The 463: Inside Tech Policy

POTUS 2.0

President Tron

As, we saw in a poll, voters at least want their next president to be as conversant in the Internet as they are. The kickoff panel at yesterday's Congressional Internet Caucus conference (The State of the Net) provided an opportunity for some of the presidential campaigns to show their geek creds. The panel focused on how the next administration should manage and prioritize technology policy. It featured representatives (some ostensible, some actual) representatives of the Clinton, McCain, Obama and Giuliani (RIP) campaigns. Here's GCN's report on it.

My quick take: The new boss may not be the same as the old boss, but, at the very least, the rhetoric will sound strikingly similar. That is, the Mom and apple pie issues were covered extensively. R&D, science and tech education, clean tech, and broadband all were heaped praise.

Hillary's guy, Thomas Kalil, from the Center for American Progress and a Clinton 1.0 official, played right from the classic "Innovation Agenda" playbook shared by many. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most of these "no brainer" policies have failed to connect to the right synapse at the right time in the last eight years to fully please many techies. An Administration and a few different shades of Congresses can all look in the mirror.

Obama's rep was a VC named Julius Genachowski. He's been a friend of Obama since they went to law school together. Genachowski mentioned Obama's fairly detailed innovation plan that he unveiled at Google a couple months ago [we wrote about it here] and touched on the big themes, namely, that the premise for the plan is that tech is essential to being part of the solution for almost every major issue that is important in this campaign. However, former congressman Tom Taucke and current Verizon policy boss complained in his later keynote that no one on the campaigns were pushing this exact salient point. (Tangent: How would anyone know? While flying out for the conference, I flipped back and forth between CNN and MSNBC's coverage of the campaign and think I got about three minutes of policy substance out of five hours of frothing horse race nonsense.)

Genachowski also noted Obama's call for a federal CTO, but didn't get into specifics on what the roll of this official would play beyond noting that the CTO could help fix "market failures" in key sectors that could spur private tech investments. And, he did echo Obama's call for using tech to create government transparency.

McCain's man, Doug Holtz-Eakin, said that Mr. Campaign Finance Reform is also a big supporter of using tech for transparency. In fact, he was so transparent, that he he let everyone know that through the magic of the Internet, the senator raised $500,000 from Midnight to the morning in his post-Florida glow. Eakin took the only pro-free trade stance for the day (which we highly commend) and called to end the annual R&D tax credit extension "charade". He was notably "on message" when it came to immigration rules that impact the industry: "We will secure the borders before engaging in any other immigration reform."

Someone close to McCain mentioned to me the other day that he thinks that the senator is unnecessarily playing his business and tech creds down. Mitt may have "managed" millions of dollars, but, bygone, Big Mac was the Chairman of the pretty-darn important Senate Commerce Committee. And, as this source said, he didn't punt all of his work to staff. He got his fingernails dirty on all sorts of business critical issues. Yesterday, I don't remember Holtz-Eakin ever so much as mentioning this role and McCain didn't either in the Republican debate.

All and all, an interesting panel that said all the right things. Can't wait to get those right things done.

Voters to Prez Candidates: It's Time to "Get" the Internet

In advance of today's State of the Net conference, 463 worked with the conference organizers at the Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee and Zogby International to put together (another) poll to tap the zeitgeist of Americans about Internet issues.

In the poll, two-thirds of voters believe that presidential candidates should have at least as much knowledge about the Internet as them.

They were asked" "Do you think that the next President will know as much about the Internet as you?" Almost 45 percent said, yes, and they should because of the importance of the Internet. And, 22 percent, didn't think the candidates would be as savvy of them, but wished that they would be. Not surprisingly, 38 percent of 18-29 year-olds don't think the candidates know as much as them, but wish that they would.

More data:

--The top tech policy priority for the next president? Energy technology policy first (38 percent) with privacy and security policy next (29%), Health IT, third, (14%) and the digital divide fourth (9%).

--Privacy expectation. When asked what would they would find to be the best example of a privacy violation, respondents said that the exposure of geo-location (GPS) data is tops (49%). Other exposures were ranked lower: 11 percent if someone posted a picture of them in a swimsuit; 11 percent if someone posted a picture of them visibly drunk; and, 9 percent if someone posted a video of them simply talking with their friends

--Among the age groups polled, all agreed on that the geo-location issue was the top concern. Coming in second for 18-24 year-olds and those over 65 was the posting of a drunken photo. 25-34 year-olds were more concerned about the posting of a video of them speaking with their friends, and, tellingly 35-54 year-olds were more concerned with the posting of them in a swimsuit.

