being collected and that users need help to gain control over their own data. Continue reading →
We all know those “hyper-users” that are constantly connected with their cell phones, smartphones, or other mobile device. Often, they’re the person next to you on the metro or standing in line. Often, they’re young. And according to a new Pew report, most of these young hyper-users are young Latinos and blacks.
NPR had a great segment this morning about the Pew Hispanic Center study. It discussed the “digital divide” and the lack of computers in homes of minority populations. In an interesting twist, the Pew study says that many minorities are just skipping the home computer and upgrading their cell phone plans for data use.
Mobile devices are a great example of leapfrog technology. Who needs a desktop or a laptop when your phone is almost as powerful (and arguably even more useful)?
Great NPR story today on how online social networking is helping to bring medical patients together to talk about their conditions and compare treatments.
The story quotes Susannah Fox of the Pew Internet and American Life Project:
“They are posting their first-person accounts of treatments and side effects from medications,” says Fox. “They are recording and posting those podcasts. They’re tagging content. They are part of the conversation. And that, I think, is an indicator of where we could be going in terms of the future of participatory medicine.”
For every story that talks about the bad on the Internet, there are are hundreds of positive examples about how online communities improves lives. If only we can get the doctors to use online technology more often….
Emerson once said that we should do the thing we fear, and then death of fear is certain. Similarly, parents that fear their child’s use of technology can use technology themselves to monitor, filter and block their children’s Internet use.
I’m a member of the NTIA Online Safety and Technology Working Group (OSTWG) along with TLF’s Adam Thierer (Mr. President of PFF). Adam organized our third meeting was on parental controls, child protection technologies and content rating methods. He organized a wealth of speakers to discuss tools available from ISPs, tools existing in operating systems, browsers, and search, and settings that exist in some social networking websites.
Here are the highlights:
- Safety experts praised AOL’s parental tools that don’t report to parents every site that a child visits. Child abuse, contraception, and other sites are the kinds that many people feel children have legitimate privacy (and in abusive situations even safety concerns for their lives) surrounding the sites they visit.
- A representative from the Department of Education asked about “best practices” — a good idea in concept but given the diversity of online sites and services easier said then done.
- It is common to categorize children into age groups for parental controls but there’s data lacking about how children understand advertising and what is the harm, if any.
- Age groups: 7 and below–white list only. 7-12–no white list only but lots of restrictions. 13-17–very permissive, lots of sites accessible. 17+–only porn images blocked.
- Google will soon be launching a national media digital literacy citizenship campaign. Continue reading →
What to do about the influences of media and advertising on children? Generally, the saying goes that where you stand depends on where you sit–but that was not apparent at today’s event on children and media.
There were 4 seats (plus moderator) at the panel on “Media, Kids, and the First Amendment” that was co-hosted by Georgetown Law School and Common Sense Media–a professor, lobbyist, FCC regulator, and attorney general. Surprisingly, while there was common ground to be shared, only the lobbyist was truly advocating on behalf of a strong First Amendment.
The Professor: Angela Campbell. She doesn’t see a need for differing legal analysis for broadcast TV or the Internet. Media is media. But she also would like to see all laws meant to protect children be subject to intermediate scrutiny by a court, not strict scrutiny (so that more regulations could be passed). She also thinks the fleeting expletives case (the Fox case) is a joke. Where does she sit? Mostly on the side of Free Speech. Some laws are necessary to protect children, but we need to focus on the harm and weigh the costs of passing law versus not passing law. But the intermediate scrutiny is troubling for free speech advocates.
The Lobbyist: Dan Brenner. He worries about laws regulation communications as being vague (what does “indecent” mean?) and overbroad (makes legitimate speech unlawful). The Maine predatory marketing law that NetChoice has engaged in is an example of being both vague and overbroad. Where does he sit? Firmly on the side of Free Speech. Dan made a powerful case that regulators have better things to do than worry about the occasional F-word or wordrobe malfunction on TV. Continue reading →
There are a lot of interesting weekly roundups on the ‘Net. A search on “this week in” using Google reveals these weekly segments (among the top 50 results) on:
pictures
science
education
the history of chemistry
the Poconos
blackness
evolution
virology
amateur radio
Palestine
My colleagues at ACT aim to join the Poconos and Palestine by adding “antitrust” to the list! Per the ACT blog:
Today, we’re kicking off a new feature on the blog, a weekly round up of the tech industry’s various antitrust cases and “potential” antitrust concerns. While last week’s antitrust news was dominated by competition concerns outside the technology industry (health insurers and the BCS), there were a few notable stories coming out of the world tech competition.
It goes on to list antitrust discussion around Amazon, IBM, Google, Microsoft, and Oracle/Sun. Given the hard line talk from Christine Varney, head of DOJ’s antitrust division, this could be an ACTive weekly blog.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.