Both Republicans And Democrats Considering Supporting Basic Internet Freedom Principles With New Platforms

from the follow-through-matters dept

There's been an awful lot of important talk about internet freedom and its importance this year. It's certainly permeated the political sphere. But is it a national political agenda item? We'll see. The Republican National Convention kicks off in a couple weeks, followed a few weeks after that by the Democratic National Convention. The folks at Demand Progress are urging both parties to add basic internet freedom issues to their official platforms. According to US News, both parties are considering it, with the Republicans saying they'll be discussing the topic at the RNC, while the Democrats have said that early drafts of their platform "advocated Internet freedom globally," though its unclear if the provision remained in.

Either way, both seem to at least recognize that this the internet is a major area of interest for a very large number of voters.

That said, just having it in a party platform may be a bit meaningless if they don't live up to it. But recognizing the issue is, at the very least, a first step in truly understanding how important it is. I doubt very much that the leadership of either party truly understands the importance of internet freedom, or is really willing to go all out in support of it. Yet. But, building up interest and general support -- along with the recognition that voters care about this stuff -- is at least an important first step in having politicians recognize that they can't just sell out internet freedom when lobbyists or "friendly" repressive governments come calling.

Filed Under: democrats, internet freedom, politics, republicans

Politician All For Transparency Until It Might Make Him Look Bad In A Campaign Commercial

from the hello-streisand dept

Apparently, California broadcasts many key state legislature hearings, just like many legislative bodies these days. However, right before a hearing on some key ballot initiatives, apparently California Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg ordered that the feed be turned off for the meeting. Critics noted that Steinberg was vigorously supporting one of the ballot measures, which involves sales and income tax issues. After complaining about cutting off the feed, Steinberg and his staff basically admitted that they did it because they don't want footage to be used against them in campaign commercials by opponents:

Steinberg spokesman, Rhys Williams justified the disruption of CalChannel service this way: 'It was inappropriate to provide legislative resources to promote the ballot measure campaigns of either side, and in particular to make those public-funded resources easily available for exploitation in political TV commercials.'"

In other words, because the public debate on these issues might lead others to make campaign commercials, it should not be transparent or shared at all.

The committee's own chairperson, Lois Wolk, was apparently horrified that the video was cut off, noting that "she had begun the hearing with a statement expressing hope that it would help voters reach a reasoned decision on the four measures." Oops.

Steinberg, to his credit has now apologized and admitted that: "It wasn't a good reason... When you mess up, you mess up. I'm sorry and it won't happen again." At least he recognizes that, but the initial move was still pretty blatant and raises significant questions about his motivations in cutting off this most basic form of governmental transparency.

Filed Under: california, darrell steinberg, live feed, politics, taxes, transparency

What Does Bipartisan Really Mean?

from the not-what-Congress-wants-you-to-believe dept

Idea from this Techdirt article.

Filed Under: bipartisan, politics, public

Obama And Romney Each Have An Ad Disappear As The Olympics Gets Snippy About Anyone Referencing The Olympics

from the non-political-because-politics-don't-pay dept

While we've had plenty of stories about the Olympics being overly aggressive in over protecting its (loosely defined) intellectual property rights, it appears that it's now also targeting both major parties' presidential campaigns. Both Obama and Romney apparently launched commercials recently with "Olympic Themes." The Olympics then called out the Obama Super PAC campaign for supposedly infringing on its copyright. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) claims that it does not allow footage to be used for political purposes, though I do wonder how it deals with cases of fair use (which this may or may not be). Either way, soon after that a Romney ad that also had an Olympics theme (both ads used footage of Romney in his role as CEO of the Olympic Organizing Committee for the Salt Lake City Olympics a decade ago) went offline as well.

One would hope that -- yet again -- these stories get the campaigns interested in the ways in which copyright law can restrict certain forms of speech. No matter who you support for President, the idea that neither major candidate can reference the Olympics seems absurd. Yes, the Olympics doesn't want to be associated with politics (for obvious reasons), but that's a moral rights issue, and in the US, such moral rights don't apply to (most) forms of copyright (and definitely don't apply in this case). What's left, then, is that the two campaigns are limited in their ability to express themselves freely. That seems like a serious issue, but one which it's likely the two campaigns will mostly (unfortunately) ignore.

