Techdirt. Stories filed under "debates" Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "debates"http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:37:01 PDT How Involved Should The Government Be In Protecting Online Privacy? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100830/12504810825.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100830/12504810825.shtml whether or not governments should do more to protect online privacy. Speaking for the motion that government should do more is Marc Rotenberg of EPIC, while arguing that there are better ways to protect your privacy than expecting your government to help you is Jim Harper from the Cato Institute. Right now more people are siding with Rotenberg, but it seems like a classic "oh, somebody has to protect me!" sort of response. Harper's arguments make a lot more sense to me, with the key point being: do you really trust the government to protect your privacy?
The American government, like others around the world, is a voracious information collector. It facilitates and promotes private-sector tracking and surveillance. It skirts and sometimes violates laws intended to restrain its snooping, and it cannot be held accountable when it does.

This does not seem like the kind of institution one would turn to for privacy protection. "Independent privacy agencies" and government bodies like the tiny, well-meaning American Federal Trade Commission do not tip the balance the other way.
Rotenberg responds that individuals really can't do much in response, and uses the example of Google Buzz's privacy screwup as an example. But, the response to that sort of proves Harper's point rather than Rotenberg's. Right after Google screwed up with the Buzz launch, in a manner that caused serious privacy concerns, the public and the press responded within hours, calling out Google for what it had done, and forcing Google to backtrack almost immediately and admit that it had screwed up. What more could the government have done? If it was solely up to the government, there would have been a months (years?) long investigation, and finally some sort of wrist-slap and a fine. The public response to Google's misstep and the concerns that raised among many people about their privacy in using Google seemed to function fine, and should (one hopes) cause Google to think a lot more carefully before making a similar mistake in the future.

Either way, as with all of the Economist's debates, there's a lot of interesting discussion going on, not just between the two main participants, but in the discussion section as well.

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]]> hands-on,-hands-off http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100830/12504810825 Thu, 12 Aug 2010 08:49:06 PDT Why Are Entertainment Industry Spokespeople So Scared To Debate Critics? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100811/13244810588.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100811/13244810588.shtml directly refused to debate Larry Lessig, after Williams falsely described Creative Commons and other groups as being anti-copyright, and referred to attempts to discuss this as an attempt to "silence" him. Over in Europe there's a similar situation, as the head of the Austrian film and music industry trade association has dropped out of a planned panel discussion after learning that former spokesperson of The Pirate Bay, Peter Sunde, would be on the panel as well.
"On Friday, I was informed of the requested list of panelists and only then I learned that Peter Sunde, a convicted co-founder of the BitTorrent download portal The Pirate Bay, will participate in this discussion. For this reason, I would like to hereby withdraw my participation."
Not much of a "debate" is it, when you refuse to sit at the same table as those who disagree with you. None of this makes much sense to me. If these folks have the evidence to support their position, why not take part in these debates and support their position in a way that wins over those watching? Intentionally avoiding such discussions seems like a blatant admission that they know their arguments don't stand up to much scrutiny.

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]]> so-odd http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20100811/13244810588 Mon, 13 Oct 2008 08:08:00 PDT What If We Put Lie Detectors On Politicians During Debates? Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081011/1047382523.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081011/1047382523.shtml
Some challengers to an Indiana congressman have come up with an amusing suggestion for how to deal with this, with two challengers to the incumbent agreeing to wear lie detectors during a planned debate. The incumbent has refused, with his party chair calling it ridiculous.

Of course, it's all really a stunt to get some press coverage for the challengers. As polygraph experts well know, a polygraph in a debate setting would be useless. Beyond not always being perfectly reliable, polygraphs are designed to work under very specific circumstances, not in a public debate setting, where the results would be entirely meaningless.

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]]> it-wouldn't-work http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20081011/1047382523 Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:52:00 PDT Recording Industry Now Making Up Facts To Support Having ISPs Police File Sharing Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080616/0818031419.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080616/0818031419.shtml trashing Virgin Media, a UK-based broadband provider, for agreeing to send out warning "notices" to folks that the entertainment industry claims are file sharing. Thompson explains that he's been known to use BitTorrent to get a copy of a TV show he missed on TV and forgot to record on his DVR, wondering why this should be a problem. He also mentions: "Evidence that heavy downloaders are also heavy music purchasers doesn't seem to have made any difference to the BPI's approach either, and instead of finding new business models they hold on to the old ways of working."

The response came from BPI's chief exec Geoff Taylor, who responds by suggesting that Thompson's column is ill-informed, and thus, supports this "education" effort by Virgin Media. He also suggests that the entertainment industry is wholeheartedly embracing new business models and its folks like Thompson who are the dinosaurs. Finally, he completely contradicts Thompson when he claims: "Independent research has shown time after time that people who download illegally generally spend less on music than people that don't, which undermines investment in new music."

Well, as the joke goes, everyone's entitled to their own opinions -- but not their own facts. And, in this case, it would appear that it's BPI's Geoff Taylor who's got his facts screwed up. The "new" business models that he talks about were hardly the result of a forward-thinking entertainment industry, but one that was dragged kicking and screaming into a new era, and has resisted every innovation at every turn -- and is still doing so. The real kicker, though, is his claim that independent studies say that those who use file sharing spend less on music. That's simply untrue. Study after study after study after study after study after study has shown the exact opposite -- noting that people who file share tend to be bigger music fans, and are more likely to spend on music.

Most of those studies were easily found doing a basic Google search. So how about a Google search in order to find all that research insisting that file sharing makes people spend less on music? The only result I could find was to BPI's own page where it claims "The overwhelming majority of reputable third party research shows that illegal file-sharing has been a key factor in the recording industry's 22% worldwide sales declines between 1999 and 2004" and then quotes the IFPI as its source (hardly an unbiased party). That page then does link to other research. Amusingly, though, it includes some of the same research mentioned above -- and either twists the results or claims that the research was "debunked," when in most cases it had not been.

In some cases, the results are positively hilarious. Take, for example, the way the BPI spins one study that says the exact opposite of what it claims: "EMR concluded that heavy music buyers are also heavy filesharers. In other words, filesharing threatens the music business' biggest customers." See how that works? When the study says that fileshares are the biggest music buyers, BPI uses it to note that file sharing "threatens the music business' biggest customers," rather than realizing that perhaps file sharers are also spending more money on music. Many of the other studies it quotes are the long-debunked stories that count every download as a "loss," which then are used to show huge "losses" in CD sales that never would have happened in the first place. The BPI is making up its own facts here. This round goes to Bill Thompson.

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]]> please-try-again http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20080616/0818031419 Tue, 22 Apr 2008 06:58:00 PDT ABC Tries To Limit How Other Networks Report On Debate; Networks Ignore ABC Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080421/142950906.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080421/142950906.shtml freely license the content of any debate afterwards for any kind of media coverage. While some agreed to this, others did not. In fact, with last week's Democratic candidate debate, it appears ABC tried to take the issue even further. It demanded that other networks show less than 30 seconds of debate clips the night after the debate. This is quite similar to the restrictions MLB and the NFL have been trying to put on reporters as well. ABC claimed that it needed to do this because it delayed the broadcast of the debate on the west coast until later in the evening. First, people on the west coast aren't stupid. They know the debate already happened. Pretending it didn't isn't going to change much. Second, it seems ridiculous that ABC time-delayed the debate in the first place. But, most importantly, restricting how others can report on a news event seems pretty pointless -- and, indeed, the other networks basically ignored ABC's demands and broadcasted as much as they wanted to of the debates.

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