Congress freed up much-needed electromagnetic spectrum for mobile communications services Friday (H.R. 3630), but it set the stage for years of wasteful lobbying and litigating over whether regulators should be allowed to pick winners and losers among mobile service providers.
The wireless industry has thrived in the near absence of any regulation since 1993. But lately the Federal Communications Commission has been hard at work attempting to change that.
A leaked staff report in December helped sink AT&T’s attempted acquisition of T-Mobile. And the commission has taken the extraordinary step of requesting public comments on an agreement between Comcast and Verizon Wireless to jointly market their respective cable TV, voice and Internet services, beginning in Portland and Seattle. Nothing in the Communications Act prohibits cable operators and mobile phone service providers from jointly marketing their products.
FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski objected to a previous version of the spectrum bill which, among other things, would have prohibited the commission from manipulating spectrum auctions for the benefit of preferred entities. The limitation was removed, and Sec. 6404 provides that nothing in the legislation “affects any authority the Commission has to adopt and enforce rules of general applicability, including rules concerning spectrum aggregation that promote competition.
Continue reading →
Folks, I wanted to bring your attention to this conference on Feb. 24 from the Information Economy Project at George Mason University. The pitch:
The assembly line of our knowledge-based economy begins with technology discovery and ends with the moving target of a consumer market. Connectivity is funded and rewarded through exchanges of time, money, and digital goods. The conversation in this conference will identify key priorities in technology policy for innovation, network investment, and content delivery models. Articles will be published in a special issue of the Journal of Law, Economics & Policy.
See the website for speakers, schedule, and RSVP info.
I honestly don’t know. I haven’t been following his work, and, by saying I don’t know, I don’t imply that he didn’t achieve anything. But it’s utterly unclear from this interview with Nancy Scola what he achieved as chief technology officer in the Obama Administration the last few years.
I was piqued by the amusing—almost comical—claims to specificity he makes, right from the outset:
What is the elevator pitch on what you’ve been doing since you were named Chief Technology Officer of the United States?
What I do is advance the president’s innovation agenda by incorporating his bottom-up theory of change. To be very specific about it, I execute the president’s innovation strategy in a manner that taps into the expertise of the American people to solve big problems.
There is nothing specific about, “I execute the president’s innovation strategy in a manner that taps into the expertise of the American people to solve big problems.” If you were to look up “vague” in the dictionary, that sentence would illustrate the first definition of the word.
Ever notice how people say, “I don’t mean to interrupt,” when they are interrupting? How they say, “to make a long story short,” when it’s already too late? Chopra says he’s going to be specific as he heads into empty generalities. Further along in the interview , he talks about his role and his involvement, which would be interesting meta-information if it set the stage for describing accomplishment.
So the question stands: What things happened under Aneesh Chopra that wouldn’t have happened in his absence?
Caveats: Aneesh Chopra seems like a nice guy. I don’t doubt his sincerity or intention to have done good things. I don’t think he’s unique among bureaucrats in not having identifiable achievements. I am open to learning what he did achieve. He just hasn’t explained it himself.
This line of questioning also may seem disrespectful. Chopra has acted as a public servant the last few years and deserves credit for that, some would argue. But I disagree that the claim to “public service” should act as insulation against being held to account for performance. What did Aneesh Chopra achieve?
From Cato’s “Job Opportunities” page:
Policy Analyst, Telecommunications and Internet Governance
The Cato Institute seeks a policy analyst to work on telecommunications and Internet governance issues. The suitable candidate will have several years of work experience in the field of telecommunications and Internet law and policy. An advanced degree in law or economics is preferred
Sought-after qualifications include: familiarity with or practice before the Federal Communications Commission; familiarity with the technical and governance bodies of the Internet; familiarity with and/or work experience on Capitol Hill; a solid background in the First Amendment and other civil liberties; familiarity with classical liberal history and scholarship; strong analytical reasoning skills; the ability to simplify complex issues in oral and written communications; and good interpersonal skills. Responsibilities include monitoring developments in government regulation and oversight of telecommunications and Internet governance at all governmental levels; researching and writing on these topics in all formats (research papers, policy briefs, editorials, blogposts, etc.); and public speaking. Candidates must support Cato’s mission of promoting individual liberty, free markets and limited government.
