DISQUS

Ah yes, another day at the TLF and another asinine corporate conspiracy theory from the enema_foundry. Seriously, pray tell, Mr. Foundry, how is it that you are so enlightened and shielded from this corporate media conspiracy while the rest of us are just mindless sheep being fed our daily marching orders from our corporate masters? Is it just the fact that I let my subscriptions to Mother Jones and The Nation lapse long ago? Do those sages offer the enlightened path to socialist slavery..er, uh.. freedom?

Now, you’ll have to excuse me while I get back to reading the couple of trillion different news stories on the Google News main page this morning. I will do my best to sort through them carefully and see if I can discern who is feeding me propaganda versus truth. Or I suppose you also have a theory about how all those media sources are really just controlled by Google! Ironically, I am about to fly out to the Valley for a conference at Google headquarters. I will ask them if they would be so kind as to deprogram me for the day and let me see the truth that is apparently only available to your eyes.

On general history of deregulation or the rationale for it, these 3 are a must:

"Economics of Regulation," Alfred Kahn

"Contrived Competition: Regulation and Deregulation in America," by Richard Vietor

"Regulation and Its Reform," by Stephen Breyer (yes, the one on the Supreme Court now)

"Prophets of Regulation: Charles Francis Adams; Louis D. Brandeis; James M. Landis; Alfred E. Kahn," by Thomas K. McCraw

Absolutely brilliant. And I loved the Old Spice commercial too.

Jerry... As a Star Wars uber-geek, I am certainly well aware of “Star Wars: Revelations” and think it is quite an impressive work of visual “fan fiction.” Nonetheless, as I have argued here before, I simply cannot agree with those who would hold it out as an example of how peer production is somehow an adequate substitute for what copyright protection incentivizes:

Two notes about "Star Wars: Revelations." First, it's based on a very successful and impressive media property that benefited from copyright protection. Second, while I too was impressed with the storyline in this "Star Wars: Revelations" amateur effort, it was decidedly amateurish in other important ways, too. Namely, have you ever tried to scale up the video to a big screen TV? Well, I have. It looks like shit. Moreover, it sounds like shit. In sum, when it comes to the quality of the final product, it really is amateur hour. There's no appreciation among the anti-copyright crowd for the issue of quality control. What the hell use is a $3000 new 50" plasma HDTV and a 7.1 surround sound audio set-up if all I have to play on it is grainy YouTube videos and stupid Burger King games?

Now, it certainly may be the case, as Mike Mansick suggests, that “Alternative business models can and do exist that allow the creator to earn money,” and that “These other business models need not use copyright -- and, in fact, can often benefit more by ignoring copyright.” I agree with that statement to SOME extent for SOME businesses or forms of art SOME of the time. But what I am suggesting here is that the really big, bold, impressive works of culture and art—and yes, I understand that is a terribly subjective term—will likely be under-produced in world devoid of some semblance of copyright protection. And we will certainly have lost something important if that is the case.

Could I be wrong? Sure. And I suspect we will find out the result of this grand experiment in our lifetimes because I am convinced that the effectiveness of traditional copyright law will gradually fade away for the same reasons that efforts to control speech and expression via censorship will increasingly fail in the future, as I have discussed in great detail here. The difference, of course, is that when censorship fails because of the combination of developments I outlined in that essay, we will not have lost much as a society. When copyright fails for similar reasons, however, I believe we may lose some of the prized cultural expression and creativity that flows from the modern gaming and movie-production community. In sum, I just don't see the Halo video game trilogy or the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy being produced in a world without some sort of copyright protection. But we just won't know for many years until copyright law falls apart and the grand experiment plays out.

I hope all the Lessig backers out there in cyberspace who are currently promoting his candidacy will recall that he has proposed a massive censorship regime for the Internet. I wrote it about it extensively here.

In Chapter 12 of Code, he spends several pages discussing possible "architectures that zone speech" and he elaborated about how such speech zoning and "tagging" laws might apply to cyberspace in an article for Wired magazine a few years ago.

Just what we need; another Net censor in Congress.

I apologize to Ed for misspelling his last name in the original post. I have correctly that.

That's a great movie. Have you seen it?

Steve... the "common good" at the force of a gun is not so good. That's the difference between us, and it's why I refer to myself as a "radical pacifist." I believe in using voluntary agreements to achieve "the common good." You believe in using coercion.

Finally, if we took your position to the logical extreme that all bundles or packages were somehow fundamentally at odds with "the common good"--however you and your statist chums define it--then we would need to empower regulators to essentially dismantle our economy and restructure entire markets since bundles and packages are all around us. Just go to your corner grocery store or local car dealership sometime and try to buy everything in the most atomistic unit possible. It's not possible. And it's not possible because it's not efficient. Same goes for cable TV.

And no one is making you buy cable each month either.

