Could it be that folks in the federal government are finally starting to get the message that all of those "piracy" stats out there are complete bunk? Following up on the recent excellent GAO report noting that industry claims about "losses" from piracy were absolute fiction (the latest, by the way, in a very long line of smart GAO reports on topics of interest to those around here), apparently the US International Trade Commission held hearings where it heard from a bunch of folks explaining how inaccurate industry reports on "losses from piracy" are -- and furthermore, based on little actual evidence and don't take into account the additional benefits.
It's so rare to see the government ever actually paying attention to those who don't toe the "piracy is absolutely purely evil and destroying everything" line, that this alone is pretty impressive. Whether or not it actually gets through or leads to policy changes is another story altogether. But it's good that more voices are being heard.
Planet Money is back at it with another great podcast highlighting how many of the recent "major issues" the world is facing -- from the financial crisis to the spewing oil in the gulf are being blamed on regulatory failures, usually in the form of a lack of oversight. The response by politicians, of course, is to look at the hammer they have, and see "more regulations" as the nail to hit. And so, we're getting all sorts of new regulations. But will they do any good? The podcast is pretty skeptical. If you're familiar with the concept of regulatory capture (and you should be) there's little in the podcast that's new. But it is a nice, succinct explanation of the concept -- with a great story from a former gov't bank regulator who worked for the agency that was regulating Savings & Loans before the big S&L crisis a couple decades ago. The response from the government was to create new regulations that "wiped out" this agency. The guy went out to watch the speech, and then went back to his building... and saw that the old name had been taken down, and in its place was the new name of the "new" regulatory agency created by this new regulation: the Office of Thrift Supervision, and his "new" job at the same desk doing the same thing as before. And, of course, the Office of Thrift Supervision was the regulatory agency behind AIG and many of the problems that resulted in the financial mess we're still digging our way out of today.
The problem -- then, as is happening now -- is that any time you set up a regulatory agency, even if it has the best of intentions, those who are regulated will either find loopholes or get enough influence over the agency to create loopholes (in the extreme case discussed in the podcast, this even includes "sexual relations" and drug use between regulators and those they regulate). Regulatory capture is what happens when you have regulations that are supposed to "protect" people from an industry -- but where that industry gets more and more say in how that agency regulates and how those rules are interpreted. The end result is often worse than no regulation at all.
A bunch of folks have sent in Mike Arrington's recent blog post, angrily pointing out that the federal government keeps trying to meddle in Silicon Valley, and it would be better off just keeping as far away as possible from the Valley, because it's only going to mess things up. We'll get to the particulars of his post in a minute, but there was one key part of the story that a bunch of submitters highlighted in sending it in: a recent "off the record" meeting between Victoria Espinel and various Silicon Valley folks, which was supposed to be about "helping" Silicon Valley, and instead, turned into "how can the government get Silicon Valley to protect the entertainment industry":
Earlier this year I was invited to a small closed door meeting with Victoria Espinel, the U.S. Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator appointed by Obama. In attendance were CEOs and other senior executives of a number of large and small Silicon Valley companies. The meeting was supposed to be about how her office can help Silicon Valley thrive. But it became very apparent very quickly that Espinel has a single agenda when it comes to copyright issues -- helping the music labels and TV/Movie studios deal with the Internet on their own terms.
The meeting was strictly off record, which is why I didn't write about it immediately after leaving the room. And the things that she said in that meeting will remain off the record as I promised. But I will say this -- I walked out in utter frustration after an hour. And among the many things I said in that room was this:
The government can keep pissing in our flowerbed, but pretty soon all the flowers are going to be dead.
The problem with Espinel is that she has to follow the lobbying dollars, and those dollars come from the old entrenched players -- TV and movie studios, and record labels. And as she said in the meeting to me (the one quote I'll use), "My job title is Intellectual Property Enforcement after all."
Of course, none of this is shocking or surprising. This was obvious since Espinel was first appointed to the job, and even as I and many others expressed our concerns about the "strategic plan" she's working on, the nature of the questions she asked made it clear that her role is not to promote the progress, but to prop up the business models of certain industries.
That said, I also agree with Anil Dash's response to Arrington, pointing out that Silicon Valley can't ignore the federal government, because that will only make things worse. However, I don't think the two of them are really disagreeing. Dash is right that folks in Silicon Valley do need to be involved and talk to folks in DC... but in part as a way to make sure that Arrington's goal of keeping them from doing something stupid is at least a possibility.
Yes, there will always be lobbying from other interests in DC, and politicians will do stupid, innovation- and job-killing things to help protect the big dollars from other industries. That's how it works. But ignoring that doesn't help matters. Instead, it really is important to get involved, not for the sake of getting DC more involved in Silicon Valley, but to keep making it clear that they need to not mess with what works and, maybe even clear out a few of the aspects of the law that really are getting in the way. Yes, we should hope that the federal government stays out of Silicon Valley, but the best way to do that isn't for Silicon Valley to stay out of DC.
