Year: 2010

Politicians, news reporters, and now voters have become obsessed with deficit reduction. Not surprisingly, I find myself in agreement with Paul Krugman and other economists who have argued that we failed to spend enough to restart the financial engines of our economy and now appear ready to compound the error by repeating the error of 1937 when Roosevelt cut back on deficit spending and sent the nation back into the Depression. Unfortunately, this “deficit cutting fever” now threatens the money previously allocated for the broadband stimulus programs.

A proposal by Senator Baucus would cut approx $300 million from BTOP and $300 million from RUS to help fund extensions of unemployment benefits and other more popular stimulus measures such as — surprise! — extensions of various tax credits. (Rep. Obey would cut the same amount, but as part of the and supplemental funding for the Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.) While I certainly don’t begrudge extending unemployment benefits (I do think tax credits are rather worthless for motivating corporate behavior in light of how few corporations end up paying corporate income tax), I absolutely question the wisdom of pulling funding from stimulus programs that are not only creating jobs now, but helping to transform our future.

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The Senate Judiciary Committee is holding an oversight hearing today on the Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement Coordinator (IPEC, aka the “IP Czar”). Yesterday, IPEC issued its first ever Report on U.S. intellectual property enforcement.  Despite much trepidation that it would come out as the usual one-sided “we must do whatever Hollywood says, treat our customers as potential criminals, and generally act like clumsy arrogant idiots,” it turned out pretty reasonable (even given our standards started abysmally low). You can see my employer PK’s press release here. Critically, the report contained language reflecting the need for balance between mechanisms that ensure that creators get paid while ensuring that people can keep building on previous work (that whole ‘seeing further by standing on the shoulders of giants‘ thing). Here’s the money quote from the report:

One of the reasons that the U S is a global leader in innovation and creativity is our early establishment of strong legal mechanisms to provide necessary economic incentives required to innovate.  By the same token, fair use of intellectual property can support innovation and artistry Strong intellectual property enforcement efforts should be focused on stopping those stealing the work of others, not those who are appropriately building upon it.

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Unsurprisingly, Commissioner McDowell’s dissent to starting an inquiry into the FCC’s broadband authority contained a reference to the new “Broadband Internet Technology Advisory Group” (BITAG). For those who missed the press release, BITAG consist of engineers from a variety of broadband industry segments chaired by Dale Hatfield at University of Colorado at Boulder. Given that BITAG has a bunch of smart folks — especially Dale, who is one of the smartest and nicest guys in this field — and a reasonable cross-industry representation, it may actually come up with some interesting stuff (hence the cautious endorsement from my employer here). Predictably, however, a chorus of Libertarian True Believers, and the “government-can-do-no-right (but hurry up with my subsidy check!)” crowd argue that this represents “industry self-regulation” and that FCC should therefore hold off on doing anything for the foreseeable future. Despite explicit statements from some participants that this does not in any way, shape, or form replace the need for FCC oversight, it does not surprise me to see McDowell again championing the idea that private sector regulation through BITAG and similar institutions provides a better way to protect consumers and encourage innovation and investment than actual, enforceable rules.

I snidely tweeted at the time “One ICANN Mtg will cure McDowell of his love of self-regulation.” For those not familiar with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), it formed back in 1998 when the Clinton Commerce Department avowedly wanted to “privatize” management of the domain while simultaneously making sure their buddies in the trademark lobby got protected. ICANN, now debates such “technical” matters as the appropriate level of cross-ownership for new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), has a sprawling bureaucracy, a budget of more than $60 million (US), and generally makes the FCC look like greased lightning when it comes to actually getting stuff done.

ICANN provides a lot of good lessons for the BITAG in what to avoid and a caution about trying to make technical standard setting the equivalent of regulation . . . .
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