December 2007 Archives
I grew up poor.
We didn't know we were poor, of course. We thought everyone's dad had to work three jobs to pay the bills, and drive horrible old clunker cars that required constant work just to keep running. But we were poor, and if there was a benefit to a lack of money it was that our technology-minded mother always had some startling new idea to save a few cents.
Which is how, in the Sixties, I ended up living in the only house I ever heard of in which the incandescent lights were all replaced by fluorescent bulbs. At night, our house looked like a set from Night of the Living Dead, with human flesh cast in a ghastly pallor of fluorescence.
When President Bush signed into law a sweeping new energy bill last week -- the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, for those who want to look it up on Thomas -- I had flashbacks to that childhood.
Overall, the bill is good tech. It is not exactly the draconian intrusion into our personal lives that conservatives fear. Neither is it the Great Leap Forward that many liberals wish it to be. It is on balance a measured step toward new goals in a host of energy areas. Automobiles and appliances will have goals to make them more energy-efficient over the next couple of decades. Biofuels and energy alternatives get more research and seed money. And incandescent light bulbs get new goals for energy consumption and life.
I doubt that means that most of us will be switching to those spiral fluourescents anytime soon. The law does not actually ban incandescent light bulbs by 2012, despite the news reports claiming that. And consumers have a legitimate beef with the harsh, grusesome light cast by these bulbs. (To put it another way, there's a reason why people put candles in their bedrooms, not fluorescent lights. I personally believe that the rise of fluorescent bulbs in bedside reading lamps is one of the leading reasons the US birth rate has fallen in recent years. "Not tonight, dear, you look like a frozen rotting corpse.")
What it does mean is that we will get better light bulbs. Bulb makers that include market leader GE are hard at work trying to make fluorescentsmore attractive, but that is not the only technology under development. And some of the new ideas will frankly outpace the fluorescents handily. I suspect that just as LED lighting now dominates the flashlight industry, something will come along to save the lights in the living room. In recent years, GE alone has experimented with bulbs that give a peach tint to a room, or blue. Other companies are doing other things, and consumers will eventually move toward these new ideas if for no other reason than to escape the fluorescents.
Congress walks a funny line these days, caught between those who point out that the Constitution doesn't give them the right to regulate what light bulbs we use and those who demand environmental action right now. Often, this line leaves Congress either doing nothing or doing the wrong thing. But with the new energy bill, it looks like they are stepping gently in the right direction.
It is The Season. The Congress critters are all safely tucked away in their home districts, furiously campaigning to keep their jobs next year (as usual, all of the House of Representatives and 1/3 of the Senate are up for re-election). The Federal agencies have begun their holiday meets and greets (with the exception of the FCC, which seems to be hyperactive this December). And bloggers have time to turn their attention to one of the more pressing issues of the day:
Eggnog.
Eggnog is a beverage whose beginnings are shrouded in mystery. Wikipedia notes that:
"Eggnog, or a very similar drink, may have originated in East Anglia, England, though it may also have been developed from posset (a medieval European beverage made with hot milk). An article by Nanna Rognvaldardottir, an Icelandic food expert, states that the drink adopted the nog part of its name from the word noggin, a Middle English phrase used to describe a small, wooden, carved mug used to serve alcohol in. Another name for this English drink was Egg Flip. Yet another story is that the term derived from the name egg-and-grog, a common Colonial term used to describe rum. Eventually the term was shortened to egg'n'grog, then eggnog."
Whatever its beginnings, the issue today is how to produce a tasty eggnog (with or without rum, brandy or bourbon) without offending the county department of health by using raw eggs for consumption. Personally, I just buy fresh eggs and let the chips fall as they may. But one can't with a clear conscience serve such an alarmingly dangerous concoction to guests. For that I fall back on my sister-in-law Sue's recipe, which produces a first-rate eggnog while also boiling the egg yolks safely away in a custard.
Here 'tis:
1 quart milk
6 eggs, divided into yolks and egg whites
1 dash salt
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 Cup heavy cream
1 small container Cool Whip
Heat milk in a large saucepan, scalding it but not allowing it to boil. Beat egg yolks and salt in a large bowl; gradually add sugar, mixing well. Gradually stir about 1/4 of hot milk into egg mixture; add to remaining hot milk, stirring constantly. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and reaches 160 degrees. Stir in cinnamon, nutmeg and vanilla. Set saucepan in refrigerator to cool.
