I got some feedback from readers about my post last night regarding the irony of the FCC’s newly-created MySpace page containing some rather vulgar user comments. I wondered if the agency would continue to allow such comments when the agency regulates similar words when they are uttered on broadcast TV or radio. A few people asked me why the agency hasn’t bother using the comment management tools that MySpace puts at the public’s disposal. It’s a good question, and actually I’m not sure why they didn’t do that right from the start. Perhaps the agency is concerned about being accused of censoring public comment. [Incidentally, the White House and some federal agencies have MySpace pages, so perhaps I need to look into how those agencies manage comments.]
Regardless, the FCC now
has taken steps to deal with this. John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable and Kim Hart of The Hill point out that the agency has removed some vulgar comments on their MySpace page (namely, any comment with the F-bomb in it). And I assume the agency is now taking steps to screen comments going forward. For those who are not aware, MySpace empowers users (including government agencies if they choose to set up profiles) to require approval before new comments appear on their profiles (accessed by clicking “My Account” and then “Spam”). Here are the options:
Moreover, I should also mention that if people want to see the FCC’s MySpace profile but don’t want to see all the comments, they can always change their default view to MySpace’s “Lite View,” which hides all comments, third party applications, and some other sections of a page. To switch to Lite View, click on “My Account” in the upper-right corner of any MySpace page, then click on “Miscellaneous” to access the Default View setting. It’s another nice way that MySpace empowers users to control their site experience.
Regardless, this will be a difficult issue for federal agencies to manage going forward. If agencies are going to take the plunge and boldly enter the social networking world, they’ll need to understand that the vibrant exchange of views will sometimes entail some salty language and occasional insults. Yet, when they take steps to deal with some of the most offensive comments posted on their pages, accusations of censorship are bound to fly. It’s a tough position for agencies to be in since they want to encourage maximum public interaction and input, and yet some of that input is bound to get heated, even ugly.
So, here are some questions that both agencies and policy wonks will need to consider going forward. Continue reading →
Along with my colleague Barbara Esbin, the Director of PFF’s Center for Communications and Competition Policy, I have just released a new paper on discussing the possibility of reallocating a portion of broadcast television spectrum for alternative purposes, namely, mobile broadband. As I discussed here before, Blair Levin, the Executive Director of the FCC’s Omnibus Broadband Initiative, has been suggesting that it might be possible to craft a grand bargain whereby broadcasters get cash for some (or all) of their current spectrum allocations if they return spectrum to the FCC for reallocation and re-auction, likely to mobile broadband services.
In our paper, “An Offer They Can’t Refuse: Spectrum Reallocation That Can Benefit Consumers, Broadcasters & the Mobile Broadband Sector,” [PDF] Barbara and I argue that:
the benefits of such a deal could be enormous for wireless broadband providers, developers of digital technologies, and consumers. Expanding the pool of spectrum available for next-generation wireless broadband offerings will ensure that innovative new networks, devices, and services are made available to the public on a timely basis. Ultimately, that will mean more high-speed choices for consumers, especially those in rural areas harder to reach with high-speed wireline networks. Finally, more generally, anything that moves us in the direction of a freer market in spectrum is a good thing.
But fairness to broadcasters lies at the heart of this spectrum reallocation plan. If a deal can’t be structured that broadcasters would find acceptable, they should not be forced to come to the table. When we speak of an offer they can’t refuse, we mean one so attractive that no rational businessperson or investor would pass it up. It is essential broadcasters be willing partners in the deal, and be full participants in the process of shaping its contours.
Read the entire thing here, or below the fold as a Scribd document. Continue reading →
While I was away at Oxford University last week, a USA Today story ran entitled “Online Hate Speech: Difficult to Police… and Define.” The author, Theresa Howard, was kind enough to call me for comment on the issue before I left and I made two general points in response to her questions about how serious online hate speech was and how we should combat it:
(1)
“The Internet is a cultural bazaar. It’s the place to find the best and worst of all human elements on display.” What I meant by that, quite obviously, is that you can’t expect to have the most open, accessible communications platform the world has ever known and not also have a handful of knuckleheads who use it spew vile, hateful, ridiculous comments. But we need to put things in perspective: Those jerks represent only a very, very small minority of all online speech and speakers. Hate speech is not the norm online. The overwhelmingly majority of online speech is of a socially acceptable — even beneficial — nature.
(2)
“When advocacy groups work together and use the new technology at their disposal, they have a way of signaling out bad speech and bad ideas.” What I meant by that was that the best way to combat the handful of neanderthals out there that spew hateful garbage is to: (a) use positive speech to drown out hateful speech, and (b) encourage websites to self-police themselves or use community policing techniques to highlight hateful speech and encourage the community to fight back. Importantly, this process is reinforcing. When online communities “flag and tag” objectionable or hateful content, it is easier for better site policing to occur, for social norms to develop, and for better speech to be targeted at that bad speech. Moreover, these new tools and methods are helping groups like the Anti-Defamation League and the National Hispanic Media Coalition to better identify hate speech and then channel their collective energy and efforts to unite the rest of the online community against those hateful speakers and sites.
