On this week’s podcast, Joseph Reagle, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, discusses his recent book, Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Reagle talks about early attempts to create online encyclopedias, the happy accident that preceded Wikipedia, and challenges that the venture has overcome. He also discusses the average Wikipedian, minority and gender gaps in contributors, Wikipedia’s three norms that allow for its success, and co-founder Jimmy Wales’ role with the organization.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
On this week’s podcast, Sean Lawson, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah and a contributor to the Forbes.com security blog, The Firewall, discusses his new Mercatus Center working paper, Beyond Cyber-Doom: Cyberattack Scenarios and the Evidence of History. Cyber security may be the new black, but it’s been a significant policy issue since the 1980s. Lawson talks about the current cyber security discourse, addressing conflation of diverse threats, overemphasis on hypothetical doom scenarios, and the resulting effects on policy proposals. He then looks to the history of disasters, including blackouts, the attacks of 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, to help estimate impacts from potential cyber disasters. Lawson also discusses incorrect doomsday predictions about WWII aerial bombardment, and he offers a few conclusions and policy recommendations based on his research.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
In the past we’ve commended the FCC and the administration for their support of incentive auctions to move spectrum now held by broadcaster to its best valued use, likely mobile broadband. Now it’s time to applaud the new House leadership for similarly making moves in the right direction.
The Washington Post reports today that “TV broadcasters resist FCC proposal to surrender more airwaves,” and earlier this month Chairman Genachowski expressed uncertainty about whether he would get congressional support for incentive auctions. But now comes word that newly inaugurated House Energy and Commerce Chairman Fred Upton is likely to include spectrum incentive auctions in new broadband rules. It’s great to see Republicans and Democrats coming together on good policy, especially in the face of opposition from a lobby as powerful as the broadcasters.
Moreover, today we also find out that the committee leadership is also considering a commercial auction of the infamous D Block spectrum, which public safety wants simply allocated to them. This puts the E&C leadership at odds with AT&T and Verizon, who oppose auctioning the D Block and would rather see a taxpayer-built built public safety network on the band. (Aside: While I’m all in favor of auction as an allocation method, I am skeptical at solving the public safety interoperability problem by simply throwing money at the existing system.)
So cheers to the new House leadership. Now that everyone’s one the same page (fingers crossed), this should be an easy win for smart policy.
On the podcast this week, Don Norman, a former Apple vice-president, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, and one of the world’s most influential designers, discusses his new book, Living With Complexity. Norman talks about differences between complexity, something being complicated, and simplicity, and suggests that people who bemoan “technology” don’t actually seek simplicity. He also discusses differences between designing a product and designing a system, using examples of iPods and iTunes, the Amazon Kindle, and BMW’s Mini Cooper — products whose success depended upon the success of larger systems. Norman also notes the difference between a forcing function and a nudge, explains how complicated rules can weaken security, and comments on sociable design in realspace and on the internet.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
On the podcast this week, Declan McCullagh, chief political correspondent for CNET and former Washington bureau chief for Wired News, discusses WikiLeaks. McCullagh gives a quick recap of the WikiLeaks saga so far, comments on the consequences of the leaks themselves, and talks about the broader significance of the affair. He also offers a few insights into Julian Assange’s ideology based on his interactions with Assange in early ’90s “cypherpunk” circles. Lastly, McCullagh discusses the future of diplomacy and the chance that Assange will be indicted in the United States.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
On this week’s podcast Evgeny Morozov, a visiting scholar at Stanford University, a fellow at the New America Foundation, and a contributor to Foreign Policy, the Boston Review, and the Wall Street Journal, talks about his new book, The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom. Morozov first discusses misperceptions about the effectiveness of American broadcasts and pamphlets to promote democracy and liberty during the Cold War. He then suggests consequences of bringing such historical baggage to internet policymaking, pointing out that many people today have faulty assumptions about the power of internet freedom to effect change in places like China, Russia, and Iran.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
On the podcast this week, Adam Thierer, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in the Technology Policy Program, reviews the past year in technology policy and looks ahead to next year. Thierer first weighs in on net neutrality and upcoming FCC deliberations could that hatch a new regulatory regime for the internet. He then talks Google and antitrust, the proposed Comcast-NBC merger, and disputes between broadcasters and content providers. He also suggests that two issues — privacy and cyber security — will be at the forefront of tech policy debates in the coming year, pointing to support for do-not-track rules and to recent WikiLeaks and state secrets drama as momentum behind the respective issues.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
Over a year ago Adam Thierer and Berin Szoka penned an essay seeking to define the contours of cyber-libertarianism, and they drew a contrast with the digital commons movement, part of what they called “cyber-collectivism.” They were criticized, however, for not drawing a similar contrast to “cyber-conservatism.” The reason they didn’t do this, Adam explained, was because they didn’t “think there really is a coherent ‘cyber-conservative’ movement out there the same way we see a rising ‘Digital Commons’ movement.” I think the reaction to Cablegate might be allowing us to see the outlines of cyber-conservatism a bit better.