Information on how to apply here.
My latest weekly Forbes column asks, “Why Do We Always Sell the Next Generation Short?” and it explores the dynamics that lead many parents and policymakers to perpetually write off younger generations. As the late journalism professor Margaret A. Blanchard once observed: “[P]arents and grandparents who lead the efforts to cleanse today’s society seem to forget that they survived alleged attacks on their morals by different media when they were children. Each generation’s adults either lose faith in the ability of their young people to do the same or they become convinced that the dangers facing the new generation are much more substantial than the ones they faced as children.”
What explains this phenomenon? In my essay, I argue that it comes down to a combination of “juvenoia” and hyper-nostalgia. University of New Hampshire sociologist David Finkelhor defines juvenoia as “exaggerated anxiety about the influence of social change on children and youth.” Once you combine such panicky juvenoia about new media and youth culture with a nostalgic view of the past that says the “good ‘ol days” are behind us, you get the common generational claim that the current good-for-nothing generation and their new-fangled gadgets and culture are steering us straight into the moral abyss.
Instead of panic and hyper-pessimism, I believe that the more sensible approach approach is patient parental engagement and mentoring. I argue that “quite often, the best approach to learning more about our children’s culture is to immerse ourselves in it. Should we worry about the content found in some games, music, or videos? Perhaps we should. Sitting down and consuming that content with our kids and talking to them about it might be the best way to better understand their culture and then mentor them accordingly.”
Anyway, read my entire essay over at Forbes. And, on a related note, I highly recommend this new piece by Perri Klass, M.D. in The New York Times: “Seeing Social Media as Adolescent Portal More Than Pitfall.” It adopts a similar approach.
[Cross posted from Huffington Post]
Does the First Amendment allow the FCC to censor “indecent” content like the occasional curse word or a brief glimpse of a bare butt on broadcast TV? The Supreme Court hears arguments on this question Tuesday in FCC v. Fox—the first time in more than 30 years the Court will squarely confront this constitutional question. The case stems from the use of “fleeting” expletives by Nicole Richie and Cher at the Billboard Music Awards Show nearly a decade ago, which prompted a draconian crackdown on broadcasters by the Bush FCC in 2004.
Our five organizations—which differ widely on many issues—have filed a joint amicus brief urging the Court to recognize that the Constitution demands an end to FCC censorship of television, given the fundamental transformation of the media landscape. In its 1978 FCC v. Pacifica decision, the Court gave broadcasting less protection than other media (like newspapers) because it was both “pervasive” in American culture and “invasive”—an “intruder” in the home from which parents were powerless to protect their children. But that rationale long ago disintegrated.
When a federal appellate court struck down the FCC’s indecency rules last year, it hit the nail on the head: “we face a media landscape that would have been almost unrecognizable in 1978.” Back then, nearly all Americans relied on broadcasting to deliver a limited range of video media to their homes. Today, only 8 to 15% percent of American households rely on over-the-air broadcasting, with the majority subscribing to cable or satellite service. More and more Americans are getting video content online from Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and countless other sites. These services are not “intruders” in the home, but invited guests. Continue reading →
I enjoyed this new piece by Matt Welch over at Reason about the uses and abuses of the “if we can put a man on the moon” metaphor. “There’s no escaping the moonshot in contemporary political discourse,” Welch notes. Indeed, in the field of technology policy, we hear the old “if we can put a man on the moon, then we can [fill in the blank]… ” line with increasing regularity.
For example, just a few years ago, in the midst of the social networking “predator panic,” several state Attorneys General, led by Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, pushed aggressively for a mandatory online age verification scheme. At several points during the debate, Blumenthal, now a U.S. Senator, argued that “The technology is available. The solution is financially feasible, practically doable. If we can put a man on the moon, we can check ages of people on these Web sites,” he claimed. Of course, just saying so doesn’t make it true. As I noted in a big paper on the issue, online age verification is extremely complicated, likely even impossible, and history has shown that no technological control is foolproof. Moreover, attempts to impose authentication and identification schemes would have numerous trade-offs and unintended consequences, especially for online anonymity, privacy, and free speech. A subsequent report by the Harvard-based blue ribbon Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF) showed why that was the case. Continue reading →
A Politician Reacting to an Attack Ad
I’ve never understood why so many people whine about “negative attack ads” during political campaign season. To me, attack ads are just about the only interesting thing that comes out of the early campaign / caucus period. Attack ads are usually chock-full of useful information about candidates and their positions and they typically provoke or even demand a response from the politician being attacked. They also attract increased media scrutiny and broader societal deliberation about a candidate and his or her views.
