Matt Yglesias gets through the TSA checkpoint with a Swiss Army Knife and the agents don’t bat an eye. But God help him if he tries to bring a can of shaving cream that’s more than 3 oz onto an airplane.
Miscellaneous 
Entrepreneurs rock! You wouldn’t guess it, though, to listen to rock music. (Marc Knopfler’s, Boom, Like That, says something about the founding and rise of McDonald’s, granted, but it hardly casts the enterprise in a very flattering light.) So in honor of entrepreneurs everywhere—but especially those in the board sports industries, whom I thank for making some very fun toys—I offer Sensible Khakis:
Like Take Up the Flame, which I coughed up on YouTube last week, Sensible Khakis’ license leaves you free to play it just for fun. You can find the chords and lyrics—including the law-geek verse, not included in the video above, about the choices entrepreneurs face between sole proprietorships, corporations, LLPs, and LLCs—here. Like the terms attached to Take Up the Flame, any commercial licensees of Sensible Khakis will have to pay a tithe to one of my favorite causes—this time, Surfrider Foundation. That is not a likely scenario, admittedly, but I figure that the thought counts for something.
[Crossposted at Agoraphilia and Technology Liberation Front.]
A few months ago, I penned a mega book review about the growing divide between “Internet optimists and pessimists.” I noted that the Internet optimists — people like Chris Anderson, Clay Shirky, Yochai Benkler, Kevin Kelly, and others — believe that the Internet is generally improving our culture, economy, and society for the better. They believe the Net has empowered and liberated the masses, sparked unparalleled human creativity and communication, provided greater personalization and customization of media content, and created greater diversity of thought and a more deliberative democracy. By contrast, the Internet pessimists — including Nick Carr, Andrew Keen, Lee Siegel, and others — argue that the Internet is destroying popular culture and professional media, calling “truth” and “authority” into question by over-glamorizing amateurism and user-generated content, and that increased personalization is damaging deliberative democracy by leading to homogenization, close-mindedness, and an online echo-chamber. Needless to say, it’s a very heated debate!
I am currently working on a greatly expanded version of my “Net optimists vs. pessimists” essay for a magazine in which I will draw out more of these distinctions and weigh the arguments made by those in both camps. I plan on concluding that article by arguing that the optimists generally have the better of the argument, but that the pessimists make some fair points about the downsides of the Net’s radically disintermediating role on culture and economy.
So, this got me thinking that I needed to come up with some sort of a label for my middle-of-the-road position as well as a statement of my personal beliefs. As far as labels go, I guess I would call myself a “pragmatic optimist” since I generally side with the optimists in most of these debates, but not without some occasional reservations. Specifically, I don’t always subscribe to the Pollyanna-ish, rose-colored view of the world that some optimists seem to adopt. But the outright Chicken Little-like Ludditism of some Internet pessimists is even more over-the-top at times. Anyway, what follows is my “Pragmatic (Internet) Optimist’s Creed” which better explains my views. (Again, read my old essay first for some context about the relevant battle lines in this intellectual war).
Over at Ars Technica, the final installment of my story on self-driving cars is up. This one focuses on the political and regulatory aspects of self-driving technologies. In particular, I offer three suggestions for the inevitable self-driving regulatory regime:
Three principles should govern the regulation of self-driving cars. First, it’s important to ensure that regulation be a complement to, rather than a substitute for, liability for accidents. Private firms will always have more information than government regulators about the safety of their products, and so the primary mechanism for ensuring car safety will always be manufacturers’ desires to avoid liability. Tort law gives carmakers an important, independent incentive to make safer cars. So while there may be good arguments for limiting liability, it would be a mistake to excuse regulated auto manufacturers from tort liability entirely.
Second, regulators should let industry take the lead in developing the basic software architecture of self-driving technologies. The last couple of decades have given us many examples of high-tech industries converging on well-designed technical standards. It should be sufficient for regulators to examine these standards after they have been developed, rather than trying to impose government-designed standards on the industry.
Finally, regulators need to bear in mind that too much regulation can be just as dangerous as too little. If self-driving cars will save lives, then delaying their introduction can kill just as many people as approving a dangerous car can. Therefore, it’s important that regulators focus narrowly on safety and that they don’t impose unrealistically high standards. If self-driving software can be shown to be at least as safe as the average human driver, it should be allowed on the road.
