Insanity: Getting Worked Up Over One Company's Slight Change Of Opinion In The Creditworthiness Of The US

from the it's-an-opinion dept

You may have heard (or, at least, I hope you heard) that, late Friday, S&P downgraded the US's credit rating from AAA to AA-plus, causing all sorts of hair pulling and worry. Here's the part that makes no sense: S&P's rating of the safety of US debt is simply an opinion. It's certainly a high profile opinion, but it's still an opinion. What I can't figure out is why anyone is making a big deal of one private company making a slight change to its opinion. People are acting as if this change is a change in facts. They're acting as if an S&P downgrade actually makes US debt less trusthworthy. It does not. The US may very well not be that trustworthy on its debt (in fact, I find that argument quite compelling these days), but having one company say that is meaningless.

We've discussed this before. For absolutely no good reason, the US government decided to put the opinion of various rating agencies into law, requiring certain institutions to maintain certain percentages of "highly rated" bonds in order to engage in certain activities. The insanity is that it effectively forced the world to think about ratings from S&P and Moody's as if they were fact, even though they're really just opinions. And to do all of this even if their ratings go against one's own opinion. And, of course, we all know that the ratings agencies are far from perfect, and have an unfortunate history that suggests that, at times, they've succumbed to pressure.

So, even if you believe that the US government's financial position is a disaster (and, again, a case can be made for that), it's crazy to pretend that one company changing its opinion (just slightly) has any actual meaning. Most of the market can and does make its own decisions on the creditworthiness of US debt, no matter what S&P says. In other words, the (slim) risk of the US actually defaulting is already priced in. The S&P saying what people are already thinking doesn't mean that anything fundamental changed... other than its opinion.

Markets are made based on the interaction of buyers and sellers. Not the (sometimes questionable) opinions of just a few firms.

Filed Under: debt, economy, opinions, ratings, united states
Companies: s&p

Doctors Sue Blue Shield Over Rating System

from the free-speech-ain't-free dept

It appears some California doctors are not at all pleased with a new doctor rating system launched by Blue Shield of California and have launched a class action lawsuit against the insurance company. Blue Shield notes that the rating system uses "nationally recognized measures of care," and the data itself comes from doctors groups, health plans and purchasers. Of course, the real question is whether or not a rating system like this can be against the law. After all, it's an opinion. In many ways, this lawsuit reminds me of lawsuits against Google from people who don't like their rankings. Such lawsuits have not gone far. Blue Shield has every right to express an opinion about a doctor, and in this case does so based on a variety of well-accepted measures. I can understand why doctors who don't perform well might not like it -- and I can also see potential problems if the data creates incentives for certain behavior that is less helpful for patients -- but that doesn't make expressing an opinion illegal. Hopefully the courts will recognize that, or we may get a very bad ruling on the books that says that giving an opinion is not allowed if some people don't like that opinion.

Filed Under: doctors, free speech, opinions, ratings
Companies: blue shield of california

Cop-Rating Website Is Protected By The First Amendment

from the and-that's-a-good-thing dept

A couple years ago, we wrote about the controversy surrounding the website RateMyCop.com, which (as the name implies) let's people "rate" their local police officers. While police around the country were "outraged" by this, we noted that police accountability seems like a good thing. While some complaints resulted in the site's registrar temporarily taking the site offline, a more troubling situation developed later in Florida, where a user of the site was arrested, after he posted information (anonymously) about a police officer who he felt did not do a good job. The authorities issued a subpoena to find out who the commenter was, and charged him under a Florida law that forbids "publishing name and address of law enforcement officer."

While the case was dropped for procedural reasons, the guy sued, noting that the arrest and the law went against his First Amendment rights. Thankfully, a judge has agreed, saying that just publishing such information is protected speech:

The judge ruled the First Amendment does not protect "true threats, fighting words, incitements to imminent lawless action, and classes of lewd and obscene speech." But publishing an officer's phone number and address, he said, "is not in itself a threat or serious expression of an intent to commit an unlawful act of violence."

You can read the full ruling below, but it's nice to see a judge note that just because some information can be used for bad purposes, doesn't mean it's okay to prohibit that kind of speech.

Filed Under: free speech, ratings

MPAA Gives 'It's Complicated' An R Rating Because It Shows Pot Might Make You Giggle

from the what-are-they-smoking? dept

Via That Kevin Smith (who has had his own share of run ins with the MPAA over bizarre ratings) comes the story of how the MPAA decided the romantic comedy It's Complicated deserved an "R" rating, because it has one scene that involves two characters (played by Steve Martin and Meryl Streep) who smoke marijuana... and then giggle. Specifically, the MPAA appears to be upset that there are "no negative consequences" to the two characters smoking pot.

