Articles by Cord Blomquist

Cord Blomquist spends most of his time pining for the singularity. To pass the time while waiting for this convergence, he serves as the New Media Manager at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. Before landing this sweet gig, Cord hocked policy writing for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, toiled in the halls of Congress, and even worked in a crouton factory. In college, Cord spent his hours studying political philosophy and artificial intelligence, resulting in an unhealthy obsession with Lt. Commander Data. All of these activities will, of course, be viewed as laughable when he is ported from this crude meatspace into the nanobot cloud.

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RIP Gary Gygax

by Cord Blomquist on March 4, 2008 · 2 comments

Gary Gygax, the father of role-playing games, died today at his home in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. As a fellow Wisconite and lover of video games–the modern forum for Gary’s roll-playing games–I have to say this is a sad day.

Wired has a post on his passing and for those of you who don’t know much about gaming and the contribution that Gygax made to the field, it’s worth reading the Wikipedia entry on his life.

Gygax with Stephen Hawking and Lieutenant Ohura on an episode of Futurama.

Though his passing isn’t a policy issue, Gygax was one of the founders of early gaming culture which has been carried through to the PC and console platforms which are under attack today. Gygax’s passing should remind us that attacks on gaming aren’t anything new. Role playing games were also attacked when they arrived on the scene. In fact, Tom Hanks starred in Mazes & Monsters, a movie based around the death of gamer James Dallas Egbert III, resulting in hype similar to the stuff we hear today about the effects of violent video games.

Today such objections to board games seem silly. Hopefully in the next decade we’ll look back on the proposed game burnings of the 90s and today as just as foolish.

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Rep. Markey’s Wireless Investment Prohibition Act

by Cord Blomquist on March 4, 2008 · 6 comments

Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass) has introduced legislation aimed at ridding the cell phone world of the much criticized practicies of phone subsidies, long-term contracts, and termination fees. In the name of contract “consistency” Markey’s bill mandates that cell companies offer alternative plans that contain no subsidy for the handset and plans that offer month-to-month service.

The bill contains a long section of “findings,” which are intended to point out what, from Rep. Markey’s perspective, are the illogical practices of cell phone providers. However, if you look at the issue of termination fees, you’ll find that Rep. Markey’s bill ignores the role of competition in decreasing costs to consumers and fails to take into account long-term investment in increasing nation-wide wireless capacity.

The bill claims that termination fees “Do not reflect the cost of recovering the monetary amount of a bundled mobile device or any other expenditure for customer acquisition.” The most glaring problem with this finding is that it’s already outed. Sprint, which is currently hemorrhaging money, instituted a new policy in November that allows customers to change plans without extending contracts and prorates termination fees. This came on the heels of similar announcements from Verizon and AT&T in October of last year. So, the bill’s $175 average termination fee figure is likely an incorrect one based on old policies.

But termination fees don’t just serve the purpose of cost recovery, they also provide an incentive for customers staying loyal to their wireless provider and giving these providers revenue predictability. With predictable revenues, it’s easier for cell phone network companies to get the financing they need to build the multi-billion dollar networks of tomorrow. Rep. Markey’s bill may save consumers in the short-term, but in the long run adding volatility to the marketplace will stem investment and slow the roll-out of 4G and Wi-Max networks.

We often talk about the unintended consequences of legislation in our work at CEI–this is a prime example of some very significant and costly unintended consequences that will ultimately hurt consumers and threatens to put America behind the curve on cell phone technology.

Rep. Markey’s bill also deals with wireless broadband, coverage maps, and spectrum efficiency. Topics that Ryan Radia and I will be addressing in future posts.

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Gates Admirable as Entrepreneur

by Cord Blomquist on February 22, 2008 · 13 comments

When reading an interesting piece on morality by Steven Pinker in The Age, I read a line that has become all to familiar to me. Pinker, in an effort to be contrarian and illustrate why our moral inclinations may be incorrect, pointed out that even guys like Bill Gates aren’t bad, noting:

Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world such as malaria, diarrhoea and parasites.

This refrain is repeated throughout the popular media when discussing Bill Gates. While I agree that Bill Gates ought to be admired for his monumental charitable efforts, can’t we also admire him for being an entrepreneur and creating countless billions in wealth?

After all, Gates didn’t just create wealth for himself or Microsoft, he’s also made the world a whole lot richer. Like it or not, it was Windows that provided the platform for much of the information revolution, which subsequently created a worldwide economic boom. We shouldn’t relegate this accomplishment to a mere footnote in Mr. Gates’ biography and it’s certainly worth considering the moral implications of that sort of wealth creation.

In a Christopher Hitchens-like move, Pinker also speaks about Mother Teresa:

Mother Teresa extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and primitive medical care.