Filed Under: barack obama, copyright, mitt romney, olympics, politics

When Every Practical Economic Idea Is Political Suicide, Something's Wrong With Politics

from the too-bad dept

Last week, Planet Money brought together five different economists, who represent a pretty broad spectrum of political ideologies in general, to see what policies there are that all of them (mostly) agree on -- and then noted why every single one of those policies is political suicide for a Presidential candidate. The list of economists is a fantastic one, including my Econ 101 Professor, Robert Frank (who I forever remember kindly for letting me take my first ever college final exam late, after I accidentally overslept, waking up in my dorm room an hour and a half after the exam began...). Also included is Russ Roberts, whose writings and thoughts on economics I follow closely. Then there's Dean Baker, whose work we've cited here a few times. Next up is Luigi Zignales, who I had the pleasure of meeting a couple months ago, and whose new book, A Capitalism for the People is on my shortlist of books I need to read this year. Finally, they have Katherine Baicker from Harvard, whose done really interesting work on health care economics -- a field that needs plenty of study.

So what policies did all five agree on? Here's the list (though you really should listen to the podcast to hear them all talk about the details)

One: Eliminate the mortgage tax deduction, which lets homeowners deduct the interest they pay on their mortgages. Gone. After all, big houses get bigger tax breaks, driving up prices for everyone. Why distort the housing market and subsidize people buying expensive houses?

Two: End the tax deduction companies get for providing health-care to employees. Neither employees nor employers pay taxes on workplace health insurance benefits. That encourages fancier insurance coverage, driving up usage and, therefore, health costs overall. Eliminating the deduction will drive up costs for people with workplace healthcare, but makes the health-care market fairer.

Three: Eliminate the corporate income tax. Completely. If companies reinvest the money into their businesses, that's good. Don't tax companies in an effort to tax rich people.

Four: Eliminate all income and payroll taxes. All of them. For everyone. Taxes discourage whatever you're taxing, but we like income, so why tax it? Payroll taxes discourage creating jobs. Not such a good idea. Instead, impose a consumption tax, designed to be progressive to protect lower-income households.

Five: Tax carbon emissions. Yes, that means higher gasoline prices. It's a kind of consumption tax, and can be structured to make sure it doesn't disproportionately harm lower-income Americans. More, it's taxing something that's bad, which gives people an incentive to stop polluting.

Six: Legalize marijuana. Stop spending so much trying to put pot users and dealers in jail — it costs a lot of money to catch them, prosecute them, and then put them up in jail. Criminalizing drugs also drives drug prices up, making gang leaders rich.

So there you go. Six proposals from five economists who represent a very wide spectrum of political views, which they all agree on. And nearly every one of those is political suicide (though, to be fair, Libertarian candidate -- and former beloved New Mexico Governor -- Gary Johnson's platform actually does include many of these).

The show suggests they're going to explore in future episodes why so many proposals that a large number of economists think make sense are simply politically unfeasible, and I look forward to that. But, a lot of these are situations where old policies effectively locked us in, and making changes would upset an awful lot of existing infrastructure and jobs, not to mention beneficiaries of those policies. And that's one of the reasons why we're always a bit worried about government leaping in to regulate areas where they don't fully understand what's going on. Those regulations can (and often do) lock us into a situation that is not easy to get out of -- even if getting out of it makes a lot of sense...

What's really unfortunate, of course, is that we can't even have reasonable discussions about most of the proposals above. Bringing up nearly any of them is considered a political non-starter, even though if people really understood the overall impact of them, they might agree that all are at least worthy of discussion.

Filed Under: economics, politics, taxes

Holy Conflict Of Interest! Tell Congress That The Public Good Is More Important Than Their Chance To Cameo In Batman

from the check-it-out dept

We recently wrote about the fact that PIPA sponsor and head of the Senate Judiciary Committee Senator Patrick Leahy has received yet another cameo appearance in the latest Batman flick. We're sure it's because of his acting skills, rather than his ability to pass legislation that favors Time Warner (who -- coincidentally, of course -- is a major contributor to his campaigns). In response to this story, the good folks at Demand Progress have set up HolyConflictOfInterest.com with an original comic, "The Adventures of Leahy & Time Warner": Click through not just for a larger version, but also for tools from Demand Progress that let you tell your elected officials that you don't appreciate such conflicts of interest.

Update: By the way, we're hearing that the MPAA hosted a "special screening" of the new Batman movie for members of Congress and their staff. Now, that would normally run afoul of gift giving guidelines... but they worked around that by spending the first 15 minutes "educating members and staff on important issues" (take a guess what those might be).

Filed Under: batman, cameo, conflict of interest, patrick leahy, politics
Companies: warner bros.