More importantly, these attack ads and the responses they provoke are far, far more substantive than the typical campaign ad puffery we see and hear. Most campaign ads are packed with absurd banalities ensuring us that the candidate running the ad loves their spouse, children, country, and God. Well, of course they do! Enough of that silly crap. It’s meaningless drivel. Give us more attack ads, I say! They are a healthy part of deliberative democracy and our free speech tradition.
Anyway, political scientist John G. Geer has made a far more eloquent case for attack ads and documented their use and importance throughout American history in his book, In Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns. Here’s the link to a Cato event featuring him and an excerpt from the event is embedded below. Continue reading →
As 2011 winds down, I thought I’d list a few year-end analytics for The Technology Liberation Front blog. In 2011, we had just under 400,000 visits from 332,000 unique visitors. That’s up from 312,000 visits and 247,000 unique visitors in 2010.If you prefer a pageviews metric then we had 514,000 pageviews and 444,000 unique pageviews in 2011, up from 420,000 and 361,000 respectively in 2010.
As far as the top posts of the year go, anything Bitcoin related proved to be link-bait magic with 4 of the top 10 posts (all by Jerry Brito) being about Bitcoin. But it was Ryan Radia’s post on how to protect your privacy on Facebook and the Net more generally that commanded the most hits in 2011 with almost 35,000 views. Congrats Ryan! Anyway, the year’s Top 10 list follows below and many thanks to all those who took the time to visit the TLF over the past year.
- #1) Privacy Solutions: How to Block Facebook’s “Like” Button And Other Social Widgets (Ryan Radia, May 20) – 34,913 views
- #2) Bitcoin, Silk Road, and Lulzsec oh my! (Jerry Brito, June 12) – 8,312 views
- #3) Terrific Visualization of Digital Information Explosion (Adam Thierer, Feb 11) – 7,236 views
- #4) Revisiting the Bitcoin Bubble (Jerry Brito, April 25) – 4,874 views
- #5) Surveillance, San Francisco-Style (Jim Harper, April 6) – 4,555 views
- #6) Bitcoin, intermediaries, and information control (Jerry Brito, April 20) – 3,362 views
- #7) 3D Printing: The Future is Here (Adam Marcus, June 10) – 2,953 views
- #8) Bitcoin: Imagine a net without intermediaries (Jerry Brito, April 16) – 2,750 views
- #9) Book Review: The Net Delusion by Evgeny Morozov (Adam Thierer, Jan. 4) – 2,606 views
- #10) A Response to Andrew McLaughlin on Net Neutrality & “Freedom” (Adam Thierer, July 9) 2,298 views
ICANN’s plan to open up the domain name space to new top level domains is scheduled to begin January 12, 2012. This long overdue implementation is the result of an open process that began in 2006. It would, in fact, be more realistic to say that the decision has been in the works 15 years; i.e., since early 1997. That is when demand for new top-level domain names, and the need for other policy decisions regarding the coordination of the domain name system, made it clear that a new institutional framework had to be created. ICANN was the progressive and innovative U.S. response to that need. It was created to become a nongovernmental, independent, truly global and representative policy development authority.
The result has been far from perfect, but human institutions never are. Over the past 15 years, every stakeholder with a serious interest in the issue of top level domains has had multiple opportunities to make their voice heard and to shape the policy. The resulting new gTLD policy reflects that diversity and complexity. From our point of view, it is too regulatory, too costly, and makes too many concessions to content regulators and trademark holders. But it will only get worse with delay. The existing compromise output that came out of the process paves the way for movement forward after a long period of artificial scarcity, opening up new business opportunities.
Now there is a cynical, illegitimate last-second push by a few corporate interests in the United States to derail that process. Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.