Dave... PFF is perfectly transparent about where we get our support. It's all right there on our website under the "About" tab:

http://www.pff.org/about/supporters.html

Incidentally, do you complain about the fact that there is no similar disclosure from Leftist think tanks? Free Press, for example, refuses to identify it sources of support. It consistently amazes me how the Left gets away with hiding its sources of funding but then bitches about others who disclose.

And for your information--but not that you care--we do not get the majority of our funding from cable companies. PFF receives contributions from a wide diversity of high-technology, communications, media and cable companies.

If you ever care to engage in actual debate about the substance of issues instead of engaging in cowardly ad hominem attacks, feel free to come back and join us for a serious debate.

Tom... The size of the bubble indicates the respective market capitalization of each operator. Google is that big because, well, Google is that big! I'm not trying to distort anything by using the 3-D bubbles instead of 2-D bubbles, but perhaps to be consistent I should I have used one or the other in each of the exhibits. But even in 2-D, Google looks pretty damn formidable.

Actually, two of the best Alfred Kahn quotes regarding the cozy nature of the regulator-regulatee relationship appear in my old Cato Journal piece. Here they are (both of them are from his book The Economics of Regulation and page numbers are listed):

“When a commission is responsible for the performance of an industry, it is under never completely escapable pressure to protect the health of the companies it regulates, to assure a desirable performance by relying on those monopolistic chosen instruments and its own controls rather than on the unplanned and unplannable forces of competition.” (p. 12)

[and..]

"Responsible for the continued provision and improvement of service, [the regulatory commission] comes increasingly and understandably to identify the interest of the public with that of the existing companies on whom it must rely to deliver goods." (p. 46)

Ah. Well then, this old report by Crandall and Ellig might be helpful. You might also want to see if Gattuso can dig up a copy of the old 1992 "Competitiveness Council" report on the history of regulation. James did a lot of research for that report and he might have some leads for you. And I assume you've got a copy of Fred Kahn's 2-volume masterwork "The Economics of Regulation." Must reading on the topic. I can dig up the exact quotes from Kahn about regulatory capture if you need them. I used to use them in every paper I wrote about telecom policy in the 90s.

Jim, you went too easy on these guys. These guys are turning the FTC into the same sort of complaint factory that the FCC has become. Essentially, EPIC and CDD are engaging in the equivalent of what Parents Television Council, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Center do every day at the FCC: bombard the agency with stacks of computer-generated complaints and other absurd petitions until something sticks and someone gets regulated.

Steven... Actually, what you are describing is exactly what I suggested as a model in a previous essay:

What I think would be most efficient and pragmatic solution is what economists call a “Ramsey two-part tariff.” A two-part tariff (or price) would involve a flat fee for service up to a certain level and then a per-unit / metered fee over a certain level.

I don’t know where the demarcation should be in terms of where the flat rate ends and the metering begins; that’s for market experimentation to sort out. But the clear advantage of this solution is that it preserves flat-rate, all-you-can-eat pricing for casual to moderate bandwidth users and only resorts to less popular metering pricing strategies when the usage is “excessive,” however that is defined.

Yes, this model has been used in other contexts, including electricity and gas. And I believe that most economists believe it has been an effective way of constraining excessive use by some users and keeping prices in check at the lower end of the market. Do you have any evidence to suggest otherwise?

Chris B. ... Satellite TV does appear on Chart 1. It is labeled as DBS (direct broadcast satellite).

But you are right about premium cable vs. basic. To get premium, you have to have basic. So, in essence, the "basic cable" data captures all those premium subscribers anyway. [I am not aware of any video service that provides access to a premium tier without first subscribing to basic. If I am wrong about that, however, the numbers would change slightly and it might be worth breaking out the two categories.]

Thanks Chris. I have been thinking about adding the premium cable data to the household penetration rate chart but I'm trying to make sure I have the right data going all the way back. But the decline in basic cable is actually more a function of the rise of DBS (and now telco) competition in the multi-channel video marketplace. Again, that's more good news! I just need to find a good way to chart it all accurately.

enigma... If the "corporations that control the mass media" aren't allowing "the truth" about global warming to be widely publicized, then how is it that you (and Al Gore, and a zillion other people in America) know some much about the issue!!

By the way, I assume you loved the global warming piece of propaganda that was the movie "The Day After Tomorrow." Know who made that movie? That would be Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. So let's hear your conspiracy theory for that one.

And regarding candidates and debates... do not even try to tell me that fringe candidates like Dennis the Menace and Mad Ron aren't getting more coverage today than ever before in history. I am not about to condone anyone being excluded from a debate, but they always have another media platform to turn to, and another, and another... This wasn't the case in past years.

Why is he right to do so? Please elaborate. Is this based on some hippie-esque "why-can't-we-all-just-share-everything" philosophy, or are you saying he's right because there's just not much that risk to leaving it wide open?

I like the way he concludes that, "I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible"... and then he posts this screed on the Internet! Seems a tad bit inconsistent.

