license – Technology Liberation Front https://techliberation.com Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology Thu, 03 Apr 2025 23:20:10 +0000 en-US hourly 1 6772528 Running List of My Research on AI, ML & Robotics Policy https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/ https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/#respond Fri, 29 Jul 2022 12:51:54 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=77020

[last updated 4/3/2025 – Check my Medium page for latest posts]

This a running list of all the essays and reports I’ve already rolled out on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and robotics. Why have I decided to spend so much time on this issue? Because this will become the most important technological revolution of our lifetimes. Every segment of the economy will be touched in some fashion by AI, ML, robotics, and the power of computational science. It should be equally clear that public policy will be radically transformed along the way.

Eventually, all policy will involve AI policy and computational considerations. As AI “eats the world,” it eats the world of public policy along with it. The stakes here are profound for individuals, economies, and nations. As a result, AI policy will be the most important technology policy fight of the next decade, and perhaps next quarter century. Those who are passionate about the freedom to innovate need to prepare to meet the challenge as proposals to regulate AI proliferate.

There are many socio-technical concerns surrounding algorithmic systems that deserve serious consideration and appropriate governance steps to ensure that these systems are beneficial to society. However, there is an equally compelling public interest in ensuring that AI innovations are developed and made widely available to help improve human well-being across many dimensions. And that’s the case that I’ll be dedicating my life to making in coming years.

Here’s the list of what I’ve done so far. I will continue to update this as new material is released:

2025

2024

2023

2022

2021 (and earlier)

]]> https://techliberation.com/2022/07/29/running-list-of-my-research-on-ai-ml-robotics-policy/feed/ 0 77020 Addressing the Growing Problem of Regulatory Accumulation https://techliberation.com/2019/05/28/addressing-the-growing-problem-of-regulatory-accumulation/ https://techliberation.com/2019/05/28/addressing-the-growing-problem-of-regulatory-accumulation/#comments Tue, 28 May 2019 20:06:23 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76492

[This essay originally appeared on the AIER blog on May 23, 2019 under the title, “Spring Cleaning for the Regulatory State.”]

Spring is in full blossom, and many of us are in the midst of our annual house-cleaning ritual. A regular deep clean makes good sense because it makes our living spaces more orderly and gets rid of the gunk and grime that has amassed over the past year.

Unfortunately, governments almost never engage in their own spring-cleaning exercise. Statutes and regulations continue to accumulate, layer by layer, until they suffocate not only economic opportunity, but also the effective administration of government itself. Luckily, some states have realized this and have taken steps to help address this problem.

Mountains of Regulations

First, here are some hard facts about regulatory accumulation:

  • Red tape grows: Since the first edition of his annual publication Ten Thousand Commandments in 1993, Wayne Crews has documented how federal agencies have issued 101,380 rules. Other reports find agency staffing levels jumped from 57,109 to 277,163 employees from 1960 to 2017, while agency budgets swelled in real terms from $3 billion in 1960 to $58 billion in 2017 (2009$).
  • Nothing ever gets cleaned up: A Deloitte survey of U.S. Code reveals that 68 percent of federal regulations have never been updated and that 17 percent have only been updated once. If a company never updated its business model, it would fail eventually. But governments get away with doing the same thing without any fear of failure. “If it were a country, U.S. regulation would be the world’s eighth-largest economy, ranking behind India and ahead of Italy,” Crews notes.
  • The burden of regulatory accumulation is getting worse: “The estimate for regulatory compliance and economic effects of federal intervention is $1.9 trillion annually,” Crews finds, which is equal to 10 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product for 2017. When federal spending is added to regulatory costs are added to federal spending, Crews finds, the burden equals $4.173 trillion, or 30 percent of the entire economy. Mercatus Center research has found that “economic growth in the United States has, on average, been slowed by 0.8 percent per year since 1980 owing to the cumulative effects of regulation.” This means that “the US economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012” if regulation had been held to roughly the same aggregate level it stood at in 1980.

In sum, the evidence shows that the red tape is growing without constraint, hindering entrepreneurship and innovation, deterring new investment, raising costs to consumers, limiting worker opportunities/wages, and undermining economic growth.

Regulations accumulate in this fashion because the administrative state is on autopilot. Legislatures pass broad statutes delegating ambiguous authority to agencies. Bureaucrats are then free to roll the regulatory snowball down the hill until it has become so big that its momentum cannot be stopped.

The Death of Common Sense

Policy makers enact new rules with the best of intentions, of course, but we should not assume that the untrammeled growth of the regulatory state produces positive results. There is no free lunch, after all. Every regulation is a restriction on opportunities for experimentation with new and potentially better ways of doing things. Sometimes such restrictions make sense because regulations can pass a reasonable cost-benefit test. It would be foolish to assume that all regulations on the books do.

Spring cleaning for the regulatory state, therefore, should be viewed as an exercise in “good governance.” The goal is not to get rid of all regulations. The goal is to make sure that rules are reasonable and cost-effective so that the public can actually understand the law and get the highest value out of their government institutions.

Philip K. Howard, founder and chair of the nonprofit coalition Common Good and the author of The Death of Common Sense, has written extensively about how regulatory accumulation has become a chronic problem. “Too much law,” he argues, “can have similar effects as too little law.” “People slow down, they become defensive, they don’t initiate projects because they are surrounded by legal risks and bureaucratic hurdles,” Howard notes. “They tiptoe through the day looking over their shoulders rather than driving forward on the power of their instincts. Instead of trial and error, they focus on avoiding error.”