--Sources of info on presidential candidates. We found that the Internet has dethroned radio and television as the primary source of candidate information for an increasingly Internet savvy electorate. 48 percent of those polled cited the Internet as the primary source of their knowledge of the presidential candidates. Only 31 percent and 13 percent cited television and radio, respectively. as the primary source. Nearly 67 percent of 18-29 year-olds cited the Internet as their primary source. Only 29 of those 65+ did so.

--Internet = smart. 89 percent of respondents said that the access to information found on the Internet has made them smarter. Four percent say that the distraction and time-wasting online has made them dumber.

--Nearly two-thirds (66%) of respondents said that they could at least "sometime" work from home and do their job well.

--Not ready for Internet voting. Despite all the other Internet warm fuzzies, 67 percent said that Internet voting could lead to fraud.

The online poll surveyed 3,585 adults and was conducted from 1/21-1/23. It has a margin of error of +/- 1.7 percent.

At the State of the Net Conference Today

First, apologies for the relatively sparse blogging this month. I'm quickly learning that when you are a new dad, "blogging time" finds a way to get replaced. Things will pick it back up again very soon...

Second, I'm at the State of the Net conference today in DC and will be moderating a panel on online video regulation. If you are a reader and at the show, please come by, say hello and tell me how you would like to see this space improved.

YouTube Korea Faces Regulatory Hurdles

Despite the enthusiasm of the Koreans in the video above, The Korea Times has a skeptical piece on YouTube's launch in the Korean market.  Competition in a crowded field of familiar Korean brands is one big issue.  The others are regulatory burdens that would send a million blogs a-blazing if they were implemented in the US...

Censorship is another critical issue that YouTube must solve. The Korean government enforces relatively strict guidelines for sexual, violent, or politically controversial contents on Web sites. So major local portals such as Naver and Daum employ several hundreds of monitors in Korea and in China who check all video and text content and filter inappropriate material 24 hours a day.
 
YouTube's Arsiwala said Wednesday that the firm will do its best to comply with the Korean regulations. But there certainly will be loopholes because of the sheer amount of the videos uploaded onto the site ― Arsiwala says that YouTube sees about 10 hours of videos uploaded every minute.

Lou Dobbs: He May Not Be a Protectionist, But He Plays One on TV

So said Consumer Electronics Association President Gary Shapiro to CNN personality Lou Dobbs in their "debate" last night.

You might remember that Shapiro challenged Dobbs to a live debate when CEA launched their free trade campaign in October. After CEA made significant noise about the value of free trade at their huge CES trade show last week, Dobbs bit on the challenge (to his credit).

Here's the video:

And, here are the facts to the Dobbsisms that he tosses around like Junior Mints (more can be found in CEA's press release about the debate here)...

• While Dobbs claims that trade has resulted in the loss of three million jobs, he ignores the fact that over that same period 25 million good jobs were created.

• While Dobbs rails against agreements such as NAFTA, he conveniently ignores that before NAFTA, the average unemployment rate was around 7 percent and in the 14 years since it has been about 5 percent.

• While Dobbs frets over imports into this country he ignored the fact that $220 billion of high-tech products, which includes consumer electronics, were exported from this country, and that many of the companies that produced those products were small and medium-sized companies that are the lifeblood of the U.S economy. Moreover, he doesn’t even address that the percentage of exports from the United States to the world has gone up by 4,000 percent (1,000 percent in real terms) over the last 42 years.

• When Dobbs belittled the jobs that have been created by the consumer electronics industry, he belittled the hard-working men and women who work for companies here in the United States that help spur the engine of the American economy – the very people he claims to be fighting for.

State of the Net Conference Looking Quite Interesting

The crew at the Congressional Internet Caucus are assembling an excellent line-up for their annual State of the Net Conference on January 30 in DC. And, I say this not only because I happen to be moderating a panel on Internet video policy.

Come to this and grab your self a piece of gab pie chock full of copyright, spectrum, privacy and broadband policy. The POTUS 2.0 panel promises to be very interesting. It will be a first discussion about how the next president should approach tech policy and will have reps from the McCain and Obama campaigns.

The current agenda and panelists are after the jump... My panel is close to being finalized, but let me know if you have a genius suggestion that we can't pass up. And, hope to see you in DC for this...

Game On

Ever since Michael Gallagher left the Commerce Department, he's been shaking up the Entertainment Software Association -- or, more plainly, the video game lobby. More from today's Times:

Michael D. Gallagher, chief executive of the Entertainment Software Association, the industry’s lobbying arm in Washington, said last week that the group’s board approved the PAC’s creation last fall and that the committee would be up and running by the end of March. The association represents major game publishers including the Walt Disney Company, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony.

