A diverse group of technology companies including broadband, video and wireless providers as well as Google, Microsoft and hardware giants like Intel and Cisco today launched the Broadband Internet Technical Advisory Group (BITAG or TAG) to provide exactly the kind of self-regulatory forum for dealing with concerns about network management practices that we at PFF have long called for—most recently in Adam Thierer and Mike Wendy’s recent paper, “The Constructive Alternative to Net Neutrality Regulation and Title II Reclassification Wars.” But rather than applauding BITAG, the regulatory radicals at Free Press insisted that:
this or any other voluntary effort is not a substitute for the government setting basic rules of the road for the Internet.
Swansong of an Industry?
There must be a separate FCC rulemaking process, which can take the recommendations of this or any other voluntary advisory group into account, but rubber-stamping those recommendations would ignore the agency’s mandate to create public policy in the public interest.
Allowing industry to set its own rules is like allowing BP to regulate its drilling. The Comcast BitTorrent case shows that without government oversight, Internet Service Providers will engage in what are already deemed by engineers to be bad practices
Free Press certainly wouldn’t have the influence they do if they weren’t so good at picking metaphors. But what does the oil spill really teach us about regulation? The
Wall Street Journal notes the growing outrage on the political Left against president Obama from those who are “furious and frustrated that the President hasn’t demanded the heads of BP executives on pikes.” But the Journal points out the central irony of the situation:
The [so-called] liberals’ fury at the President is almost as astounding as their outrage over the discovery that oil companies and their regulators might have grown too cozy. In economic literature, this behavior is known as “regulatory capture,” and the current political irony is that this is a long-time conservative critique of the regulatory state….
In the better economic textbooks, regulatory capture is described as a “government failure,” as opposed to a market failure. It refers to the fact that individuals or companies with the highest interest or stake in a policy outcome will be able to focus their energies on politicians and bureaucracies to get the outcome they prefer.
Continue reading →
Since Jonathan Zittrain’s ideas about the “generativity” have permeated the intellectual climate of technology policy almost as thoroughly as those of Larry Lessig, scarcely a month passes without a new Chicken Little shouting about how the digital sky is falling in a major publication. The NYT has had not one, but two such articles in the course of a week: first, Brad Stone’s piece about Google, Sure, It’s Big. But Is That Bad? (his answer? an unequivocal yes! as I noted), followed by Virginia Heffernan’s piece “The Death of the Open Web,” which bemoans the growing popularity of smart phone apps—which she analogizes to “white flight” (a stretched analogy that, I suppose, would make Steve Jobs the digital Bull Connor).
What really ticks me off about these arguments (besides the fact that Apple critics like Zittrain use iPhones themselves without a hint of bourgeois irony) is Heffernan’s suggestion that, “By choosing machines that come to life only when tricked out with apps from the App Store, users of Apple’s radical mobile devices increasingly commit themselves to a more remote and inevitably antagonistic relationship with the Web.” To hear people like Heffernan (and others who have complained about Apple’s policies for its app store) talk, you might think that modern smart phones don’t come with a web browser at all, or that browser software is next to useless, so the fact that browsers can access any content on the web (subject to certain specific technical limitations, such as sites that use Flash) is irrelevant, and users are simply at the mercy of the “gatekeepers” that control access to app stores.
In fact, the iPhone and Android mobile browsers are amazingly agile, generally rendering pages originally designed for desktop reading in a way that makes them very easy to read on the phone—such as by wrapping text into a single column maximized to fit either the landscape or portrait view of the phone, depending on which way it’s pointed. In fact, I do most of my news reading on my Droid, and using its browser rather than through any app—although there are a few good news apps to choose from. In fact, I probably spend about 10 times as much time using my phone’s browser as I spend using all other 3rd party apps (i.e., not counting the phone, e-mail, calendar, camera and map “native” apps). So I can get any content I want using the phone’s browser, I certainly don’t lose any sleep at night over what I can or can’t do in apps I get through the app store. I’d love to see actual statistics on the percent of time that smartphone users spend using their mobile browser, as compared to third-party apps. Do they exist?
