When the Institute for Policy Innovation published a study purporting to show the harms of movie piracy to the United States economy, I wrote a post critiquing it that was unnecessarily vituperative. After further reflection, I posted a follow-up post apologizing for the tone of that post. IPI president Tom Giovanetti apparently didn’t find my apology adequate, because he sent letters to the president and several board members of the Show-Me Institute, where I was employed at the time, seeking to have me reprimanded. Thankfully, they didn’t consider my post to be a firing offense.
I’d like to avoid repeating that experience, so I’m going to be a lot more polite in my analysis of IPI’s latest study, this one on music piracy. Unfortunately, the new paper exhibits the same methodological defects as the previous study, and introduces some new problems as well. The gory details are below the fold.
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A great Hayek quote from Law, Legislation, and Liberty:
The understanding that “good fences make good neighbours”, that is, that men can use their own knowledge in the pursuit of their own ends without colliding with each other only if clear boundaries can be drawn between their respective domains of free action, is the basis on which all known civilisation has grown. Property, in the wide sense in which it is used to include not only material things, but (as John Locke defined it) the “life, liberty and estates” of every individual, is the only solution men have yet discovered to the problem of reconciling individual freedom with the absence of conflict. Law, liberty, and property are an inseparable trinity. There can be no law in the sense of universal rules of conduct which does not determine boundaries of the domains of freedom by laying down rules that enable each to ascertain where he is free to act. (Hayek 1973, 1:107)
Property rights are essential to a free society. But “property rights” without clear boundaries aren’t property rights at all, they’re an affront to the rule of law.
One of the things I love about the geek community is that they’re absolutely fanatical about civil liberties. Take my new story at Ars about Mike McConnell’s ham-fisted demagoguery:
McConnell charged that as a result of press reports and Congressional debates regarding surveillance activities, “some Americans are going to die.” That’s because disclosures about surveillance activities will tip off terrorists to the existence of American surveillance programs and prompt them to use alternate communication methods, making it more difficult for the authorities to stop terrorist attacks before they occur.
This annoyed me enough that I took the liberty of editorializing in the very next paragraph:
McConnell didn’t elaborate on which specific revelations undermined anti-terrorism efforts. It can hardly have been a surprise to Al Qaeda that the U.S. government was spying on them or that they were using American voice and data networks to do it. Still, fear of terrorism is a potent force in American politics, and so McConnell’s charges, however dubious, may persuade some members of Congress to support the administration’s position.
But Ars readers, who were almost unanimous in their reactions, had a had some much better retorts. This one is my favorite:
Thousands of Americans already did die to secure us in our persons, houses, papers and effects. McConnell is pissing on their graves.
If only the general public had that kind of moral clarity! I think I’ve linked to this before, but Paul Graham’s essay on hackers offers a theory about why geeks get so excited about civil liberties issues.
Tim Wu announces AltLaw, a search engine for legal decisions. This is a fantastic idea. I wonder why Google hasn’t jumped on it yet. The case coverage is still somewhat limited—Supreme Court decisions only go back to 1991—but it’s an excellent start, and I imagine they’ll be adding additional cases over time.
Over at the American, I’ve got a new piece up on the First Sale Doctrine, shrinkwrap licenses, and EFF’s new “promo CD” case. My favorite part was the part I didn’t write:
“Frankly, UMG’s argument reminds me of the one made by the goblin banker in the latest Harry Potter book—that somehow everything made by UMG remains their property forever, even after it is sold or given away,” von Lohmann says. “As readers of the book will recall, that’s not how the law works, not even in the fantasy world of J. K. Rowling.”
Charter and I have this game we play. About once a year, they raise the rate for my broadband connection to something ridiculous like $53.99/month. I then call them up, pretend I want to cancel, and they offer me a “special offer” that allows me to pay something more reasonable, like $29.99/month, “for a limited time” or in exchange for a 1-year contract.
Last time I did this, the process was relatively quick and painless. After some hemming and hawing, the customer service representative took my information over the phone and that was that. This year, however, Charter has figured out that there’s this thing called “the Internet.” So when I called up my friendly Charter customer service representative, she informed me that I would need to sign up for a special offer through the website. Great! I thought. I picked the package I wanted, entered my information, clicked “Order,” and up popped a small window labeled “Charter Live Chat.” (“One more step!” it said, rather optimistically)
Charter doesn’t appear to have jumped on the Web 2.0 bandwagon, as the chat window worked by means of a frame that refreshed every few seconds, creating an annoying flicker. It was also extremely slow–after I typed a message, it would take more than a minute for the lady at the other end to respond. And she didn’t appear to have any of the contact information I’d just entered. In fact, after about 10 minutes of sitting around waiting for her to get back to me, she informed me that she was unable to access my account, and I’d have to call to get the account changed.