Insanity: Romney's Ad Featuring Obama Singing Al Green Shut Down Via Copyright Claim

from the seriously? dept

YouTube campaign videos get pulled over bogus copyright claims with alarming regularity. And now, as we're entering silly season for the US Presidential campaign, it means we'll be seeing more high profile takedowns. Back during the 2008 campaign, the McCain campaign even sent YouTube a letter trying to explain fair use to the company (seriously), and suggesting that Presidential campaigns should get special treatment to prevent videos from being pulled down. Of course, what might be better is if the Presidential candidates spoke up about how they'd fix the "shoot first, ask question later" aspect of the DMCA takedown procedures, but no one seems willing to do that yet. Back in the 2008 primaries, Mitt Romney also had to explain fair use to Fox News, so he should be ready for this issue again.

In fact, he appears to be the first "fair use victim" this time around. Romney's campaign had posted a web video ad on YouTube that included some of the well-known footage of President Obama singing a single line of Al Green's "Let's Stay Together." Apparently, that triggered BMG to issue a takedown on the Romney ad. This confuses me. If you look at the original footage of Obama singing, it's a grand total of 9 seconds long. If there ever were a clear-cut case of fair use -- a very brief snippet, used in a political ad -- this would be it.

One hopes that Romney, who spoke out against SOPA during the primaries, will start to realize that perhaps he should take a stronger stand in favor of digital free speech rights and against copyright excessiveness, now that he's (yet again) a victim of such things. But perhaps that's just wishful thinking.

Filed Under: al green, barack obama, copyright, fair use, mitt romney, politics, youtube
Companies: bmg

UK Copyright Industries Suddenly Become Fans Of Evidence-Based Policy Making

from the pot,-kettle,-black dept

Building on the solid work of the Hargreaves Report on copyright, the UK government took a surprisingly sensible attitude in its proposed implementation of most of Hargreaves' suggestions. The consultation period for those proposals ends shortly, and the panic among the copyright industries that the UK government might actually make copyright slightly less biased in their favor is evident. Here's a Daily Telegraph piece where they try to undermine the economic rationale behind the moves, professing scepticism about UK government claims that modernizing copyright will add billions to the UK economy:

UK Music, the music industry body, said the growth projection was “based upon underlying assumptions and extrapolations that are facile and deeply flawed”.

Its chief executive, Jo Dipple, called on the Government to “re-examine the evidence”.

"Re-examine the evidence" is precisely what the Hargreaves team did when it explored to what extent digital piracy was causing harm to the copyright industries. Here's what it found:

The Review team has examined numerous studies, including those in the table above, and a supporting paper looks at the methodological strengths and weaknesses of this work. With the exception of the Industry Canada study, we have either not been able to examine the methodology of the studies or, where we have, we have discovered problems with the methodology. Consequently, we have not found either a figure for the prevalence and impact of piracy worldwide or for the UK in which we can place our confidence.

In other words, bar one report, there was no reliable evidence, despite the fact that the copyright industries have been claiming the contrary for years, and using those claims to push for harsher laws against online copyright infringement.

A typical case is the TERA report that came out in March 2010. As I have shown elsewhere, its headline result that piracy in the EU was likely to cause losses of 1.2 million jobs and 240 billion euros ($325 billion) by 2015 was based almost entirely on figures supplied by the recording industry -- in other words, of no value as independent evidence. And yet its "assumptions and extrapolations" were widely used in the debate running up to the vote in April 2010 that saw the passing of the UK's Digital Economy Act.

Also quoted in The Telegraph piece is Pete Wishart, an MP and a musician chiefly associated with the folk-rock band Runrig. Commenting on the UK government's projections, he said:

“How the Government has got away with such bonkers figures is beyond me.”

The real issue is how the copyright industries got away with its bonkers figures, and for so long. Let's hope their new-found love for evidence-based policy making doesn't vanish when the facts turn out to be very different.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and on Google+

Filed Under: copyright, politics, studies
Companies: uk music

Julian Assange's Ultimate Publicity Stunt: Running For Australian Senate?

from the really,-now? dept

Even for supporters of Wikileaks and what it tried to achieve, Julian Assange is a polarizing figure -- often accused of letting his ego get in the way of good judgment. So, to be honest, it comes as little surprise that he's announced plans to run for the Australian Senate, even while he's still stuck in the UK, awaiting a ruling on being extradited to Sweden (with some concerns about eventually being extradited to the US as well). Wikileaks also announced plans to have someone else run against current Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who Assange feels has not done enough to support him. While there have been some questions about the legality of such a run, enough Australian legal experts seem to agree that he can probably do it. Whether or not he can actually get very much support is another question altogether. However, from an outside observer's standpoint, it's going to make the next Australian elections a lot more interesting.