Now, I've never smoked marijuana (or ingested it in other forms either), but I'm at a loss to see how this makes something deserving of an R rating. The NY Times article quotes someone from the Parents Television Council -- the group famous for bombarding the FCC with bogus indecency complaints -- who says "The last I checked, smoking pot was still illegal, illicit behavior." Indeed. But, then again, so is blowing up Los Angeles, and "last I checked," the movie 2012 got a PG-13 rating.

The larger point, of course, is just how incredibly out of touch the MPAA is beyond just its laughable ratings system. This is a group that's still trying to break your TV because it can't figure out how to release movies on TV in a reasonable amount of time without doing so (even though its own studios have figured it out). This is the same group that argues that blames tech companies for its own inability to recognize and embrace what technology allows. This is the same group that insists that piracy is "killing" the movie industry as the industry scores yet another box office record. This is the same group that insists that ACTA is necessary, but won't share what its own lobbyists helped write.

The NY Times article admits that the decision to rate this particular movie "R" is more of a political move from an organization that doesn't want to be attacked during the next elections -- and even that should be troubling. This is an organization that will do amazingly dumb things just to stay in the good graces of our politicians, so that it can continue to push through protectionist laws. One simple rating may not seem like a huge deal (and, by itself, it is not), but it's yet another sign in how out of touch the MPAA really is, and how its actions are entirely about protecting its political power and helping its members get favors from the government, rather than anything else.

Filed Under: it's complicated, movies, ratings
Companies: mpaa

FCC To Study Single Rating System For Movies, Video Games, TV & Music

from the under-what-mandate? dept

GamePolitics reports that the FCC is planning to study the idea of a "universal rating system" for all kinds of media, including movies, music, video games and television. According to the Bloomberg article on this, the FCC actually has a mandate to do this under a 2007 law that gave it authority to explore blocking technologies, though that seems to go well beyond the official mandate of the FCC to only monitor communications using public infrastructure. Furthermore, every single attempt to put in place a gov't mandated solution for a ratings system has been struck down as unconstitutional (and a bunch have been tried). Every rating system you see now are voluntary agreements from the industry. Having the FCC even explore such an issue raises some serious constitutional questions.

Filed Under: fcc, first amendment, movies, music, ratings, television, video games

Great Timing: USPTO Gives Amazon Patent For 'Reliable Ratings'

from the that-would-be-an-oops... dept

theodp writes "Do bad patents bring bad karma? Less than 24 hours after a hacker identified as 'Weev' claimed he exploited a feature for reporting inappropriate content to wreak havoc on Amazon's product ratings (Amazon blamed a "glitch"), the USPTO issued Amazon.com a patent for the Automatic Identification of Unreliable User Ratings, an 'invention' which - you guessed it - purportedly prevents Amazon's product ratings from being gamed by providing a feature for reporting inappropriate content ('Section 244 also contains a link 254 to a display (not shown) where customer CCC can report that item review 222 contains scandalous or inappropriate material')."

Filed Under: patents, ratings, reliability, uspto
Companies: amazon

Using The DMCA To Stop Patients From Rating Their Doctors

from the signing-over-your-rights dept

Last month, Carlo wrote about how a number of doctors were pushing their patients to sign waivers, promising that they wouldn't review the doctors online -- and that one company would go around trying to enforce these waivers and get critical comments pulled down from ratings sites like RateMyMD.com. The whole thing seemed quite odd -- but in another article about the service (found via Michael Scott), the details make it clear that this is even more questionable than we previously thought. That's because the way the "waivers" from the company "Medical Justice" work is by having the patient "assign all intellectual property rights for anything the patient may write (and publish) about the physician to the physician." Then, the physician can claim copyright infringement on any review, and force it offline. So unlike what was implied in the original article, it wouldn't be a specific contractual issue, but a copyright issue.

This is not what copyright law was intended to do.

Of course, it does bring up a few interesting points of discussion. First, is that the main purpose of using copyright here is so that the doctors can make use of the DMCA's notice-and-takedown safe harbor provisions, rather than be stymied by the similar (but not quite the same) CDA section 230 safe harbors for things like defamation. One of the key differences between the two is that Section 230 doesn't have a notice-and-takedown provision (though some have been trying to add one). So, really, all this is designed to do is figure out a way to shift the critical rules in question from the CDA to the DMCA. Sneaky!

