In the New York Times today, Evgeny Morozov indicts the “solutionism” of Silicon Valley, which he defines as the “intellectual pathology that recognizes problems as problems based on just one criterion: whether they are ‘solvable’ with [technology].” This is the theme of his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here, which I’m looking forward to reading.
Morozov is absolutely right that there is a tendency among the geekerati to want to solve things that aren’t really problems, but I think he overestimates the effects this has on society. What are the examples of “solutionism” that he cites? They include:
- LivesOn, a yet-to-launch service that promises to tweet from your account after you have died
- Superhuman, another yet-to-launch service with no public description
- Seesaw, an app that lets you poll friends for advice before making decisions
- A notional contact lens product that would “make homeless people disappear from view” as you walk about
It should first be noted that three of these four products don’t yet exist, so they’re straw men. But let’s grant Morozov’s point, that the geeks are really cooking these things up. Does he really think that no one besides him sees how dumb these ideas are?
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MRUniversity, the “massive open online course” project of Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok, has just launched several new courses today, including one on the economics of the media, featuring guests lessons by yours truly and Adam Thierer. From the site:
>In the Information Age, media is everywhere. This course will help you make sense of it all, providing insight into the structure of media firms, the nature of their products and how they make money.
>Is media biased? Is consolidation of media companies bad for consumers? This course will address those questions as well as how the government effects the structure of media through policies such as net neutrality, copyright, TV regulation and spectrum allocation.
>This course will provide a general background on the research from economists on media and journalism. There will be a lot of economics and not too much math.
>If you pass the final exam, you will earn our “Economics of the Media” certificate on your profile.
Putting together a couple of 5-minute lessons was a lot harder than it sounded when we were asked to contribute, and it’s given me greater appreciation for what Tyler and Alex are doing with this project. It worth the hard work, though. They are reaching thousands of students for much the same effort that would go into a regular university course.
In a recent article in National Review, Joe Karaganis of American Assembly notes that copyright law is increasingly out of step with social norms. His polling suggests that it’s only a matter of time before a majority supports a broad copyright reform agenda.
As I’ve noted before, copyright has for too long been a bipartisan issue, but it will soon become a partisan one. The question is, which party will take up the winning copyright reform issue?
Karaganis:
How would an Internet politics emerge in the Democratic party? The answer is probably simple: It is impossible in the short term because of the power of Hollywood and inevitable in the long term because of the power of time. Most of the young are already Democrats.
How would an Internet politics emerge in the Republican party? Given the decades of rhetorical entrenchment around property rights and law enforcement, it would probably require the recasting of intellectual-property rights as government monopoly, of SOPA-style bills as crony capitalism, and of Internet enforcement as part of a digital-surveillance state.
Such views in favor of recasting IP rights already have a home on the right, and are supported by congressmen such as Darrell Issa and Jason Chaffetz. Tactical considerations alone could produce Republican-led majorities on these issues, galvanized by the prospect of wounding the Democrats’ Hollywood money base or splitting Silicon Valley libertarians.
Seems to me like the case is strong for a Republican-led movement, but time is of the essence. Will the G.O.P. squander this opportunity?
Is geek culture sexist? Joseph Reagle, Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northeastern University and author of a new paper entitled, “Free as in Sexist? Free culture and the gender gap,” returns to Surprisingly Free to address geek feminism and the technology gender gap.
According to Reagle, only 1% of the free software community and 9% of Wikipedia editors are female, which he sees as emblematic of structural problems in the geek community. While he does not believe that being a geek or a nerd is in any way synonymous with being a sexist, he concludes that three things that he otherwise loves—geekiness, openness, and the rhetoric and ideology of freedom–are part of the problem inasmuch as they allow informal cliques to arise, dominate the discussion, and squeeze out minority views. Reagle also comments on a unintentional androcentricity he has observed even amongst free software community heroes, highlighting the ways in which this behavior can be alienating to women and prevents geek culture from growing beyond its traditional base.
Reagle prescribes a 3-step solution to sexism in geek culture: talking about gender; challenging and expanding what it means to be a geek; and not allowing the rhetoric of freedom to be used as an excuse for bad behavior.
Reagle further supports efforts to form female-only subcultures within the geek community, which opponents argue goes against the free software value of openness. Instead of the balkanization of their movement that opponents fear, these closed-group discussions actually strengthen geek culture at large, according to Reagle.
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After several delays, it looks like the “six-strikes” Copyright Alert System is launching today. Over at Reason.com I write that instead of dismissing it out of hand, those of us skeptical of the current copyright regime should give it a chance:
>While the Copyright Alert System is far from perfect, it succeeds in treating illegal file-sharing as an infraction more akin to speeding, and less like grand larceny the way courts and prosecutors do. And the private system has its own set of checks and balances absent from public enforcement: ISPs have a strong incentive to ensure that their customers are not harassed by false positives or overzealous enforcement. (Indeed, the agreement limits the number of notices copyright holders may send in a month.) This is why the temptation to codify such a “six-strike” system in law the way France and other countries have should be resisted.
>In the long run, the new system is likely to be ineffective at stopping piracy. Determined pirates will be able to detect and evade monitoring, spoof their IP addresses, or simply switch to other methods of file-sharing not covered by the agreement, like streaming or using locker sites or Usenet. In the short run, however, copyright alerts will attempt to nudge public norms that have increasingly moved toward widespread acceptance of file-sharing. Evidence suggests, though, that it’s probably too late for that too.
>Rather than dismiss the new system out of hand, those of us seeking a saner copyright regime should welcome this experiment while keeping a close eye on it. If nothing else, it’s preferable to have content owners make constructive use of their private rights rather than rely on the power of the state.