In such an environment, risk-taking and entrepreneurialism are more challenging and economic dynamism suffers. But regulatory accumulation also hurts the quality of government institutions and policies, which become fundamentally incomprehensible or illogical. “Society can’t function when stuck in a heap of accumulated mandates of past generations,” Howard concludes. This is why an occasional regulatory house cleaning is essential to unleash economic opportunity and improve the functioning of our democratic institutions.

Regulatory House Cleaning Begins

Reforms to address this problem are finally happening. In a series of new essays, my colleague James Broughel has documented how several states — including Idaho, Ohio, Virginia, and New Jersey — are undertaking serious efforts to get regulatory accumulation under control. They are utilizing a variety of mechanisms, including “regulatory reduction pilot programs” and “red tape review commissions.” Recently, Idaho actually initiated a sunset of its entire regulatory code and will now try to figure out how to clean up its 8,200 pages of regulations containing 736 chapters of state rules.

Meanwhile, other states are undertaking serious reform in one of the worst forms of regulatory accumulation: occupational licenses. The Federal Trade Commission notes that roughly 30 percent of American jobs require a license today, up from less than 5 percent in the 1950s. Research by economist Morris Kleiner and others finds that “restrictions from occupational licensing can result in up to 2.85 million fewer jobs nationwide, with an annual cost to consumers of $203 billion.” And many of the rules do not even serve their intended purpose. A major 2015 Obama administration report on the costs of occupational licensing concluded that “most research does not find that licensing improves quality or public health and safety.”

Arizona, West Virginia, and Nebraska are among the leaders in reforming occupational-licensing regimes using a variety of approaches. In some cases, the reforms sunset licensing rules for specific professions altogether. Other proposals grant workers reciprocity to use a license they obtained in another state. Finally, some states have proposed letting most professions operate without any license at all but then requiringall, but then require them to make it clear to consumers that they are unlicensed.

The Need for a Fresh Look

Sunsets are not silver-bullet solutions, and the recent experience with sunsetting and “de-licensing” requirements at the state level has been mixed because many legislatures ignore or circumvent requirements. Nonetheless, sunsets can still help prompt much-needed discussions about which rules make sense and which ones no longer do.

Sunsets can be forward-looking, too. I have proposed that when policy makers craft new laws, especially for fast-paced tech sectors, they should incorporate a clause that what we might think of as “the Sunsetting Imperative.” It would demand that any existing or newly imposed technology regulation should include a provision sunsetting the law or regulation within two years. Reforms like these are also sometimes referred to as “temporary legislation” or “fresh look” requirements. Policy makers can always reenact rules that are still relevant and needed.

By forcing a periodic spring cleaning, sunsets and fresh-look requirements can help stem the tide of regulatory accumulation and ensure that only those policies that serve a pressing need remain on the books. There is no good reason for governments not to clean up their messes on occasion, just like the rest of us have to.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2019/05/28/addressing-the-growing-problem-of-regulatory-accumulation/feed/ 1 76492 Thoughts on FTC Economic Liberty Task Force Report & Occupational Licensing Reform https://techliberation.com/2018/09/25/thoughts-on-ftc-economic-liberty-task-force-report-occupational-licensing-reform/ https://techliberation.com/2018/09/25/thoughts-on-ftc-economic-liberty-task-force-report-occupational-licensing-reform/#respond Tue, 25 Sep 2018 19:47:37 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76385

Over at the Mercatus Center Bridge blog, Trace Mitchell and I just posted an essay entitled, “A Non-Partisan Way to Help Workers and Consumers,” which discusses the new Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Economic Liberty Task Force report on occupational licensing.

We applaud the FTC’s calls for greater occupational licensing uniformity and portability, but regret the missed opportunity to address root problem of excessive licensing more generally. But while FTC is right to push for greater occupational licensing uniformity and portability, policymakers need to confront the sheer absurdity of licensing so many jobs that pose zero risk to public health & safety. Licensing has become completely detached from risk realities and actual public needs.

As the FTC notes, excessive licensing limits employment opportunities, worker mobility, and competition while also “resulting in higher prices, reduced quality, and less convenience for consumers.” These are unambiguous facts that are widely accepted by experts of all stripes. Both the Obama and Trump Administrations, for example, have been completely in league on the need for comprehensive  licensing reforms.

Trace and I argue that we need serious occupational reforms built on the idea of the “right to earn a living” that must pass this test: “All occupational regulations shall be limited to those demonstrably necessary and carefully tailored to fulfill legitimate public health, safety, or welfare objectives.”  Also, all licensing authorities should be put on the clock and be required, within one year, to reassess the wisdom of all existing licenses to ensure they meet that test. If not, they are repealed or reformed.