Whip egg whites until they form soft peaks. Slowly fold in Cool Whip. Fold in cooled egg yolk custard and the heavy cream. Add alcohol if desired (I usually leave it as is so the kids can enjoy it, and let the adults add liquor to the glasses). Sprinkle with ground cinnamon.
The recipe can be made in advance by a day or so. I usually save a few plastic one-gallon milk jugs in the weeks before the holiday, make a bunch up and store it by the gallon -- ready for use in case the Sixth Army drops by for eggnog and cookies.
Eggnog is one thing I love more than technology or policy.
In what the Motion Picture Association of America is calling a "significant victory for the major Hollywood studios," a federal judge has ruled against the popular BitTorrent indexing site TorrentySpy.
I can't see that it is a big win for Hollywood as much as an indictment of TorrentSpy for attempting to subvert the judicial system. TorrentSpy operators are accused of intentionally modifying or deleting directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealing IP addresses of users; and withholding the names and addresses of forum moderators, the court found. They had earlier been fined $30,000 for violating discovery orders, and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.
Hollywood never proved that TorrentSpy actually infringed on copyrights, so it doesn't set much of a precendent in that regard. However, the MPAA will be able to extract damages from the company and thus lay some moral claim to victory.
Both sides have withdrawn to lick their wounds, and will rejoin in court to quibble over how much TorrentSpy will pay in damages. It is in a sense a good day for the MPAA, which has its victory; a good day for TorrentSpy, which is located in the Netherlands and thus is not much bound by US copyright laws; and a sad day for the Internet.
It's a sad day because the Internet isn't the free-style, wild-West, flaunt-the-law place it was back in 1997, and it is time that more people recognize that. To the extent that operators do flaunt the law and get away with it, we are all a little bit lessened. To the extent that any element of the industry abuses the law for its own gain, we are all harmed.
I'm not a big user of BitTorrent, mostly because I'm out here on the edge of broadband with a satellite connection and little patience for any large download I don't really need. But to the extent I have used it, BitTorrent seems an important technology that should not be sullied by abuse in copyright infractions. After all, we may need it once Hollywood gets its act together for movie downloads.
I'm Scottish by heritage and nature, a kilted man in the tartar of the Clan McLeod and a fierce supporter of Scottish independence from England. If you're interested, my personal web site has much more information about our clan and my family.
Among the most treacherous acts of perfidy in the history of Scotland occurred in 1692 at the villages of Glen Coe in the Scottish Highlands. Two companies of soldiers loyal to King William of England and under the command of Robert Campbell came to the MacDonalds of Glen Coe on a winter night. They were given Highland hospitality -- a warm meal and a place to sleep, and played cards with the MacDonalds.
But the Campbells carried sealed orders from King William -- "You are hereby ordered to fall upon the Rebels, the McDonalds of Glenco, and putt all to the sword under seventy..."
In the night, they fell on the members of Clan MacDonald under the order of the King, and slaughtered 38 members of the clan. Another 40 women and children died of exposure when they tried to escape into the wintery night. To this day, no Scot will trust a man who brings a sword to dinner, and the name Glen Coe is synonymous with treachery.
I mention this historical footnote because I came across an editorial on CNet this week called "'Tis the Season for Commonsense Copyright." Authored by Maura Corbett, partner in a Washington, DC pr firm, the piece is a gushing endorsement of H.R. 4279, a copyright bill introduced as a gift to copyright holders by Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Congressman Howard Berman (D-Calif.). Ms. Corbett writes of the bill:
"It's the season of giving, and the House Judiciary Committee could give consumers, innovators, and artists what they are asking for--fair and balanced copyright reform--and even give a holiday boost to our technology-driven economy."
Bovine excrement. This bill does nothing of the sort.
It fails to do anything to promote fair use. It does, however, substantially raise the penalties for copyright infringement, allowing for multiple awards for a single infraction that could drive the penalty cost of copying a single CD -- even if that copy was made legally under current law -- to as much as $360,000.
It creates a new copyright squad within the US Department of Justice to act as the private police force for the copyright industry. But according to Ms. Corbett:
"What H.R. 4279 offers, if we are very lucky, is the beginning of a meaningful conversation."
What she perhaps meant to say is that you can have a meaningful conversation with federal agents before they arrest you and destroy your life for making a copy of a CD you already bought.
