capitalism again (or net neutrality)

Net neutrality is preventing internet service providers (ISP’s) from taking sides when it comes to providing users with content from content providers (CP’s); that’s a lot of using the same few words, which illustrates the apt naming of ISP’s and CP’s, but it is also a little confusing. In simpler terms, net neutrality is keeping the internet even.

An uneven internet would be one on which certain content loaded faster because those content providers are receiving preferred treatment. That preferred treatment could be the result of paying a premium, a special business relationship, or something else, and it is known, formally, as paid prioritization. Paid prioritization is the chief interest at stake when we debate net neutrality.

Those in favor of net neutrality argue that paid prioritization is a way for the giant ISP’s to play favorites, and a CP that doesn’t have a preferred relationship with an ISP is at a disadvantage. This is potentially problematic for a couple of reasons.

First, from a fairness perspective, our biggest ISP’s are vertically integrated throughout the internet-relevant industries, so they have their own associated CP’s that would undoubtedly get the preferred treatment without net neutrality. This would put other CP’s at a business disadvantage, regardless of what the end user wants, and stinks a little bit of monopoly.

Second, from an innovation perspective, CP’s just starting out would have trouble breaking into the “fast lane” (the paid prioritization lane), resulting in a negative feedback loop: more difficult to get new customers -> less money -> less paid prioritization -> fewer new customers, ad inf.

Opponents to net neutrality largely support a freer market approach, arguing that the industry innovation is really occurring at the ISP’s, and that government regulation will impede progress. They argue that if customers are unhappy with a particular ISP’s prioritization (e.g. slowing down Netflix), they will switch to a different ISP and the natural market forces will eventually lead to the best distribution of ISP resources.

The problem with that reasoning is that many people in America don’t have the freedom to choose between ISP’s – you’re stuck with whoever has the infrastructure developed in your area. This characteristic of the telecom industry illustrates that it is very similar to other “natural monopolies” in the US, and so it requires government regulation.

Monopolies are one of capitalism’s market failures and are dealt with by government regulation. Natural monopolies occur when it makes the most sense for just one company to develop infrastructure in a geographical area. You don’t want four different cable companies all digging their own cable lines to every house in a neighborhood – it would be a waste of resources. But if there’s only one company that provides cable in that neighborhood, they could charge customers exorbitant amounts of money for their service because there would be no competition. That’s why government regulation is important for natural monopolies – the government can ensure a fair price for customers.

The internet requires a serious amount of infrastructure, so a natural monopoly makes sense, but it’s important that the government has a hand in how ISP’s conduct business.

I read all of the arguments against net neutrality, and they were all across the board.

David Cohen, an executive at Comcast, argues that the government can’t possibly keep up with modern technology so they shouldn’t bother trying to regulate it. The executives at Comcast likely no little about the technology their company uses to actually provide people with internet, but they know enough to make important decisions, which they learn from the people below them who actually know how the stuff works. Likewise, politicians don’t need to know how every piece of the puzzle fits together, they just need someone who does get it to explain to them the big picture.

Grant Babcock argues that since there is “no dire threat to freedom hinging on [net neutrality],” it is not the government’s business to be involved. I guess he probably has bigger qualms with the government, though, than net neutrality. Like NASA’s $19 billion budget in 2016, or the fact that the government pays for highways.

The crown jewel, however, was Jeffrey Dorfman’s invective against net neutrality. He expressed annoyance with “poor analogies” surrounding net neutrality, and then gave us these:

We win from having multiple flavors of ice cream in the store. We benefit from the large variety of cars available for purchase. The fact that most people cannot afford some of those models does not mean they should be removed from sale. Similarly, the fact that some businesses or consumers may choose to pay for better access to the Internet is not a bad thing. Some people pay more to fly first class, but they do not interfere with my travel in coach.

They have pretty much nothing to do with net neutrality.

 

Here is a link to the letter that Connor Brant, Alex Hansen, and I wrote to the editor of the Observer.