The most vocal and strident reaction against Wikileaks has come from folks we can identify as neocons. Aside from demanding that the U.S. hunt down Julian Assange, Charles Krauthammer wrote, “Putting U.S. secrets on the Internet, a medium of universal dissemination new in human history, requires a reconceptualization of sabotage and espionage — and the laws to punish and prevent them.” Meanwhile Marc Thiessen, ignoring the distributed nature of WikiLeaks, called for the U.S. to “rally a coalition of the willing to defeat WikiLeaks by shutting down its servers and cutting off its finances.” And William Kristol, for his part, asked rhetorically, “Why can’t we disrupt and destroy WikiLeaks in both cyberspace and physical space, to the extent possible? Why can’t we warn others of repercussions from assisting this criminal enterprise hostile to the United States?”
I won’t say there’s a fully developed theory of internet policy in these statements, but you can definitely see a rejection of an unregulated internet, not to mention of internet exceptionalism. Information control in the name of security, they seem to argue, is more than justified. And despite his technical cluelessness, Marc Thiessen does grasp that pressuring internet intermediaries, like Amazon and PayPal, is an important way to control information.
Continue reading →
On the podcast this week, Milton Mueller, Professor and Director of the Telecommunications Network Management Program at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, discusses his new book, Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. Mueller begins by talking about Wikileaks’ recent leak of diplomatic cables, using the incident to elaborate on the meaning of internet governance. He notes the distinction between traditional centralized systems of authority and peer-produced, distributed governance that rules much of cyberspace. He also discusses global democracy, contradictions in cyber libertarian views, judicial checks and balances on the internet, and future issues in internet governance.
Related Links
To keep the conversation around this episode in one place, we’d like to ask you to comment at the web page for this episode on Surprisingly Free. Also, why not subscribe to the podcast on iTunes?
It’s been surprising to me that none of my TLF colleagues has yet ventured a post about this latest WikiLeaks controversy. But perhaps it shouldn’t be so surprising because the Cablegate case presents some very hard questions to which there are no easy answers. I’m not sure that I know myself exactly how I feel about every issue related to leaks. But to try to get some conversation going, and to try to pin down my own feelings, I thought I’d take a stab at writing down some thoughts.
Is it legitimate for states to keep secrets from their citizens? It’s a good question, but not one I’m interested in addressing here. The fact is that they do keep secrets.
Should the disclosure of classified information be a criminal offense? Given state secrets, this is a bit of a moot question because a state’s ability to keep a secret depends on it’s ability to punish disclosure by anyone entrusted with secrets. If nothing else, someone so entrusted has likely made a promise not to disclose. (There should, of course, be whistleblower protections in place that make exceptions to the rule.)
Therefore, the interesting question is this: Should there be liability for third parties who publish disclosed information? Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.