DISQUS

The last comment was actually from me, not Enigma.

Thanks for the plug, Tim.

Good point. Thanks for participating in my wikiproofreading system...

And almost on cue, the FCC site in in fine form today. I've been trying to pull up a speech by Chairman Martion -- it's only in PDF -- and it freezes up my PC each time I try. Perhaps it has some sort of cookie that lets it know I will use it to criticize the chairman...

Check the post again. 34,700 is not a number of people, it is the number of Google results on "how to bypass Comcast."

I realize that, but -- as an ignorant American -- didn't know where to find that symbol. I did what I could.

Oucch. No idea where that "c" came from, but its gone now...

I like it.

Re naming my own law, there actually already is one on the books. "Gattuso's Extension of Murphy's Law" holds that nothing is ever so bad that it can't get worse." I have no idea what Gattuso is responsible for it, but it seems valid, in my experience.

Thanks for clearing that up. I wish we had kept the original meanings of the terms here in the U.S. as well, in the sense that "liberal" implies "liberty." That's one reason I tend to use the term "Left" instead.

When did they admit those 25 extra states?

Oops. I took out the reference. But, for the math whizzes among you, it's three percent, not six percent, of the Senate.

Sometimes I wonder if the entire savetheinternet.com website is a parody of itself...

Interesting. It does make me wonder if anyone will now argue that the FCC's jurisdiction should entend to U.S. airways as well as U.S. airwaves. :)

Best idea I've heard in years!

Thompson is mentioned, actually, in the Spectator article I linked to. I'm betting the answer to your question is "yes."

My point is that the converter box is only necessary for reception of over-the-air signals. Certainly, you need an antenna to receive such signals. But fewer and fewer viewers are getting their signals this way. I don't know if it will go away completely, but do think that it will at best be a marginal form of TV transmission.

I had missed Seth's correction above that most of his first comment was quoting others - and that only the bracketed statement up front was his. My response remains the same, but all invectives, sarcasm, et. al. should be redirected toward the people he quotes. :)

Seth Finkelstein raises an interesting point. Are there two different questions at issue here: 1) whether recording criminal violance for "kicks" should be banned, and 2) whether recording made by eyewitnesses in to expose a crime or injustice should be illegal?

It seems the authors of the law meant only to address no. 1, and not no. 2 -- thus the exemptions for recordings in (as phrased above) "the normal exercise of a profession devoted to inform the public or is carried out in order to be used as proof in justice".

The problem, however, is that the two cannot be so easily separated. Someone has to decide whether a recording is made in the interests of justice or not. As in the free speech context, I simply don't trust the government to make that call. Taking Rodney King as an example, Mr. Finkelstein says that it would be "black letter legal." In his first comment, he said that:

"George Holliday was not an amateur journalist who films the scene to make a good post on his blog or upload it to YouTube. He was acting as a full fledged citizen who is in position to record a proof of a crime and does it".

There's a lot of gray area there. What if the situation arose today, and he posted it to his blog? Would the state make a determination as to whether he really truly wanted to stop and injustice, or whether he was trying to maximize hits? What if Matt Drudge put it up, trying to get his own circulation up? What if the recorder put it on youtube, just because it was interesting? What if he sold it to People magazine? Or to Fox News? At what point is he not acting as a "full-fledged citizen?"

My point is that these calls are not always easiest to make. And, frankly, I don't trust the government to make the call as to whether my motives are pure enough to allow me to document what I see.

This doesn't leave us without an answer to violance. If someone actually is an accomplice to a violent act -- either planning in advance with the perpetrator to film it, egging it on as it proceeds, or whatever, it seems the current laws regarding criminal accomplice would be sufficient. But a law specifically banning certain recordings is unnecessary and dangerous.

Is this really a "wolf, wolf" story? I admit that when I first read of this new law, I thought maybe this was a Onion-like hoax. But the story seems well-substantiated (and not just by bloggers, but by the "professional" media, as the French lawmakers would put it).

I appreciate Seth Finkelstein's explanation of the law above. But, although he says that "everything [he] knows contradicts the story," his explanation actually seems to confirm that it is true:

* He writes that the French Constitutional Court hasn't addressed the issue yet. But he corrects himself farther down -- saying a decision has in fact been reached.

