Some readers might be interested in Cato’s 2007 annual report, which is now available online. Most of the report summarizes the excellent public policy work my colleagues did during 2007. Cato’s financials and a list of corporate and foundation donors can be found on pp. 46-47. The corporate sponsors with significant interests in technology policy are: Comcast, the Consumer Electronics Association, Freedom Communications, Microsoft, and Time Warner. Cato’s 18 corporate sponsors together contributed just 2 percent of the budget in 2007.
I don’t even know where to start with this AFP wire story. The writer obviously doesn’t understand that the IPv4 address shortage has nothing to do with top-level domain expansion:
With the stock of available web addresses under the current IPv4 protocol set to run out by 2011, ICANN has been under pressure to find a solution for burgeoning demand.
In theory, an infinite number of new domain names could be born, which would prove a boon for ICANN because it would receive payment for each one.
I’m half-tempted to compile a list of factually-inaccurate technology reporting from major media outlets, just so I can forward it to sanctimonious “journalists” whenever they attack the accuracy of blogs.
Couch potatoes of America, have no fear… Your friendly neighborhood super-regulators are about to swoop in and save you from the scourge of loud TV ads and “illegal” product placements! As we all learned in our high school Civics 101 classes, this is why the American Revolution was fought: We Americans have an unambiguous constitutional birthright to be free of the tyranny of “excessive loudness” during commercial breaks and pesky product promos during our favorite network dramas. (Seriously, it’s right there in the footnotes to the Bill of Rights; you probably just missed it before.)
Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) has the first problem covered. She and her House colleague Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) are proposing H.R. 6209, the “Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act.” (Oh, isn’t that so cute! The “C.A.L.M. Act”! How very, very witty.) The CALM Act would address “volume manipulation” in TV ads by making sure that TV ads are not “excessively noisy or strident.” (Strident! We Americans hate “strident” ads.) The bill would empower regulators at the Federal Communications Commission to take steps to ensure that “such advertisements shall not be presented at modulation levels substantially higher than the program material that such advertisements accompany; and, the average maximum loudness of such advertisements shall not be substantially higher than the average maximum loudness of the program material that such advertisements accompany.”
Clearly, this is valuable use of our regulators’ time. I look forward to the day when I can visit the FCC and see my tax dollars at work as teams of bureaucrats closely monitor each episode of “Desperate Housewives” and “Swingtown” in search of such malicious volume manipulation during the commercial breaks. (Incidentally, where is the form I need to fill out to get that job? Heck, I’ll take minimum wage pay to do this all day long.)
Continue reading →
Nick Carr tells us that Google and the Net are making us stupid. And, over at Slate, Michael Agger calls us “Lazy Bastards” for how we read online.
So, what do you think? Is the Net destroying our attention spans and turning us in to mindless, robotic sheep?
[My own take… The Net isn’t making us stupid, but it is changing the way we process information and, for better or worse, affecting our patience regarding some forms of media / writing. The death of media scarcity and the rise of information abundance was bound to have profound implications for how we read, write and communicate—in most ways for the better, but perhaps in some ways for the worse. I doubt we’ll ever have a Shakespeare arising from the world of Twitter, for example, but I believe we are better off for having technologies and media platforms like it in our lives. We just all struggling to find balance and a sensible middle ground in a world where our senses are being bombarded with an unprecedented number of choices and volume of information. But I’ll take that predicament over our miserable past existence any day of the week. Down with scarcity; up with abundance!]
Are you still reading, or have I already lost your attention?!
Two contrasting examples of different paths to take for Internet Safety: beefing up our criminal laws vs. imposing pseudo-verification requirements on social networking sites.
First, the good news–a Virginia appellate court upheld the commonwealth’s law criminalizing online solicitation. The law makes it illegal to send sexual content to a minor online with the intent to engage the minor in criminal sexual conduct offline.
Enhancing existing or creating new criminal laws is the crux of a model legislation strategy NetChoice has been promoting before state legislators. It’s a way to direct an understandable legislative urge to protect children toward a productive, meaningful end. And to avoid the bad news – age verification.
Last week the Attorney General for Washington, Rob McKenna, called for sites like Facebook and MySpace to use credit cards as a way to prove identity. Now, age verification has been a pet project of AGs for over two years now. I’ve written on why age verification won’t work to keep kids safe, and so too has Adam Thierer (see his most recent post). I mean, really, don’t sexual predators have credit cards too?
This morning the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations held a hearing on Sovereign Wealth Funds–those growing state-owned investment funds (often invested in the tech sector) causing a political stir as of late.
The panelists differed at the margins, but all agreed that sovereign wealth funds are a good thing for the U.S. economy. We need the money! The thought that foreign governments would invest in the U.S. to surreptitiously bring down the U.S. is nil, as it’s a mutually assured destruction strategy. There’s just too much money being invested in the U.S. so even some Arab and Asian countries have an interest in seeing our economy prosper.
ACT released a paper on foreign direct investment earlier this year, where my coauthor Nora von Ingersleben and I conclude that there are processes already in place–namely CFIUS review–that will account for any national security threats. I wrote in a past blog post that Congress should refrain from politicizing foreign investment, including the proposed acquisition of 3Com.
Congress is right to be involved, and CFIUS keeps them involved. Congress receives reports from the CFIUS committee that does a national security review of foreign transactions to ensure transparency in the process.
