Miscellaneous

Follow the TLF and TLFers on Twitter!

by Adam Thierer on August 21, 2009 · 6 comments

As we’ve noted here before, there are many ways to follow the TLF. [Did you notice those cool icons over on the upper right-hand side of the page?] But we wanted to make sure that our readers were aware of our Twitter feed, in particular, as well as the individual feeds of some of our contributors. So, in case you are interested, here ya go!

TLF main feed: http://twitter.com/TechLiberation
Jerry Brito: http://twitter.com/jerrybrito
Cord Blomquist: http://twitter.com/cordblomquist
PJ Doland: http://twitter.com/pjdoland
Adam Thierer: http://twitter.com/AdamThierer
Berin Szoka: http://twitter.com/BerinSzoka
Braden Cox: http://twitter.com/BradenCox
Wayne Crews: http://twitter.com/wayne_crews
Sonia Arrison: http://twitter.com/SoniaArrison
Hance Haney: http://twitter.com/hance_haney
Bret Swanson: http://twitter.com/JBSay

6 comments

Legacy Regulation Killed Google Voice

by Hance Haney on August 19, 2009 · 21 comments

Reacting to Apple’s decision to not allow Google Voice for the iPhone, Wall Street Journal guest columnist Andy Kessler complains,

It wouldn’t be so bad if we were just overpaying for our mobile plans. Americans are used to that—see mail, milk and medicine. But it’s inexcusable that new, feature-rich and productive applications like Google Voice are being held back, just to prop up AT&T while we wait for it to transition away from its legacy of voice communications. How many productive apps beyond Google Voice are waiting in the wings?

So Kessler proposes a “national data plan.”

Before we get to that, Kessler complains that margins in AT&T’s cellphone unit are an “embarrassingly” high 25%. He doesn’t point out that AT&T’s combined profit margin — taking into account all products and services — is only 9.66%.

AT&T is actually earning less now than it was legally entitled to earn when fully regulated — 9.66% versus 11.75%.

Don’t fall for the myth that AT&T killed Google Voice.

The truth is regulators are quietly expropriating wireless profits to hold prices for regulated services like plain old telephone service artificially low. Continue reading →

21 comments

What Obama could learn from the “unmanned revolution”

by Sonia Arrison on August 14, 2009 · 10 comments

“We’re at the beginning of an unmanned revolution.” That’s what Gary Kessler, who oversees unmanned aviation programs for the US Navy and Marines, told the AFP.

According to the article, “Robots or “unmanned systems” are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps and firing lethal missiles without putting US soldiers at risk.” This revolution is at hand because saving the lives of soldiers is very popular, which also happens to be part of a meme that is blocking President Obama’s health care plans.

That is, Americans expect technology to help save lives, even those that are in the most danger (hello robot drones). Any move to limit the use of technology to save lives (i.e., denying high tech care to those deemed “too sick or too old”) is guaranteed to hit resistance.

10 comments

I Will Read Digital Books When They Get This Cool

by Adam Thierer on July 21, 2009 · 4 comments

Hat tip: siliconANGLE

4 comments

Mill’s On Liberty at 150: Its Legacy for Freedom of Speech & Expression

by Adam Thierer on July 10, 2009 · 16 comments

John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty turns 150 this year. Published in 1859, this slender manifesto for human liberty went on to become a classic of modern philosophy and political science. It remains a beautiful articulation of the core principles of human liberty and a just society.

Anyone familiar with the book recognizes the importance of the opening chapter and Mill’s “one very simple principle” for “the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion”:

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him, must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

Mill went on to outline “the appropriate region of human liberty,” and divided it into:

“liberty of conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty of expressing and publishing opinions may seem to fall under a different principle, since it belongs to that part of the conduct of an individual which concerns other people; but, being almost of as much importance as the liberty of thought itself, and resting in great part on the same reasons, is practically inseparable from it.”
“liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan of our life to suit our own character; of doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow: without impediment from our fellow-creatures, so long as what we do does not harm them, even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong”
“freedom to unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others”

Bringing it altogether, he argued:

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves, than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.

To this day, I do not believe there has been a more eloquent or concise summation of the central principles of libertarianism than those passages from Chapter 1 of the book. But what many fail to remember or appreciate is the equally powerful second chapter of Mill’s treatise, “On the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.” It was a bold defense of freedom of speech and expression that was many decades ahead of its time. And it still has lessons and warnings worth heeding in our modern Information Age.