In recent testimony in Texas, our Mercatus Center colleague Matthew Mitchell has also discussed other reform options, including the “Occupational Board Reform Act,” which recently passed in Nebraska. The goal of the law is to “protect the fundamental right of an individual to pursue a lawful occupation;.” They key provision of the Act demands that state actors:

use the least restrictive regulation which is necessary to protect consumers from undue risk of present, significant, and substantiated harms that clearly threaten or endanger the health, safety, or welfare of the public when competition alone is not sufficient and which is consistent with the public interest;

That’s an excellent approach to reform and when combined with the Right to Earn a Living Act, policymakers can begin to reverse the protectionist, anti-competitive licensing schemes that encumber entrepreneurs and workers across the land.

In forthcoming work, I hope to more fully develop the connection between the right to earn a living, the need for comprehensive licensing reform, and the freedom to innovate more generally. In the meantime, hop over to The Bridge to read our new essay on how the FTC report helps advance this cause..

]]> https://techliberation.com/2018/09/25/thoughts-on-ftc-economic-liberty-task-force-report-occupational-licensing-reform/feed/ 0 76385 Should We Teach Children to Be Entrepreneurs, or How to Pay Licensing Fees? https://techliberation.com/2018/08/21/should-we-teach-children-to-be-entrepreneurs-or-how-to-pay-licensing-fees/ https://techliberation.com/2018/08/21/should-we-teach-children-to-be-entrepreneurs-or-how-to-pay-licensing-fees/#comments Tue, 21 Aug 2018 12:46:28 +0000 https://techliberation.com/?p=76353

Yesterday was National Lemonade Day. Over at the Mercatus Bridge blog, Jennifer Skees and I used the opportunity to highlight the increasing regulatory crackdown on kids operating ventures without first seeking the proper permits from local authorities. We ask, “wouldn’t it be better to teach them the value of hard work and entrepreneurial effort instead of threatening them with penalties for not getting costly permits to do basic jobs?” Here’s our answer:

Today is National Lemonade Day. For many Americans a lemonade stand was their first experience in entrepreneurship. But unfortunately, this time honored tradition that teaches the value of hard work, entrepreneurship, and innovation may be under threat from overzealous grown-ups.

Should we really force kids to get licenses to start lemonade stands, sell bottles of water outside a ballpark, or mow lawns for a little extra money? And wouldn’t it be better to teach them the value of hard work and entrepreneurial effort instead of threatening them with penalties for not getting costly permits to do basic jobs?

Recent news stories have highlighted examples of kids being confronted with local regulations that essential tell them not to be entrepreneurial until they’ve gotten someone’s blessing–or else face fines or other penalties for those efforts.

Out in San Francisco, for example, a neighbor threatened to call the police on an eight-year-old girl selling water to raise money for a trip to Disneyland after her mother had lost her job. The neighbor berated the little girl for “illegally selling water without a permit.” Luckily, national outrage seems to have fallen in favor of this rogue entrepreneur instead of “Permit Patty.” But this is far from an isolated case.

Another story went viral earlier this year involving kids and lemonade stands. Country Time lemonade pledged to pay the fines received or the permit cost for children’s lemonade stands. Who thought we’d reach the day when we need a Lemonade Legal Defense Fund? But just prior to the launch, Stapleton, Colorado police were called to shut down the lemonade stand of  four and six year-old brothersfor failing to have a business license. Kids who probably can’t read or fill out the necessary forms are expected to obtain a formal license for a tradition that dates back about 120 years.

Kids are confronted with other meddlesome local permitting rules even when they aren’t selling food or beverages. The town of Gardendale, Alabama made news last year after attempting to charge a teenager $110 for a business license for mowing neighbors’ lawns during the summer to earn money for a mission trip. A local professional lawn service had apparently pressured local parents about the need for kids to have licenses to mow. The city later clarified teenagers would be allowed to mow lawns for a little extra money without needing a license to do so as long as the work was part-time and they were students.

Should we have expected kids to seek permits in these cases? Some sticklers might say yes, we should. After all, it’s the law!

But complying with the law is costly in two important ways. First, the actual fees can be exorbitant. In San Francisco, for example, the filing fee for a “peddler’s permit” costs $330-$525 depending on whether you are selling non-food or food items. Then, if you get the city’s blessing, you have to pay an additional $166-$624 annually for a license to serve the community. It’s safe to say that most kids and their parents probably could not afford that expense.

But the more important cost might be the mental transaction costs or general hassles associated with navigating the labyrinth of red tape that entrepreneurs must confront to get new ventures started. The very act of going through a laborious, confusing, and time-consuming permitting process will be too much for many to bear, especially kids. When a mother tried to get a license for a lemonade stand in Texas, she was told that an inspection by the health department would also be necessary because of the “bacteria that can grow in lemonade.” As a result some children and parents have gotten creative by not “selling” these dangerous products but instead offering it “free” but accepting donations.

The costs of permitting have important real-world implications. They are sending a clear message to kids and their parents: Don’t even bother trying to be entrepreneurial unless you are willing to deal with a world of regulatory pain. Worse yet, to the extent they learn anything by attempting to comply with such silly rules, it’s probably only a lesson in how to manipulate a political process for your own gain. All too often, many incumbent businesses who already worked their way through the system figured out how to exploit it for their own gain to keep competitors out. They then become the guardians of the licensing systems

This is what Philip K. Howard, chair of Common Good, calls this  The Death of Common Sense, in a book of the same name. “Like sediment in a harbor,” he argues, rules and regulations in the US have accumulated, “until most productive activity requires slogging through a legal swamp. “It’s degenerative,” he says. Indeed, laws and regulations like these sap the entrepreneurial spirit of young Americans and discourage them from taking the initiative and learning important skills they will use throughout their lives.