But however high that percentage might be, the important thing is that the smartphone browser offers an uncontrolled tool for accessing content, even if apps on that mobile OS do not. Continue reading →
Today’s NYT piece by Brad Stone about Google (Sure, It’s Big. But Is That Bad?) offers a superb example of how to use the rhetorical question in an article headlined to suggest that you might actually be about to write a thoughtful, balanced piece—while actually writing a piece that, while thoughtful and interesting, offers little more than token resistance to your own preconceived judgments. But perhaps I’m being unfair: Perhaps Stone’s editors removed “YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES, YES!” from the headline for brevity’s sake?
Anyway, despite its one-sidedness, the piece
is fascinating, offering a well-researched summary of the growing cacophony of cries for regulatory intervention against Google, and also a suggestion of where they might lead in crafting a broader regulatory regime for online services beyond just Google. In short, the crusade against Google and the crusade for net neutrality (in which Google has, IMHO unwisely been a major player) are together leading us down in intellectual slippery slope that, as Adam and I have suggested, will result in “High-Tech Mutually Assured Destruction” and the death of Real Internet Freedom.
Ironically, this push for increased government meddling—a veritable “New Deal 2.0″—is all justified by the need to “protect freedom.” But it would hardly be the first time that this had happened. As the great defender of liberty
Garet Garrett said of the New Deal 1.0 in his 1938 essay The Revolution Was:
There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom.
That theme lives on in the works of those like antitrust warrior Gary Reback, an anti-Google stalwart whose book Free the Market: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive
Adam savaged in his review last year. Reback argues:
Google is the “arbiter of every single thing on the Web, and it favors its properties over everyone else’s,” said Mr. Reback, sitting in a Washington cafe with the couple. “What it wants to do is control Internet traffic. Anything that undermines its ability to do that is threatening.”
Move over, ISPs! Search engines are the
real threat! Somehow, I feel fairly confident in predicting that this will be among the chief implications of Tim Wu’s new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, to be released in November, which his publisher summarizes as follows: Continue reading →
We at The Progress & Freedom Foundation announced a series of eight upcoming policy events today, taking the place of our previously scheduled Sundance Summit. Beginning this month, the events will run through the summer in the nation’s capital. By moving these events closer to home in this manner, PFF will be better positioned to speak to legislators, policymakers, and tech policy press before Washington turns its attention to the midterm elections.
The series of events (which you can add to your calendar here) will include several breakfast and luncheon panel presentations and two half-day conferences. Covering such areas as communications and competition policy, digital property, digital media freedom and Internet freedom, the events will include:
- Tuesday, April 27: “Cable, Broadcast & the First Amendment: Will the Supreme Court End Must-Carry?” — A panel of experts will debate the future of “must carry” rules in the wake of a new challenge to their constitutionality by Cablevision, and what this decision could mean for other media. (RSVP here)
- Friday, May 7: “What Should the Next Communications Act Look Like?”
— A discussion with key industry stakeholders about the future of the Telecom Act in the wake of the Comcast v. FCC decision and the looming battle over Title II reclassification of broadband. (RSVP here)
- Thursday, May 20: “Can Government Help Save the Press?” — This conference will discuss the FCC’s new “Future of Media” proceeding and debate what role government should play in subsidizing the press or bailing out failing media enterprises. (RSVP here)
- Monday, June 7: “The Future of Speech on the Borderless Internet” — A panel of leading cyberlawyers will discuss trans-national regulation and litigation of defamation, hate speech, indecency and political dissent. (RSVP here)
- Monday, June 21: “Sports Programming & the Challenges of Digital Piracy“— A discussion of the challenges that digital piracy, including unauthorized streaming, poses to professional and collegiate sports that have traditionally earned revenues from telecasts of games, bouts, etc. Continue reading →
Congresswoman Diane E. Watson, who serves as Chair of the House Government Management, Organization, and Procurement Subcommittee, has just introduced new legislation proposing the creation of a “National Office for Cyberspace” within the Executive Office of the President. Rep. Watson’s bill, “The Federal Information Security Management Act of 2010” (H.R. 4900) amends the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) of 2002 in an attempt “to strengthen and harmonize the federal government’s efforts to ensure the integrity of its information infrastructure.”
