The 463: Inside Tech

That Kramer Thing

Being on the other side of the world at the time, I wasn't sure what to make of the whole Kramer incident.  Courtesy of National Lampoon, everything is cleared up.

Australian Copyright: Crikey!

When you're writing for a semi-regular blog and go on vacation, it can be a tough thing to fully extract yourself from feeling pangs of needing to post.

Case-in-point:  Almost as soon as I got to Australia, I picked up the Sydney Morning Herald and the front page ran a story about how a new copyright rule there could create criminal penalties for fairly basic acts using an iPod or YouTube. 

Fortunately, I have a life wife, so I she made the decision not do any blogging from down under...

But, that doesn't mean that I still didn't think about the piece, so here's the basics....

Basically, a proposed copyright law could make a nation colonized by criminals into a nation of criminals.  One attorney says it would criminalize YouTube lip-synching to copyrighted music (which doesn't fall under one of many of YouTube's licensing deals with labels).  Electronic Frontiers Australia explains:

Wow, I Guess There Is More To Nevada Than Gambling...

Looks like the U.S. District Court in Nevada shut down ERG Ventures, faster than you can say "double-down" at the blackjack table, for distributing malicious software through cheesy screen savers and other downloaded programs.

The FTC filed suit against ERG who also operated under a number of affiliates, including Team Taylor Made...

Light Blogging Ahead

One of us is going on vacation through Thanksgiving weekend.  And, that someone happens to do most of the babbling on these pages.  Soldier on.  And, we'll get noisy again near the end of the month.

I, For One, Welcome Our New San Francisco Overlord

We'll get to a round-up of "What-Does-It-All-Mean-For-Tech?!" coverage in a bit, but, first, our quick thoughts...

First and foremost, with the notable and troubling example of net neutrality, support for and opposition to tech policy has been largely bipartisan in nature.  Therefore, at first glance, the election results shouldn't really matter much.  Yet, an optimist would say that since both the Bush Administration and Congressional Democrats will be motivated to get something done, melding respective "Innovation Agendas" and getting it passed and signed would seem to be a good way to disprove gridlock.  Practically, this means high-skilled immigration reform, modernizing and making permanent the R&D tax credit, needed education reform, reforming the patent system

Likewise for Greentech policy.  The Bush Administration is poised to become cheerleaders for alternative and efficient technologies.  So are leading Democrats.  Perhaps they'll be able to work together to create the first wave of federal policies that begins the slow road to weaning America off of foreign oil.

But then there is the downside of bipartisanship.  Both Republicans and Democrats were able to come together and spend 410 House votes on a terrible Deleting Online Predators Act. Yes, we get why many Dems felt "forced" to vote on it, but we also heard plenty of them saying that a big problem of DOPA was that it didn't go far enough.  The reality is that the quizzical look that both a Democrat and a Republican Congressman gets when they look at MySpace for the first time is pretty much the same.

And, it's bills like DOPA that provide an incremental, dangerous creep towards shoving old media models onto the Internet in order to make sense it all for congress folks who frankly are struggling to keep up with the rapid changes on the Net and with other new technologies like so many other Baby Boomers on up.  We're worried that something as seemingly benign as closed captioning rules for online video doesn't somehow start a snowball of regulations that will turn YouTube into YeOldeTube.

But, this isn't all on Capitol Hill to figure out.  The industry needs to remember how fast things move in tech and make a greater effort to educate.   And, importantly, the education shouldn't be just about what Web site does what and how a new gizmo works.  It should be about how those sites and gizmos are improving the average American's life far away from Silicon Valley.  It's also high time for the Web 2.0 players to get off the snide and get involved in DC.

And, while all this attention is being showered on the new congressional leaders, let's not forget that 2008 is right around the corner and we need to be arming all of the top candidates with a positive innovation platform.

After the jump, what others are saying....

The Morning After

This whole election thing has us a bit busy.  Fortunately, National Journal Tech Daily has a public blog focused on the campaign and impact on tech.  The Tech Daily folks were up way late last night and claim to have received little to no sleep as they watched key votes trickle in.  They made this sacrifice for YOU, so click over and check out the blog.

It's An Election Year; Do You Know Where Your Congressman Is?

October 18: The 463 posts an item titled "Tech to DC: All You Do is Talk Talk". The subject is the lack of action on big tech policy promises made by congressional leaders. It includes a genius reference to "My Dinner with André" that approximately one person got.

October 30: The Mercury News runs an op-ed by Silicon Valley Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren titled "Congress On Technology Issues: All Talk and No Action." Not surprisingly, the subject is the lack of action on big tech policy promises made by congressional leaders. Yet, shockingly, there is no "My Dinner with André" reference.

Coincidence? Yeah. Absolutely.

We do hope the tech-savvy Congresswoman's conclusion to her piece isn't just, well, talk...

If Democrats win control of Congress this fall... We will work with all interested House colleagues in order to turn Pelosi's innovation agenda into reality. This will mean good things for Silicon Valley as well as our nation's tech sector and a better future for all Americans.

Because with only talk, we'll have to go out and get the requisite action figures to compensate.

Regulate Nutella; Not Online Video

"Most governments today rationally see efforts to restrict access to programming on the Internet as hopeless, unless the government happens to be a member of the E.U.

"The E.U. sees video programming on the Internet and other non-broadcast forms of distribution such as YouTube as opportunities for future regulation....

"...the real futility of Internet content regulation is not its ineffectiveness in stopping harmful Web sites but its chilling effect on legitimate Web activities. Businesses would be discouraged from placing video files on their Web sites for fear of inadvertently angering the regulators. Businesses engaged in the distribution of video programs would reasonably worry about the potential penalties of European regulation and would rationally locate their sites elsewhere beyond the reach of E.U. regulators...

... From an op-ed by Former FCC commissioner and chief economist in the House Commerce Committee, Harold Furchtgott-Roth. (NY Sun)

For more on online video content regulation, see our analysis or links to recent coverage.