Just wanted to let everyone know that two new contributors–Bret Swanson and Ryan Radia–will be joining us here at the TLF.
Bret recently joined PFF to start a new program on trade, globalization & technology policy issues. It’s called the Center for Global Innovation. He’s fighting back against the foolish push to close off our borders to free trade or to limit the flow of technology and e-commerce globally. He’s also working on a big new book about the role of China in the new global economy.
Ryan Radia, a researcher with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, is also joining us. At CEI, Ryan does great work on technology policy along with our own Cord Blomquist. Ryan is also going to be helping us out with TLF podcast production in coming months.
We’re glad to have Bret and Ryan join us and look forward to their contributions to our little “virtual think tank” here at the TLF!
I’ve been reading Brett Frischman’s “An Economic Theory of Infrastructure and Commons Management”, which develops a general theory of infrastructure management and then applies this theory to (among other things) the network neutrality debate. I’ll likely have more to say about it once I’ve finished digesting it, but I wanted to note one offhand comment that I found interesting. On page 924, Frischmann writs:
A list of familiar examples [of “infrastructure”] includes: (transportation systems such as highway systems, railways, airline systems, and ports, (2) communications systems, such as telephone networks and postal services; (3) governance systems such as court systems; and (4) basic public services and facilities, such as schools, sewers, and water systems.
Which of these things isn’t like the others? Let me first quote his definition of “infrastructure resources”:
(1) The resource may be consumed nonrivalrously;
(2) Social demand for the resource is driven primarily by downstream productive activity that requires the resource as an input; and
(3) The resource may be used as an input into a wide range of goods and services, including private goods, public goods, and nonmarket goods.
As far as I can see, schools don’t fit any of these criteria. While there are certainly some under-attended schools who could be called non-rivalrous in some sense, there is typically a trade-off between the number of students in a classroom and the quality of instruction. And I suppose you could say that in general, education is a pre-condition for higher future earnings, but if we interpret this definition that broadly, almost everything is “infrastructure.” People couldn’t be productive citizens without food, so does that make farmers, supermarkets, and restaurants “infrastructure?”
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There’s a lot of hoopla surrounding Bain Capital’s buyout of beleaguered 3Com Corporation, due to the fact that one of the buyers is Huawei, a company from China. Or “communist China” (gasp!) according to today’s press release from Rep. McCotter:
News circulated today Bain Capital and communist China’s Huawei plan to resubmit an application seeking U.S. approval for a planned buyout of American 3Com Corporation within the next several weeks. Congressman Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) made the following comments on the possible new merger:
“No business can sufficiently structure such deals to protect America from this stealth assault on America’s national security. It is the solemn duty of the United States government to protect our liberty from all threats; and CFIUS must again do its job and reject this latest threat to our cyber-security.”
It’s nice that members of Congress are looking after our national security, but they don’t have to when it comes to foreign direct investment. We have CIFIUS. And in a paper I co-authored with my colleague Nora von Ingersleben, we assert that when CIFIUS gets politicized, American innovation will suffer.
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There’s a good opinion piece on age verification and social networking websites by CDT’s Leslie Harris on the ABC news site.
Third, can we verify age or identity and still protect privacy? Would personal information about minors have to be submitted and maintained in large databases, or would Internet users have to have an authenticated identification card to go online?
Along with TLF’s very own Adam Thierer, CDT is on the Berkman Center task force setup by the MySpace & Attorneys General joint statement to study online authentication techniques. Intelligent study of the issue is much needed, as age verification is a hot topic in the states.
So far this year we’ve seen age verification bills introduced in Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, and Mississippi (last year also saw Connecticut and North Carolina). These bills would force the sites to age verify its users and obtain parental consent before kids under 18 could register. I’m happy to say that Mississippi’s bill failed to make crossover and is dead, and Georgia’s bill is effectively dead.