He goes on to note that:

These examples show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish.

By that standard, even if Gates spent his fortune solely on mega-yachts and sports franchises he’d still beat Mother Teresa hands down. If we’re talking human flourishing, how can you beat creating an operating system that runs on 90+ percent of PCs has likely contributed trillions to global GDP over the last quarter century? Only super heroes to humanity like Norman Borlaug, also mentioned by Pinker and winner of CEI’s Julian Simon Award, can rise above Gates.

Love him or hate him, it’s hard to deny that Bill Gates has done a lot of good for the world, both as a philanthropist and as a CEO.

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Look Mom, I’m on TV!

by Cord Blomquist on February 11, 2008 · 3 comments

So someone finally made the mistake of allowing me to be on television. If you’re interested in the marriage that might have been and could still be between Microsoft and Yahoo, check out my appearance on C-SPAN’s weekly show The Communicators, which is unfortunately only available in our favorite format, Real Media.

Though Mr. Ballmer’s proposal was rejected the first time, he’s not one to give up easily and he’ll likely barrow even more than the few billion he thought he’d need to increase the size of the dowry. Though he may want to pause, at least for a moment, as the Wall Street Journal reports that tech stocks are up after this weekend’s rejection of the deal by Yahoo!

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Microsoft moves to buy Yahoo!

by Cord Blomquist on February 1, 2008 · 4 comments

By now everyone has heard the news announced this morning that Microsoft has offered to buy Yahoo! for $44 billion. Is this earth-shattering, or something that should have been expected given the current disarray at Yahoo! and Microsoft’s distant 3rd (domestically, 4th globally) in the search race?

Either way, the FTC will face the same objections that were leveled against Google/DoubleClick, and likely from the same sources.

And just like the Google/DoubleClick merger, many of the arguments won’t be about competition, but instead will focus on privacy. One would think that with the Google/DoubleClick approval now serving as precedent, the FTC will be able to dismiss these arguments as non-jurisdictional a bit more easily. But, being that the deal is still pending in the EU and that several groups are challenging the approval in the US, Microhoo! isn’t out of the woods yet.

EPIC will also have to come up with another clever logo like this one:

My suggestion: just change the punctuation. Privacy!

Though privacy is certainly a valid concern, a question remains for privacy advocates: Who can merge? Anyone competing in the search market who desires to compete with Google is likely going to do so with at least a few acquisitions and along with the hardware, patent portfolios, and a bunch of PhDs–these search market contenders will also be combing their data. But is this reason enough to oppose such mergers? Not if we want the market to stay competitive.

Blocking mergers of search companies blocks one of the most effective methods for any group of competitors to take on Google. Without the ability to acquire or merge with other firms, organic growth is the only method left to these companies to try to catch Google, making the search race much harder to run.

But would the deal be good for consumers? There’s reason to think so. Yahoo! and Microsoft could combine their online services to compete much better with Google. A few possibilities:

1.) Turn Microsoft’s Photosynth loose on Flickr and add tags to everyone’s photos using picture recognition software. This will enrich the database immeasurably. Imagine your pictures from the Louvre suddenly being tagged with the title of the work, the name of the artist, and the year the work was created.

2.) Use Microsoft’s Live Search Images software with Flickr to create filters for faces, portraits, and black and white photos.

3.) Give every MSN and Windows Live user the ability to create custom RSS feeds using Yahoo! Pipes technology.

The potential for much better targeting also exists especially given the purchases of aQuantive and Right Media by Microsoft and Yahoo! respectively. In addition, Microhoo! could benefit from sheer economies of scale. Both of these factors mean Microhoo! could cut its margins and offer ad buyers lower rates and ad sellers higher pay-outs. The result: online content creators will have more coin in their pocket to spend on content, benefiting everyone.

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Better iTunes Killer: Antitrust or Amazon?

by Cord Blomquist on January 25, 2008 · 6 comments

I’ve been busy with other projects, like the panel discussion on privacy I did with fellow TLFer Jim Harper, but I’d like to jump in on what is now an old story. Variety, among many others, reported on June 9th that the EU resolved its qualms with Apple after Jobs and company agreed to standardize pricing policies across Europe.

Apple has been charging consumers in the UK 10% more than the rest of Europe, but Variety failed to mention why this policy was in place. The EU determined that neither Apple nor the recording companies that distribute through iTunes were varying prices in order to take advantage of consumers. Instead, as The Business Times aptly reported, the price differences were attributable to, “copyright laws specific to individual countries.”

So, Apple was pricing differently in different markets because of genuine differences in those markets, not because Steve Jobs secretly hates limeys.