I think this approach makes more sense than calling in governments to police online hate speech through censorship efforts. This is especially the case because, at the margins, “hate speech” can often be tricky to define and, at least in the United States, regulatory efforts could conflict with legitimate free speech rights. Again, the best way to deal with and marginalize such knuckleheads is with more and better speech. Fight stupidity with sensibility, not censorship.
I’ll be heading to Oxford University this week to participate in an Oxford Internet Institute (OII) forum on the subject of “Child Protection, Free Speech and the Internet: Mapping the Territory and Limitations of Common Ground.” It’s being led by several experts from the OII as well as my good friends John Morris and Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). The aims of this forum are:
- To facilitate a dialogue between NGOs campaigning to protect respectively, child protection and children’s rights online, and freedom of speech and other civil liberties online.
- To promote a better understanding of each others’ positions, to share perspectives and information with a view to identifying areas of common ground and areas of disagreement.
- To identify any shared policy goals, and possible tools to support the achievement of those goals.
- To publicize the findings of the forum in international policy debates about Internet governance and regulation.
Conference participants were asked to submit a 2-3 pg summary of their views on a couple of questions that will be discussed at this event. I have listed those questions, and my answers, down below the fold. It’s my best attempt to date to succinctly outline my views about how to balance content concerns and free speech issues going forward. Continue reading →
I really appreciate the venture capitalists (VCs) in Silicon Valley subsidizing my soapbox at Twitter. Seriously, it is an absolutely awesome platform for getting a message out to the masses. But at some point I worry that the gravy train will come to an end and that users will have to start picking up part of the tab. After all, will those VCs continue to subsidize Twitter if it never turns a profit? According to the Wikipedia entry about Twitter:
In total, Twitter has raised over US$57 million from venture capitalists. The exact amounts of funding have not been publicly released. Twitter’s first round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between $1 million and $5 million. Its B round of funding in 2008 was for $22 million and its C round of funding in 2009 was for $35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital. Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.
Again, thank you VCs! But, like them, I do wonder when and how Twitter will bring in some cash. Is there a “freemium” model that could work? Perhaps. “Pro” or corporate accounts have been rumored to be in the works. Getting someone else to pick up the tab that way might bring in enough cash for Twitter to allow the free ride to continue for the rest of us. But what about advertising? It’s been the “mother’s milk” of most online media and platforms for some time now, and Twitter seems perfectly suited to insert a few banner ads or contextual ads here and there. It could be happening sooner than you think. Austin Modine of The Register notes in a new piece, “Twitter ‘Leaves Door Open’ for Targeted Ads,” that: Continue reading →
In a post earlier this week, I discussed Randy Cohen’s “guideline” for anonymous blogging. Specifically, Cohen argued in a recent New York Times piece that, “The effects of anonymous posting have become so baleful that it should be forsworn unless there is a reasonable fear of retribution. By posting openly, we support the conditions in which honest conversation can flourish.” While sympathetic to that guideline, I noted I agreed with it as an ethical principle, not a legal matter. In others words, what might make sense as a “best practice” for the Internet and its users would not make sense as a regulatory standard. I prefer using social norms and public pressure to drive these standards, not regulation that could have an unintended chilling effect on beneficial forms of anonymous online speech.
Dan Gillmor of the Center for Citizen Media of the Harvard Berkman Center has a new column up at the UK Guardian in which he takes a slightly different cut at a new standard or social norm for dealing with some of the more caustic anonymous speech out there:
One of the norms we’d be wise to establish is this: People who don’t stand behind their words deserve, in almost every case, no respect for what they say. In many cases, anonymity is a hiding place that harbours cowardice, not honour. The more we can encourage people to use their real names, the better. But if we try to force this, we’ll create more trouble than we fix. But we don’t want, in the end, to turn everything over to the lawyers. The rest of us — the audience, if you will — need to establish some new norms as well.
Specifically, Gillmor argues that, ” We need to readjust our internal BS meters in a media-saturated age,” because “We are far too prone to accepting what we see and hear.” I think Gillmor has too little faith in most digital denizens; most of us take anonymous comments with a grain of salt and assume that the ugliest of those comments are often untrue. And that’s generally the “principle” he recommends each of us adopt going forward: Continue reading →
Randy Cohen, who pens “The Ethicist” column for The New York Times Magazine, wrote this week about the “skank case,” or the controversy surrounding the recent legal outing for an anonymous blogger who called fashion model Liskula Cohen a “psychotic, lying, whoring … skank.” Thanks to a recent court decision, we now know that the blogger who uttered those words is Rosemary Port, a 29-year-old Fashion Institute of Technology student. And she now apparently plans to sue Google for revealing her identity to the court. [As a shameful aside, can I just say that there has never been a nerdy Internet legal battle that involved two more smokin’ hot women than this! Sorry, I couldn’t resist pointing out the obvious.]
