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.
You don’t have to look far over the horizon to know what life in America would be like if we had a national ID. On Saturday, the Associated Press reported that a mall in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin is considering requiring ID from youths before they can enter. This decision would be much easier if there was a nationally uniform ID system.
With IDs and credentials of different designs and from different issuers in our hands today, ID checking is relatively rare, and rarely automated. Nonetheless, companies like Intelli-Check are pushing electronic ID-checking systems for nanny-state purposes. They would have a much easier time if all of us carried the same card and it was effectively mandatory. Keep in mind that more ID checking equals more personal data collection.
In tiny Earlville, Illinois, a woman named Joy Robinson-Van Gilder has started a one-woman crusade against her local public school which decided to use fingerprint biometrics to administer the purchase of hot lunches in the cafeteria. Despite her wishes, they fingerprint scanned her 7-year-old, for a time refusing to allow him hot lunches if he wouldn’t use their system.
The starting point for this kind of program is using it to manage lunch payments, but the ending point is a detailed record of each child’s eating habits and the school usurping the role of parents. It’s no wonder government schools are at the center of so much social conflict.
There is nothing inherently wrong with identification or with biometrics but, unless they are adopted through voluntary choice, they will be designed to serve institutions and not people.
Against Monopoly points to a YouTube video tracking some history of the “Amen Brother” beat and sampling generally.
The video reminded me again of the upwelling of creativity that occured in the late 80’s before sampling came on the the radar screen of copyright holders.
“Amen Brother” is important, of course, but there are many other beats that contend for top honors. I went looking for James Brown’s “Funky Drummer” beat and came across this list of beats, calling itself “The 30 Greatest Hip Hop Drum Breaks & Samples of All Time.” Well, I’m not so sure, if it doesn’t have Funky Drummer, but listening to the beats connotes the dozens of songs that succeeded them. It’s an exciting window into our culture.
The point? Creative works are not just outputs of creative people – they’re also very much inputs to new creative works, a point made well by Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter in their Cato Policy Analysis Amateur-to-Amateur: The Rise of a New Creative Culture.
Over at the Volokh Conspiracy, law professor Sabrina Safrin is guest blogging about the development of intellectual property law, particularly patents, in light of patent-holder behavior. Her forthcoming law review article
argues that property rights evolve in reaction to each other. The creation of property rights for some engenders the demand for related property rights by others. These demands and resulting recognition of property rights may have little to do with the value of the resource in question or efficiency concerns.
Interesting idea, sort of a game-theoretic explanation for the recent explosion of patents, with an embedded suggestion that things are out of whack. Here’s Eugene’s introduction of her and her first post.
The Department of Homeland Security issued regulations to implement the REAL ID Act today. Well, it issued regulations to delay implementation, anyway. The regs really don’t explain anything in this fundamentally flawed national ID law. They just kick the can down the road.
I’ll compile here some links to Cato@Liberty blog posts about what I’ve been up to. Apologies to C@L readers forced to slog through my meanderings twice.
First of all, it’s interesting to watch the slow-motion collapse of so many government ID programs because they are so poorly designed and poorly thought through.
That isn’t stopping politicians from trying to shore them up. Representative Barbara Cubin (R-WY), for example, has been misdirecting her state’s legislators about what the law says.
I originally thought that Senator Collins (R-ME) was confused about REAL ID. Her state was the first to pass legislation rejecting REAL ID, so you would think she would not try to help force states to implement a national ID. But it now is quite clear that Senator Collins (R-DHS) supports REAL ID.
But I can – to be the first to link to Mike Masnick’s very interesting post on the “can’t compete with free” meme.
It seems like a genuine problem content producers have, competing with those who would share content without regard to copyright law. But Mike points out that they have the same problem as the producer of any good. Competition drives their profits to zero, forcing them to innovate, which content producers seem reluctant to do.
In the comments, Mike is defending himself against some meritorious challenges, though. The marginal cost of distributing intellectual goods may be (effectively) nothing, but the marginal cost of the goods themselves is something above that. Content producers are looking at competion from those who would offer the same products at below marginal cost.
Phil Windley points to an interesting site called HowManyOfMe.com that shows the inutility of names for distingushing among people (when there are lots of them).
I was struck when visiting it, though, that the site requires users to declare their age. The reason? The Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.
COPPA is one of my favorite superfluous laws. It starts from the premise that parents can’t or shouldn’t be responsible for their children’s online experiences, and it has probably diminished the availability of educational content online for children, particularly children on the margins.
The COPPA declaration on this site illustrates well how dumb regulation gums up the Internet (and other media too). Someone with an interesting idea had to spend a bunch of extra time on his or her project to put it in compliance with a federal law (that I think probably doesn’t actually apply in this case). And just as importantly, millions of people will have to click an extra couple of clicks (I had to go back and do the age declaration) just to get a couple of interesting tidbits of info.
Take these modest inconveniences and multiply them by thousands of Web sites, then by millions or billions of clicks. Then, consider that two or three such gummy inconveniences are added to the burdens Web businesses carry every year. You start to realize that fresh, invigorating ideas and entertainments we could be enjoying are being slowly but surely sapped of energy and vigor. All so the government can do stuff like insinuate itself into the rearing of children.
Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has posted two videos relating to the iPhone. The first is an interview with Steve Ballmer that gives good insight into the state of competition in the device market. Ballmer scoffs at the iPhone’s high price point (and lack of current availability), while conceding that MSFT is behind in MP3 players. The second video, though, shows just why the iPhone is likely to do well. It may be high-priced, but it has incredible capabilities. Do check it out.
14. Plaintiffs allege and are prepared to show proof that, at all times relevant to the claims alleged herein, said parents were variously too busy, preoccupied, or self-absorbed to attend to their ordinary parenting duties. Alternatively and additionally, the willfullness and independence of their victim children was intimidating and exhausting, for which reason responsibility for defending and guarding the interests of said victims shifted to defendant MySpace.
Here‘s Harper on PFF on Net Neutrality in Regulation magazine.
My review of the Progress & Freedom Foundation book Net Neutrality or Net Neutering: Should Broadband Services be Regulated (which starts on page 5 of the PDF) takes a sort of “pox on both your houses” approach while concluding that the opponents of public utility regulation for broadand have the better argument.
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.