Paul Kouroupas, a lobbyist for Global Crossing, makes a good point about network neutrality:
Why would government agencies that have historically shown a preference for the incumbent interest over the public interest all of the sudden get it right with net neutrality? Isn’t it more likely that these agencies will favor the incumbent interests when they adopt regulations implementing a vague Congressional statute? (And you know it is going to be vague because it has to be the subject of compromise in order to garner enough votes.) And won’t this lead to protracted litigation before several layers of federal courts? And don’t the Bell Companies hold the advantage in resources for this sort of war of attrition? After all, AT&T has the legal, regulatory, and political resources of the former SBC, Pacific Bell, Ameritech, SNET, AT&T and BellSouth. For those of us who remember the CLEC wars of the 1990s, any one of these former companies was a formidable foe. Now all of those resources sit under the control of one company! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out how this movie ends.
Obviously, anything a lobbyist says should be taken with a grain of salt. An interesting question is how one would apply Matt Yglesias’s “vulgar Marxist” method of political analysis to GC’s stance. In a nutshell, Matt’s theory (which he expands on here) is that when we’re unsure about the details of a complex policy issue, we should line up with the companies whose interests are most likely to be aligned with our own.
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Cass Sunstein riffs on one of my favorite themes:
Developing one of the most important ideas of the 20th century, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek attacked socialist planning on the grounds that no planner could possibly obtain the “dispersed bits” of information held by individual members of society. Hayek insisted that the knowledge of individuals, taken as a whole, is far greater than that of any commission or board, however diligent and expert. The magic of the system of prices and of economic markets is that they incorporate a great deal of diffuse knowledge.
Wikipedia’s entries are not exactly prices, but they do aggregate the widely dispersed information of countless volunteer writers and editors. In this respect, Wikipedia is merely one of many experiments in aggregating knowledge and creativity, that have been made possible by new technologies.
I’ve previously covered Tim Wu’s excellent paper making a similar point in greater depth.
EFF linked to this summary of Microsoft v. AT&T which, unfortunately, completely misunderstands the thrust of the case:
AT&T’s position is that its speech recognition software is protected by US patent, on the grounds that it constitutes a “component of a patented invention.” Microsoft was apparently granted license to utilize that software in the US, but AT&T contends that the duplication of that software outside of US boundaries, with the intent to sell the duplicates overseas, is a violation of that license. That view was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeals, and Microsoft is appealing that decision…
Olson built a case against AT&T’s position: For foreign replication to work, a golden disk is shipped abroad to the replication service, containing the master of the Vista operating system that includes AT&T’s drivers. It’s not software at that point, Olson says, because no one can execute it. When it’s installed onto a hard drive, then it becomes software, and it’s the end customer who does that.
If you accept that argument, Olson’s case goes on, then Microsoft did not copy AT&T’s software. And since the physical components – the hard drive, processor, and optical drive – necessary for the copying process to happen may or may not have been supplied by manufacturers in the US, then US courts may not have jurisdiction anyway.
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Last Friday’s Cato Podcast was about the free Kareem movement, a campaign to secure the release of a young Egyptian blogger who was jailed for four years for the crime of criticizing Islam, his school, and the Egyptian authorities:
The Free Kareem Coalition is an interfaith alliance of young bloggers and college students committed to the principles of freedom of thought and freedom of speech.
This campaign is our way of fighting to further the cause of brave people who continue to practice their right to freedom of expression even when such rights are not recognized. The creators and main supporters of the Free Kareem Coalition are Muslim, and we are doing this despite what Kareem said about our religion. Free speech doesn’t mean “speech that you approve of.” It includes criticism.
You may be disgusted at what he said, even angered. That’s okay, so are we! But we will defend with all our might his right to express such opinions, because it is his basic, inalienable human right.
Kareem is a writer who always found the courage within him to keep speaking his mind freely in the name of not only freedom of speech, but the freedom to think in an otherwise sheltered society. Because of that, he has been sentenced to four years in prison. We stand by and fully support Kareem through these difficult times and will continue working on this campaign until he is freed.
A worthy cause. Click over to find out what you can do to help.
Via Richard Bennett, Wonkette reports the following depressing statistics about the newspaper industry:
Net income plunged 6.7%.
Classified advertising dropped 22%.
Overall ad revenue is down 8%.
Circulation is down 2.9% — except for Sunday, which is down 3.2%.
Operating income in the publishing division fell by 24%.
Craigslist’s CEO says this is because U.S. newspapers just plain suck.