In the current issue of the Weekly Standard, Sonny Bunch has a very nice review of our book, Copyright Unbalanced: From Incentive to Excess:
Into the fray jumps this collection of essays, arguing that copyright is hopelessly broken. The libertarian right has grown increasingly skeptical of the institution, arguing that media corporations have perverted the Constitution’s Copyright Clause into a tool used not to “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts” but to swell their coffers. Many libertarians see the endless extension of copyright terms, the retroactive granting of such extensions, and the increasing number of instruments that can be copyrighted as crony capitalism.
There is certainly a case to be made for copyright reform. Whereas the Copyright Act originally provided that copyrightable items—limited to books, maps, and charts—could be protected for one 14-year term, and extended for another 14-year term (if the author wished), we now have, in essence, unending, unlimited copyright: the life of the author, plus 70 years. Gone is the requirement that copyright holders actively pursue their copyright or its extensions. The effect is rather to grant copyright protection to everything created, in perpetuity. The public domain is no more.
Bunch does have one critique, however:
Were copyright protections simply a question of economic utility—a quest to discover which economic regime inspires content creators to make the most stuff—Copyright Unbalanced would be on more solid footing. But there is a moral dimension that must be accounted for. Libertarian opponents of copyright are not necessarily wrong to dodge the question; it has been a tricky one in American legal discourse. But the moral dimension of copyright has been a part of the general conversation since the days of the Founders—and before.
Guilty as charged. We did indeed dodge the moral question in the book, but that’s because we felt that there is so much patently bad policy in the current system—before even getting to the moral questions—that conservatives and libertarians should be able to agree needs reform. I believe one can take a pretty strict Randian or Lockean approach to copyright and still find lots of cronyist malfeasance in copyright.
That said, we won’t be dodging the moral question for long. Mercatus will later this year publish another book, Intellectual Privilege by Tom W. Bell, which in part refutes some of Adam Mossoff’s claims about the significance of Locke’s and Adam’s writings. While I don’t agree with everything Tom says in his forthcoming book, I think it will be an important contribution to conservative and libertarian thinking on what should be the proper bounds of a copyright system.
[Good question in *The Economist*](http://www.economist.com/news/international/21567886-america-leading-way-developing-doctrines-cyber-warfare-other-countries-may) from December of last year, before all the Mandiant madness:
> As Mr Libicki asks, “what can we do back to a China that is stealing our data?” Espionage is carried out by both sides and is traditionally not regarded as an act of war. But the massive theft of data and the speed with which it can be exploited is something new. Responding with violence would be disproportionate, which leaves diplomacy and sanctions. But America and China have many other big items on their agenda, while trade is a very blunt instrument. It may be possible to identify products that China exports which compete only because of stolen data, but it would be hard and could risk a trade war that would damage both sides.
Given what China-U.S. relations are today, its not clear there are any good options. This situation reminds me of [America’s early history of piracy](http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva75.html). Until China is better integrated into the global order, the executive is going to have quite a challenge on his hands.
[Evgeny Morozov in the WSJ](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324503204578318462215991802.html) is afraid that ‘smart technology’ might make us a bit unthinking:
> The problem with many smart technologies is that their designers, in the quest to root out the imperfections of the human condition, seldom stop to ask how much frustration, failure and regret is required for happiness and achievement to retain any meaning.
> It’s great when the things around us run smoothly, but it’s even better when they don’t do so by default. That, after all, is how we gain the space to make decisions—many of them undoubtedly wrongheaded—and, through trial and error, to mature into responsible adults, tolerant of compromise and complexity.
I think he overestimates how successfully engineers will eliminate friction. Even as new technologies solve some problems, they introduce new ones. He also overestimates how accepting people will be of these technologies. I know several persons with WiThings scales, but none of them tweet their weight. And Google Glass’s official unveiling has been met mostly with derision. I agree with Morozov that preserving experimentation and serendipity are important for human flourishing, but we should be careful not to forgo technologies that might unlock our curiosity and humanity in ways we can’t now predict.
Politicians from both parties are now saying that although President Obama took comprehensive action on cybersecurity through executive order, we still need legislation. Over at TIME.com I write that no, we don’t.
Republicans want to protect businesses from suit for breach of contract or privacy statute violations in the name of information sharing, but there’s no good reason for such blanket immunity. Democrats would like to see mandated security standards, but top-down regulation is a bad idea, especially in such a fast-moving area. But as I write:
>Yet guided by their worst impulses – to extend protections to business, or to exert bureaucratic control – members of Congress will insist that it is imperative they get in on the action.
>If they do, they will undoubtedly be saddling us with a host of unintended consequences that we will come to regret later.
The executive order does most of what Congress failed to do in its last session. What Congress could add now is unnecessary and likely pernicious. The executive order should be given time to work. Only then will Congress now if and how it might need to be “strengthened.”
Ronald A. Cass, Dean Emeritus of Boston University School of Law, discusses his new book, Laws of Creation: Property Rights in the World of Ideas, which he co-authored with Boston University colleague Keith Hylton. Written as a primer for understanding intellectual property law and a defense of intellectual property, Laws of Creation explains the basis of IP and its justification.
According to Cass, not all would-be reformers share a similar guiding philosophy, distinguishing between those who support property rights but nevertheless have specific critiques of the intellectual property system as it currently stands, and reformers who do not see a place for property.
Cass explains that the current intellectual property system is neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but is a matter of weighing tradeoffs. On the whole, he argues, intellectual property benefits society. Cass also argues that intellectual property law in the U.S. is still more functional than that in other countries, such as Italy, and that, while it would benefit from some reform, it is fundamentally a workable system.
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