Disqus - Latest Comments for jimharper

Re: Here Comes Democracy!

jimharper — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 14:40:53 -0000

In fact, you love to nitpick. If you hated to do it, you wouldn't.

I don't see where I said there is an office of the President-elect, but Change.gov calls itself "The Office of the President-Elect.

Re: Scrap E-Verify

jimharper — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 11:03:21 -0000

Thanks for your comments, DB and TJ.

DB, we don't have a national identification system. What we have in the Social Security number is a national identifier. This is an important step toward national identification, but is not in itself national identification, which includes some kind of biometric. You may not be familiar with my book, Identity Crisis, but I spend a good deal of time defining terms in the identity area, which is unfortunately rather fluid.

If you think glitches in the current system are bad, you ain't seen nothing yet. In the first year of a national E-Verify program, 1 in 25 new hires would be sent to Social Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security offices simply because of the 4.1% error rate in SSA databases. Many would be assumed identity fraudsters and candidates for deportation. And this is just one of the flaws in the system.

Teresa, your link to LibertyScreening.com - what an ironic name - suggests that you own or work for this employee screening service. Good for you - you make money by trying to reduce the burden of red tape. But the preferable state of affairs is for there to be no red tape in the first place, and no LibertyScreening.com.

Many would like to think it, but employee screening is not a service that employers want and need. It is a burden imposed on employers and on the economy as a whole. Well-meaning though you are, your business is essentially parasitic, and your advocacy for E-Verify is what economists call rent-seeking. You're just trying to make sure you can earn money through advantages given you by the law.

Re: WashingtonWatch.com: 1,000,000 Visitors

Jim Harper — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:17:07 -0000

Heh heh. You're funny, Adam.

Re: Border Biometrics: “Zero Benefit”?

Jim Harper — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 19:14:41 -0000

I agree that using biometrics on law violators is more appropriate. I don't think the assumption that illegal immigrants commit more crime (beyond the illegal entry) holds up, however. Here's a Reuters story from earlier this year about a study that touched on that question.

Among other findings in the report, non-citizen men from Mexico 18 to 40 -- a group disproportionately likely to have entered the United States illegally -- are more than eight times less likely than U.S.-born men in the same age group to be in a correctional institution (0.48 percent vs. 4.2 percent).

"From a public safety standpoint, there would be little reason to further limit immigration, to favor entry by high-skilled immigrants, or to increase penalties against criminal immigrants," the report said.

If you have countervailing evidence to share, that would be welcome, of course.

Re: Debate: Does Google Violate its “Don’t Be Evil” Motto?

kdonovan11 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:00:46 -0000

If you haven't seen it already, check out Nart's summary and research of different firms' approaches to censorship transparency: http://www.nartv.org/2008/06/26/perspectives-on...

Google did, in fact, induce more openness about the government policy.

Re: Debate: Does Google Violate its “Don’t Be Evil” Motto?

Jim Harper — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 00:39:04 -0000

Thanks, MZ, for some fair criticisms of my post.

I think the Chinese people are better off with Google in there slow-walking their compliance with the Chinese authorities. When I last spent time with this issue, Google was indicating it to Chinese searchers when their results had been censored, which is crucial meta-information that a Baidu would not provide. So, no, being there and complying with censorship law is not the same as not being there.

Chinese censorship is problematic (at least), but the focus should be on the government with its wrongful rules rather than the company that complies with local law. If a building code requires using highly flammable materials and people die in a fire, you blame the building code, not the contractor that complied with the code.

"Model corporate citizen" may have been a bit generous. Perhaps they're a "model" for all the companies that are worse, as opposed to a model of perfection.

I'm not sure any of these changes occurred under pressure rising to the level of "duress." When a legitimate concern has been raised, Google has fairly promptly and easily agreed to privacy-protecting changes. (The whole thing about having a privacy policy linked from its home page was a canard, in my opinion, btw.)

