Jim is the Director of Information Policy Studies at The Cato Institute, the Editor of Web-based privacy think-tank Privacilla.org, and the Webmaster of WashingtonWatch.com. Prior to becoming a policy analyst, Jim served as counsel to committees in both the House and Senate.
My employer, The Cato Institute, has put together a couple of podcasts that make for interesting listening as we try to understand what has happened in mortgage finance and financial services – and what is to come.
Dorn puts together Cato’s annual Monetary Conference, which draws some of the most knowledgeable analysts in the country and world. It happens November 19th this year. I’m guessing it will be well attended.
Yours truly shows up in a good story on surveillance cameras on the Christian Broadcasting Network today. Watching the whole thing, I was impressed by the sophistication of the host, who observed in the discussion segment: “We’re giving up so much privacy in order to obtain the illusion of security.”
[The following post discusses a matter of public interest and people who have brought public attention upon themselves. It contains only expressions of opinion and recitations of facts that I believe in good faith to be true. It should be clear, and I urge you to be clear, that the only service provider discussed in the post, involved in authoring the post, or involved in publishing the post is the law firm Jones Day and its attorneys. Let there be no confusing that this is all about Jones Day. Since it’s a post critical of Jones Day, there should be no implication to anyone that Jones Day could possibly endorse the content of this post or this blog. I say all this so that any nitwit attorney who thinks this blog post gives him or her a cause of action will be on notice that nothing said here violates trademark law, everything here is protected speech under the First Amendment, and that no cause of action can possibly lie against any person for this publication.]
It’s fascinating sometimes to see lawyers with an abundance of power and no sense of judgment – especially big-firm lawyers who shouldn’t exhibit their poor judgment and ignorance of basic legal doctrine to current and prospective clients.
But the law firm of Jones Day has some lawyers working for it who really don’t seem to have a clue about trademark law. I never practiced trademark law, and I seem to know more about it than they do.
It exalts terrorists and terrorism to try chasing their videos off the Internet, and it doesn’t work. Senator Lieberman’s quest to cleanse the Internet of terrorism has won a battle in a losing war by convincing Google to take down such videos. They can still be found on LiveLeak and can be hosted on any of millions of servers worldwide.
[In his eager anti-Google gafliery (“gadfliery” – the nominative case of the verb “to gadfly,” which I just invented), I’m sorry to say that TLF friend Scott Cleland has gotten it wrong.]
The better approach is to treat terrorists as the losers that they are. Their videos do not scare us, but provide us opportunities to observe, comment, and deplore them, perhaps even mocking their foolishness. In this video, at minute 2:18, terrorists appear to be training for the circus. We’ll really fear them when they can fend off lions with a chair.
Declan McCullagh has done some great reporting this morning on an ITU plan to trace the source of all Internet communications. Meaning: no more anonymous speech online.
The U.S. National Security Agency is also participating in the “IP Traceback” drafting group, named Q6/17, which is meeting next week in Geneva to work on the traceback proposal. Members of Q6/17 have declined to release key documents, and meetings are closed to the public.
It’s particularly interesting to note the role of VeriSign in developing this surveillance capability for the ‘net. McCullagh quotes Tony Rutkowski of VeriSign stepping up to defend the plan. Rutkowski published a summary of the plan in May.
Great reporting by McCullagh. Not a great thing for VeriSign to be doing.
C|Net’s Charles Cooper reports today that Department of Justice trustbusters are considering a comprehensive antitrust attack on Google.
Sources who have provided testimony to the government say a departmental debate revolves around whether antitrust regulators should challenge Google’s proposed revenue-sharing deal with Yahoo, or go for the whole enchilada–and haul Google into court on broader charges related to its dominance in search advertising.
C|Net’s Declan McCullagh speculated earlier this week about how Google would fare under an Obama administration:
[Obama’s] technology campaign platform pledges to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement” and “step up review of merger activity.” He complained to the American Antitrust Institute that “the current administration has what may be the weakest record of antitrust enforcement of any administration in the last half century.” If the Bush administration’s current antitrust probe of Google, coupled with this week’s apparent threat of a federal lawsuit, amounts to a “weak” record, imagine what antitrust true believers in an Obama administration might do. (A three-way split of Google into search, applications, and display ads, anyone?)
