Mike at TechDirt takes issue with an article by Tom Lenard on C|Net that argues that market allocation of “white space” spectrum is more efficient than a “commons” designation. He writes that “Unlicensed spectrum is hardly a ‘centralized allocation system,’ and it’s hard to see how anyone could make such a claim with a straight face.” As I explained in a recent paper, in order to have a “commons” that works, you need to have rules that govern how devices operate in the space so that they don’t interfere with each other. For example, devices in the chunk of spectrum in which Wi-Fi operates, by regulation, cannot operate above 5 Watts EIRP. Therefore, the rules that govern the “commons” we now have are centrally planned by the government. It’s not controversial to say that central planning is inefficient because a planner cannot possibly have all the information about all the possible competing uses of the spectrum.
While there no doubt is a place for unlicensed devices, one has to admit that designating some spectrum as a commons with certain specific rules will prevent that spectrum from being used in another, perhaps more innovative way, that cannot operate within the commons’ rules. In a market you could just buy the spectrum and deploy your more innovative use; in a commons regime you would have to petition the central planner to change the rules (and we all know how well and how quickly that works.)
Second, Mike takes Lenard to task for not understanding the concept of zero, claiming that when scarcity is removed, market oriented folks have a hard time understanding policy. I tend to agree with him, and I think his is a great observation as it applies to intellectual property. Ideas truly are not scarce; their scarcity is created artificially through IP laws. However, I’m afraid that while new technologies have been able to eke out more communications capacity from existing spectrum, that capacity is still finite and, despite the rhetoric one often hears, spectrum scarcity has not been eliminated.
Mike writes that “what those who understand zero recognize, is that unlicensed spectrum turns spectrum into a free input, lowering the costs and allowing companies to provide products that serve the market at much more reasonable rates.” What he doesn’t see is that while unlicensed spectrum might be a “free input” for certain uses, a whole host of other uses are precluded. While a commons can allow low power, near range devices such as Wi-Fi, bluetooth, and cordless phones–great innovations all–you could not deploy a new national wireless competitor in voice or video over unlicensed spectrum. The only way the cost of spectrum could truly be zero is if all potential uses of spectrum could be deployed without precluding any other use. This is the case in intellectual property where I can use any idea as much as I want without ever affecting someone else’s ability to use that same idea. But it’s not the case for spectrum where one use of spectrum (even the use of spectrum for an unlicensed commons) will necessarily preclude some other potential use.
What do contact lenses, wine, and caskets all have in common? Online sales of these products have been heavily regulated online, often because bricks-and-mortar incumbents have lobbied for laws that protect them from Internet-based competition. New research on this topic will be presented at a daylong symposium presented by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, in collaboration with the George Mason University School of Law. Legal and economic scholars will present papers on topics such as the current status of legal and regulatory barriers, their impact on consumers, and their implications for competitive federalism. Ken Starr will give the keynote address. Check out the full agenda after the jump.
The event will take place on Wednesday, May 24th, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., at the George Mason University Arlington campus. For more information and to RSVP, visit the event page.
Continue reading →
It looks like RFID panic is percolating a bit again. Wired has an article in the current issue about how easy it will be to hack RFID tags, and Gizmodo recently reported ominously hat Levi’s will be tagging its jeans. Most of the privacy concerns are the same as those I’ve refuted in the past; RFID is not GPS and it won’t let you pinpoint someone’s position. However, I’m curious about one new claim the Wired article raises:
Grunwald has recently discovered another use for RFID chips: espionage. He programmed RFDump with the ability to place cookies on RFID tags the same way Web sites put cookies on browsers to track returning customers. With this, a stalker could, say, place a cookie on his target’s E-ZPass, then return to it a few days later to see which toll plazas the car had crossed (and when). Private citizens and the government could likewise place cookies on library books to monitor who’s checking them out.
I’m curious for more information on how this is done. To my knowledge, cookies are just static strings of text that can be used to uniquely identify a browser each time it comes back to a site. In that sense, an RFID chip is itself a cookie. An
HTTP cookie isn’t written to and doesn’t contain a list of all the sites you’ve visited, so how can an RFID cookie tell a stalker all the toll plazas you’ve been to? Also, can all RFID tags take cookies? Beyond those questions, I’m not sure how a stalker is helped by knowing where his target
has been. He would only know which toll plazas were crossed, not what a target’s ultimate destination was, and certainly not their current location. With the library book example, the same questions apply. But assuming that the RFID chip is written to, is the patron’s name inserted into the surreptitious cookie whenever the book is checked out? Why would the library’s software do this? Why would it insert a name and not an ID number? If it’s an ID number, then wouldn’t the stalker need access to the library database to cross-reference the patron’s name? If the stalker has access to that database, why not just look up the check out information there?
At least I’m glad to see that both the Gizmodo and Wired stories acknowledge a privacy threat from government and not just from retailers and other private companies. Privacy activists have concentrated on the perceived threat of commercial RFID use when the real threat is their use in government-mandated IDs.
For a long while I’ve been bemused by the running rivalry over intellectual property issues between some of the writers on this blog and the folks at PFF. While sometimes entertaining, I often shake my head when Tim takes the time to painstakingly refute an argument from Jim DeLong that on the surface was already patently erroneous. Now, as I prepare to take the bait myself, I think I understand the feeling of exasperation that prompts such replies.