A common refrain of just about every generation of adults is that the younger generation doesn’t work as hard as their generation did. Such “kids-these-days!” complaints are almost always off-base. But they are particularly outlandish when it’s the adults who are acting juvenile by refusing to reform illogical and costly rules that do nothing to protect the public but make it harder for young people to pursue their dreams and engage in entrepreneurial activities.

We shouldn’t actively encourage kids to break the law, of course. But what happens when rules and regulations utterly defy common sense, as these and countless others do today? Perhaps a little “evasive” entrepreneurialism and civil disobedience is the answer. Luckily, public interest law firms like the Institute for Justice, the Goldwater Institute, and the Pacific Legal Foundation already exist to defend our general right to earn a living. Sometimes it will be necessary to push our luck against what Goldwater’s Timothy Sandefur calls “the Permission Society” if we hope to get policymakers to wake up to the illogical and unfair nature of archaic old licensing regimes.

Luckily some states have started to realize that these burdensome licensing and permitting requirements may have gone too far and at least in some cases are not serving their original purposes. For example, Utah recently passed a law that exempts lemonade stands and other similar child-run businesses from permitting requirements. And recently health inspectors helped a Minneapolis 13-year-old get the necessary permits and paid the costs of the licenses to keep his hotdog stand open. But on a broader front, the right to earn a living is tied both to the value of entrepreneurship and the right to innovate. It is far too easy for incumbents to use licensing schemes to keep out new innovations like ride-sharing and home-sharing. Instead of focusing on raising requirements to prevent new innovations and protect existing industries, we should look to the right to earn a living as a way to even the playing field by reducing the burdens for everyone.

Kids are used to asking permission from their parents, but what are we teaching them when every attempt to do a job or earn a little money also requires endless permission slips from the government? Studies have shown that helicopter parenting makes children struggle emotionally and behaviorally later in life. Imagine how much worse that problem is when the government serves as the ultimate helicopter parent, demanding constant permission to engage in any kind entrepreneurial acts? It seems if we want to stay a nation of innovators and entrepreneurs, the least we can do is tell the kids to stick to asking “Mother may I?” of just their mothers.

Additional Reading:

]]> https://techliberation.com/2018/08/21/should-we-teach-children-to-be-entrepreneurs-or-how-to-pay-licensing-fees/feed/ 2 76353 Robert Graboyes on What the Internet Can Teach Us about Health Care Innovation https://techliberation.com/2014/11/10/robert-graboyes-on-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-health-care-innovation/ https://techliberation.com/2014/11/10/robert-graboyes-on-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-health-care-innovation/#respond Mon, 10 Nov 2014 18:56:06 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=74900

Robert-GraboyesI want to bring to everyone’s attention an important new white paper by Dr. Robert Graboyes, a colleague of mine at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University who specializes in the economics of health care. His new 67-page study, Fortress and Frontier in American Health Care, seeks to move away from the tired old dichotomies that drive health care policy discussions: Left versus Right, Democrat versus Republican, federal versus state, and public versus private, and so on. Instead, Graboyes seeks to reframe the debate over the future of health care innovation in terms of “Fortress versus Frontier” and to highlight what lessons we can learn from the Internet and the Information Revolution when considering health care policy.

What does Graboyes mean by “Fortress and Frontier”? Here’s how he explains this conflict of visions:

The Fortress is an institutional environment that aims to obviate risk and protect established producers (insiders) against competition from newcomers (outsiders). The Frontier, in contrast, tolerates risk and allows outsiders to compete against established insiders. . . .  The Fortress-Frontier divide does not correspond neatly with the more familiar partisan or ideological divides. Framing health care policy issues in this way opens the door for a more productive national health care discussion and for unconventional policy alliances. (p. 4)

He elaborates in more detail later in the paper:

the Frontier encourages creative destruction and disruptive innovation. Undreamed-of products arise and old, revered ones vanish. New production processes sweep away old ones. This is a place where unknown innovators in garages destroy titans of industry. The Frontier celebrates and rewards risk, and there is a brutal egalitarianism to the creative process. In contrast, the Fortress discourages creative destruction and disruptive innovation. Insiders are protected from competition by government or by private organizations (such as insurers and medical societies) acting in quasigovernmental fashion. In the Fortress, insiders preserve the existing order. Innovation comes from well-established, credentialed insiders who, it is presumed, have the wisdom and motives and competence to identify opportunities for innovation.

In framing the debate in this fashion, Graboyes hopes that we will start paying more attention to the supply side of health care policy debates:

The debate over coverage (and over related issues concerning how health care providers are paid) has focused attention almost exclusively on the demand side of health care markets—who pays how much to whom for which currently offered services. The debate underplays questions of supply—how innovation can alter the very nature of the health care delivery system. (p. 3-4)

This is where Graboyes brings the Internet and information technology into the story to illustrate a powerful point: We could unlock many important life-enriching and potentially life-saving innovations by embracing the same vision we applied to the Internet and IT sectors. Graboyes is kind enough to cite my work on permissionless innovation and the importance of not letting public policy be dictated by excessive fear of worst-case scenarios regarding new technological innovations. As I noted in my book on the topic, “living in constant fear of worst-case scenarios—and premising public policy upon them—means that best-case scenarios will never come about. When public policy is shaped by precautionary principle reasoning, it poses a serious threat to technological progress, economic entrepreneurialism, social adaptation, and long-run prosperity.”