I’m not sure whether structural separation is on Google’s near-term horizon, but Washington, D.C.’s parasite economy will make its move.
The provocative title hides some pretty good news, actually.
I had been thinking about how the “suggested searches” in the Google homepage and the Google search box in Firefox must rely on sharing your keystrokes with Google as you type them.
This is a privacy concern. Say you typed “I have herpes” in the search box but then thought better of submitting it. Google Suggest would already have sent your keystrokes along, even before you hit “I’m Feeling Lucky!” (Might have reconsidered that “lucky” feeling back in college when you – well, water under the bridge I guess . . .)
I’m pleased to see that Google recognizes this problem and is taking some steps to minimize the privacy consequences of this feature. They will anonymize the 2% of usage data they collect about this service.
Now, keep in mind that Google has been squirrely in the past about what it means to anonymize information. You can disable Google Suggest in “Preferences” by selecting the ‘Do not provide query suggestions in the search box’ checkbox.
The overall lesson is that you shouldn’t type anything on a Web form that you don’t plan on sharing. The curtain hiding your thoughts is pulled back before you click “Submit.”
Scott Cleland has an unusually even-keeled post today (Where are the bullets and bolding, Scott?!) about how Google undermines its own policy arguments on net neutrality regulation by promoting more sources of broadband – in this case, satellite.
What has always mattered, of course, is getting more broadband platforms up and running. The debate over net neutrality regulation is a sideshow, and probably a detriment to communications progress as it casts a cloud of regulatory uncertainty over the industry. Higher costs, slower rollouts, and lower profits from uncertain regulations probably chills investment in any potential new broadband platform.
But I’m here to tell you, Scott, that even if Google helps put a couple more broadband platforms in place, the goalposts will move.
Today, I came across a letter sent by Senate Antitrust Subcommittee Chairman Herb Kohl (D-WI) asking the four major wireless providers why the price of text messaging has gone up. He says that the price has gone from 10 cents per message sent or received in 2005 to 20 cents on all four carriers. Continue reading →
Over on the WashingtonWatch.com blog, I’ve recently concluded a review of each of the presidential candidates’ actual legislative work during the current Congress. It’s a window onto their priorities that has the advantage of being actual data, not just what they say about themselves.
A good illustration about how information on products and services reaches consumers, and how the overall bargain between businesses and consumers is formed, comes in the shape of this Ars Technica story about Google’s new Chrome browser.
Intrepid Ars reporter Nate Anderson writes (two days ago now):
Today’s Internet outrage du jour has been Chrome’s EULA, which appears to give Google a nonexclusive right to display and distribute every bit of content transmitted through the browser. Now, Google tells Ars that it’s a mistake, the EULA will be corrected, and the correction will be retroactive.
Standing in the shoes of a great mass of consumers who one assumes wouldn’t like that EULA term, Anderson quickly and effectively bargained Google back from it. Writing about the episode, he (and other, less prominent outlets) dealt Google a PR slap for even including such a term in the first place. The mighty Google is chastened and has corrected what it calls an error.
It’s a commonly held belief that consumers are powerless to fight large corporations, and it’s true that a single consumer is unlikely to be successful bargaining with a large company about some dimension of the goods or services it provides, especially if he or she has peculiar tastes.
But this episode shows how the media act as a conduit through which consumers bargain with large corporations – successfully. When the corporation has gotten on the wrong side of a significant enough consumer interest in their product, it will back down so quickly that it’s easy to miss.
This is the market at work. It’s imperfect, but it’s the best way we’ve got to figure out what consumers want and get it delivered to them.
[Update: Aw crap – just went to catch up on my TLF reading and see that Berin already had it covered. He’s a smart fellow, and you should listen to him.]
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.