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Encryption is a fundamental right only as it relates to privacy. Obviously it’s not something the Founding Fathers could’ve foreseen, but the magic in their words lies in the applicability to ever-changing technology and culture. Encryption is ultimately a privacy tool, but there’s no reason encryption, itself, should be a fundamental right. Additionally, privacy is a fundamental right, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be suspended by the government when it’s warranted.

The issue of complete, irreversible encryption is, in my opinion, only really an issue because of the partial distrust of our government. If American citizens trusted the government entirely, there wouldn’t be any questions asked when the government requested Apple to unlock an iPhone for an investigation. So, to me, encryption isn’t a big issue when aligning with a politician. To me, the heart of the issue is the heart of the candidate – choosing a politician I trust.

If I trust the president of the country, I may disagree with certain individual stances like encryption or immigration or climate change, but I am willing to go along with what he or she decides because I trust his or her judgement.

In any struggle, I like to visit the extremes of either side. With personal privacy, the extreme is that the government has no access to any of its citizens’ data (physical or digital) and is essentially powerless in investigations. With extreme national security, I imagine a surveillance state in which the government has access to all of the data they could ever want, including what each citizen is doing at every moment of every day. They’re both scary, but if we want a government at all, we should want it to have efficacy in dealing with problems we can’t deal with individually (catching a murderer, stopping a terrorist plot), so I definitely lean toward the national security side.

Again, it boils down to trust for me. If everyone in the country trusted the government to obtain our personal data responsibly (i.e. only when they need it for an investigation and not to use it against us unnecessarily), there would be no debate.

 

pirates: black beards or neckbeards

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a broad stroke effort to prevent unauthorized access to and copying of copyrighted material. There are a couple of provisions that dictate that, but the overall effect of the act, as noted by Kerry Maeve Sheehan, is that it’s blunderingly trying to keep up with technology that far outpaces the speed of lawmakers’.

Piracy, which has generally come to mean using something without permission (like listening to a copyrighted song without paying for it), is one of the principal targets of the DMCA, due to its popularity with the internet as a vehicle. The way the DMCA seeks to prevent piracy is by making illegal any attempt to “circumvent” digital rights management (DRM), and heightening the pre-existing penalties for doing so. (Circumvent is in quotes because pretty much every reading uses that term, and I believe it is purposefully vague.)

So the main idea is that the government is trying to prevent illegal music and movie downloads, which is a noble cause, but they aren’t really equipped to do it. Russell Brandom points out that “YouTube relies on user-generated flags to enforce its policies, which can make violations maddeningly inconsistent.”

This brings up the concept of Safe Harbor. The DMCA provides provisions to protect companies like YouTube, Facebook, and Google from copyright infringement. This, at least, is a reasonable idea, since making these tech giants liable for users’ copyright infringements would only serve to discourage the development of novel file-sharing technology.

What the Safe Harbor provisions dictate is that an online service provider (OSP), basically any website, is not responsible for illegal activities conducted by users, provided the OSP meets a few regulations: (1) the company must have no knowledge of the infringements, (2) the company must have a copyright policy, and (3) the company must have an agent to whom copyright claims should be directed. (This information conveniently gathered from Muso’s DMCA explanation.)

Due to the sheer volume of video on YouTube, it is reasonable to believe they can’t have knowledge of all copyright infringements hosted on their site, but they do have to make an effort, hence the “user-generated flags.” It is easy to see how that reporting system could become immensely frustrating for YouTube’s most frequent users.

And what motivation is there for users to flag copyrighted material on YouTube? It must primarily be those owning the copyrights as well as a handful of speciously-white knights – everyone else enjoys the material and is complacent enough to not ask questions. This behavior falls somewhere on the spectrum of piracy. At the other end is people who actively seek, steal, and disseminate copyrighted material. Somewhere in between are people like me, who download the audio tracks of YouTube videos as MP3 files and occasionally make use of torrenting sites to access copyrighted material.