I’m at a loss to explain what Charter is trying to accomplish with this whole Internet-based ordering process. It doesn’t seem like it would cut down on labor costs much. And it’s certainly not any faster or more convenient for the customer. Maybe they’re hoping that if they make the process as cumbersome as possible, I’ll give up and pay their inflated prices without a fuss?
Nate Anderson at Ars reports that Wal-Mart is jumping on the no-DRM bandwagon:
DRM isn’t yet dead in the music business, but it has a nasty, hacking cough. Wal-Mart is the latest company to ditch the DRM in an attempt to crack the coveted iPod market, which for years has been out of reach. The company announced this morning that it has embraced high-bitrate MP3s from Universal and EMI (iTunes only has DRM-free files from EMI, not from Universal), and it promises to continually expand its offerings.
Wal-Mart has actually run a download store for years, selling DRM-encumbered WMA files at $0.88 a pop. They couldn’t play on either the iPod or the Zune, but at least they were cheap!
Now that the DRM shackles are loosening, Wal-Mart can offer a store with at least a chance of attracting customers. As a sign of how badly Wal-Mart want to attract iPod users, the music store doesn’t list tracks as being DRM-free, but as being ready to “play on the iPod.”
Because neither Warner nor Sony BMG are yet licensing their catalogs without DRM, many of the tracks at the store are still DRM-encumbered WMA files—it’s a confusing situation and a huge drawback if the company wants iPod users to shop there. Most users don’t think in terms of what record label their favorite artists appear on, so finding music for download can be a hit-and-miss affair. Still, there’s not much that Wal-Mart can do except try to compete on price with its current selection of tracks and stress the fact that it has MP3s from Universal as well.
At this point, it’s only a matter of time before Warner and Sony BMG follow suit. Wal-Mart customers are not going to be happy about a situation in which half the music on offer plays on an iPod and the other half doesn’t. And when customers complain, Wal-Mart is likely to point the finger straight at the labels and say “we’d love to sell you unencumbered songs, but they won’t let us.” Warner and Sony will be leaving money on the table if they continue to sell their songs in crippled formats.
Kudos for Google for making amends for the bone-headed way Google decided to shut down its ill-fated video store. Customers will now be able to watch videos for another six months, and for every dollar they spent at the video store, they’ll get a dollar of Google Checkout credit and a dollar of cash. Google sure is sorry.
But here’s what I don’t get: why doesn’t Google just keep its DRM servers running? I don’t know exactly how they work, but it can’t possibly cost more to keep them running than to provide refunds to everyone who’s ever purchased from the store.
I hope this serves as a cautionary tale for other firms considering whether to introduce DRMed or non-DRMed content offerings: the DRM isn’t just a pain in the ass for the customer, it can be a pain in the ass for the vendor as well. Had Google heeded Mike’s advice and sold videos in an open format from the beginning, they wouldn’t be having these problems now, because files in open formats don’t require magical authentication servers to continue playing.
Yglesias points to yet another silly TSA rule: extra scrutiny for people wearing headgear. He’s not impressed:
People tend to forget this, but pre-9/11, American airplanes were almost never hijacked. Since 9/11, we’ve re-enforced cockpit doors, which would have been sufficient to foil the 9/11 plot. We’ve also gotten more careful about handing out silverware that can be used as a weapon, which would have been sufficient to foil the 9/11 plot, and about letting people take knives on planes more generally. What’s more, passengers now know that they should resist hijacking attempts. The three successful 9/11 hijackings succeeded because up until that day passengers were told not to attempt to resist hijackers. The one time passengers did resist, their resistance was successful.
At this point, you’ve got to figure that even without all this crap about taking your shoes off and not carrying liquids on the plane, that airplanes have become relatively unattractive targets for terrorists. You could blow up a train or a bus, open fire on a crowded subway station, try to hijack a truck carrying deadly chemicals, or do any number of additional things. Endlessly piling on more and more security measures to air travel is pointless, especially when you consider how much safer it is to travel by plane than by car in terms of accidents.
Well said.
That didn’t take long. People have apparently developed a robust and user-friendly way to install third-party applications on your iPhone. Awesome.
And it’s already got Doom, albeit without controls.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.