I don't pretend to have all of the answers when it comes to copyright. It is important that authors and artists be compensated for their efforts. It is important to protect American copyrights and trademarks here and abroad. And no one should condone stealing. But it is also important to protect the cherished and traditional notion of fair use. And to protect school kids and single moms from the thuggery of the entertainment industry. And to protect taxpayers from government bureaucracies run amok.
Whatever H.R. 4279 offers, it is not a meaningful conversation. It is not an effort to address the glaring and crippling problems created by the odious Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It is not the solution that consumers, innovators and artists are asking for.
For consumers, this is a copyright Glen Coe. And the Campbells are coming for dinner.
I've always had a lot of respect for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and have worked with them on a lot of issues affecting the Internet. Even today, we jointly operate the Subpoenadefense.Org web site, which helps victims of the RIAA and MPAA assault on their own customers to find decent legal representation.
Still and all, they do occasionally take a position that I can't support, as when they attack companies that assist the government in tracking down and stopping terrorists. Or when they launch an dubious and nasty campaign against Comcast for its network management practices.
I'm not alone in that regard. Over at the Register ("Biting the hand that feeds IT"), author, blogger and network engineer Richard Bennett dissected the EFF position on Comcast from a technical standpoint. His bottom line:
"So why does the EFF complain? They're aware that file-sharing is troublesome for cable networks, but remain fully committed to the religious view that the internet's protocols were born fully-formed and inviolate in the mind of a virgin engineer in Bethlehem some 40 years ago, IETF discussions to the contrary notwithstanding.
Like many advocacy groups dealing with technical subjects, the EFF represents the view that technologies are meant to liberate the human spirit from the chains of exploitation, hence it's bewildered by the sight of people using the internet for such mundane purposes as downloading porn, bullying, and stealing music.
So it manufactures a fake crisis of network management to avoid the truth about the inanities of the internet. Problem solved."
I'll can't ascribe motives to the EFF, but would make two comments. First, now that the dust has settled and the knee-jerk pundits have quieted down, it becomes clear that Comcast's policies not only do not block downloads over BitTorrent, they act to speed such downloads for the majority of users. Second, a year ago I summed up the supporters of Netowrk Neutrality as a "coalition of the deranged." I've seen nothing in the year since to change that opinion, and am deeply saddened to see the EFF join their ranks.
In the early days of the online community, I worked with the FBI on several occasions to root out child pornography. Later, I helped train state and local law enforcement organizations on this issue. I also worked as a counselor and intervention specialist, dealing with victims of abuse. I mention this so that you will understand that I have some credentials with respect to the issue.
The House of Representatives has passed almost overwhelmingly another bill to "do something" about child pornography online. As with most of the similar bills in recent years, this one should not become law. While it does contain some good provisions with respect to liability and organization, the "SAFE" Act relies on three wildly incorrect assumptions:
- That because some "smaller" Internet Service Providers have not reported finding child pornography on their services, they may automatically be assumed to be willfully refusing to report it as required under the law.
- That because some Internet Service Providers have not registered with the National Center For Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), they may be involved in promoting child pornography.
- That the solution is therefore to punish ISPs by forcing them to register with NCMEC and threaten them with larger fines if they fail to report child porn.
Virtually anyone who knows the ISP industry would likely note that there is no requirement for ISPs to register with a private corporation like the NCMEC, nor should there be; that the reason why some ISPs have not reported finding child pornography on their services is that it isn't there; and that raising the fines therefore is a futile gesture unlikely to further the cause of battling child pornography online.
The bottom line: laws like the SAFE Act are harmful both because they scapegoat ISPs and because they give the appearance of taking action on this critical issue while accomplishing little.
What would I do if I were designing a way to fight child ponrography online? Glad you asked. Here's my list of 10 steps we could take that (IMHO) might actually be productive:
- Put a stop to the scapegoating. ISPs do not promote, sanction or even overlook child pornography. They do not profit from it, and in fact are required by law to report it. ISPs generally have an excellent record of cooperating with law enforcement on this issue, and the effort to make it seem otherwise is counterproductive and unsupported by the facts.
- Do the research. What passes for data on this issue isn't just bad -- it's outrageously, stultifyingly, embarrassingly bad. From the attorney general's bogus claim that there are 50,000 sexual predators online, to the estimate that child porn is a billion-dollar industry to the bizarre claims of how many children are approached by predators online, the data seems more geared to political expedience than understanding the issue. Congress should first set aside money to properly define the issue, measure its scope, measure the effectiveness of the programs currently used to battle it, and explore other measures that may be helpful going forward.