* He states that lawmakers had to differentiate between recording violence "for the fun" and "in order to get proof." Mr. Finkelstein rightly says that's not easy. I agree -- it's never easy to differentiate between "good" speech and "bad" speech, which is one reason governments should avoid trying to do so.

* The law itself, as translated by Mr. Finkelstein, says "whoever knowingly records images of violence is an accomplice and will be punished as such." Not much room for exaggeration here. The normal law defining who is an accomplice is thrown out. You are an "accomplice" if you record the act, regardless of whether you provided any aid to or had any contact with the actual perpetrators.

* Mr. Finkelstein argues that there is "right" to broadcast humiliating images of people (using photos of rape as an example). Perhaps -- but that's a privacy law question. The law that was passed goes well beyond that. Reporters Without Borders, for instance, has strongly objected to the law, pointing out that citizen-recorded images of government human rights abuses would be banned. They write that it would be "shocking" if "this kind of activity were to be criminalized in a democratic country." http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=21237.

* Lastly, Mr. Finkelstein writes that "we have a lot of political parties and organisations of all sizes. I didn't hear a word about this law from any of them," except for one small group.

This does nothing to justify the law. The silence of France's "political parties and organizations" is perhaps the most troubling aspect of this whole debate. Are there really so few in France willing to defend individual rights?

Mr. Finkestein calls this a "wolf, wolf" story. But there does seems to be an actual wolf about. The question is where are the watchdogs to defend against them?

Skip -- I'm sympathetic to your concerns, Lord knows I've been critical of antitrust on more than one occasion. Certainly, this shouldn't be an FTC lovefest. But two factors tilt me toward the FTC. First, the FCC has industry-specific responsibility, while the FTC has general jurisdiction. If you are at the FCC, all you have is one sector to regulate -- if you find it doesn't need regulation, you are out of a job. (If all you have is a telecom hammer, everything looks like a telecom nail that needs hammering, to mangle a metaphor). If you are at the FTC, however, can always simply move on to something else (hopefully more productive). Second, while the FTC certainly has had its share of political interference, it pales in comparison to the record of the FCC. Antitrust law, for all its flaws, has been surprisingly focused on actual economics. Just compare the FCC's public interest standard to the concept of consumer welfare in antitrust. So given the choice between the two admittedly imperfect agencies, I'll take the FTC.

Jerry -- That's a good word of caution. I agree -- the profit motive is part of the solution, not the problem. I didn't mean to imply otherwise, and should have made that clear. My impression though was that the concern expressed at the hearing was not that somebody was profiting per se. Its that Cyren Call is not advocating its plan out of an abstract sense of the public good, but that it has a financial stake in the outcome. Again, as Seinfeld would say "there's nothing wrong with that." But, remember that Cyren Call is asking that auctions be forgone here. McCaskill's concern, according to Comm Daily's Veigle, was why Morgan O'Brien "wouldn't bid on the spectrum like other companies." That's seems at least a fair question.

thanks for the post, Tim.

You should try Gattuso as a name. Aside from my brother and wife, and the occasional Italian soccer star, there's very little competition.

Tim -- Frankly, I'm with Brooke. Why wouldn't a challenger potentially want to compete based on speed? As you say, it may be a matter of fractions of a second, but competition takes place on the margin -- firms compete on hundreds on factors much more seemingly minor than that. This is just one more potential -- and quite legitimate dimension. I'm also unpersuaded by the claim that charging for such differentiated treatment is "impractical." There seem to be plenty of network owners who see it as quite doable -- would they be fighting this battle if it wasn't?

I'm not saying that this sort of differentiation definitely will or will not develop. But that's the point -- in markets like these (or any market for that matter) we simply don't know. And we also don't know -- no matter how many engineers say it would "suck" - what is best for consumer welfare. That's what markets are there to discover. In the meantime, I wouldn't dismiss the potential outcome Brooke outlined.

Solveig -- I don't know if Thomas or his friends get paid, but they were nationalized in 1947 ("We are nationalized now, but the same engines work the region," Rev. Awdry wrote in a Sodor book that came out that year.) I'm not sure when they were privatized again (perhaps Thatcher had a children's fictional privatization program), but Sir Topham Hatt seems to be safely making profits once again.

I know way too much about this, I know. Can you tell I have a five-year old at home?

Those actually aren' groupies -- its the ragtag army of net neutrality fanatics.