Meanwhile, Josephine Wolff at the Daily Princetonian was kind enough to quote me in an article about self-driving technologies. For the record, I was exaggerating a bit when I said “The only reasons there are pilots is because people feel safer with pilots.” Most aspects of flying can be done on autopilot, but I’m not sure we’re to the point where you could literally turn on the autopilot, close the cockpit door, and let the plane take you to the destination.
And if any TLF readers are in the Princeton area, I hope you’ll come to my talk on the future of self-driving technology, which will be a week from Thursday.
Finally, over at Techdirt, I’ve got the final installment of my series (1 2 3 4) on network neutrality regulation. I’ve got a new Cato Policy Analysis coming out later this week that will expand on many of the themes of those posts. Stay tuned.
The fight for freedom has seen brighter days, I grant. I think it will see still brighter days yet, though, if we can encourage another generation to join the cause. Towards that end, I wrote a song, “Take Up the Flame.”
As the song’s credits indicate, I’ve dedicated the song to my old friend and mentor, Walter E. Grinder—one of the many people who inspired me to take up “the flame.” I originally planned to debut the song at a conference planned by the West Coast chapter of the Students for Liberty, to be held at Stanford University in mid-November. I figured that Walter, who lives nearby, could hear the tune in person. That meeting got cancelled, alas. Not to be deterred, though, I’m now distributing the song virtually.
The song’s credits also indicate that I’ve released it under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License, and made the lyrics and chords freely available for downloading. It would delight me if somewhere, someday, “Take Up the Flame” helped to raise the spirits of young folks rallying for the Good Fight. (Although I don’t imagine anyone will find much reason to license the song commercially, I’ve also stipulated that any such licensee must agree to tithe a portion of the proceeds—10% of income, traditionally—to the Institute for Humane Studies, an organization that has long taught students about liberty.) Sing it loudly and proudly, friends of freedom!
[Crossposted at Agoraphilia and Technology Liberation Front.]
WASHINGTON – November 4 /TLF News Service/ — The recently announced Alcohol Liberation Front event, Thursday, November 6 from 5:30pm on at Gazuza (1629 Connecticut Ave NW), has already roiled the social media world, but organizers pledge to carry on despite the ALF 7 controversies.
“I ain’t a quitter. People ask me to quit. ‘Stop Tweeting – it’s hurting my eyes,’ they say,” said someone other than Brooke Oberwetter, ALF 7 organizer. “But I ain’t a quitter. I’m keepin’ on keepin’ on. ‘Keepin’ on keepin’ on’? Did I just invent that! Better Tweet it!”
Trading on shares of privately-held Facebook remained suspended on the major markets today after it was revealed that the platform doesn’t permit the names of events to be changed. A typo rendering ALF 7 as ALF 6 on the Facebook event page threatens to bring down the social networking giant.
“Facebook won’t let me change the event name,” roared an enraged Berin Szoka on the Facebook page announcing the event. “I pledge to do everything in my power to destroy Facebook,” he didn’t say.
Meanwhile, one pageview of the Facebook event page displayed an ad that caught TLFer Jim Harper as an outrageous effront to the law of trademark. The image at right, displayed exclusively here on TLF and anywhere someone deems it appropriate, shows a screenshot of an ad that may violate Apple’s rights in the iPod trademark.
“It’s not outrageous. Don’t say that. I just think that calling a shaver the ‘iPod of shaving’ has the potential to cause consumer confusion as to the source of the shaver by suggesting that it’s an Apple product. There are so many mistaken allegations about trademark law – this could be a real trademark violation, and it’s worth pointing out.”
Asked if he would be an expert witness in any case brought by Apple, Harper replied, “You’re not funny, you know. You’re writing this yourself, by yourself, and not interviewing anybody. Oh yeah. You’re being ‘meta’ or something. Whatever. How stupid.”
“Sourpuss” Harper will be one of the attendees at the Alcohol Liberation Front event, Thursday, November 6 from 5:30pm on at Gazuza (1629 Connecticut Ave NW).
Ticketmaster last week completed its acquisition of Front Line Management, a talent agency — expanding Ticketmaster’s empire into a vertically integrated unit renamed “Ticketmaster
Entertainment.” Combine the acquisition with AC/DC announcing it is the latest band to use Ticketmaster’s “paperless ticket” technology on its live tour, and I’m left wondering — are we on the highway to ticket hell?