Stephen Conroy, the Australian politician who has been pushing hard to massively filter and censor Australia's internet has been fighting Google for a while now. After the company made comments about why such censorship was a bad idea, rather than respond to the issues, Conroy came out swinging by attacking the company for its Buzz privacy mishap, and quoting Eric Schmidt out of context. So, of course, with Google's WiFi data capture admission, Conroy has some new ammo. He's claiming that it couldn't possibly have been an accident and that this represents "the largest privacy breach in history across Western democracies."
While it's no surprise that Conroy doesn't like Google and its opposition to his plan to censor the internet, perhaps he should stay away from laughably ridiculous hyperbole. The only data Google collected was what was passed over open WiFi connections in the split seconds that it drove by those access points with its Street View vehicles. These are networks where anyone on those networks could have just as easily have done the same thing -- except if someone was really on one of those networks, they could keep recording that data, rather than moving on when the traffic light changed. Furthermore, there's no evidence that Google ever did anything whatsoever with whatever data it did collect. Making claims about this being some huge privacy breach when there's no evidence that anyone ever even saw the data seems pretty questionable.
In May 2009, EFA published this blog post discussing the current censorship regime in the context of the new filtering system soon to be introduced. As part of that discussion, we included a link to a page on American website abortiontv.com that we discovered was on ACMA's blacklist. Abortion being a sensitive political issue, we felt it illustrated the dangers of internet censorship in general and a secret blacklist in particular. Furthermore, since discussion site Whirlpool had received a notice instructing them to delete the link, we thought it highlighted the serious way in which internet content in Australia is already regulated.
Shortly thereafter, EFA's web host at the time, Sublime IP, received a "Link Deletion Notice" of their own, for the link contained in the EFA post hosted on their servers. They contacted us, and given the fines involved, EFA complied. (The post in question is still redacted.)
EFA helped its ISP, Sublime, challenge the deletion notice on two counts: (1) that it was a violation of the supposed freedom of political communication, especially since it was a discussion about the "political effects of censorship policy," and (2) that officials should have sent the notice to EFA directly, rather than its ISP (in fact, EFA had asked for a notice to be sent directly to it, rather than Sublime, so that it could take on the case directly... and officials refused).
Unfortunately, the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) rejected both challenges, twisting itself into a bit of pretzel logic to explain why this wasn't a violation of freedom for political communication. Basically, the tribunal claimed that EFA could have hidden the link behind a special "restricted access system" that would block that content for those under 18 (in theory, of course, but not in practice). And, since you have to be 18 to vote, the tribunal reasoned, if such a age verification wall had been in place, the content would not have been blocked from those of voting age... and thus there was no violation of political communication. Yes, that's quite twisted logic, but if you're defending internet censorship, sooner or later your logic is going to get twisted into knots...
This was pretty predictable, but it's still unfortunate that it's happening. We've complained in the past that both sides on the net neutrality debate are exaggerating and making absolutely ridiculous arguments, and even though I agree that putting net neutrality in the law in some manner is a bad, bad idea, I have to admit that the arguments by most of those against such rules is so ridiculous that it makes me wonder they're thinking. There were the outright lies -- such as the ridiculous claim that Google gets its bandwidth for free (to which I asked if the lobbyist who made that statement would pay Google's broadband bill -- and he never responded). Then there are the claims that net neutrality would mean the end of the internet or no more iPhones, both of which are ridiculous hyperbole that have no basis in truth.
Given that there actually are perfectly good arguments against regulations on this issue without resorting to such ridiculous lies, I actually think that such claims really hurt the case of those who are worried about the unintended consequences of opening up the internet to regulation.
However, with the FCC's recent decision to sorta, kinda, partially reclassify broadband access, it seems like the lobbyists, sock puppets and shills are going into overdrive, and it's not helping anyone. In fact, part of the mess is that everyone now is looking for big "gotchas" on either side. For example, the website Think Progress got its hands on a PowerPoint apparently coordinating the ridiculously over-the-top anti-net-neutrality campaign, which they're apparently trying to rebrand "net brutality."
The whole thing reads like what you'd expect from a lobbying effort... but it turns out that it was just a student project, though, the attention given it by Think Progress may have just catapulted it into something more. That said, the project itself is filled with questionable activities, where they even admit that the whole goal is to create the impression that it's a grass roots effort. And, not surprisingly, the project's blog links to some highly questionable sources that have been shown to be sock puppetry and astroturfing in the past.
Of course, the other side isn't immune to questionable activities either. It didn't take long for the press to realize that a letter that was being passed around by Rep. Jay Inslee in support of the FCC's move had metadata indicating it was actually written by the policy director of Free Press, a group that has been ferociously pushing for net neutrality regulations for quite some time. Ridiculously, Inslee is trying to pretend that the document wasn't written by Free Press by claiming a staffer had just typed over a Word doc sent by Free Press:
Inslee's office told Hillicon Valley on Tuesday that Scott did not, in fact, draft the letter on behalf of the congressman. Rather, as Inslee's staff scrambled to put out something last week in support of the FCC's goals, it consulted old documents and industry talking points for ideas. A staff member ultimately typed the new letter on top of the Word document that Free Press previously sent Inslee -- the date of which was May 7 -- meaning the meta-data still reflected Scott as its author.
