I always thought “rickrolling” was a stupid meme. So I’m happy to see it covered in the New York Times, a sure sign that the fad is on its way out. (And yes, that goes to the New York Times, not the stupid video)
Jonathan Zittrain, who is affiliated with Oxford University and Harvard’s Berkman Center, recently released a provocatively titled book: The Future of the Internet–And How to Stop It. It’s an interesting read and I recommend you pick it up despite what I’ll say about it in a moment. (Incidentally, if you ever have a chance to hear Jonathan speak, I highly recommend you do so. He is, bar none, the most entertaining tech policy geek in the world. Imagine Dennis Miller with a cyberlaw degree.)
Jonathan’s book contrasts two different paradigms that he argues could define the Net’s future: The “generative” Net versus what he refers to as a world of “tethered, sterile appliances.” By “generative” he means technologies or networks that invite or allow tinkering and all sorts of creative uses. Think general-purpose personal computers and the traditional “best efforts” Internet. “Tethered, sterile appliances” by contrast, are technologies or networks that discourage or disallow tinkering. Basically, “take it or leave it” proprietary devices like Apple’s iPhone or the TiVo, or online walled gardens like the old AOL and current cell phone networks.
Jonathan’s thesis is that, for a variety of reasons [viruses, Spam, identify theft, etc], we run the risk of seeing the glorious days of the generative, open Net give way to more tethered devices and closed networks. He states:
This is a fascinating article about China’s censorship efforts. I thought this was a bit weird, though: “servers (short for file servers, which are essentially very large-capacity computers)” I don’t think “server” is short for anything. And I kind of thought the term had long since become common knowledge among the sort of folks who read The Atlantic.
One-time TLF blogger Brooke Oberwetter (no really, she posted here one time) fretted to me recently that there was no commentary here on the outcome of the recent 700 mhz spectrum auction. Here goes, Brooke:
The way I see it, the result shows that Google has arrived as a Washington player and rent-seeker. It masterfully used the regulatory process to bend the rules in its favor. Rather than buying the spectrum, it managed to convince the FCC to require any buyer to make use of the spectrum in a way that benefits Google.
The $billions in benefits Google’s owners may reap come at the cost of the relatively tiny sum it spent on PR and lobbying. It didn’t have to plunk down any of its big money on spectrum itself. Richard Whitt’s recent post phrased the outcome in terms of benefit to consumers, of course, but its as much self-congratulations for the rewards that will come to Google from his work.
Make no mistake, I believe that an open network will be a better network with more innovation and more interesting uses, but we could have had that same open network if Google had paid full price for the spectrum in an open auction. Instead, Google will reap excess returns from the encumbrance it got placed on the spectrum.
Well played, Google. Welcome to Washington.
So reports the Missoulian on the Department of Homeland Security’s capitulation in the face of Governor Schweitzer’s resolute rejection of REAL ID.
On Friday, Montana Attorney General Mike McGrath notified the Department of Homeland Security that the state will not comply with REAL ID but will pursue the identity security policies it deems appropriate. McGrath urged DHS not to penalize the state for rejecting REAL ID.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker chose to interpret McGrath’s letter as a request for an extension of the REAL ID compliance deadline and granted it.
In other words, DHS has abandoned any pretense that it can tell states what to do. A showdown with recalcitrant states around the May 11 compliance deadline would require the Transportation Security Administration to disrupt the passenger air travel system, something DHS evidently recognizes to be a losing proposition.
Montana wins.
More reporting at the Threat Level blog.
Over at the Cato@Liberty blog, I’ve got a longish post responding to a Center for Strategic and International Studies paper defending data mining for terrorists.
Here’s a great speech by my former boss David Boaz on his new book, The Politics of Freedom:
http://www.cato.org/weekly/flvplayer.swf
David Weigel has a good write-up of the National Press Club launch of Larry Lessig’s Change Congress project.