Re: Wedding Phtography and Copyright Release

joegratz — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:42:14 -0000

Copyright assignment and "works for hire" are very different. What's needed here is an assignment of the copyright by a written agreement. Work for hire in the context of a specially commissioned work like this (rather than a work by an actual employee in the scope of employment) only applies when the work is:

"a work specially ordered or commissioned for use as a contribution to a collective work, as a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, as a translation, as a supplementary work, as a compilation, as an instructional text, as a test, as answer material for a test, or as an atlas, if the parties expressly agree in a written instrument signed by them that the work shall be considered a work made for hire. For the purpose of the foregoing sentence, a “supplementary work” is a work prepared for publication as a secondary adjunct to a work by another author for the purpose of introducing, concluding, illustrating, explaining, revising, commenting upon, or assisting in the use of the other work, such as forewords, afterwords, pictorial illustrations, maps, charts, tables, editorial notes, musical arrangements, answer material for tests, bibliographies, appendixes, and indexes, and an “instructional text” is a literary, pictorial, or graphic work prepared for publication and with the purpose of use in systematic instructional activities. " 17 USC 101.

So a work for hire agreement might well not effectively cause copyright to end up in Tim's hands. Assignment is what's needed instead.

Re: Jones Day Lawyers Apparently Don’t Know the Law

Jim Harper — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 10:24:46 -0000

Documents from the case are on the Citizen Media Law page.

Re: Jones Day Lawyers Apparently Don’t Know the Law

Jim Harper — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:23:14 -0000

The Jones Day suit didn't allege any copyright violations - perhaps because the owner of the copyrights in the images they have on their Web sites is the photographer who took them. And news reporting is listed in the Copyright Act as purpose of using copyrighted material that is fair use. Perhaps Jones Day lawyers DO understand copyright law! [n.b., Criticism and comment are also listed fair uses of copyrighted material.]

Re: Wedding Phtography and Copyright Release

Jim Harper — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:15:38 -0000

Had I known Adam was going to comment, I wouldn't have read any of this. I don't read any of his stuff. But he snuck a comment in there - and I find it meritorious!

YOUR jab at homeownership is where things go off the rails. Owning a house RULEZ! Provided you don't put a wife and kids in it. Put a big huge hot tub in the bedroom, and a monster stereo system and a disco ball. We're talkin' ladeeeez, my man. The ladeeeeeeeze!!

Um, anyway.

In answer to this problem here, use the "work for hire" doctrine. As I recall - and Tom said so too - you have to get an agreement in writing that the works produced by your photographer are works for hire. Then you own the copyright and all the licensing mumbo jumbo is gone.

As an attorney, I must note to you that this does not constitute legal advice. Would you like mustard with this pretzel?

Re: Market Forces At Work: The PR Backlash Against Google Chrome’s EULA

Seth Finkelstein — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:09:36 -0000

@Jim - Do you even know what I'm talking about? I'm serious. That sounds rhetorical, but I mean it. Do you know the issues I'm describing? Your reply is pure knee-jerk sneer.

Bleh. I really shouldn't do this. Libertarians are like cuckoo-clocks, their "Cuckoo" is "Markets".

[Tedious explanation - denial of class-action affects HUGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE! It is one of the major legal tools against corporate abuse.
"Arbitration" is almost a Libertarian fantasy, where you contract away all your legal recourse]

Re: Market Forces At Work: The PR Backlash Against Google Chrome’s EULA

Jim Harper — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:25:47 -0000

@Robb Topolski - Did you notice how Comcast quickly (and, yes, clumsily) caved on its up-to-that-time undisclosed BitTorrent throttling? The marketplace spoke in that situation too.

@Seth - Alas, it's a corollary of markets serving the great mass of consumers that it doesn't always serve every outlier. You are among a small group that doesn't like these clauses in EULAs, it's up to you to generate enough interest; it's not a failure of markets if others don't share your concerns.

Re: Russian Astro-spam?