"Yep, that's it, in our haste we typed over a word document with someone else's meta tag," said communications director Robert Kellar. "There is no plot and we created the letter."
I mean, it even sounds like Kellar knows he's not fooling anyone with the "Yep, that's it" part of the statement. It's about this far away from "Yeah... that's the ticket..."
Either way, as we predicted, the whole thing is becoming a political food fight being manhandled by lobbyists and special interests, with little regard for the deeper, important, underlying issues. Even when moves are being made by people outside of the beltway, it's being dissected for the driving forces behind it, rather than what actually makes sense. What comes out in the end is going to be shaped by those lobbyists and special interests. And that's my big fear with all of this. The end result isn't going to have anything to do with actually looking at what's best for the internet or the American people, but who can game the system better and turn this into a hotter political football.
It seems like nearly every year we have a story about Australian politicians pushing plans to censor the internet. And while the politicians pushing them always insist that there's widespread support, there are always huge protests, and the laws never seem to get passed. So it's interesting to note that the latest attempt to censor the internet may also be dead in the water. Apparently, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy -- the main supporter of the plan -- has admitted that the legislation has been moved to the backburner, and it is unlikely to be passed before the election. Given how many times these proposals have been made and failed, it makes you wonder why they keep trying.
One of the really amazing things in witnessing the reactions among various politicians to the ACTA negotiations is realizing how out of the loop they are as well. They're often just as angry that things are being done in the name of their country that they have no visibility into. Of course, this adds to the impression that this whole process is not about figuring out what's best for the people of each country, but an end run around the democratic lawmaking process, pushed mainly by big industries (led by the entertainment and pharmaceutical industries).
So, with last week's leak showing that Denmark was one of the countries that was most against transparency for ACTA negotiations, Danish free culture activists like Henrik Moltke have been speaking up, going on TV and questioning why Denmark is being the transparency roadblock. And it appears to be working.
"It is news to me that Denmark is so close to the negotiations. And it's pretty shocking that Denmark should have taken the position that you actually want to give priority to secrecy," said Morten Messerschmidt, a member of the European Parliament
Messerschmidt has gone on to say that he's going to demand that Denmark support a more transparent ACTA process, and it appears that some other Danish politicians are agreeing as well.
A bunch of folks have sent in the news of a new law in South Australia that forbids any anonymous political commentary leading up to elections. Literally, the law reads:
"A person must not during an election period, publish material consisting of, or containing a commentary on, any candidate or political party, or the issues being submitted to electors, in written form, in a journal published in electronic form on the internet or by radio or television or broadcast on the internet, unless the material or the program in which the material is presented contains a statement of the name and address (not being a post office box) of a person who takes responsibility for the publication of that material."
Apparently, things like The Federalist Papers would not have been welcome in South Australia. It's clearly a method of censorship, though, of course, the guy behind it, Michael Atkinson, is spinning it as the opposite of censorship: "The real point of this legislation is not blocking or censoring freedom of speech -- it's just making sure freedom of speech is attributed to the right person."
Reader cofiem points out that Atkinson has a bit of a history as being technologically reactionary, such as his strong support for banning video games that he feels are too violent even for adults. Cofiem also points to some of the legislative history behind this, which includes Atkinson making it clear that this law should apply to "blog sites, Wikipedia and internet newspapers" but thankfully he does "not want to go into twittering because that is too much like individual communication over a mobile phone. So, that is where we are putting the boundary." Phew. Each political Twitter won't need to be accompanied by your address.
That same report suggests that Atikinson has aimed this legislation at a particular online publication that he does not like:
It is being supported by Atkinson in the most appalling way -- the news reports quote him apparently frothing at the mouth about 'Adelaidenow', which the law seems implicitly to target;
Nice use of elected office to try to stifle the ability of your critics to speak freely.
Having just seen how the US was putting pressure on Costa Rica to modify its copyright laws for the purposes of a "free trade" agreement, Dylan F sends in the news of how the international community seems to be putting pressure on Israel to change a few things in order to join the OECD. There are three issues discussed, and you can see how the first two are at least worth discussing: corruption/bribery in weapons trade and its ongoing dispute with Arab territories within the country. But it's difficult to see how the third issue, generic patents, could possibly be seen on the same level as the first two. But, there it is:
The second concern, regarding intellectual property rights, involves the Israeli company Teva Pharmaceuticals, one of the world’s largest producers of generic drugs. Major American and Swiss companies have long accused Israel of insufficient regulation of the way Teva markets its products in the face of patent regulations in other countries.
So, because some big pharma companies can't compete well with Israeli generics, Israel should be barred from joining the OECD?