Had fear of potential worst-case outcomes driven policy for the Net, we might have never seen many of the life-enriching innovations that we enjoy today, as Graboyes explains eloquently in this passage:

Knowing what we know today, it would not be hard to persuade a cautious observer in 1989 to radically slow the pace of IT innovation. IT arguably poses personal risks as grave as those that health care poses. Cell phones have been essential components of improvised explosive devices in war zones. The 9/11 atrocities would have been difficult or impossible to carry out without cell phones. Thieves have used the Internet to steal. Stalkers have used the Internet to terrify their prey. Child predators find their victims on the web. People have been murdered by strangers they met in chatrooms. IT has allowed individuals and governments to violate others’ privacy in countless ways. Drug dealers and terrorist networks organize their efforts via cell phone and Internet. The Internet has greatly reduced the cost of destroying another’s reputation, and news accounts tell of suicides following cyberbullying. Our laws demand terribly high standards of safety and efficacy for drugs. We require no such standards for computers, cell phones, and software, but given the nefarious uses to which they are sometimes put, decades ago one could easily have argued for doing so. Had we done so, we would now be living in a much poorer, less interesting world—and perhaps one with even greater risks to life and limb than we have now. No online predators or improvised explosive devices, but also no OnStar to save you after an automobile crash or smartphone to alert police to your life-threatening situation and geographic location. (p. 41)

In other words–and this is another lesson I stress at length in my work–precautionary policies create profound trade-offs that are not always well understood upon enactment of new laws or regulations. As I noted in my book, “When commercial uses of an important resource or technology are arbitrarily prohibited or curtailed, the opportunity costs of such exclusion may not always be immediately evident. Nonetheless, those ‘unseen’ effects are very real and have profound consequences for individuals, the economy, and society.”

What Graboyes does so well in his new paper is prove that these trade-offs are already at work in the American health care system and that we had better get serious about acknowledging them before real damage is done. And what makes Fortress and Frontier such an enjoyable read is that Graboyes is a gifted story-teller who explains in clear terms how expanded health care innovation opportunities could improve the lives of real people. It’s not just abstract, textbook talk. We hear stories of real-world innovators and the patients who need their inventions. For example, Graboyes tells of “an unheralded doctor who pioneered stem-cell therapy in a small-town hospital, a carpenter and puppet-maker who invented functional prosthetic hands costing one-thousandth the price of professionally made devices (aided by an evolutionary biologist who started a worldwide consortium of amateur prosthetists), and college students who devised a low-cost treatment for clubfoot.” (p. 4) And much, much more.

“The most important thing to understand about disruptive innovation is that it often comes (perhaps usually comes) from strange and unexpected places,” Graboyes notes. (p. 20) “[A] shift from Fortress to Frontier would benefit the health and finances of Americans,” he argues, and “the task begins by easing limits on the supply of health care services, thereby clearing the way for innovators to take health care in directions we cannot yet imagine.” (p. 39)

Importantly, Graboyes also offers another reason why America should embrace the “frontier” spirit: Our global competitive advantage in this space is at risk if we don’t:

Moving health care from the Fortress to the Frontier may be more a matter of necessity than of choice. We are entering a period of rapid technological advances that will radically alter health care. Many of these advances require only modest capital and labor inputs that governments cannot easily control or prohibit. If US law obstructs these technologies here, it will be feasible for Americans to obtain them by Internet, by mail, or by travel. (p. 41-2)

He highlights several areas in which this debate will play out going forward including (and notice the intersection with the modern digital technologies and tech policy debates we often discuss here): genomic knowledge and personalized medicine, 3-D printing, artificial intelligence, information sharing via social media, wearable technology, and telemedicine.

To make sure that America can capitalize on the same innovative spirit that gave us the Information Revolution, Graboyes concludes his study with a laundry list of needed policy reforms. These include:

  • reform of FDA drug & device approval process to expedite reviews.
  • ensure that Americans have a “right to know” about themselves and their health (i.e., that individuals have a right to possess their own genetic information and to receive information about how to interpret the results.)
  • abolish state certificate-of-need laws, which unnecessarily “require that hospital developers obtain government permission before building a new facility, or expanding an existing one, or even adding a specific piece of medical equipment.”
  • reform state-based licensing laws, which “put barriers in the way of doctors moving from other states” and create physician shortages. Also need to reform state laws to allow nurse practitioners, optometrists, and others to practice independently of physicians.
  • reform tort law by capping noneconomic damages, instituting a “loser pays” rule to discourage frivolous lawsuits, establishing safe harbors for vaccine developers, and more.
  • revising tax laws to make sure medical devices are not hit with discriminatory tax burdens that discourage innovation, and then also revising other taxes that skew incentives in the health insurance marketplace.