Yesterday DeLong posted an entry entitled “Another Urban Legend Shot Down.” He wrote that “One of the arguments against extended copyright terms, made in Eldred and other places, has been the charge that there are piles of books, films, etc., moldering away unseen because no one can get permission to look at them and the copyright holders are too oblivious to find and exploit useful items.” He then says that the fact that Amazon sells DVD packs that contain 50 classic movies for just $16.47 refutes the idea (or “urban legend” as he puts it) that there are other movies out there that are being harmed by extended copyright terms. He goes on, “Would such treasures be available if there were no money to be made from making them so? Doubtful.”
FIrst DeLong implies that there are no such works disintegrating out of sight and hints that such an idea is just an “urban legend.” I would point him to the Library of Congress’s report on film preservation. It catalogs precisely the fact that a great number of films are literally disintegrating. It is a fact, not a myth.
Continue reading →
According to eWeek, “Google’s begun testing [its proposed Mountain View, CA, muni wi-fi] network and, in so doing, has discovered it might need to add more Wi-Fi transmitters than originally thought to deliver the coverage and service quality it promised[.]” This follows “snags” in the muni wi-fi efforts in St. Cloud, FL. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: communications over a “commons” requires government-enforced low-power restrictions like those imposed on wi-fi. Low power works great when you’re in a small area you control: your home, a coffee shop, etc. Wi-fi, and unlicensed/commons communications generally, are not suited for municipality-wide reach (unless you define the municipality as city hall and the town square).
By popular demand, we have updated our RSS feed. The new feed is full-text, so you can enjoy all of the Tech Liberation Front in your feed reader. Also, using Feedburner, we’ll be able to get an idea of how many subscribers we have. The new feed is at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/techliberation.
IMPORTANT: If you subscribe to our current feed, please update to our new feed. The old feed will be discontinued in a week’s time. After that, only the Feedburner feed will work.
Want to know more about what RSS is and how it can help you keep track of your favorite sites? I recommend reading this article from Slate and this one from the NYT.
Google, who less than a year a go didn’t have an office in D.C., seems to have picked up the ways of Washington pretty quickly. The New York Times reports today that Google has gone to Justice Department and EU antitrust authorities to complain that the search box in Microsoft’s new Internet Explorer 7 browser uses MSN as the default search engine.
Google has informed the European antitrust authorities of its worry that “Microsoft’s approach to setting search defaults in Internet Explorer 7 benefits Microsoft while taking away choice from users,” said Steve Langdon, a spokesman for Google. … “We have spoken to the Justice Department generally about our business and the importance of preserving competition in the search market,” Mr. Langdon said.
Wow. This is deja vu all over again. According to Microsoft, it is simple to change the default search engine if you want to. Also, last time I checked, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and the AOL browser all have Google as the default–and Google paid cash to the latter two for the privilege.
Next Tuesday, Nobel Laureate and George Mason Professor Vernon Smith and Prof. David Porter, both internationally renowned experts on the structure of auctions, will be speaking about their experiences helping craft the FCC wireless auctions. They will asses the auction system and discuss how auctions have affected the allocation of radio spectrum. Event deets: Tuesday, May 2, 4 p.m. (reception following) – GMU School of Law Room 120 – Admission is free, but seating is limited. RSVP to Masha Khazan, mkhazan@gmu.edu.
The U.S. recently lost a WTO suit brought by Antigua. Basically the U.S. had outlawed overseas internet gambling, but allowed certain types of domestic gambling sites. The WTO sided with Antigua and told the U.S. it had to change its law. Today is the deadline for the U.S. to make that change and it doesn’t seem like it will. For one thing, the U.S. has little incentive. The normal course in this situation is that Antigua would be allowed to place trade sanctions on U.S. imports. But for a country with a population of 70,000, this would hurt them more than it would hurt the U.S. So, the Antiguans are looking for other options. According to the Boston Globe,
Antigua is considering retaliatory moves that could enable the tiny nation to punch above its weight. … the country may refuse to enforce American patents and trademarks. This would make it possible for Antiguan-based companies to produce knock-offs of American intellectual property, like video and music recordings or computer software. Such a tactic would get the attention of major US firms like Microsoft Corp. and entertainment titan Time Warner Inc. It would also put tiny Antigua’s trade war against the United States on front pages around the world.
There’s also an NPR story on the Antiguan affair here. Easier than actually producing physical knock-offs, they could allow online businesses a la Napster, My.MP3.com, or AllOfMP3.com to go up within their borders. I wonder how far this will go. If they just want to get attention and put pressure on the U.S., or if they’ll go further. Also, what will the WTO make of this? Under the Dispute Settlement Understanding, sanctions aren’t the express remedy. The treaty states that if a settlement can’t be reached by the parties, the plaintiff can seek the WTO’s OK “to suspend the application to the Member concerned of concessions or other obligations under the covered agreements.” The TRIPS Accord would be a candidate for suspension. Although it looks like the WTO Dispute Resolution Body has previously demurred on the topic, some have made the case that TRIPS can “serve as an enforcement device for developing countries in the WTO.”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.