- Straighten out the liability problems. Thanks to earlier legislative efforts on this issue, we find ourselves in the embarrassing position of placing the people who are on the front lines of combating child pornography at risk of being arrested themselves. The courts have made this situation even worse, with rulings such as the one that deemed that just looking at an image was sufficient to send someone to jail. If the first thing we have to do in an investigation is close our eyes, I can't see the investigation being very successful.
- Clean up the domain name system. It is ridiculous that we can't effectively contact the real owners of web sites and other Internet services. We can't' largely because we allow people to register domain names using deliberately false or outdated information. Every single domain registration should include the name, address and telephone number of an administrative and technical contact. Who are real, findable and accessible. Any that do not should be de-registered as soon as this is discovered. This loophold needs to be closed.
- Clean up USENET. The USENET system doesn't see much use in the US today, but the major USENET servers still reside here. And they are chock full of child pornography. The fiction that no one controls USENET, or that nothing can be done about this problem, can be addressed by simply shutting down the services that refuse to comply. First amendment protections do not apply to illegal actions.
- Shut down the "honeypots." Sure, law enforcement likes the idea of keeping chat rooms and web sites active in order to trap sexual predators. But frankly, one has to wonder if this strategy is all that helpful. You can't stop bank robberies by handing out floor plans to banks, and you can't effectively fight child pornography by keeping child porn sites open and accessible.
- Filter the P2P services. child pornography is plentiful on the P2P networks, but filtering it out simply isn't that hard. If they can filter for copyrighted songs, they can filter for child porn.
- Make more training available to local law enforcement. There is clearly a disconnect between the time a complaint is handed off to local law enforcement and the local LEOs actually open an investigation. In some cases, this can be months -- a problem because evidence can disappear during this time. The solution is not, as the DOJ tried to push last year, to simply keep everyone's data for years and years. It is to work with local law enforcement to get cases opened and resolved more quickly and effectively.
- License US Internet Service Providers. You have to have a license to sell cigarrettes, cut hair or push a hot dog cart down the street, yet we have no registry of Internet Service Providers. That's insane. Especially as we move from a dial-up world to broadband and the industry consolidates (roughly 20 ISPs now handle about 95 percent of all US Internet traffic) and the numbers become fewer. The registry should be established and maintained by an agency of the federal government and the information made available only to those with a legitimate need to have it -- like law enforcement agencies combatting child pornography.
- Help the US Department of Justice to keep pace with technology. This is in many ways a budget issue, but it becomes more apparent with each passing year that the federal government in general and the DOJ in particular are struggling to keep pace with technology. Child pornography is moving underground, using torrent streams, file sharing web sites and virtual private networks to avoid detection. The answer is not a knee-jerk effort to kill emerging technologies or paw through the underwear drawers of innocent Americans, but rather to work within new technologies. This won't be easy, as technologists don't generally thrive in large bureaucracies. Still, it needs to be done.
No, these won't solve the whole problem. We humans generally have a poor track record of legislating away moral problems, especially when they relate to sex and violence (just ask Moses how well he fared with the 10 Commandments). But these 10 steps would go a long way toward helping to clean up the Internet where crime is concerned.
And it makes much more sense than pointing fingers and blustering.
I know it's wrong to be judgmental, or to view things in black and white, but here's the deal -- I really, really hate HP.
They make some of the best-known printers on the planet, and I have used them faithfully since my first Laserjet back in the Dark Ages. But lately something evil has happened to that company, and I'm not referring to their merger with Compaq or the shenanigans in the boardroom.
I'm talking about doing harm to consumers. And it turns out that this isn't just my opinion, but the subject of a study by the American Consumer Institute as well (Disclaimer: the ACI study doesn't single out HP, but I do because I use their products and believe they epitomize the problem).
I'm still really buzzed because a year after Windows Vista was released to corporate users, HP still did not have drivers for many of their LaserJet products. A year. Long after they were promised. Long after they should have been done. Jeez, it's not as if they didn't have two years before that to get ready. Personally, I believe that they withheld the the drivers hoping people would get the hint and upgrade to new printers. Of course, none of the inexpensive laser printers were offered with Vista drivers.
So now ACI releases a study that shows that consumers are being ripped off to the tune of about $6 billion a year by printer companies who low-ball the cost of the inkjet printers and then jack up the price of the print cartidges to make their money. That's the reason the printers can be had for $29, $19 or even free. Disengenuous, if not immoral.