Continue reading →

16 comments

YouTube, Power Laws & the Persistence of Media Inequality

by Adam Thierer on July 9, 2009 · 31 comments

“Liberty upsets patterns.” That was one of the many lessons that the late Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick taught us in his 1974 masterpiece “Anarchy, State, and Utopia.” What Nozick meant was that there is a fundamental tension between liberty and egalitarianism such that when people are left to their own devices, some forms of inequality would be inevitable and persistent throughout society. (Correspondingly, any attempt to force patterns, or outcomes, upon society requires a surrender of liberty.)

No duh, right? Most people understand this today–even if some of them are all too happy to hand their rights over to the government in exchange for momentary security or some other promise. In the world of media policy, however, many people still labor under the illusion that liberty and patterned equality are somehow reconcilable. That is, some media policy utopians and Internet pollyannas would like us to believe that if you give every man, woman, and child a platform on which to speak, everyone will be equally heard. Moreover, in pursuit of that goal, some of them argue government should act to “upset patterns” and push to achieve more “balanced” media outcomes. That is the philosophy that has guided the “media access” movement for decades and it what fuels the “media reformista” movement that is led by groups like the (inappropriately named) Free Press, which was founded by neo-Marxist media theorist Robert McChesney.

Alas, perfect media equality remains an illusive pipe dream. As I have pointed out here before, there has never been anything close to “equal outcomes” when it comes to the distribution or relative success of books, magazines, music, movies, book sales, theater tickets, etc. A small handful of titles have always dominated, usually according to a classic “power law” or “80-20” distribution, with roughly 20% of the titles getting 80% of the traffic / revenue. And this trend is increasing, not decreasing, for newer and more “democratic” online media.

For example, recent research has revealed that “the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets” and “the top 15% of the most prolific [Wkipedia] editors account for 90% of Wikipedia’s edits.” As Clay Shirky taught us back in 2003 in this classic essay, the same has long held true for blogging, where outcomes are radically inegalitarian, with a tiny number of blogs getting the overwhelming volume of blogosphere attention. The reason, Shirky pointed out, is that:

Continue reading →

31 comments

Export Controls: Impediments to Tech Free Trade

by Alex Harris on June 18, 2009 · 19 comments

I’ve spent the past couple of months interning for a large Silicon Valley technology company doing export compliance work. The company I’m working for does an enormous amount of its business overseas. And it exports, well, technology products, many of which are controlled. Laws ostensibly designed to prevent terrorism and proliferation in fact control way more than weapons and chemicals – indeed, they regulate even extremely mundane goods like servers, software with encryption, and the technical data used to design and build such products.

As a result, it has to employ large numbers of people to comply with the US’s, the EU’s, and other countries’ export control regimes. The US’s is particularly complicated, with a long list of prohibitions, some which can be circumvented if an exporter gets a license and exceptions to the licensing requirement (based on the classification of the goods, the destination country, the end-user, and the end-use). In addition, there are lists of parties – companies, universities, and individuals – with whom no company can do business. Companies that provide lots of goods and services: hardware, software, courseware for training on the products, etc., have to screen those lists many times – when a customer buys a product, when she signs up for training, when a part is shipped from a manufacturer, etc. They also have to spend lots on classifying their products and devising schemes to ensure compliance at every step in their complicated supply and distribution chains. And, because of the US “deemed export” rule, they often cannot share information with their US-based engineers who are citizens of other countries (who were hard enough to obtain visas for in the first place!).

And, yet, the US system – with all its complexity – still requires less effort than some other countries’, which require a license to export every controlled good. That entails significant delay and processing costs. Unfortunately, too little attention has been paid to these costs on doing business internationally when passing feel-good “anti-terrorism” and “anti-proliferation” laws and regulations.

As Tim Lee points out, some of the more ridiculous encryption controls have finally gone away, but as technology advances, more and more products will fall into a category (which are often based on technical performance) that requires a license. So, as American products improve, the costs of sending them overseas increases! One would think politicians supposedly worried about the trade deficit would see this as counterproductive to their goals of increasing US exports and reducing imports… but that’s politics!

19 comments

For Real-Time News from Iran . . .

by Jim Harper on June 15, 2009 · 7 comments

. . . follow @persiankiwi.

7 comments

Many Ways to Follow the TLF!

by Adam Thierer on June 2, 2009 · 9 comments

This is just a quick reminder to both faithful and fair-weather readers that there are many ways to keep up with what we’re saying here at the Technology Liberation Front, including:

(1) RSS

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