Second, is that I wonder if this would be seen as actual copyright infringement anyway, or if reviewers could make a credible fair use defense. In some cases, the review itself might not even be covered by copyright (i.e., if there's no creative expression in it -- such as simple "he's awful!" reviews). In other cases where copyright might exist, the four factor fair use test might allow its use. While it could hurt the doctor's ability to make money as a doctor, it wouldn't be harming the market for the copyrighted content. Also, the use would be for purposes of "criticism." So, it's difficult to see how such content posted on a review site would actually violate anyone's copyright, even if the rights really were signed over.

But... (and this is where that sneaky first part comes into play), this might not matter. Even though you can get in trouble for filing a false DMCA notification (and even for failing to take fair use into account), most online services will quickly pull down content when receiving a DMCA takedown to preserve their safe harbor protections. So in almost all cases, the content will get pulled down, even if the content isn't really infringing. And, then it seems quite unlikely that any reviewer/patient will find it worth the trouble of filing a counternotice.

So, really, this is a fascinating misuse of the DMCA that will live on (unless someone like the EFF decides to make an example of it). What it really highlights is one of the many problems with the DMCA's notice-and-takedown provision, which heavily incentivizes service providers to pull down content as quickly as possible. As a result of that, companies like Medical Justice have tremendous incentives to come up with a plan like this to shift what they do to a copyright issue, solely to make use of the notice-and-takedown provision, even in cases where there's no actual infringement of the copyright.

Filed Under: cda, copyright, dmca, doctors, ratings
Companies: medical justice

Breast-Feeding Photo Brouhaha Shows How Impossible It Is To Rate Websites

from the mission-impossible dept

Just after the UK's culture minister, Andy Burnham, announced that he thinks all websites can and should be rated, comes a story that highlights what a ridiculous suggestion it is to say that you can simply classify all websites. Facebook is facing a bit of a backlash after the company started banning some photos of women breast-feeding as being inappropriate. Basically, Facebook has been making its own judgment on which of those photos are "obscene" and which are fine -- and it's pissing off a bunch of moms whose photos have been deleted. And, of course, this is just one simple example. Thinking that there's some sort of single objective measure by which all sites (or content) can be rated is so wrong it's hard to believe that someone thinking such a thing was possible could hold down a serious job, let alone elected office.

Filed Under: andy burnham, breast feeding, indecent content, ratings
Companies: facebook

UK Culture Secretary Andy Burnham Wants Websites To Be Rated... To Protect The Children

from the can-we-rate-Andy-Burnham-instead? dept

The UK sure does have one impressively clueless culture secretary in Andy Burnham. We first came across him nearly a year ago, when he was suggesting that it should be ISPs' responsibility to deal with file sharing by monitoring usage and cutting off users who file share. Then, just a few weeks ago, he made an incredibly poorly thought out speech, where he pushed for copyright extension on performance rights, not for any good reason -- but because of some odd "moral" compunction to take content away from the public and give it to the record labels. For this he was roundly criticized by those who actually understand the topic.

But, of course, it appears he can't stop there. His latest move is to suggest that all websites should be rated and ISPs should be responsible for blocking access to inappropriate content, "for the children" of course. Burnham seems to think that the proliferation of information online is a bad thing:

"If you look back at the people who created the internet, they talked very deliberately about creating a space that governments couldn't reach. I think we are having to revisit that stuff seriously now.... There is content that should just not be available to be viewed. That is my view. Absolutely categorical. This is not a campaign against free speech, far from it; it is simply there is a wider public interest at stake when it involves harm to other people. We have got to get better at defining where the public interest lies and being clear about it."

Because, that's just what the world needs: more government censorship determining what is and what is not "appropriate" online. This is the typical mistake made by politicians who think the internet is a content platform, and not a communications platform. If he's going to censor the internet for such content, will he also make it illegal to say bad things over the phone?

To make it even more ridiculous, he wants to take the UK's libel laws -- already some of the most draconian around -- and make them even worse. He wants it to be easier than ever to sue for defamatory speech, apparently not noticing how many bogus defamation lawsuits are brought by those who are merely upset at being criticized, rather than defamed. Making it easier only encourages more bogus lawsuits.

Would it really be that out of line to suggest that a culture secretary actually understand the internet before trying to regulate it?

Filed Under: andy burnham, protect the children, ratings, uk