HP is the leader of the inkjet industry, but you don't see much leadership coming from them these days. And that's a shame, because they were once a company that valued integrity, truth, consumer support and service.
What could they do? For starters, publish a list for each of their printers of the number of average printed pages per cartridge (they can do this for laser printers, I notice, but don't seem to for inkjets). And they can price their products realistically according to manufacturing and marketing costs, rather than using them as a loss leader to rip off poor working families and students with lowball initial hardware prices and high cartridge costs.
I know the HP board of directors has other matters with which to deal, but they ought to give this one a little priority. They used to be a leader in the printer industry, and could be again. All they have to do is show a little leadership.
The world of high tech produces a wealth of stories -- some happy, some sad, and some downright infuriating. And as someone who has been there since the first days of the commercial Internet, I have seen, heard and participated in my share of all three.
When we were just launching the Association of Online Professionals (that would later become the US Internet Industry Association), editor Robert Metcalfe accused me of just trying to scare people into joining the association by telling them what was happening in Washington. Within a year we were up against the language of the Telecom Act of 1996 and fighting for the life of the industry.
Sen. John McCain scolded me once because he believed the Internet companies in America were not engaged enough with the public. We didn't participate. We didn't join. It seemed we only wanted to earn our millions and retire young, giving nothing back to the people, institutions and government that helped us into being. He warned that the Internet companies only seemed to come to Washington when they wanted a handout, rather than to help engage in the balanced give and take of a public/private partnership. He was right then, and it is still true now.
But I was reminded today of a different story -- one that earned me a friend in Steve Pociask of the American Consumer Institute.
I was then, as now, speaking at dozens of conferences each year. If you do that long enough, you spend a lot of time in Las Vegas. And I hate Vegas. I figure that raising children, engaging in Internet public policy and driving a Ford pickup truck are enough gambling for one lifetime. So Vegas has very little appeal for me. But I go, because that is the job.
I rolled into the MGM Grand after a harrowing flight just a little after midnight. The lobby was full at the check-in stand, which for a weekday was unusual and disconcerting. Turns out the MGM had somehow overbooked, and even though we had confirmed reservations they had no rooms. They were suggesting that people hang out in the Starbucks until morning. I didn't have that long -- we were on early in the morning with a panel discussion on whatever was the burning topic of the day.
I called the reservation clerk over, explained that I spent a lot of time in Vegas on business, asked her to look up my record staying at the MGM Grand and asked her to find me a room -- anywhere. The guy at the next counter over wasn't doing so well. He was tired, distraught and PO'd big time, but was getting little satisfaction. As I waited to see what might happen, we started chatting. Turned out we were going to the same conference. To speak at the same time slot. On the same panel.
I don't know why Steve did not get a room. I did. Well, not a room. A deluxe, high-roller suite with bedroom, a living room area, fireplace indoor pool and more gold that I have ever seen in my life. Free bar. Fresh fruit on the table. Masseuse on call. You get the picture. It was bigger than my townhouse in Alexandria, VA, back then.
I had visions of poor Steve Pociask sitting in Starbucks, and hunted him down to invite him to crash on the couch. Instead, we sat up long into the night talking about Internet policy and consumer rights over a decent bottle of red wine. I finally wandered off to bed, getting up the next morning to find that our panel had been cancelled at the last moment and we were off the hook.
Steve and I run into one another now and then on the lecture circuit, and I always joke about whether he's gotten a room this time. And I continue to watch his web site, which leads to one of the more honest consumer organizations in Washington. (Most of the self-proclaimed consumer-rights organizations don't seem to have much integrity when it comes to their political agendas, and I am grateful that ACI is an exception.).
This all comes to mind because of a new study ACI has done that should get a lot of attention. I'll post about it separately.
I live and work in the valley of the Shenandoah, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Sure, my office is about 90 miles east of here, and I am often in DC for meetings and events. But other days, I sit in a home office with a view of the mountains and pastures of rural Virginia.
I am able to do that through the miracle of broadband. I'm using Hughes Satellite at the moment, but have the option of using cable or optical wireless. DSL is supposed to get here at some point, and 3G cellular as well.
Telecommuting doesn't work for every person, job or lifestyle. But it can clearly work for a lot more people than are currently able to telecommute. And the benefits of telecommuting are so enormous that it makes me wonder why more people are not offered the option. I've heard all of the theories -- insecure middle managers, entrenched corporate cultures, the hassle of paperwork and revisions to employee manuals. But none of them really seem to account for why so many people are being less productive and more costly as employees because they have to make the daily trudge to an office.
