Marc Hochstein, Executive Editor of American Banker, a leading media outlet covering the banking and financial services community, discusses bitcoin.
According to Hochstein, bitcoin has made its name as a digital currency, but the truly revolutionary aspect of the technology is its dual function as a payment system competing against companies like PayPal and Western Union. While bitcoin has been in the news for its soaring exchange rate lately, Hochstein says the actual price of bitcoin is really only relevant for speculators in the short-term; in the long-term, however, the anonymous, decentralized nature of bitcoin has far-reaching implications.
Hochstein goes on to talk about the new market in bitcoin futures and some of bitcoin’s weaknesses—including the volatility of the bitcoin market.
Download
Related Links
Following up on Eli’s earlier post (“Does CDT believe in Internet freedom?”), I thought I’d just point out that we’ve spent a great deal of time here through the years defending real Internet freedom, which is properly defined as “freedom from state action; not freedom for the State to reorder our affairs to supposedly make certain people or groups better off or to improve some amorphous ‘public interest.'” All too often these days, “Internet freedom,” like the term “freedom” more generally, is defined as a set of positive rights/entitlements complete with corresponding obligations on government to delivery the goods and tax/regulate comprehensively to accomplish it. Using “freedom” in that way represents a grotesque corruption of language and one that defenders of human liberty must resist with all our energy.
I’ll be writing more about this in upcoming columns, but here’s a short list of past posts on Internet freedom, properly defined:
- The Problem with the “Declaration of Internet Freedom” & the “Digital Bill of Rights” – by Adam Thierer (July 2, 2012)
- A Note to Congress: The United Nations Isn’t a Serious Threat to Internet Freedom—but You Are – by Jerry Brito & Adam Thierer (The Atlantic, June 19, 2012)
- Does the Internet Need a Global Regulator? – by Adam Thierer (Forbes, May 6, 2012)
- More Confusion about Internet “Freedom” – by Adam Thierer (Mar. 1, 2011)
- Internet Freedom–Real vs Imagined – by Adam Thierer (Dec. 12, 2007)
- A Response to Andrew McLaughlin on Net Neutrality & “Freedom” – by Adam Thierer (July 9, 2011)
- Web 2.0, Section 230, and Nozick’s “Utopia of Utopias” – by Adam Thierer (Jan. 13, 2009)
- Cyber-Libertarianism: The Case for Real Internet Freedom – by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka (Aug. 12, 2009)
- Broadband as a Human Right (and a short list of other things I am entitled to on your dime) – by Adam Thierer (Oct. 14, 2009)
- “Internet Freedom”: How Statists Corrupt Our Language – by Berin Szoka (Oct. 27, 2009)
Andy Greenberg, technology writer for Forbes and author of the new book “This Machine Kills Secrets: How WikiLeakers, Cypherpunks, and Hacktivists Aim to Free the World’s Information,” discusses the rise of the cypherpunk movement, how it led to WikiLeaks, and what the future looks like for cryptography.
Greenberg describes cypherpunks as radical techie libertarians who dreamt about using encryption to shift the balance of power from the government to individuals. He shares the rich history of the movement, contrasting one of t the movement’s founders—hardcore libertarian Tim May—with the movement’s hero—Phil Zimmerman, an applied cryptographer and developer of PGP (the first tool that allowed regular people to encrypt), a non-libertarian who was weary of cypherpunks, despite advocating crypto as a tool for combating the power of government.
According to Greenberg, the cypherpunk movement did not fade away, but rather grew into a larger hacker movement, citing the Tor network, bitcoin, and WikiLeaks as example’s of its continuing influence. Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, belonged to a listserv followed by early cypherpunks, though he was not very active at the time, he says.
Greenberg is excited for the future of information leaks, suggesting that the more decentralized process becomes, the faster cryptography will evolve.
Download
Related Links
Joshua Gans, professor of Strategic Management at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and author of the new book Information Wants to be Shared, discusses modern media economics, including how books, movies, music, and news will be supported in the future.