In my opinion, people in that category aren’t actively seeking to stick it to the recording labels or the movie studios, those behaviors are more characteristic of the pirates Stephen Witt describes: “The founders of [The Pirate Bay] were ideological in nature, seeking a revolution in copyright law.”

As you shift slightly more toward the harmless end of the piracy spectrum from the founders, you get active torrenters who spend considerable amounts of time seeding files and ensuring there’s always enough content for people – “the last of the ideologues: anti-profit, pro-freedom political dissidents… at considerable personal risk.”

But once you get back to my category, people are just doing it because it’s the easiest and cheapest option. With services like Netflix and Spotify, the easiest and cheapest option is changing for a lot of people. Whether the line is drawn at <$10/month or the fact that Netflix accounts are naturally shareable, people have started to give up piracy in favor of streaming services. But again, the motivation is not noble or moral, it is simply ease of access.

I think piracy might start to fade with the next generation, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing. To conclude, here are my thoughts, summed up nicely by Joss Stone:

Yeah, I love [Piracy]. I think it’s brilliant and I’ll tell you why. Music should be shared. […] The only part about music that I dislike is the business that is attached to it. Now, if music is free, then there is no business, there is just music. So, I like it, I think that we should share.

It’s ok, if one person buys it, it’s totally cool, burn it up, share it with your friends, I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it. As long as you come to my show, and have a great time listening to the live show it’s totally cool. I don’t mind. I’m happy that they hear it.

on patents, aka progress stiflers

Thomas Jefferson and Elon Musk, among the foremost thinkers in their respective eras, both believe that patents stifle progress.

If a bright mind comes up with a clever idea in his field, it seems obvious that the field will move further along (which should hopefully be the ultimate goal of inventing and ideating) if that idea is shared with colleagues than if it is protected by patent laws. If the original ideator is more concerned with becoming famous for his or her particular idea or making money off of it, there is probably less incentive to share, but that’s only because of the way the patent system is perceived.

Elon Musk points out that releasing all of Tesla’s patents may actually boost the company’s economic position, by attracting more smart people to the technology base. More importantly, Musk believes that sharing the patents will further the cause behind Tesla, the “why” of his company, which is to create a more sustainable future in cars. That ought to be every inventor’s primary motivation, to further a cause, and patents should support that. To promote human growth in technology and culture is one of the World Intellectual Property Organization’s (WIPO) stated aims, but it’s efficacy is uncertain.

Another matter, addressed by Thomas Jefferson, is the use of the term “property” in describing an idea. Jefferson insists that property, as we know it most commonly (house, belongings, land), is only truly “owned” when we are currently occupying or using it. Other times, it is only owned as a result of social construction (i.e. if you aren’t standing on a piece of land, there’s no physical law that says I can’t come stand on it and call it mine, just the social laws and norms we’ve built up over the years). So how does an idea fit in?

How ideas work physically was not well understood in Jefferson’s time, and it is understood only marginally better now, but Jefferson makes a nice point,

That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature…

He goes on to relate the spread of ideas to sharing a flame. If I have a candle, I can light 50 other candles without diminishing my flame at all. And if I have an idea, I can share it with the world (quite easily now, thanks to the Internet) without losing the integrity of the idea, myself. Then, not only do I have a shot at coming up with the next great idea, but anyone who understands my idea also has that opportunity, which undoubtedly gives us a better shot at progress.

Getting back to the WIPO, their stated purpose of patents, or more generally, the protection and promotion of intellectual property, is threefold:

1. Humanity needs technological and cultural progress.
2. Protection of IP encourages further investment in ideas.
3. Protection and promotion also create economic growth.

Elon Musk, Thomas Jefferson, and I would argue that you don’t need patents to promote growth in culture, technology, and economy, and that the effect patents actually have, regardless of intention, is to encourage patent trolls, who can end up costing people more money than their patent is worth, and to inhibit other inventors and ideators from using novel ideas.

In short, patents stifle progress. They detract from the nobility of invention, and they suppress the free flow of information between colleagues.

“He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.” – Thomas Jefferson