I was hopeful that with the wide deployment of broadband this would be the Decade Of The Telecommuter. But we are almost eight years through the decade and the numbers are still dismal. The technology is largely in place. The tools exist. People will adapt. I am left somehow thinking that more people don't telecommute because they simply don't take a moment to say, "Hey, I could do that."
I'd write more on the subject, but I have a lot of work to do tomorrow and want to spend a little time in the hot tub looking at the stars before I end the day. The snow fell in the Shenandoah Valley for the first time this year, and the air is crisp and cold.
George Ou's "Real World IT" blog over on CNet notes that EFF has joined Free Press and Public Knowledge in calling for Network Neutrality rules that would lead to metered broadband use and substantially higher prices for consumers. [Update -- EFF says they don't support metered use] Ou is astounded that such groups would advocate something that would so damage America and its consumers, but I'm not.
Remember, the consequences of their actions are of no interest to these groups. Their only goal is to destroy America's network operators -- particularly telephone and cable companies -- to prevent them from getting some kind of "power." What they don't ever consider is what happens after that. Because they don't care.
And that's the real problem with Network Neutrality. No matter how you shake it out, it's nothing more than good old-fashioned Bell-bashing. There's no real plan. Not even a consensus on what "neutrality" means. Just a desire to trash the leading broadband companies and then move on.
But until you can show me in very simple and quantifiable terms how network neutrality will directly lead to better, faster and cheaper broadband service, I'm not interested. Harm the Bells? Yeah, sure. Kill the CableCos? Whatever.
But enact Network Neutrality legislation without knowing its full consequences in real life to typical consumers? Bad idea. Bad, bad idea.
I was struck this morning by yet another example of why law school students should be forced to take course in economics, business management and common sense. This time by way of a blog entry by Susan Crawford, a visiting law professor at Michigan (and, frighteningly, a board member of ICANN) who begins with the statement:
"Let's say that providing communications infrastructure is an inherent function of a state."
Her blog goes on to make the usual nonsense conjectures that seem to always lead to the government seizing control of broadband so that network operators don't get too much power. The implied threat is that if they do get such power, consumers and governments would be so powerless to stop them that we would be forced to accept...well, who knows?
Just for the record:
1) Private companies have no obligation, implied or otherwise, to protect First Amendment free speech. The Bill of Rights does not apply to private entities. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 does encourage network operators to censor any content they find objectionable, and protects them in doing so. Amazing how the "experts" in cyberlaw never seem to have read that section of law. Or simply overlook it as an inconvenient truth.
2) Countries suffering under communist and other totalitarian governments seize the assets of private companies under the excuse that it is for the common good. We are neither a communist nor a totalitarian government, and should not act like one. BTW, our communications networks are the envy of the world today, and most of the world is busy tearing down their state-owned monopolies in order to emulate our success. If we are less successful than we once were, you can blame it on a Congress that just can't stop regulating our successes away.
3) Trying to pass off socialist political theory and bizarre imaginings as any kind of scholarly discourse on management of the Internet generally fails -- as does this one -- because it stops short once we turn everything over to the government. Since the goal is not to produce a better, faster or cheaper Internet, but only to destroy the telephone and cable companies, there is never a discussion of how things will be improved, if at all, in the New World Order. No discussion of who will actually run the networks, or whether they are qualified to do so, or even whether consumers will have a voice in the choices they are offered.
My good friend and USIIA chairman Dennis Hayes, whose work on the Hayes modem and ringset made him a true pioneer of the Internet, is often fond of noting that the workings of a free market are ugly, frequently slow and sometimes unfair. But they are always a better option than markets controlled by the goverment.
Amen.
In my little corner of the world -- which is a small spread at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia -- I'm constantly search for technologies that can make my life easier, cheaper or more productive.
With the winds gusting up to 60 miles an hour today, I resumed my search for information on how I could use wind power to supplant my ecological footprint and lessen my electric bill. The news, alas, is not good.
There are a lot of good windmills on the market today, including some by PacWind that are smaller and more suitable for a home or small business. Unfortunately, my place sits in a valley with steady state winds of only 5-6 miles per hour. At that rate, a windmill would only produce about 90 kilowatt hours of energy against an average of 1200 kilowatt hours for a household. At that rate, I would be long dead before recovering my investment.