Graboyes itemizes dozens of other potential reforms to give policymakers a smorgasbord of options from which to choose. It is unlikely that all the reforms he lists will be adopted, but even if policymakers would just pick a few of those proposed action items, it could provide a real boost to medical innovation in the short term. Importantly, most of these proposed reforms could be implemented without stirring up contentious debate over the future of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Needless to say, I highly recommend Fortress and Frontier and I very much hope that the vision that Graboyes articulates in it comes to influence public thinking and future policymaking in the health care arena. In a follow-up post, I will also discuss how Fortress versus Frontier provides us with another “innovation paradigm” that can help us frame future innovation policy debates in many other contexts.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2014/11/10/robert-graboyes-on-what-the-internet-can-teach-us-about-health-care-innovation/feed/ 0 74900 CBS, Time Warner Cable & TV Blackouts: What Should Washington Do? https://techliberation.com/2013/08/12/cbs-time-warner-cable-tv-blackouts-what-should-washington-do/ https://techliberation.com/2013/08/12/cbs-time-warner-cable-tv-blackouts-what-should-washington-do/#respond Mon, 12 Aug 2013 18:16:02 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=45463

over-the-topCBS and Time Warner Cable have been embroiled in a heated contractual battle over the past week that has resulted in viewers in some major markets losing access to CBS programming. When disputes like these go nuclear and signal blackouts occur, it is inevitable that some folks will call for policy interventions since nobody likes it when the content they love goes dark.

While some policy responses are warranted in this matter, policymakers should proceed with caution. Heated contractual negotiations are a normal part of any capitalist marketplace. We shouldn’t expect lawmakers to intervene to speed up negotiations or set content prices because that would disrupt the normal allocation of programming by placing a regulatory thumb too heavily on one side of the scale. This is why I am somewhat sympathetic to CBS in this fight. In an age when content creators struggle to protect their copyrighted content and get compensation for it, the last thing we need is government intervention that undermines the few distribution schemes that actually work well.

On the other hand, Time Warner Cable deserves sympathy here, too, since CBS currently enjoys some preexisting regulatory benefits. As I noted in this 2012 Forbes oped, “Toward a True Free Market in Television Programming,” many layers of red tape still encumber America’s video marketplace and prevent a truly free market in video programming from developing. The battle here revolves around the “retransmission consent” rules that were put in place as part of the Cable Act of 1992 and govern how video distributors carry signals from TV broadcasters, which includes CBS.

But those “retrans” rules are not the only part of the regulatory mess here. There are many related federal rules that tip the scales toward broadcasters and content creators, such as the requirement that video distributors carry broadcast signals even if they don’t want to (“must carry”); rules that prohibit distributors from striking deals with broadcasters outside their local communities (“network non-duplication” and “syndicated exclusivity” rules); regs specifying where broadcast channels appear on the cable channel lineup; and prohibitions against carrying sporting events on cable when the local stadium doesn’t sell all its seats on game day (“sports blackout rule”).

As they say on TV.. ” But Wait, There’s More!” Working in the favor of video distributors are the compulsory licensing requirements of the Copyright Act of 1976, which essentially forced a “duty to deal” upon broadcasters. Broadcasters have to let cable operators and other video distributors retransmit local stations, though the system at least ensures they get compensated for it. As I noted in my old Forbes essay, along with must carry rules, “Compulsory licensing is the original sin of video marketplace regulation. We could have avoided most of the regulatory mess of the past quarter century if Congress had simply left these rights and contractual negotiations alone. Once Congress forced broadcasters to share their programming, however, marketplace manipulation was off and rolling.”

Of course, the more primal and problematic intervention came decades before in the 1920s and ’30s when the government decided to nationalize spectrum management. Once mandates instead of markets where chosen as the primary allocation agent, America was off and running with a grand experiment in spectrum central planning. We’re still living with the results today. The very fact that spectrum is licensed and can only be used and sold for very narrow purposes as detailed in meticulous FCC regulations is a sign of just how far-removed we are from a pure free market here.

The question now is, what are we going to do about this fine mess? And is there any chance we can get it done?

The problem in this debate is that there are multiple layers of interventions that have built up over the years and created constituencies that are wedded to their preservation. Broadcasters, networks, independent content creators, big cable companies, small cable companies, satellite companies, sports leagues, and viewing consumers themselves — they all have conflicting interests and a stake in how this debate turns out. In his 2012 Mercatus Center working paper, “Consumer Welfare and TV Program Regulation,” media economist Bruce M. Owen noted that “What distinguishes TV programs from other mass media content, including both traditional print and new online media, is the extreme eagerness of Washington to engage in efforts to prevent markets from working freely, often in response to interest group pressures and opportunities for political advantage and with almost complete indifference to the welfare of consumers.”

As a result, if you talk to almost anyone involved in this debate, they will all insist that only their very specific reforms are the ones that can or should be implemented. Consequently, comprehensive reform will be challenging precisely because of all the conflicting interests and layers of law and regulation that must be eradicated.

But at least there is a blueprint for how to get the job done right. Many times here before I have written about “The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act,” which was floated last session by Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) and then-Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC). It proposed wiping off the books all the archaic rules outlined above. Alas, the bill never went anywhere in the last Congress and now that Sen. DeMint has left to lead the Heritage Foundation, there is no supporter in the Senate this session. Instead, we have some lawmakers floating bad ideas like S.912, the “Television Consumer Freedom Act of 2013,” which just proposes more regulatory gaming of an already over-gamed system.