Jim Harper — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 21:44:38 -0000

But here's a post on WashingtonWatch.com about that conflict that hasn't gotten any comments.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Wu’s Many Mistaken Metaphors

Jim Harper — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:44:54 -0000

I like the care you've taken in this piece, Bret, though I somewhat agree with Tim that your interpretation of what Wu is getting at is overwrought.

The one thing I really question is whether the broadband marketplace is "intensely competitive." I would say that it's "pretty competitive" or "kinda competitive." There are so many ways for it to be more competitive, I don't think, by comparison, the state of competition today could be called "intense."

All in all very good piece, and very well written.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Cuil’s Incredible Privacy Policy

Jim Harper — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 12:52:11 -0000

I agree that this is a good example of the market providing privacy (or at least seeking to) consistent with consumer demand (which, of course, is distinct from consumer-advocate demand).

As a consumer myself, I don't assume that there's a good reason for Google's data retention policy. Most IT systems collect information by default, without regard to need and without balancing privacy considerations, so I assume that Google fell into the habit of long data-retention terms and that they may not have a fully justifiable reason for doing so, all things considered.

Trying to dictate data retention terms from the outside (i.e. through regulation) would be a fool's errand, and handing that authority to governments would lead to longer data retention terms and less privacy as the interests of law enforcement (more trumped up than genuine) would prevail.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Cuil’s Incredible Privacy Policy

Jim Harper — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:35:27 -0000

How would logging IP addresses improve their search results? Google policy people here in D.C. - true, they may not be the most knowledgeable about the guts of Google's search and advertising algorithms - say that there's nothing better than a person's current search for determining ad relevance. "Psychographic profiling" - or whatever you might want to call it - isn't that important.

Re: Google Search Won’t Return Links to cato-at-liberty.org

Jim Harper — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:22:01 -0000

Thanks for the definition, though I already have a handle on the meaning of the term "implied." You realize, don't you, that providing a definition of "implied" implies that I didn't already know it. That's condescending and rude. Let's come back to that, though.

You point to my citation of Berin being careful not to imply or state that Google had done anything wrong as evidence that I was trying to suggest it? That's a verry close call. I was trying to be as careful as Berin, while holding out the possibility - because it was one, though remote. I was most suspicious of some neutral, if arguably inappropriate, functioning of the Google crawler, such as the one reported on TechDirt the other day. In the last paragraph, I asked people to offer technical explanations and fixes. The strongest inference is that I was searching for a technical explanation and fix. I said nothing about content-based treatment of TLF - as if TLF would be important enough to suffer some derogatory treatment by Google. Please.

S0 should one apologize for holding out the possibility of some wrongdoing, while carefully seeking all explanations for a thing happening? I just don't think you've got a legitimate beef here.

Which brings us back to you. Your condescension here, and your pursuit of this infinitesimal slight against Google, are just two among many examples of a unique maladjustment that you portray in your comments here on TLF. Adam, Jerry, myself, and others interact with dozens and dozens of people online. When one of them is consistently difficult to deal with, chances are that it has something to do with that one. So consider the possibility that it's not TLF or any of its authors. Consider the possibility that it's you. I suppose we could be complimented that you obsess over the content of this site, but your participation here doesn't really add value to anyone's experience - writer or visitor.

Here's an idea that could solve all these problems and make everyone's life better - your own included: stop reading TLF. Stop commenting here. Get another hobby! There are plenty of options for you. There are thousands of communities where you might find a more pleasurable experience and be more pleasurable to others. You might find it a relief to just walk away from TLF and never look back.

Over and out. I won't be replying to further comments.

Re: Google Search Won’t Return Links to cato-at-liberty.org

Jim Harper — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 20:33:30 -0000

I'll happily do so - just as soon as you point to where I implied that Google wasn't playing fair with Cato@Liberty. I felt like I took pains not to do that, and, reading back over what I wrote, I think I did pretty well.