Gans argues that sharing enhances most information’s value. He also explains that the business models of traditional media companies, gatekeepers who have relied on scarcity and control, have collapsed in the face of new technologies. Equally important, he argues that sharing can revive moribund, threatened industries even as he examines platforms that have, almost accidentally, thrived in this new environment.
Download
Related Links
Tuesday was a big day for the FCC. The Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee held an oversight hearing with all five Commissioners, the same day that reply comments were due on the design of eventual “incentive auctions” for over-the-air broadcast spectrum. And the proposed merger of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS was approved.
All this activity reflects the stark reality that the Commission stands at a crossroads. As once-separate wired and wireless communications networks for voice, video, and data converge on the single IP standard, and as mobile users continue to demonstrate insatiable demand for bandwidth for new apps, the FCC can serve as midwife in the transition to next-generation networks. Or, the agency can put on the blinkers and mechanically apply rules and regulations designed for a by-gone era. Continue reading →
Is geek culture sexist? Joseph Reagle, Assistant Professor of Communications Studies at Northeastern University and author of a new paper entitled, “Free as in Sexist? Free culture and the gender gap,” returns to Surprisingly Free to address geek feminism and the technology gender gap.
According to Reagle, only 1% of the free software community and 9% of Wikipedia editors are female, which he sees as emblematic of structural problems in the geek community. While he does not believe that being a geek or a nerd is in any way synonymous with being a sexist, he concludes that three things that he otherwise loves—geekiness, openness, and the rhetoric and ideology of freedom–are part of the problem inasmuch as they allow informal cliques to arise, dominate the discussion, and squeeze out minority views. Reagle also comments on a unintentional androcentricity he has observed even amongst free software community heroes, highlighting the ways in which this behavior can be alienating to women and prevents geek culture from growing beyond its traditional base.
Reagle prescribes a 3-step solution to sexism in geek culture: talking about gender; challenging and expanding what it means to be a geek; and not allowing the rhetoric of freedom to be used as an excuse for bad behavior.
Reagle further supports efforts to form female-only subcultures within the geek community, which opponents argue goes against the free software value of openness. Instead of the balkanization of their movement that opponents fear, these closed-group discussions actually strengthen geek culture at large, according to Reagle.
Download
Related Links
Christopher S. Yoo, the John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science at the University of Pennsylvania and author of the new book, The Dynamic Internet: How Technology, Users, and Businesses are Transforming the Network, explains that the Internet that we knew in its early days—one with a client-server approach, with a small number of expert users, and a limited set of applications and business cases—has radically changed, and so it may be that the architecture underlying the internet may as well.
According to Yoo, the internet we use today barely resembles the original Defense Department and academic network from which it emerged. The applications that dominated the early Internet—e-mail and web browsing—have been joined by new applications such as video and cloud computing, which place much greater demands on the network. Wireless broadband and fiber optics have emerged as important alternatives to transmission services provided via legacy telephone and cable television systems, and mobile devices are replacing personal computers as the dominant means for accessing the Internet. At the same time, the networks comprising the Internet are interconnecting through a wider variety of locations and economic terms than ever before.
These changes are placing pressure on the Internet’s architecture to evolve in response, Yoo says. The Internet is becoming less standardized, more subject to formal governance, and more reliant on intelligence located in the core of the network. At the same time, Internet pricing is becoming more complex, intermediaries are playing increasingly important roles, and the maturation of the industry is causing the nature of competition to change. Moreover, the total convergence of all forms of communications into a single network predicted by many observers may turn out to be something of a myth. Policymakers, Yoo says, should allow room for this natural evolution of the network to take place.
Download
Related Links
2013 is shaping up to be another big year for Internet and information technology policy books. Here’s a list of what’s coming out or already on the market. As faithful readers know, I put together end-of-year lists of important info-tech policy books, and here are the lists for 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and the most recent one for 2012. And here’s my compendium of all the major tech policy books from the 2000s. So I’ll do my best to get through all these books and whatever else follows throughout the year. Consider this my public service to the Internet policy community: I read nerdy Internet policy books so that you don’t have to!
Let me know what else I may have missed and I will add it to the list.