“We will be writing checks to campaigns by the end of this quarter,” Mr. Gallagher said. “This is an important step in the political maturation process of the industry that we are ready to take now. This is about identifying and supporting champions for the game industry on Capitol Hill so that they support us.”

if you care about video game policy, be sure to read The Political Game weekly column at Joystiq. The author had high praise for Gallagher after he had been in the gig for a couple months...

...we should create some kind of JFK award for the guy just for having the guts to stand up and proclaim, "ich bin ein gamer." In interviews, the new ESA boss immediately outed himself as the setup man for the office multiplayer Doom network when he worked as a congressional staffer. Of course, I had a great deal of respect for Gallagher's ESA predecessor, but Doug Lowenstein wouldn't know a space marine from the man in the moon. He was no gamer. To his credit, he didn't pretend to be. But it feels better to have someone who is in gut-level touch with the medium at the industry's helm.

(**Tecmo Bowl: The source of many poor showings on midterms in college)

Thank You For Searching

Tech Daily's Andrew Noyes blesses us with photos of Google's new DC office and teases us because we will be thousands of miles away from this week's office warming that promises knock-down Guitar Hero battles and lots of knowing winks about the massage chair. (And, I don't even know what that means).

BTW, when I first mentioned the new office last summer, I got on my high horse about how it should be used as a center of education about technology's impact on average citizens (read: constituents). Won't repeat the rant here, but if you so desire, step back into time.

3Qs with Adam Thierer on the MySpace/AG Child Safety Effort

PFF Senior Fellow Adam Thierer wrote the book on online child protection, so who better to give insight on today's long-awaited MySpace/Attorney General agreement to create protections for kids using the News Corp site.

And, no really, Adam did write the book. (You can download "Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools and Methods" here.)

Before we get to the Q&A, here is a brief overview/opinion of the agreement courtesy of NYT's Brad Stone:

Among the dozens of measures MySpace has agreed to take, the social network will let parents submit the e-mail addresses of their children, so the company can prevent anyone from using that address to set up a profile. It will also set the profiles of all 16 and 17-year-olds to private, so only their established online friends can visit their pages - essentially creating a “closed” section for users under age 18.

MySpace also promises to hire a contractor to identify and delete pornographic images on the site. And the company will take charge of an Internet safety technical task force to develop an age and identity verification tools for social networking sites.

Now, to Adam...

Q: Why is today’s AG/MySpace announcement significant? What about this tells you that this will be more substantive than the veritable “blue ribbon committee” that peaks at launch?

The agreement is significant because it represents a sensible step forward in terms of online safety. Indeed, many of the principles in the agreement could form a potential model “code of conduct” that other social networking sites could adopt. That is important because (a) it really could help keep kids safer online; and (b) it will help us avoid the specter of government regulation of the Internet and others forms of digital communication.

The agreement with the AGs is especially notable for what it does not include: age verification mandates. The call for an Internet Safety Technical Task Force to study online safety methods and identity authentication tools is a sensible alternative to the rush to mandate age verification, which some AGs have been advocating vociferously over the past two years.

Hopefully the task force will provide critical examination of the issue and not simply begin with pre-ordained conclusions about the wisdom or effectiveness of online age verification techniques and technologies. At the press conference announcing the agreement, however, Attorneys General Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut seemed to imply that that the goal of the task force would be to develop and implement a full-blown age verification system for the Internet. “We are going to find and develop online identity authentication tools,” said AG Cooper. And AG Blumenthal reiterated an argument he made ad nauseum last year that, “if we can put a man on the moon,” then we ought to be able to verify the ages of people before they go online.

But it’s just not that simple. As I argued in a lengthy PFF study last year entitled, “Social Networking and Age Verification: Many Hard Questions; No Easy Solutions,” there are no silver bullet age verifications solutions. Online authentication is a complicated, multi-faceted technical issue. And, even assuming we could find a way to make it work, there are many other considerations that must be taken into account, such as the burden it might impose of freedom of speech or individual privacy.

The danger, therefore, is that the AGs have a pre-ordained conclusion and that they will either stack the deck on the task force with age verification advocates or pressure the task force to adopt mandatory age verification without thoroughly studying the issue. Again, that would be a serious mistake and it would also likely give rise to legal challenges.

Q: What other companies are critical to making the Internet Safety Technical Task Force successful? And, as far as you know, was their consideration to having them involved prior to this announcement?