David Marchick of the Carlyle Group was one of the witnesses, and last month he was a panelist at an event on foreign investment that ACT sponsored in the Capitol Building.
Last week I noted how I struggled to get through a 5-day vacation without the Internet, blogs, e-mail and my other daily informational inputs. I was both trying to see if I could do it and also giving in to the pleading of my family, who had been asking me to stay away from the Net and electronic gadgets for at least one vacation.
Mark Glaser of MediaShift has taken it a step further and is experimenting with the idea of a “technology sabbath,” i.e., taking one day at week to relax and get away from technology to ponder or experience other things. Here’s how he explains it:
So, being that I am Jewish — though not very religious — I decided to shut down the computer each Friday night at sunset until Saturday at sunset, the traditional time of the Jewish Sabbath. I make exceptions when I need to get directions or check for a personal email. I still use my cell phone but try to limit it to personal calls only. While this day of technological rest can be a difficult routine, it has allowed me to stretch my time, spend more hours outside and be with people more in face-to-face settings.
And I’m not alone. The concept of a “Technology Sabbath” is becoming more widespread, both in religious circles and among bloggers and media people who are overwhelmed with the always-on nature of the broadband Internet and smartphones. And that overwhelming feeling is exacerbated by instant messaging, social networking and services such as Twitter, that allow us to do more informal communications electronically rather than in person.
Boy, I just don’t think I could do it. At least not on a set basis. Some weekends, mostly without even thinking about it, I don’t turn on my computer or any gadgets because I’m playing with the kids, busy doing home renovations, driving my sports car, or entertaining guests. But it’s still pretty rare for me to make it through the entire day–even on the weekend–without ever cracking open my laptop. Not sure I would be able to set aside an entire day on a regular basis to go techno-free.
The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance represents a program of sorts, one designed to run on human brains and to output obedience. Like any program, however, the Pledge can suffer from bugs and submit to hacking. I thus offer you an upgraded Pledge, v. 2008:
I pledge allegiance to the laws of the United States of America, on condition that it respect my rights, natural, constitutional, and statuory, with liberty and justice for all.
For the coder’s notes, click on over to
Agoraphilia.
I’m please to welcome Berin Szoka to the TLF as a new contributor. Berin is currently serving as a Visiting Fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation and working closely with me to create a new Center for Internet Freedom within PFF. At PFF and here on the TLF blog, Berin will be sounding off on a wide variety of Internet policy issues such as online free speech, intermediary immunity and Sec. 230 issues, online advertising, behavior marketing, privacy policy, e-commerce taxation/regulation, Internet jurisdictional matters, and much more.
Berin also has a great deal of experience on the traditional communications / spectrum law front and will be sounding off on those issues as well. Before joining PFF, he practiced communications, Internet and satellite law as an Associate in the Communications Practice group at Latham and Watkins LLP. Prior to his time with Latham, he practiced at Lawler Metzger Milkman & Keeney, LLC, a boutique telecommunications law firm in Washington, and he also clerked for the Hon. H. Dale Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
Finally, Berin has a keen interest in space technology and the policy and legal issues affecting space commercialization. He has been an Advocate of the Space Frontier Foundation since 2005. On occassion, he will be commenting on space law issues here at the TLF.
Berin hasa degree in economics from Duke University and his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law, where he served as Submissions Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Technology. We look forward to his contributions to the TLF!
Could you make it through an entire 5-day vacation without the Internet, blogs, e-mail and your other daily informational inputs? Well, I almost did it. Why would I do that? Two reasons. First, a few months ago I read a random blog post in which someone deep within the comments to the entry said he couldn’t live even 1 day without their daily info-fix. And so I wondered if I could for a few days. Second, my wife and kids have been begging me to stay off the computer when we go on vacations! So, I decided to give it a shot and not only stay off the Net, blogs and e-mail for 5 days, but also steer clear of even traditional information sources, namely newspapers and magazines.
Oh man, it hurt. I felt like a junkie going into detox. Withdrawal symptoms were immediate. I awoke with the nagging need to check my RSS feeds on Bloglines, check out the TLF, and flip through my e-mails. Even worse was the absence of my beloved Wall Street Journal. It was everything I could do not to pick one up each morning at a local Waffle House or Denny’s while I was on the road. But I denied myself these pleasures and stuck to the plan, with the exception of a few moments when I cheated and checked a few work e-mails on my cell phone.
Anyway, when I returned, it was like trying to figure out how to deal with an information overload apocalypse. Over on my Bloglines account, just under 400 new blog posts were waiting for me from the 75+ blogs I monitor daily. On my work e-mail, I had well over 500 messages, not including spam. My Yahoo e-mail account had another 100+. My GMail account had dozens more. There we also plenty of voice mails at work and home. And when I got back to my house, I had a stack of Wall Street Journals, Washington Posts and the Sunday New York Times waiting for me. And several magazines in the mail.
Where to even begin? How does one catch up? Well, I’m not sure I’m gunna. I’m thinking about just ignoring all of it and hitting the reset button. I’ve already thrown away all the newspapers. And I have been bulk deleting most of my e-mails on all 3 accounts. And I’m still not sure when and if I’ll be able to catch up with those RSS feeds, but I would really feel like I was missing something if I just ignored them all.
Sometimes life in an Age of Abundance is a bitch!
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.