- Ian Brown & Christopher T. Marsden – Regulating Code: Good Governance and Better Regulation in the Information Age
- Robert W. McChesney – Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy
- Jaron Lanier – Who Owns the Future?
- Marvin Ammori – On Internet Freedom
- Abraham H. Foxman and Christopher Wolf – Viral Hate: Containing Its Spread on the Internet
- Giovanni Ziccardi – Resistance, Liberation Technology and Human Rights in the Digital Age
- John O. McGinnis – Accelerating Democracy: Transforming Governance Through Technology
- Scott Shackelford – Managing Cyber Attacks in International Law, Business and Relations: In Search of Cyber Peace
- Viktor Mayer-Schonberger & Kenneth Cukier – Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think
- Evgeny Morozov – To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
- Ronald Deibert – Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace
- Eric Schmidt & Jared Cohen – The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business
- Dorothea Kleine – Technologies Of Choice? ICTs, Development, and the Capabilities Approach
- Nicco Mele – The End of Big: How the Internet Makes David the New Goliath
- Thomas Rid – Cyber War Will Not Take Place
- Ethan Zuckerman – Rewire: Digital Cosmopolitans in the Age of Connection
- Nate Anderson – The Internet Police: How Crime Went Online, and the Cops Followed
- Paul Rosenzweig – Cyber Warfare: How Conflicts in Cyberspace Are Challenging America and Changing the World
- Alice E. Marwick – Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity, and Branding in the Social Media Age
- Gautam Shroff – The Intelligent Web: Search, Smart Algorithms, and Big Data
- Anupam Chander – The Electronic Silk Road: How the Web Binds the World Together in Commerce
- Laura DeNardis – The Global War for Internet Governance (likely 2014 launch)
In an important essay this week entitled “Silicon Valley’s ‘Suicide Impulse’,” Wall Street Journal columnist L. Gordon Crovitz warns that “Silicon Valley has long prided itself on avoiding the lumbering relationship between big government and most industries, but somehow it has become one of the top lobbyists in Washington.” Crovitz is worried that Internet and technology companies are falling prey to what Milton Friedman labeled “The Business Community’s Suicidal Impulse”: the persistent propensity to persecute one’s competitors using regulation or the threat thereof. “Rather than lobby government to go after one another,” Crovitz argues, “Silicon Valley lobbyists should unite to go after overreaching government. Instead of the ‘suicide impulse’ of lobbying for more regulation, Silicon Valley should seek deregulation and a long-overdue freedom to return to its entrepreneurial roots.”
Crovitz’s essay touches upon a dangerous trend I have written about here and elsewhere in the past: the increasing politicization of the Internet and information technology sectors and the gradual rise of rent-seeking (i.e., favor-seeking) over time. I’ve written about this problem in essays like:
These essays have documented how tech companies are increasingly vying for the attention of legislators and regulators in Washington, statehouses, and international capitals across the globe.
Why should we care about the increasing politicization of the information technology sector? Continue reading →
I posted an analysis of Netflix’s new Internet blocking strategy last week. I concluded that Netflix is attempting to leverage net neutrality regulations to gain an anticompetitive price advantage in the marketplace. In my view, this harm is an unintended consequence of the FCC’s decision to abandon its free market approach to the Internet and adopt net neutrality rules that enhance the market power of so-called “edge” companies. As Neil Stevens said in his Tech at Night column: “Told you so.”
Harold Feld apparently agrees that Netflix is threatening competition, and he has is own case of Cassandrafreude (“told you so,” but with a smile). In his view, however, the problem is that the FCC didn’t go far enough. He believes this situation could have been avoided if the FCC had applied common carrier regulation to the Internet (also known as Title II), which would regulate the Internet using statutes written for the old monopoly telephone network.
Though Harold Feld and I disagree on the appropriate level of Internet regulation (I would prefer less rather than more), it appears we do agree on several issues raised by Netflix’s decision to block access to its Super HD service. The unintended consequence of Netflix’s decision is that the ensuing debate has clarified some important Internet policy issues. 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.