We instead need policy reforms like the old DeMint-Scalise bill that clean up the regulatory mess of the past. But there just isn’t much appetite for such a house-cleaning. Most parties affected by these rules want very specific outcomes and deregulation won’t give them any such guarantees. After all, there will still be blackouts after deregulation. And the cost of some content may continue to go up in response to demand. And there will still be fights over sports programming. And there’s no certainty that all local broadcasters or small video distributors will survive. And so on, and so on.

But it is also true that a deregulatory environment is more likely to lead to even more experimentation and innovation with new business models, technologies, and methods of content creation and delivery. We already see much innovation in this marketplace despite all the red tape that exists. Just look at what’s been going on recent years with alternative video delivery platforms, including: Netflix, Hulu, XBox Live, Vudu, Roku, Redbox, Boxee, Amazon, Apple TV, Aereo, Google Chromecast, and so on. And don’t forget the strides that the old broadcast and cable giants have made here, too. CBS is actually a pretty good model for how content can be re-purposed online in creative ways on a firm’s own digital platform. Likewise, cable companies like Time Warner Cable are slowly but surely adapting to consumers’ demand for video to be delivered to multiple devices.

Of course, there there will always be hiccups along the road to video nirvana. Some regulatory activists seemingly expect that all content can be delivered effortless and cheaply to consumers without giving a thought in the world to just how complicated it is to get that content financed and distributed in the first place. Great content and great delivery platforms don’t just happen by magic or the good intentions of activists or policymakers. Those platforms happen because new markets and monetization mechanisms develop to facilitate them. If we cut back the regulatory deadwood in our modern information marketplace, we’d likely get even more experimentation and innovation that would likely produce all new ways of financing, creating, and delivering content to consumers. But we’ll never know unless we are willing to embrace change and kill all those old regulatory weeds that continue to grow in our information garden.

Alas, if Congress can’t muster the courage to do that, then lawmakers ought to at least consider asking the broadcasters to return all that juicy spectrum they are sitting on. After all, the current retrans racket gives the broadcasters an increasingly lucrative revenue stream when they deliver content on cable and satellite systems (in addition to the advertising revenues they already receive). No good reason exists to give them preferential treatment relative to any other cable channel out there today. Don’t forget, there are all sorts of garden-variety cable carriage disputes that happen outside the regulated retrans system today. (Remember last year’s big spats between AMC vs. Dish and Viacom vs. DirecTV?) There are no special rules that either side can rely on in those instances. So why should special rules be applied to other content companies simply because some of their properties are broadcast channels? Answer: they shouldn’t.

But if no other reforms occur and if companies like CBS still want to be more like a cable mega-channel — albeit, a very handsomely compensated cable channel — then by all means go for it. In the meantime, however, they can return all that spectrum for re-auction for some better purpose. In fact, back early 2009, CBS Corp. President and CEO Les Moonves told an investor conference that moving all CBS network programming to cable and satellite platforms would be “a very interesting proposition.” I agree! But, absent other reforms, it might be time to make that “interesting proposition” a mandatory one.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2013/08/12/cbs-time-warner-cable-tv-blackouts-what-should-washington-do/feed/ 0 45463 Again, Facebook sparks controversy then bows to user pressure https://techliberation.com/2009/02/18/again-facebook-sparks-controversy-then-bows-to-user-pressure/ https://techliberation.com/2009/02/18/again-facebook-sparks-controversy-then-bows-to-user-pressure/#comments Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:18:28 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=16835

Facebook sparked a major user uprising when it amended its terms of service earlier this month to grant the social networking site greater licensing rights over user-submitted content. The implications of Facebook’s amended Terms of Use were originally uncovered by The Consumerist this past Sunday in a story entitled, “Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: ‘We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.'” The title pretty much sums up what the controversy was all about: under Facebook’s amended Terms of Use, even after a user deletes his Facebook account, Facebook would retain its license to distribute nearly all types of user-submitted content including photos and videos.

Predictably, news of Facebook’s expanded licensing rights made many users angry, with several Facebook groups against Terms of Use modifications popping up, attracting thousands of members overnight. As is often the case with juicy reports like this one, news of the Facebook fiasco spread throughout the blogosphere rapidly, eventually making its way to major tech sites and even the main page of CNN.com. By yesterday afternoon, a snapshot of Mark Zuckerberg‘s face was plastered on Fox News Channel, next to an excerpt of an entry he posted to Facebook’s blog in defense of the social networking site’s new terms.

Facebook’s explanation of its new terms seemed reasonable enough: even after a user quits Facebook, material that user has posted on friends’ walls and other messages the user has sent to others may remain available. Facebook also noted that its perpetual license only allowed the site to use material in accordance with departed users’ privacy settings (presumably at the time of their departure). Under the new terms, therefore, Facebook would still be required to respect albums marked as private–and ensure they stay that way.

But the seemingly stark contrast between Facebook’s attempts to justify the changes to its terms of use and, well, the actual language of terms themselves left many observers dissatisfied. In theory, if a user who had a Facebook photo album open to her entire network were to delete her account, Facebook would retain license to make those photos available to members of her network in perpetuity. And depending on how you parse the amended terms, Facebook could even use your profile pic in ads for the social network long after you terminated your Facebook account.