Age verification is looked upon as a way to keep our kids safer online, but it’s really an access control device that by itself does nothing to limit opportunities for sexual predators. Politicians should avoid age verification mandates, particularly as we have a panel of experts to study the issue over the next year!
Wow, look at the lineup for this Google and Stanford Law School event that I am speaking at next week as part of a “Legal Futures Summit,” which is billed as “a conversation between some of the world’s leading thinkers about the future of privacy, intellectual property, competition, innovation, globalization, and other areas of the law undergoing rapid change due to technological advancement.”
I have no idea what I’ll be saying at this event, but I’m really looking forward to just interacting with this impressive group of intellectual powerhouses. [Apparently the second day of the event–next Saturday–is open to the public. So Silicon Valley locals might want to come and hear the fun.] Anyway, here’s the lineup…
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The OC Register has a profile of our own Tom Bell and his struggle to finish his forthcoming book on copyright law:
Every morning that he spends writing, Bell sets a goal for what he needs to complete, gets into his truck with his laptop and surfboard and drives to San Onofre Surf Beach.
There, the Chapman University law professor gets out of his truck, gazes longingly at the surf break, turns away and boots up his laptop. Sometimes he works at a picnic table overlooking the beach, other times in his Toyota 4 Runner.
If he gets his assigned amount of writing done in the morning, he allows himself to get out his board and surf. If not, he eats his sack lunch, and then sits there until it’s time to go pick up his kids from school.
I can relate to the challenges of keeping oneself motivated. Sadly, I don’t think I have a hobby that excites me as much as surfing does him. Maybe I need to move to California.
Whenever I hear some politician or political pundit lament the supposedly dismal state of political discourse in modern America, I always laugh. Anyone who has ever read a lick of history knows that politics has always been a dirty business full of plenty of under-handed antics and distasteful rhetoric.
I was reminded of this again this morning as I was reading through The Washington Post and saw various people complaining about the tone and tactics on display in this year’s presidential primaries. Then, I flipped to the editorial page and saw an interesting essay entitled “Lincoln-Douglas: The Real Thing,” by civil war era historian Allen C. Guelzo of Gettysburg College. It included the following gem of passage about the heated 1858 Senate campaign battle between Lincoln and Douglas:
A month into the campaign, lagging in visibility and short of funds, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates — outdoors, unrehearsed — in seven locations around the state. At a time when popular community entertainments included mano-a-mano encounters such as wrestling, horse racing and knife fighting, one-on-one debating seemed a perfectly natural forum for political contests, too. And the Lincoln-Douglas debates certainly had their share of entertaining features. Brass bands hired by Republicans and Democrats struggled to drown each other out. Banners with raw sexual innuendoes and crude racial insults billowed over the heads of the crowds. At one debate, someone shied a melon at Douglas and struck him on the shoulder.
Like I was saying, the more things change, the more things stay the same.
I’ll probably get mocked again, but here’s another thing I didn’t know about regulation in the good ‘ol days of the 1970s (from this paper):
With capacity and route expansion foreclosed as outlets for product differentiation, the trunk carriers devised new means of service competition. “Capacity wars” gave way to “lounge wars.” On wide-bodied aircraft, lounges were introduced in first class, then in coach. When American installed piano bars, TWA countered with electronic draw-poker machines. Live entertainment proliferated, with musicians, magicians, wine-tasters, and Playboy bunnies.
When’s the last time you saw live entertainment on a commercial flight?
The ACLU of Northern California is looking for someone to fill a “two-year (September 2008- September 2010) Technology and Civil Liberties Fellowship to help develop legal and policy papers about emerging technologies and implement an innovative campaign to educate consumers of all ages, policymakers, and businesspeople about privacy and free speech rights.”
Two thoughts:
1) They should pick someone who writes shorter sentences than the one I just quoted.
2) Let’s get a libertarian in there! Dress kinda sloppy and have a sense of humor – they’ll think you’re one of them! 😉
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.