Everyone should have a windmill to tilt at, right? Mine is collection of SSNs by accounting departments that don’t need them, such as when they reimburse me for travel expenses.
Here’s my latest effort to work that issue, in an email sent to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants:
Following on my post yesterday, Tim Lee has written a story at Ars Technica. Anne Broache of CNET also investigated the REAL ID advocacy training DMV bureaucrats are getting.
Update: Ryan Singel on Wired’s Threat Level blog also picked up the story.
So, here’s a question: Are state DMV bureaucrats using or planning to use DHS grant funds to lobby for REAL ID? Whether or not that’s a legal violation, it is certainly an ethical one.
In a breezy post on the Department of Homeland Security’s new blog, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff writes about the federal government’s lawsuit to overturn an Illinois workplace privacy law. The “Right to Privacy in the Workplace Act” will restrict the ability of Illinois employers to enroll in the federal government’s “E-Verify” system, which runs all new employees through a federal background check to determine if they’re entitled to work under federal law. Illinois has got it right. There shouldn’t be a federal background check before you can work.
Chertoff takes on some objections to “E-Verify” one by one. Let’s take his responses one by one.
Nick Carr’s comments on CCIA’s study of fair use include the following critique:
What the authors have done is to define the “fair-use economy” so broadly that it encompasses any business with even the most tangential relationship to the free use of copyrighted materials. Here’s an example of the tortured logic by which they force-fit vast, multifaceted industries into the “fair use” category: Because “recent advances in processing speed and software functionality are being used to take advantage of the richer multi-media experience now available from the web,” then the entire “computer and peripheral equipment manufacturing industry” qualifies as a “fair-use industry.” As does the entire “audio & video equipment manufacturing” business. And the entire software publishing industry. And the entire telecommunications industry.
Oh dear. I think one could fairly count the Tivo, and a portion of some of the activity described above… anything involving parody, certainly.
Of course, there is a larger conceptual problem. Fair use is always fair use of something copyrighted… so do we add fair uses on to the value of copyright uses? There is a case to be made that the copyrighted materials–and the consequent fair use of them–would not exist in such abundance but for copyright. The logical response to that is, yes, but we wish to measure in particular the value of this particular exception. Fair enough, so long as one bears in mind the risk of the exception’s swallowing the rule. Also, that a substantial part of the economic activity in question might well occur in similar form even without the exception, due to the growth of markets in snippets and bits and other licensed material for downstream use.
Empirical studes are funny things, aren’t they?
SS
Throw out everything you learned in civics class. The legislators who represent you in Congress and your statehouse are just figureheads. The real work of governing is done behind the scenes, by the bureaucracy. This is why the REAL ID Act – all but dead – is still a threat to your privacy.
This week, state bureaucrats are gathering at a vendor-sponsored conference on REAL ID at the Renaissance Washington Hotel here in D.C. Session titles include Clarifying The Different Funding Options – Where Exactly Is The Money Going To Come From? and Developing A Practical Roadmap For Real ID Implementation. With public opinion set against REAL ID, here’s a session that’s particularly interesting:
Bringing Your Public Onboard For Smoother Legislature Changes . . . [E]very State DMV needs to find a way to educate their public so that they can ensure the legislature changes necessary to become Real ID compliant. So how exactly can you do this? This session will examine how you can change your public’s perception as quickly and as cost effectively as possible.
- Listen to your people: Examining the direct impact on your public so that you understand the perception you are trying to change
- Know which marketing methods will be most effective at reaching your public
- Examine how much of your budget a public relations exercise is worth: Measuring cost against outcome
Back in 2005, I wrote a book called Media Myths and one of the myths I attempted to debunk in the book dealt with the power of new media outlets and technologies relative to the old mass media. Specifically, I made the argument that, contrary to what many media critics claimed, new media could provide both a credible alternative to many traditional mass media providers as well as a powerful check on them and their power.
That argument was certainly harder to advance back in 2005 when the general public was just beginning to gain an appreciation for the power of the Internet, blogs, and so on. Today, however, I think most people “get it.” I remember back then how many people would stare at me funny when I explained to them how I started my day by reading Google News and checking my Bloglines account for updates to my favorite blogs. But now I seem almost old fashion when I say that to an audience as many have moved on to even more sophisticated ways of gathering news and information daily.
And with each passing week, I continue to discover new and exciting ways that new media outlets and technologies are shaking things up and providing a credible alternative to old media. Last week, for example, provided us with two powerful examples:
What did you do with your Saturday night? I spent mine solving this programming puzzle. (Via PJ) I’m guessing most TLF readers don’t care, but if any do, details are below the fold.
Yglesias is right about this:
Near the end of The New York Times’s article on new NBC TV downloads, Jeff Gaspin, NBC TV’s president, says “Our research shows that 83 per cent of the viewers would still rather watch on a TV than a PC.” This doesn’t necessarily seem relevant to me. I would want to watch shows on as high-quality a display as possible but whether that display is a “monitor” connected to a computer or a “television” connected to a cable box doesn’t matter at all. I don’t, in practice, connect my TV to my computer but if you made it possible to download files that were worth watching on a large high-definition screen, then I’d do it in a minute.
Another aspect of consumers’ preference for TV-watching is a matter of convenience. That is, they want a compact, simple, and user friendly box that will fit on their TV stand and be operated with a remote. Right now, TVs fit that profile and computers don’t.
But that’s surely going to change in the next decade. Already, set-top boxes like the Apple TV provide a mostly TV-like experience. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, you’ll be able to buy a user-friendly $200 set-top box with an ethernet port on the back that allows you to download and play video files. What’s lacking is a robust, user-friendly distribution network for large quantities of free video content. This is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem because nobody is going to buy a set-top box unless there’s content available for it, but few people are going to produce content for a given network unless there’s a large enough installed base to make it worthwhile.
But sooner or later, someone’s going to figure out a way to solve the dillemma. It might take the form of a peer-to-peer network like Joost or it might be a next-generation version of Netflix, where you pay $20/month for access to an unlimited amount of Internet-based streaming video. Technologically speaking, the set-top box will be a “computer,” but consumers will simply perceive it as a cable box with a virtually unlimited number of “channels.”
Incidentally, it’s rather bizarre that TV networks are so determined to charge consumers for copies of their TV shows. TV networks have been giving TV shows away for free for half a century. They’re the world’s experts at monetizing eyeballs. And if anything, selling ads on the Internet should be easier because they can precisely measure the size and demographics of their audience. So why do they continue giving their TV shows for free over the air (and even spending millions of dollars advertising those free shows) while fretting about the possibility that someone might get the exact same TV shows for free via the Internet? They should be creating MPEG files featuring their TV shows with embedded ads and giving them away for free on peer-to-peer networks.
USA Today reports that Municipal Wi-Fi plans across the nation continue to collapse under the pressure of economic reality. Schemes such as those proposed in Chicago and San Francisco simply don’t make good business sense, which is why they have been abandoned.
I don’t think citizens of these would-be wireless utopias should be upset over the loss of their Wi-Fi blanket, however. Most of these arrangements involved giving exclusive access to city rights of way to one company, creating a new generation of Ma’ Bells–a very dystopian vision. Getting in bed with the government is a bad idea for business, especially network industries, because as time goes by they lose their autonomy and become an atrophied public utility. So though Wi-Fi might give consumers more choice, it’s just another bad choice.
Read more in my piece recently published at American.com.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