Would Facebook actually do any of these things? Probably not. As Zuckerberg pointed out, Facebook “wouldn’t share your information in a way you wouldn’t want.”  Taking this a step further, I think that even if Facebook saw a chance to earn a quick buck or two by selling departed users’ images, such a move would undoubtedly spur user backlash orders of magnitude more severe than anything the site has experienced before. Instead of thousands of users in arms, there’d be millions, and a mass exodus of users would be a very real possibility. Despite Facebook’s awesome success in the social networking arena, there are lots of robust alternatives to Facebook out there that would love nothing more than to provide a home to disaffected Facebook users. Facebook’s execs know all of this, which is why I highly doubt the site would ever commit any of the violations that some have speculated might be possible under the new terms.

Of course, none of these assurances–however comforting they may be–would hold up in court. Even though Facebook probably wouldn’t ever misuse its license to user content, it could under its new terms. That fact alone is unsettling to many users.

All these concerns were rendered largely moot this morning when Facebook announced that it had decided to revert to a previous version of its Terms of Use, thereby nullifying the changes responsible for the uprising. Facebook’s move isn’t especially surprising, nor is it unprecedented. Back in late 2007, Facebook unveiled an advertising service called Beacon that tracked the buying habits of Facebook users for advertising purposes. Beacon allowed your friends to see your purchasing habits, sparking privacy concerns and media scrutiny. After a few weeks, Facebook gave in to pressure and began allowing users to opt-out of Beacon entirely by changing their privacy settings.

The peaceful resolution of the latest Facebook fiasco further hammers home an argument that many of us TLFers have made time and time again: especially on the Web, companies have little choice but to listen to their users, and firms often find that they can’t get away with unsavory practices that might have flown under the radar in another era without spurring user backlash and, worse still, bad PR. As Bob Garfield aptly put it, when disputes between consumers and businesses arise in age of the Internet and the blogosphere, ” the Herd Will Be Heard.”

If Facebook had not relented, there’s a chance government would’ve gotten involved. Yesterday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center had announced it was “readying a complaint” against Facebook with the Federal Trade Commission. And even if that complaint hadn’t gone anywhere, chances are some member of Congress would have seen it fit to “investigate” social networking practices and send Facebook a detailed questionnaire about its content licensing policies.

But as the user uprising and Facebook’s quick reaction illustrate, markets are perfectly capable of resolving many kinds of disputes quickly and efficiently. Regulators are the dinosaurs of the digital era. Even if the FTC had acted on EPIC’s planned complaint, any regulatory ruling probably would not have emerged until long after the fiasco had been resolved–either by Facebook relenting, or by users ditching Facebook for a competing social network.

We’ll never know what would have happened had Facebook held firm, but if history is any guide, keeping regulators at bay may well have been a wise move on Facebook’s part.

]]> https://techliberation.com/2009/02/18/again-facebook-sparks-controversy-then-bows-to-user-pressure/feed/ 18 16835 Google Book Search deal = ASCAP / online collective licensing model for the future? https://techliberation.com/2008/10/28/google-book-search-deal-ascap-online-collective-licensing-model-for-the-future/ https://techliberation.com/2008/10/28/google-book-search-deal-ascap-online-collective-licensing-model-for-the-future/#comments Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:39:24 +0000 http://techliberation.com/?p=13597

At first glance, it seems to me that this big settlement announced today between Google and the book publishers regarding Google Book Search sounds a lot like an ASCAP model for online book transactions. Specifically, of the key provisions of the agreement, it’s this last one about the Book Rights Registry that makes me think of ASCAP:

Compensation to Authors and Publishers and Control Over Access to Their Works – Distributing payments earned from online access provided by Google and, prospectively, from similar programs that may be established by other providers, through a newly created independent, not-for-profit Book Rights Registry that will also locate rightsholders, collect and maintain accurate rightsholder information, and provide a way for rightsholders to request inclusion in or exclusion from the project.

That’s basically what ASCAP does today, and I think this sounds like a pretty good plan for books going forward. But I also find myself wondering: Could this be the beginning of a move toward a more comprehensive online collective licensing system for other types of content as everything moves online. For example, could this model work for music? EFF has argued it could. And some in the music industry appear to be moving in that direction. (Talk about your strange bedfellows… EFF and the RIAA potentially on the same side of an issue!)

Of course, you’d need to get a lot more companies than just Google to play ball to make it work for music — specifically, you’d need all the ISPs on board. For books, by contrast, the reason today’s deal will likely work is because Google has been the only online operator with the scale and interest in putting the entire contents of so many books online. But all music is already online and much video is heading online, too. So, I think it would be much, much more challenging to make collective licensing work for music and video the way it appears it might work for books. (We’d probably need compulsory licensing instead, which I am no fan of). The key to these voluntary collective licensing systems is large, trusted intermediaries that can clear a massive volume of transactions. Google can do that for books as today’s deal makes clear. It will be interesting to see if others suggest that music and video can and should work the same way. I’m skeptical, and I’m also a bit hung up on some fairness issues about how it would work, which I might touch upon in a future essay.

But I’m no copyright expert so I’d be interested in hearing what my colleagues and others think.

Update: Looks like someone beat me to the punch with the ASCAP comparison. I just starting reading through my RSS feed and finding reaction from others and came across Mathew Ingram’s post arguing that, “In effect, Google is setting up a body that does what ASCAP and similar groups do for musicians.”

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