What I found most disturbing about the reporting on this case was this statement from European competition commissioner Neelie Kroes:

Continue reading →

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Jack Bauer on GeoCities

by Cord Blomquist on January 25, 2008 · 2 comments

This clip from College Humor, 24: The Unaired 1994 Pilot, is hilarious and makes me appreciate the abundance of great new technologies that the last decade has brought us. The video features many recent and familiar, yet shockingly antiquated technologies.

Sometimes there’s really no need to argue for free markets, you just need to remember what 1994 was like!

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Google Caused My Rock Band Addiction

by Cord Blomquist on January 25, 2008 · 7 comments

Thanks to Google, I am now addicted to the game Rock Band. I don’t own the game, but I do alternate between playing the demo at BestBuy in Pentagon City and playing the demo at the Gamestop across the street in the mall.

How can I prove that Google caused this addiction? Here I am playing Rock Band with Jillian Bandes of Roll Call in Google’s game room.

Jill’s fake drum performance far exceeded my abilities at the fake guitar. Soon after this photo was taken a tech from Google’s New York offices schooled us on how to rock Rock Band and scored a 97% on a much more difficult setting. Thanks to Adam Kovacevich at Google for featuring my silly performance on Google’s policy blog.

On a more serious note, I’m looking forward to working with Google on some of the policy issues that we’ll likely confront in the coming year. CEI is of like minds with the monolith of Mountain View on issues like privacy and competition policy. But we also disagree on policies like network neutrality and the best way to liberalize spectrum in the U.S.

Google is a great company that has created an enormous amount of wealth. I hope that their DC offices focus on creating a freer market for them to operate within and that they move away from the standard Washington favor-seeking.

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AFF January Roundtable: “Don’t Be Evil”: Privacy in the Age of Google

by Cord Blomquist on January 11, 2008 · 0 comments

In less than a decade, Google has grown from a Ph.D. research project to be the indispensable tool of the information economy. With the objective of making all information instantly and universally accessible, Google now controls the principal index to the internet and the email traffic of millions, while adding new features such as maps replete with street-level photos cataloging the non-virtual world.

How should governments around the world treat this data? Is it a great new resource for national security and law enforcement, or should we protect it from the prying eyes of bureaucrats? Should private companies be reigned in by regulation, or will government action only serve to undermine the modicum of privacy we maintain in the information age?

On January 16th Americas Future Foundation (AFF) will be hosting a roundtable to discuss these and other questions.

The panelists:

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)
Amber Taylor of O’Melveny & Myers LLP
Jim Harper of the Cato Institute
Cord Blomquist of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (me)

The event will take place at the Fund for American Studies, 1706 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, near Dupont Circle. Drinks at 6:30; Roundtable begins at 7:00. Roundtables are free for AFF members, $5 for non-members. So join today! Please RSVP to Cindy Cerquitella at cindy@americasfuture.org.

Hopefully we’ll see some TLF fanboys at the event!

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Jack Thompson: Video Games Inspire Violence

by Cord Blomquist on January 9, 2008 · 9 comments

TLF readers may be interested in reading a piece I just wrote with John Berlau, a colleague of mine at CEI, about Hillary Clinton’s stance on video game regulation. Senator Clinton has taken a very aggressive stance against video game violence, suggesting the FTC should oversee how games are rated, opening the door to further interference with the ESRB system.

We’ve quickly received feedback from one of the heavy-hitters in the anti-gaming world. None other than Jack Thompson emailed John today. Thompson, a famous anti-gaming lawyer and activist, has supported a wide variety of legislative solutions to the supposed plague of video game violence. His email to John contained no text in the body, but the subject line read as follows:

You’re wrong. Video games inspire violence. It’s a public safety hazard and a legitimate governmental concern

He attached a PDF of a Stephen Moore column for the Wall Street Journal to back up this assertion. In the piece, Moore complains that his children have turned into zombies, claiming that video games are the “new crack cocaine.” Though I love Moore and his columns for the WSJ and agree with him more often than not, this is one of those instances of not.

Video games are addictive, I’ll say that from personal experience, but I’ve been able to wean myself off a nearly debilitating addiction to Company of Heroes–I’m now down to a reasonable 4 hours a week. But games aren’t the new crack, they’re just a new diversion that neither kids nor adults should invest too much time into. Kids don’t have the self control to keep themselves away from them, so once parents let the kids vegetate for 8 hours a day, it is a tough job for parents to refuse kids their endorphin-producing joy-machines, but government won’t do a better job.

Instead of pushing for government action, which would be a 1st Amendment violation in addition to being ineffective, Jack Thompson ought to be trying to educate parents about sensible limitations for little ones and pointing them in the direction of Adam Thierer’s Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods.

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