I've already ruled out solar as a viable replacement -- too expensive, and still too inefficient.
Moving on to geothermal. Will report progress.
I haven't gotten much involved in the mess over the Federal government tapping phone and Internet lines without due process. Perhaps it is because my own communications are so boring that investigators would have a hard time staying awake if they tapped my lines.
But I am wondering why the Congress and the EFF, among others, seem hell-bent on punishing the phone and broadband companies who complied with a federal order and allowed the taps. And I wonder whether it is right to somehow hold these companies open to liability and lawsuits for doing what most citizens would do under similar circumstances.
We are, after all, at war. We have been attacked, and the odds are good that we will be again. Given this simple fact, I would think that Congress would be doing everything it could to help stop someone from flying an airplane into Capitol Hill. Or otherwise targeting the nation's capitol.
But even if we pretend we are not at war, and that the wiretaps were not justified in the effort to prevent another attack on the US, how is this the fault of the network operators? It is not as though the Department of Justice gave them a choice. They gave an order, in secret, that no law-abiding company could easily challenge and no good corporate citizen would want to.
If there is blame in this situation -- and they may well be -- if falls squarely on the US Department of Justice. And that agency of the federal government should have the guts to say so. As should our Congressional leadership.
Citizens have a right to protection in their persons, their papers and their private communications. They have a right to a government that protects that right unless they can show a judge a good reason to do otherwise. They did not do so in this case, and thus betrayed not only the good faith of the citizenry but that of the network companies that allowed them to tap those communications.
Shame on the DOJ for doing this, and shame on the Congress for victimizing the network companies a second time by judging them guilty for trying to do the right thing.
I grew up in what is universally acknowledged to be the golden age of Rock 'n Roll. I've lived in Lubbock, where Buddy Holly started...rocked to WGAR in Cleveland, where the likes of Alan Freed held sway...spent my early years as a radio jock on AM and FM...and lived to see music die in the Eighties.
You don't think music is dead? The industry is having to pull geriatric rockers out of the nursing homes and prop them up on stage just to fill the venue halls. There hasn't been an innovation in music for nearly two decades (not counting the brief resurgence of country in the Year of Garth). Even the hit songs of today seem mostly to be remixes of songs from the Sixties and Seventies.
Friends who stayed in the music biz blame much of this on the crass greed of music executives and shareholders. They say that when the industry began its mega-mergers, taking the industry down to essentially five major studios, they sacrified their A&R Departments -- mergers are expensive, and must be paid for somehow. Artists and Repertoire, or A&R, is that part of the music business responsible for locating and grooming new acts, and for acquiring the rights to music for them to perform. No A&R budgets, no new groups. No new music. No innovation. Only stagnation and declining sales.
Industry execs, for their part, blame the Internet. Though the research pretty clearly shows that sharing music files increases rather than decreases sales, some would blame all of their woes on the kids who download music. They are so certain they are right that they have sued millions of American school kids and bullied them into submission to make their point.
It is the Internet that is killing the music industry, IMHO. But not because of file sharing. Rather, it is because music has stopped being cool. The industry became so fascinated with celebrities and the urban contemporary experience that they forgot their audience was teenagers who wanted to be cool.
Eric Carmen, one of the coolest back in the day, sang it this way:
"Well I was sixteen
And sick of school
I didn't know what I wanted to do
I bought a guitar
I got the fever
That's rock'n roll."
It was, and is.
In my day, the way to be cool was with music. Dancing. Singing. Or at the top of the heap, playing in a band. Those who wanted to be cool and still weird became drummers. We did sock hops and dances. Listened to songs on the radio. Bought records and swapped them with our friends. The rockers were our heroes as no one else.
My good friend Roger Felice, the original drummer for the BeeGees, still can't sit in his living room over a drink without drumsticks in his hands, quietly tatooing a rock beat. He's still cool. And weird.
The point is that today's cool teens aren't riffing chords. They're riffing Facebook or uploading their own videos to YouTube. Music is something in the background while you are surfing the web. Today's teens largely don't know who's in the Top Forty, and don't care.
Maybe the music industry can find a way to be cool again. But to do so, they have to stop living in the glory days of the past and find a way to become relevants the the teens who buy most of their product. They won't do it with threats and bullying. They won't do it by continuing to do what worked two decades ago. And perhaps they won't be able to do it at all.