Oh, and just for amusement's sake, one Australian publication mocked Wikileaks for misspelling Gilard's electorate, given its namesake's similarities to Assange himself:

Assange had an electoral learning process of his own which played out live on Twitter yesterday morning, with a first message from the Wikileaks feed announcing only that the organisation would be “fielding a candidate to run against Julia Gillard in her home seat of Laylor (sic)”. Very shortly afterwards, a second tweet declared: “We have discovered that it is possible for Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate while detained. Julian has decided to run.” The spelling error in the initial tweet betrayed a curious ignorance of Australian history, given that the electorate in question is named after Peter Lalor, who led the famous Eureka Rebellion at the Ballarat goldfields in 1854. One would have thought that Lalor, a radical activist who saw his efforts crudely suppressed by the authorities before going on to a distinguished career as a parliamentarian, might have been better known to Assange – if not to the extent that he would have spelt his name correctly, then at least so far that he might have misspelled it in a phonetically correct manner (“Lawlor”). But I digress.

I would be pretty surprised if this candidacy (or either candidacy if they really do raise two candidates) actually goes anywhere, but that won't make it any less entertaining to follow.

Filed Under: australia, julia gillard, julian assange, parliament, politics, senate
Companies: wikileaks

'Don't Get SOPA'd' Is The New Mantra On Capitol Hill

from the good dept

As we noted when one of the recent cybersecurity bills was introduced in the Senate, it was accompanied by a press release that explicitly stated that this bill wasn't SOPA. While the entertainment industry keeps hoping that the anti-SOPA protests were a one-time experience, apparently the power of internet users is very much on the minds of nearly everyone on Capitol Hill who have turned the phrase "don't get SOPA'd" into a new mantra.

This is excellent news in a number of ways. Congress should fear backlash from going against the will of the people, especially in mucking around with some of the key tools they use to communicate every day. The only issue I take with the article is that it rehashes the false dichotomy that SOPA was "Silicon Valley vs. Hollywood," and quotes lots of people who continue to talk about how the way to avoid "getting SOPA'd" is to talk to the tech industry, but not to internet users themselves. Now, I think that talking to the tech industry is a good place to start, and it is an important stakeholder in understanding the internet, but what drove the SOPA protests was the users. Yes, tech companies helped get their users interested in the topic, but once the users on Tumblr, Reddit and Wikipedia took over, they were the ones driving the bus. The companies themselves took a backseat and, at times, were pressured into going along with what the users wanted, against their own concerns (for example, the date of the January 18th protests, which many "industry insiders" thought was too early, since the Senate wasn't yet in session).

So, while quotes like this are great to see:

“Nobody wants another SOPA moment,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a vocal critic of SOPA, told POLITICO. “The nerds are more powerful than anyone thought, and the tech industry flexed its muscle like never before.”

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) said the anti-SOPA movement showed a certain “coming of political age” for the tech industry, and his colleagues in the House are treading carefully.

“They’re involving the tech community more and are more interested in listening,” said Polis, who also opposed SOPA. “They’re paying closer attention now.”

I think even those two strong allies in the fight against SOPA are missing the mark somewhat. It's not the tech industry that people need to be paying such close attention to. It's the internet users themselves. Ignoring that and just trying to court deals with the companies is a strategy that's likely to backfire.

At the end, the article acknowledges this in a rather backhanded way -- merely using it to suggest that the tech industry really isn't so powerful and that politicians shouldn't worry about another SOPA:

“The rational observers realize there’s a significant overestimation of high tech’s ability to control the netroots,” said one industry lobbyist.

Another lobbyist said it’s “nearly impossible” to get the tech community to engage on policy issues, especially complicated measures that are highly technical, such as cybersecurity, or dry, such as online taxes.

“SOPA was an inflection point and people on the Hill are certainly going to take more notice next time around,” the lobbyist said. “But one incident like that isn’t going to be the huge game changer.”

But notice what's totally ignored here. That the "netroots" -- the internet users who stood up and spoke out by the millions -- still are engaged and aware. The lobbyist is correct that the tech industry can't control the netroots. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to fear concerning another SOPA, it means that politicians need to be open and engaging with the netroots, not just the tech industry.

And this article suggests that folks on Capitol Hill still might not understand that... which is why it actually may be more likely that we'll see another SOPA moment.

Filed Under: capitol hill, copyright, internet, pipa, politics, sopa, tech industry, users