There are a number of ways you might interpret these figures. Richard thinks, bizarrely, that the problem is “parasitic web sites” like Craig’s List [Update: Richard says that he was talking about news aggregators, although he didn’t mention those in his original comment]. Craig’s List’s CEO, on the other hand, thinks it’s the newspapers’ fault:
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I’ve got a lengthy analysis of Rick Boucher’s latest copyright reform legislation. Despite being titled the “FAIR USE Act,” and despite the fact that Boucher’s press release focuses on the harms of the DMCA, the bill itself would do little or nothing to remedy the problems created by the DMCA:
If Boucher’s legislation passed, a film studies professor would be permitted to use software such as Handbrake to circumvent the copy protection on DVDs and create an audiovisual presentation featuring scenes from various movies. However, developing or distributing Handbrake in the United States would still be a crime.
Obviously, as a practical matter, that college professor already has the ability to use Handbrake without any real fear of prosecution. The MPAA knows that prosecuting a college professor for showing videos in his class would be a PR disaster. The problem is that, unlike previous versions of the legislation, Boucher’s new bill offers no legal protections for the developers of software like Handbrake. As a result, the tools required to exercise fair use are difficult to find, not as user-friendly as they could be, and not supported by major software companies like Apple and Microsoft. Perhaps worst of all, the law makes it impossible for legitimate software firms (in the United States, at least) to develop new software to make innovative uses of content obtained from DVDs, iTunes, or other DRM-encumbered formats. In the 1990s, software companies developed MP3 software that revolutionized music over the objections of the recording industry. An entrepreneur wanting to do the same thing for DVDs would run afoul of the law–and Boucher’s legislation would do nothing to change that.
Needless to say, this is disheartening to those of us who see DMCA reform as a high priority. Granted, Boucher’s bill didn’t go anywhere in previous sessions of Congress, and would likely have been a long shot again this session. But it was still nice to at least have somebody in Congress carrying the torch. Now, it doesn’t look like anyone will introduce meaningful DMCA reform in this session of Congress.
What’s going on here? Read the rest of the article for my take on Boucher’s apparent change of priorities.
Jed Harris has a fantastic post about how peer production introduces a fissure between capitalists and entrepreneurs:
Before widespread peer production, the entrepreneur’s and capitalist’s definitions of success were typically congruent, because growing a business required capital, and gaining access to capital required providing a competitive return. So classical profit was usually required to build a self-sustaining business entity.
The change that enables widespread peer production is that today, an entity can become self-sustaining, and even grow explosively, with very small amounts of capital. As a result it doesn’t need to trade ownership for capital, and so it doesn’t need to provide any return on investment.
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Over at Ars, Jon Stokes has a story on the debate over allowing more high-skilled immigrants into the country:
In an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates argues yet again in favor of raising the cap on H1-B foreign worker visas from its present number of 65,000. Gates’ basic argument boils down to this: fewer students at American universities are opting for computer science degrees, which means that we need to raise the H1-B cap so that the software industry can import more foreign labor to fill those jobs that Americans–for whatever reason–don’t seem to be equipped for.
Of course, the fact that the importation of cheap foreign labor into the software industry job market hampers American programmers’ ability to compete and leads to depressed wages overall is never mentioned by Gates as a major reason why a computer science degree just isn’t that attractive any more to Americans. Who wants to spend four or five years getting a CS degree, only to be priced out of the job market by foreign programmers who are willing to work for less in exchange for a green card?
The rest of his article is about whether Bill Gates has been making misleading statements about how much Microsoft pays its immigrant employees. I don’t have anything to add to that debate, but I think the argument that Stokes makes above reflects a basic economic fallacy.
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People seem to be not very good at tooting their own horns around here, so I just wanted to note that Adam was prominently quoted in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal editorial $ on the XM-Sirius issue:
Beltway critics of the deal see a media monopolist around every corner, scheming to limit the public’s access to content. And it’s true that the merger would create a lone satellite radio company. But a pure monopoly is one that exists in a market where there are no close substitutes. By contrast, a combined Sirius-XM would have to compete not only with free broadcast radio but also with MP3 players, online radio and even music channels offered by cable providers.
Heaven only knows what the cellular companies will bring to the party. They’re already gearing up to provide more video options, but there’s nothing stopping Verizon or Cingular from coming up with a device that includes a couple of dozen radio stations to compete with satellite.
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Harold Feld has a long screed accusing “the Libertarian/anti-dereg crowd” (which I assume includes us, although I kind of thought we were the pro-dereg crowd) of failing to be suitably awestruck by the awesome power of regulations to improve consumer welfare.
I think it’s quite fitting that he invokes “the New Deal-type ideal of using regulatory power,” because he clearly hasn’t learned anything since the New Deal. Not, for example, the lesson of the ICC, which corporate shill Ralph Nader attacked in 1970 for operating a cozy transportation cartel at the expense of consumers. Nor the lesson of the CAB which that notorious right-winger Jimmy Carter (and a Democratic Congress) abolished in 1978. Nor, I suppose, the way that the broadcasters’ cartel has used its power with the FCC to enrich itself at the expense of competitors and consumers.
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