As I’ve written in a previous posting, Ticketmaster has introduced what it calls a “Paperless Ticket” and Veritix has a paperless ticketing technology called Flash Seats. The concept is the same – no more paper tickets.
And while I’m unabashedly pro-technology on many fronts, here’s where I’m skeptical. The use of electronic tickets, when combined with the recent vertical integration moves of both Ticketmaster and Live Nation, could provide less control for consumers to do what they want with tickets.
The trend in the industry is to integrate the 4 major aspects of a live show: 1) primary ticket sales; 2) management and promotion; 3) direct artist to fan (clubs and paraphernalia); and 4) secondary ticket sales. Technology can be used to help tie the ticket to all aspects of the business, and even provide more control to music artists, but the downside could be a lack of consumer control once the ticket is purchased.
Under Ticketmaster’s paperless tickets policy, you have to present a credit card and a government-issued photo identification for admittance. What if you want to sell the ticket? Or your baby sitter cancels in the last minute and you want to give your tickets to a friend? Can’t do it. At least not under the current policy.
AC/DC’s latest tour is named after its new album, Black Ice. Let’s hope that electronic tickets aren’t the cause of consumers skidding out of control of their own tickets.
The Commerce Department released an interesting paper yesterday on competitiveness and legal costs. It’s conclusion: support U.S. competitiveness by reducing legal costs and uncertainty. At a time when small IT firms are finding it harder to access capital from here at home, they need look far, wide, and global. (earlier this year ACT released a report on the importance of foreign direct investment to innovative technology startups).
And it appears that our litigiousness will end up hurting investment from overseas.
The paper, The U.S. Litigation Environment and Foreign Direct Investment: Supporting U.S. Competitiveness by Reducing Legal Costs and Uncertainty, notes that high U.S. tort costs are a competitiveness issue that merits sustained efforts aimed at getting these costs in line with those of other nations. There is also a pressing need for additional economic research on the impact of a litigious society on a country’s ability to attract foreign direct investment (FDI).
Overall the U.S. legal system is the best in the world. But we can and should be better. America’s open investment policy is based on the principle that foreign investors should not be treated differently.
The new Obama or McCain administration needs to be a good promoter of this, even in the face of protectionist forces and a bad domestic economy.
Alex’s excellent post on the enforceability of shrink-wrap contracts produced a lively debate that’s worth checking out. In particular, my friend Wilson mounts a spirited defense of the proposition that if a customer has a reasonable expectation that a Gateway computer will arrive with a contract attached, and if Gateway offers to pay for return shipping if the customer does not wish to be bound by the contract, then it’s reasonable to consider the the customer bound by the contract if he does not return the computer to Gateway.
I think there are several reasons to be skeptical of this position, but rather than re-hash the arguments I made in the comments to Alex’s post, I think it’s worthwhile to step back and consider the broader principle at stake here. Libertarians are, of course, in favor of freedom of contract, but it’s important to understand what freedom of contract means. Some libertarians seem to think that being in pro-freedom of contract means being pro-contract in the sense that the government should make contract formation as easy as possible and should enforce as many contracts as possible. For example, a few weeks back I criticized an article by F. Scott Kieff that seemed to take this kind of view with respect to patent law.
I think this is a mistaken conception of what freedom of contract is all about. At its heart, freedom of contract is about peoples’ freedom to enter or not enter contractual relationships, and to be confident that the government will enforce valid contract in a predictable manner. The “or not enter” part is important. It violates freedom of contract for the state to fail to enforce a contract to which both parties have consented. But it’s no less a violation of freedom of contract to enforce a contract to which one of the parties did not consent.
And I think we should be extremely skeptical of inferring an affirmative obligation based on someone’s failure to take some action demanded by another party. Complying with such a demand always has costs (I might live far from the nearest post office and not have a car, for example), and I shouldn’t have to bear costs simply to avoid being a party to a contract I never indicated interest in being party to in the first place. And no, the fact that computers often come with attached EULAs doesn’t mean that I “should have known” that there would be a EULA in the box. Courts can’t read minds; the enforceability of contracts needs to be about peoples’ actions, not speculation about what they did or should have known.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.