If the task force does go forward, it needs to be a balanced panel of experts and include other social networking players, such as Facebook. This shouldn’t just be a MySpace thing.

Q: While this obviously is targeted towards collaborations with state law enforcement, what do you think the DC impact will be of the Internet Safety Technical Task Force?

Some AGs have tried to get the federal government involved in the effort to regulate social networking sites, but so far nothing has come of that. Ironically, if anyone was going to take the lead in terms of social networking regulation, it should be the federal government—not the states—since the Internet is not a local medium or platform. In fact, that’s one of the reasons why the AGs have wisely not pursued any formal legal action against MySpace thus far; they know it would likely be struck down as an unconstitutional burden on what is clearly interstate commerce.

Of course, the last thing I want is more federal Internet meddling and silly bills like the Deleting Online Predators Act (DOPA) that are completely counter-productive. If the feds get involved at all, it should be in terms of education and awareness building about sensible online safety efforts and parental empowerment tools. They should adopt an “educate first” approach to the issue. But I have a sneaking suspicion that, to the extent they do get involved, they will once again take the “regulate first” approach.

Yes, New Hampshire (and Nevada and South Carolina...), There is a Tech Policy Issue That Matters

Supporting free trade at CES

CNET's Anne Broache went to the site of Tuesday's big primary earlier this week to file the shocking news that the average voter in New Hampshire doesn't give a rat's rear-end about net neutrality and other geek policy issues fawned over on this page. And, we've said as much here for as long as we've been pumping out posts. At the height of the NN debate, we noted how few average Internet users cared about it. And, we have suggested that it won't be until 2012 for an issue like privacy to become presidential debate-worthy.

But, hold on a minute people. Don't get your geek dawbers down. There is a tech policy issue being debated at every turn of this campaign. You may just be missing the forrest for the trees. The issue is free trade and, if you haven't noticed, the fear-driven creep of protectionism is spreading as the election year rhetoric heats up.

Free trade has a huge impact on innovation, the success of both big and small companies that touch technology and consumers of everything from big TVs to little pacemakers. This is why the Consumer Electronics Association is taking on the issue as a priority and made free trade a front and center focus at this week's massive CES event.

A gaggle of 463ers attended the event and, working with CEA, helped get the good word about free trade out at the show. Part of this meant jumping headfirst into retail politics and manning a booth (above) that helped get thousands of CES attendees to send a letter to their congressional representatives in support of free trade. It was fascinating to hear firsthand how many small business owners attending the show rely on free trade to keep their American employees employed and well-paid.

What worried me, though, were the good number of people who stopped to ask who could possible be against free trade. And, they were surprised to learn that something they took for granted as a motherhood and apple pie issue could be threatened.

As CEA's president Gary Shapiro noted in his CES keynote, there are plenty of people using free trade as a wedge issue for their own interests...

From coverage of Shaprio's speech:

He cited a CEA survey showing that 69 percent of Americans "agree that free trade is important." But that consensus, Shapiro added, is threatened. "Free trade. Given the [political] climate today, it is not a given."

As the enemy, Shapiro identified "protectionists and isolationists," as well as "pundits, politicians and TV demagogues holding out protectionism as a solution to our economic problems."

He said, "I believe that our digital destiny is as inevitable as the discovery of America." But he added, "Never before have I been as concerned that some in our country might restrict our leadership toward that digital destiny." Shapiro said that a trend toward isolationism, which was common in the U.S. before World War II, is "dangerous and disturbing."

Against the forces of economic retrenchment, Shapiro said that free trade, especially in technology, represents America's best hope. "Technology has become the shining star of the new economy," said Shapiro. "We believe that our technologies improve the world." (EETimes)

The Hollywood Reporter also notes how free trade created one of the bigger truces of tech policy (if for a moment this week)...

The Hollywood studios, consumer electronics makers and the music industry have called a temporary truce and are teaming to convince lawmakers of the importance of free trade.

The heads of the groups' major trade organizations told lawmakers in a letter released Monday that it was in the country's best interest to approve a number of trade agreements pushed by the Bush administration.

Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Assn., told reporters "it was the first time in my career" that he had agreed to sign on with "two organizations I have opposed for years" -- the MPAA and the RIAA.

"While we disagree strongly on the specifics of intellectual property, we agree on this point," he told reporters during a telephone news conference from the CEA's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

For more on CEA's perspective, go to the organization's International Trade special section of their Web site and see Sharpiro's CNET op-ed titled "Protectionism Never Works." And, remember, if you are looking for an issue that impacts technology this election year, it may be right in front of you.