Re: Google Search Won’t Return Links to cato-at-liberty.org

Jim Harper — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:27:04 -0000

Just slightly out-helpfuling Seth, Tim Lee has figured out that the site's use of robots.txt is sending Google packing. I'm sure Cato's Web staff will fix it in the morning. In the meantime, I'm glad I didn't assume the worst of Google.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » The NY AG’s Anti-Free-Speech Shakedown Racket

Jim Harper — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:20:01 -0000

These are worthwhile points as to the NCMEC agreement. Should all praise and support for Comcast on other speech-related issues be withheld because of it? How would that be productive?

I suspect that the left (not you, Jack) is cutting off its free speech nose to spite its net neutrality face. Or something.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Comcast resists pressure to drop Usenet access

Jim Harper — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 22:21:32 -0000

This is important - and three cheers to Comcast if they do hold the line. I hope all who pounced on Comcast during the late network management Kerfuffle recognize and publicly applaud the company doing something very right.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Google Dilemma

Jim Harper — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 16:48:33 -0000

Lo and behold, here's an example of the continuous oversight by the interested communities (shorthand: "the market") that keeps Google in check.

Re: The Technology Liberation Front » Archive » Google Dilemma

Jim Harper — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 13:43:39 -0000

It is a good paper, but I'll tell you two things that I didn't like about it.

Whoever controls the search engines, perhaps, controls the Internet itself.

This struck me as vast overstatement. There are lots of protocols and platforms on the Internet for which search is not - and can not be - a meaningful bottleneck. Reading it, I suspected it would be the false premise for some later conclusion.

Because the paper is even-keeled, the conclusion I was watching for was not over-played, but it came through as an implication here:

[T]he First Amendment reasoning [that the choice of how to rank results is a form of protected speech] is worrisome. If taken at face value, it would suggest that the First Amendment provides an absolute shield for search engines to rerank sites at will, for any reason at all, even a deliberately malicious reason. What's more, it would suggest that the government is powerless to make the search engines stop, even in cases where the reranking was obviously malicious and dishonest.

The First Amendment reasoning doesn't actually carry this far. The First Amendment wouldn't protect ranking choices that were libelous, for example. Search King was shady - it got what it deserved. Later cases will explore all the countours of First Amendment protection for search algorithms in closer cases. In short, don't take these cases at face value.

But the paragraph sets up this unutterable situation where Google gets to eliminate entire sites - its competition, the politically disfavored, whatever - from "the Internet," and government can't do anything to stop it. This is at least "worrisome" to the author, and I take him to mean that it's wrong, in which case something should be done about it.

I don't think it's terribly worrisome, and don't think anything needs to be done about it. Were Google to knock out sites at will or whim, the Streisand Effect would kick in like you've never seen before. Any attempt by Google to censor would almost certainly be self-defeating.

Which is why the premise that the leading search engine controls "the Internet" is so wrong. I use RSS (as just one example) every day to gather information from all over the Web. Any blog post or news story about search engine misbehavior would reach me and tens of thousands of others very rapidly, without any intermediary saying yes or no.

Along with visiting the 'banned' site, my Internet-using brethren and I would look around for a search engine that hadn't corrupted its own service. We would look for a better product.

Google recognizes this. It knows that its legitimacy and its profits ride on a narrow ledge of credible neutrality. If it steps away from the ledge, it steps away from profits and shareholder value. Let them control their search algorithm. The oversight of the media and users will harness them to our ends. The unspeakable problem can be spoken of, and it can be disposed of in fairly short order.

Re: Will Stirs the High-Skilled Hornets Nest

Jim Harper — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 17:16:23 -0000

OK, you're a nationalist too. A nationalist and a socialist. Where are we going with this? Godwin's law! [Over and out.]

Re: Will Stirs the High-Skilled Hornets Nest

Jim Harper — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 16:32:06 -0000

Here's a tidbit from Boudreaux that's worth emphasizing:

"Whether immigrants increase or decrease measured GDP or per-capita income is an empirical question that can be answered only by sound empirical research. But the moral case for open immigration is paramount."