And how about this line: "Facebook pretends to be about freedom, but isn't it really more like an ideologically motivated virtual totalitarian regime..?" Uh, no.

That really is a shame. Very high quality tech reporting. It will be missed. The free alternatives just don't offer everything that NJTD does.

"Recompense comes in the form of gifts and friends."

Tom... I assume you provide some details about how this model will work in the book. I'd like to see you next post provide those details if you have worked them out.

As you know, this model was used with mixed success in the days of grants from the crown for works of art / culture.

Mike… Fair points, but let me ask you about those “complementary products” for a moment. By complementary products, do you mean lots of touring, t-shirts, more touring, bumper stickers, more touring, hats, and still more touring? This is the Grateful Dead model, of course, and I’m not denying it can’t work for some. But I’ve often wondering, what is the true cost of that model for most artists, especially if we abandoned copyright altogether? Again, I’m just thinking out loud here, so don’t bite my head off, but isn’t it the case that copyright law has afforded artists the ability (time, facilities, equipment, or whatever else) to be more productive in the studio?

Here’s what got me thinking about this. Increasingly, my favorite bands seem to ALWAYS be out on the road trying to build their name recognition and, presumably, make some money. Good example would be The Secret Machines, a band I absolutely love. It’s great to catch the machines on these tours but, quite frankly, I’d love to see them in the studio more recording more beautiful music.

When I think about The Machines and other bands these days, it seems like their aggregate album output is way, way down. The length of time between album releases today seems to be growing longer. (I don’t have any stats to cite here, so perhaps I am wrong. But I doubt it). By contrast, The Stones, The Who, Zeppelin, Van Halen, etc… all the old rock bands used to put out an album every year or two.

Now, it certainly is true that the move from vinyl to CDs helped changed things first. As artists could fit more music on a CD, they crammed them full of songs (including a lot more crap, in my opinion). In the old vinyl days, you only had around 25 minutes per album side, I think. So that is probably one reason the window between album releases may have grown longer in recent years.

But I think the changing economics or the industry and the decline of copyright might be partly to blame as well. Without the guarantee of copyright protection, might there be less time for the artists to sit in front of their canvas creating? After all, under the Grateful Dead model, they need to be out making a buck off whatever they had they brief time to put together. I suppose one could argue that that’s the way it should be; we don’t need copyright protection to give them any incentive to be in a studio or be creating much of anything at all. Screw em… let them figure out how to eek out an existence some other way! And so “complementary products” becomes the answer.

OK, that’s certainly one view. Another is that copyright has afforded artists the chance to be incredibly creative and feel *reasonably* confident they would be *reasonably* compensated for their ACTUAL creative product; not some complementary product (t-shirts, stickers, whatever else) that had little to do with their actual skill set.

Again, I am certainly not saying there is anything wrong with a lot of touring, or even selling “complementary products,” whatever that means (and please do tell me what you mean by that so I am clear on that point). But I do wonder, what are the opportunity costs associated with artists spending more time doing those things instead of sitting in front of their canvas?

But hasn't this whole bottled water analogy been taken a bit too far? I mean, what people are buying when they purchase bottled water is convenience. We want to tote our water around. And so we’re willing to spend a little money for that luxury, even if the ultimate product is the same one we could get free from a tap. Essentially, we’re paying for plastic bottles that fit nicely in the cup holders in our cars and gym equipment. And there’s something wonderful about the spill-proof spouts on bottle water compared to open Dixie cups!

Of course, people want convenience with their music as well, but the difference is that the willingness to pay for music is increasingly much, much lower that even bottled water. No, I’m not going to get into the whole Radiohead numbers spat here, but it seems to be clear that, when given the chance, many people are all too happy grab music off the Net for nothing, especially because that is what is ultimately the most convenient thing to do.

And therein lies the difference. With bottled water, we are paying for convenience. With digital music, by comparison, the most convenient solution is the one we need pay nothing to receive. In that environment, "competing with free" *does* become more challenging, although I do not think it is impossible.

I’m just thinking out loud here, and I’m sure Mike will tell me why I’m full of sh*t! But, honestly, I think copyright critics need to find a better example than bottle water.

Harold, thanks for listening to the show. And regarding your point about disclosure... if you listened to the show closely, you will recall that I actually made the point that more transparency and disclosure is, generally speaking, a good idea. I’d like to see broadband operators be clearer about how they are managing traffic, and for what purpose they are doing so.

However, Richard Bennett made a good counter-argument on the show: The more specific a broadband operator gets about what service is being "managed" or how it is being managed, the more likely it is that aggressive users will seek to evade those management efforts.

I think that’s a fair point, although I still think more could be done to clarify TOS agreements regarding traffic management techniques.

Mr. Sternberg... I've heard them that way too, and agree that that is sheer heaven. But it's not always possible, of course. My life is spent searching for second-best solutions!