I’m interested in changing the way things work – witness WashingtonWatch.com – and I have no doubt about the earnest good intentions of Professor Lessig. But there are plenty of reasons why the project might not succeed, and indeed might be harmful to discourse in our democracy. They’re articulated well in the comments to Weigel’s post.
I’m reading through the big patent reform bill that’s currently stuck in the Senate. One of the big changes in the legislation concerns the calculation of damages for patent infringement. It reads, in part:
Upon a determination by the court that the showings required under subparagraphs (A) and (B) have not been made, the court shall conduct an analysis to ensure that a reasonable royalty is applied only to the portion of the economic value of the infringing product or process properly attributable to the claimed invention’s specific contribution over the prior art. In the case of a combination invention whose elements are present individually in the prior art, the contribution over the prior art may include the value of the additional function resulting from the combination, as well as the enhanced value, if any, of some or all of the prior art elements as part of the combination, if the patentee demonstrates that value.
I think an economist would tell you that this is completely incoherent. The only way to objectively determine the “economic value” of something is by observing the price it fetches in the marketplace. (The financial markets are currently learning the dangers of trying to compute asset values a priori) If the thing you’re trying to value is similar enough to something that’s commonly bought and sold (say, if your house is similar to your neighbor’s house that just sold), you can use that to get a reasonably accurate estimate of the product’s value. Likewise, if I want to determine the “economic value” of the “specific contribution” of the LCD panel in my MacBook to the laptop’s overall value, I can see what LCD panels with similar characteristics were selling for at the time my laptop was manufactured.
But a patent is not a commodity. It’s not a component of a manufactured product. Rather, a patent is a legal entitlement to sue people who build certain kinds of devices or perform certain processes without the patent holder’s permission. There isn’t any objective answer to the question of how much of a products value is “properly attributable” to the fact that any given patent holder has agreed not to sue the manufacturer. Trying to apportion the value of a product among the patents that apply to it is a category error because a patent’s value in the market place is determined by the leverage the legal regime confers on patent holders. The greater the powers the law gives to patent holders, the larger the monopoly rents they can extract from manufacturers, and the more valuable the patent will be on the marketplace. So it’s completely circular for the law to ask what the “economic value” of a patent is, when the economic value of a patent was created by the legal system in the first place.
Of course, the fact that a legal requirement is incoherent doesn’t mean that judges won’t give it the old college try. No doubt, there will be plenty of “expert witnesses” who will come up with all manner of elaborate methodologies for determining the “economic value” of a patent’s “specific contribution” to a product. A a practical matter, judges will take the passage of this reform bill as a signal that recent patent damage awards have been too big, and will scale back the awards accordingly. That’s what the technology industry wants. From their perspective, it probably doesn’t matter if the requirement is coherent, as long as it gets them the result they’re looking for.
But if you care about the rule of law, it should trouble you that the rules are so incoherent. We should always be concerned when the legislature gives legal force to concepts (like “blight”) that lack a clear definition. The patent system is full of concepts like this, and I think that lack of clarity is a major cause of the problems we’ve been seeing in recent years.
One would be right to worry about DHS Assistant Secretary for Policy Stewart Baker. He’s as smart and cagey as they come, but for all his years at the Department of Homeland Security his security thinking seems not yet to have matured. At the same time, his recollection of the REAL ID Act is showing signs of somewhat advanced age. Let’s walk through some things with our friend, Stewart.
Writing on the DHS blog in support of our national ID law, the REAL ID Act, he intones about the importance of driver’s licenses to national security. “Unfortunately,” he says, “we learned this the hard way. Twice.”:
First, in 1995, when Timothy McVeigh was able to create a fake South Dakota license with ease; all it took was a manual typewriter and a kitchen iron. He used the license to rent a Ryder truck in Oklahoma and destroy the Murrah Federal Building. Then, on September 11, 2001, eighteen of the nineteen hijackers carried government-issued IDs – mostly state driver’s licenses, many obtained fraudulently.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.