It’s hard to argue against that goal, and I won’t here. Clearly, our government needs to get it’s own house in order when it comes to network and data security. Nonetheless, an “Office for Cyberspace” gives me pause. Although I always try to be careful with slippery slope arguments (per Eugene Volokh’s excellent advice here), I think there are good reasons to fear that any Executive Branch-level “Office for Cyberspace” would quickly come to take on a wide variety of other policy matters beyond just federal cyber-security issues. The Federal Communication Commission’s past and recent history of regulatory mission creep is not encouraging in this regard. The agency has always looked to grow its mission and powers, and it has often succeeded. Of course, to be fair, the fundamental ambiguity of certain clauses and phrases within the agency’s charter document– the Communications Act of 1934 — left the door open to creative readings of things like what was in “the public interest,” or what constituted “fair and non-discriminatory” practices.
If, by contrast, the powers of this new “National Office for Cyberspace” are tightly limited to the mission of simply ensuring that the federal government keeps its own house in order — and doesn’t try to regulate our digital houses at the same time — then perhaps we have nothing to worry about. But, I remain a bit paranoid about these things and fear that the old “Hands Off the Net!” dream dies a little more each day because of bills like this.
What distinguishes pragmatic Internet optimists from their starry-eyed, pollyanna-ish optimist kin is the ability to recognize the real problems raised by technology. More than anything else, that means being able to appreciate great satire on the downsides of the Digital Revolution. Robert Lanham, author of The Hipster Handbook and other satirical classics, offers the definitive guide to the “post-print world” in his “Internet-Age Writing Syllabus & Course Overview” for the fictitious college course, “ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era.” If only the arch-pessimist Andrew Keen were half so funny!
As print takes its place alongside smoke signals, cuneiform, and hollering, there has emerged a new literary age, one in which writers no longer need to feel encumbered by the paper cuts, reading, and excessive use of words traditionally associated with the writing trade. Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era focuses on the creation of short-form prose that is not intended to be reproduced on pulp fibers.
Instant messaging. Twittering. Facebook updates. These 21st-century literary genres are defining a new ”
LostGeneration” of minimalists who would much rather watchLost on their iPhones than toil over long-winded articles and short stories. Students will acquire the tools needed to make their tweets glimmer with a complete lack of forethought, their Facebook updates ring with self-importance, and their blog entries shimmer with literary pithiness. All without the restraints of writing in complete sentences. w00t! w00t! Throughout the course, a further paring down of the Hemingway/Stein school of minimalism will be emphasized, limiting the superfluous use of nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, conjunctions, gerunds, and other literary pitfalls.
My favorite part,
Week 8: New Rules:
Students will analyze the publishing industry and learn how to be more innovative than the bards of yesteryear. They’ll be asked to consider, for instance, Thomas Pynchon. How much more successful would Gravity’s Rainbow have been if it were two paragraphs long and posted on a blog beneath a picture of scantily clad coeds? And why not add a Google search box? Or what if Susan Sontag had friended 10 million people on Facebook and then published a shorter version of The Volcano Lover as a status update: “Susan thinks a volcano is a great metaphor for primal passion. Also, streak of my hair turning white—d’oh!“
Now, as it happens, I think Strunk & White, authors of the 1918 classic
The Elements of Style, would probably have appreciated Twitter’s 140 character limit (and blogging more generally) for ruthlessly, if over-zealously, enforcing their core rule for good writing: Continue reading →
NPR notes that we’re approaching a major milestone in the history of man’s relationship with machines:
Nearly 200 years ago, workers in England took up arms against technology. Weavers protested the advent of mechanized looms with violence. Named for weaver Ned Lud, the Luddites feared machines would make hand weaving extinct. The people of Huddersfield are rising up again, but this time to commemorate the city’s 19th century weavers.
According to this history of the Luddite movement, the 199th anniversary of the movement’s beginnings passed just last week:
The first incident during the years of the most intense Luddite activity, 1811-13, was the 11 March 1811 attack upon wide knitting frames in a shop in the Nottinghamshire village of Arnold, following a peaceful gathering of framework knitters near the Exchange Hall at Nottingham. In the preceding month, framework knitters, also called stockingers, had broken into shops and removed jack wires from wide knitting frames, rendering them useless without inflicting great violence upon the owners or incurring risk to the stockingers themselves; the 11 March attack was the first in which frames were actually smashed and the name “Ludd” was used. The grievances consisted, first, of the use of wide stocking frames to produce large amounts of cheap, shoddy stocking material that was cut and sewn into stockings rather than completely fashioned (knit in one piece without seams) and, second, of the employment of “colts,” workers who had not completed the seven-year apprenticeship required by law.