Reflecting on this catfight in his NY Times Magazine editorial, “Is It O.K. to Blog About This Woman Anonymously?” Randy Cohen asks:
Has anonymous posting, though generally protected by law, become so toxic that it should be discouraged? It has. To promote the social good of lively conversation and the exchange of ideas, transparency should be the default mode. […]
Here is a guideline. The effects of anonymous posting have become so baleful that it should be forsworn unless there is a reasonable fear of retribution. By posting openly, we support the conditions in which honest conversation can flourish.
But Mr. Cohen never specifies whether he is talking about an
ethical guideline or a legal guideline. There is a world of difference, of course. As a matter of social or personal ethics, I think many of us would agree that anonymity “should be forsworn” and we should encourage people to “post openly.” I always live by that rule myself when blogging or posting comments on other sites, whether they are blogs, discussion boards, or even shopping sites. But that is my choice. I would not want that choice forced by law upon others. Continue reading →
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka — (Ver. 1.0 — Summer 2009)
We are attempting to articulate the core principles of cyber-libertarianism to provide the public and policymakers with a better understanding of this alternative vision for ordering the affairs of cyberspace. We invite comments and suggestions regarding how we should refine and build-out this outline. We hope this outline serves as the foundation of a book we eventually want to pen defending what we regard as “Real Internet Freedom.” [Note: Here’s a printer-friendly version, which we also have embedded down below as a Scribd document.]
I. What is Cyber-Libertarianism?
Cyber-libertarianism refers to the belief that individuals—acting in whatever capacity they choose (as citizens, consumers, companies, or collectives)—should be at liberty to pursue their own tastes and interests online.
Generally speaking, the cyber-libertarian’s motto is “Live & Let Live” and “Hands Off the Internet!” The cyber-libertarian aims to minimize the scope of state coercion in solving social and economic problems and looks instead to voluntary solutions and mutual consent-based arrangements.
Cyber-libertarians believe true “Internet freedom” is 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”—an all-to convenient facade behind which unaccountable elites can impose their will on the rest of us.
Continue reading →
What Unites Advocates of Speech Controls & Privacy Regulation? [pdf]
by Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka
The Progress & Freedom Foundation,
Progress on Point No. 16.19
Anyone who has spent time following debates about speech and privacy regulation comes to recognize the striking parallels between these two policy arenas. In this paper we will highlight the common rhetoric, proposals, and tactics that unite these regulatory movements. Moreover, we will argue that, at root, what often animates calls for regulation of both speech and privacy are two remarkably elitist beliefs:
- People are too ignorant (or simply too busy) to be trusted to make wise decisions for themselves (or their children); and/or,
- All or most people share essentially the same values or concerns and, therefore, “community standards” should trump household (or individual) standards.
While our use of the term “elitism” may unduly offend some understandably sensitive to populist demagoguery, our aim here is not to launch a broadside against elitism as
Time magazine culture critic William H. Henry once defined it: “The willingness to assert unyieldingly that one idea, contribution or attainment is better than another.”[1] Rather, our aim here is to critique that elitism which rises to the level of political condescension and legal sanction. We attack not so much the beliefs of some leaders, activists, or intellectuals that they have a better idea of what it in the public’s best interest than the public itself does, but rather the imposition of those beliefs through coercive, top-down mandates.
That sort of elitism—elitism enforced by law—is often the objective of speech and privacy regulatory advocates. Our goal is to identify the common themes that unite these regulatory movements, explain why such political elitism is unwarranted, and make it clear how it threatens individual liberty as well as the future of free and open Internet. As an alternative to this elitist vision, we advocate an empowerment agenda: fostering an environment in which users have the tools and information they need to make decisions for themselves and their families. 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.
Federal Agencies Can Easily Manage Settings on Their MySpace Page, but How Should They?
by Adam Thierer on November 13, 2009 · 9 comments
I got some feedback from readers about my post last night regarding the irony of the FCC’s newly-created MySpace page containing some rather vulgar user comments. I wondered if the agency would continue to allow such comments when the agency regulates similar words when they are uttered on broadcast TV or radio. A few people asked me why the agency hasn’t bother using the comment management tools that MySpace puts at the public’s disposal. It’s a good question, and actually I’m not sure why they didn’t do that right from the start. Perhaps the agency is concerned about being accused of censoring public comment. [Incidentally, the White House and some federal agencies have MySpace pages, so perhaps I need to look into how those agencies manage comments.]
Regardless, the FCC now has taken steps to deal with this. John Eggerton of Broadcasting & Cable and Kim Hart of The Hill point out that the agency has removed some vulgar comments on their MySpace page (namely, any comment with the F-bomb in it). And I assume the agency is now taking steps to screen comments going forward. For those who are not aware, MySpace empowers users (including government agencies if they choose to set up profiles) to require approval before new comments appear on their profiles (accessed by clicking “My Account” and then “Spam”). Here are the options:
So, here are some questions that both agencies and policy wonks will need to consider going forward. Continue reading →