In other words, a bunch of hooligans—the ancestors of today’s stereotypically rude, drunk and violent English soccer fans, no doubt—started smashing machines because—horror of horrors!—the machines were producing less expensive textiles and could be operated by cheaper, less-skilled workers outside the hooligans’ guild. That, in essence, is the history of technology and its discontents: Innovation produces gains in productivity that raise the overall standard of living by bringing down prices for consumers, but workers in outmoded industries try to obstruct progress because it renders their unproductive jobs obsolete. Tim Lee noted this back in 2006 regarding the supposed need for tech workers to unionize. Continue reading →
Michiko Kakutani has a very interesting essay in the New York Times entitled, “Texts Without Contexts,” which does a nice job running through the differences between Internet optimists and pessimists, a topic I’ve spent a great deal of time writing about here. (See: “Are You An Internet Optimist or Pessimist? The Great Debate over Technology’s Impact on Society.”) She surveys many of the books I’ve reviewed and discussed here before by authors such as Neil Postman, Nick Carr, Cass Sunstein, Andrew Keen, Mark Helprin, Jaron Lanier, and others. She notes:
These new books share a concern with how digital media are reshaping our political and social landscape, molding art and entertainment, even affecting the methodology of scholarship and research. They examine the consequences of the fragmentation of data that the Web produces, as news articles, novels and record albums are broken down into bits and bytes; the growing emphasis on immediacy and real-time responses; the rising tide of data and information that permeates our lives; and the emphasis that blogging and partisan political Web sites place on subjectivity.
At the same time it’s clear that technology and the mechanisms of the Web have been accelerating certain trends already percolating through our culture — including the blurring of news and entertainment, a growing polarization in national politics, a deconstructionist view of literature (which emphasizes a critic’s or reader’s interpretation of a text, rather than the text’s actual content), the prominence of postmodernism in the form of mash-ups and bricolage, and a growing cultural relativism that has been advanced on the left by multiculturalists and radical feminists, who argue that history is an adjunct of identity politics, and on the right by creationists and climate-change denialists, who suggest that science is an instrument of leftist ideologues.
It’s a great debate, but a very controversial one, of course. Anyway, go read her entire essay.
The Treasury Department today announced that it would grant the State Department’s December request (see the Iran letter here) for a waiver from U.S. embargoes that would allow Iranians, Sudanese and Cubanese to download “free mass market software … necessary for the exchange of personal communications and/or sharing of information over the internet such as instant messaging, chat and email, and social networking.”
I’m delighted to see that the Treasury Department is implementing Secretary Clinton’s pledge to make it easier for citizens of undemocratic regimes to use Internet communications tools like e-mail and social networking services offered by US companies (which Adam discussed here). It has been no small tragedy of mindless bureaucracy that our sanctions on these countries have actually hampered communications and collaboration by dissidents—without doing anything to punish oppressive regimes. So today’s announcement is a great victory for Internet freedom and will go a long way to bringing the kind of free expression we take for granted in America to countries like Iran, Sudan and Cuba.
But I’m at a loss to explain why the Treasury Department’s waiver is limited to free software. The U.S. has long objected when other countries privilege one model of software development over another—and rightly so: Government should remain neutral as between open-source and closed-source, and between free and paid models. This “techno-agnosticism” for government is a core principle of cyber-libertarianism: Let markets work out the right mix of these competing models through user choice!
Why should we allow dissidents to download free “Web 2.0” software but not paid ones? Not all mass-market tools dissidents would find useful are free. Many “freemium” apps, such as Twitter client software, require purchase to get full functionality, sometimes including privacy and security features that are especially useful for dissidents. To take a very small example that’s hugely important to me as a user, Twitter is really only useful on my Android mobile phone because I run the Twidroid client. But the free version doesn’t support multiple accounts or lists, which are essential functions for a serious Tweeter. The Pro version costs just $4.89—but if I lived in Iran, U.S. sanctions would prevent me from buying this software. More generally, we just don’t know what kind of innovative apps or services might be developed that would be useful to dissidents, so why foreclose the possibility of supporting them through very small purchases? 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.