Techdirt. Stories filed under "market"

Rep. Marsha Blackburn's Staffer Lashes Out At Derek Khanna And RSC Report

Mike Masnick — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:35:27 PST

Ah, Representative Marsha Blackburn. This is the self-styled "limited government" Member of the House of Representatives who famously posted a nearly 100% factually misleading attack on "net neutrality" just shortly before sponsoring SOPA, despite the fact that almost everything she complained about in her mythical version of net neutrality was true of SOPA. For example, she talked about the wonders of the internet (yay!) and sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, and talked about how they've been built up entirely without government intervention (ignoring, of course, the government's rather large role in the creation of the internet, but let's leave that aside). And then she states: "There has never been a time that a consumer has needed a federal bureaucrat to intervene (in the world wide web)." And she worries how under the net neutrality she fears "the next Facebook innovator" may "have to go apply with the government to get approval to develop a new application."

Yet, of course, when it comes to SOPA and copyright, she ignores these very same arguments. SOPA itself was very much about federal bureaucrats, including Rep. Marsha Blackburn, intervening in how the internet was to work. And, of course, the very nature of copyright these days is that it means that innovators often do have to effectively get "approval" from the government to develop a new product. In fact, the former director of the US Copyright Office, Ralph Oman, recently stated specifically, in the Aereo case, that he believed the intention of copyright law was that new technologies must first get Congressional approval before they can be considered legal -- and this appears to be Blackburn's position as well.

Of course, this blatant contradiction is explained away easily enough, since her district is up against Nashville, Tennessee, a major outpost of the recording industry. Given that, it was no surprise to see it confirmed that she was one of the leading voices among Republican members who led the Republican Study Committee to first retract Derek Khanna's "copyright myths" policy brief, and then to push to make sure that he was not retained as an RSC staffer.

The latest, is that when asked about Blackburn's role in Khanna's employment situation, a Blackburn staffer, Mike Reynard, went off on an ill-informed rant against the policy brief:

"She does not believe the radical positions espoused in a recent so-called policy paper regarding copyright," Reynard said. "Conservatives aren't going to tolerate the ideology that copyright violates nearly every tenant of laissez-faire capitalism, that copyright is a government monopoly, and that property rights don't matter anymore."

"We were concerned that the RSC's Executive Director, Paul Teller, and Congressman Jim Jordan associated themselves with these bizarre ideas and were happy to see them denounce the process and the ideas in the paper after it was published," he added.

So much lies and distortions in two short paragraphs. First of all, the ideas in the paper were hardly "radical." They've been widely discussed for quite some time outside the halls of Congress, but they rarely make it inside, because Blackburns' close friends at the RIAA and MPAA do a bang up job keeping them out. Second, the idea that "conservatives aren't going to tolerate the ideology that copyright violates nearly every tenant of laisez-faire capitalism" is kinda laughable, since an awful lot of conservatives not only "tolerate" the idea, they believe it to be true. In fact, as we've noted, there's an entire new book making the "conservative" case for massive copyright reform (even going beyond Khanna's so-called "radical" suggestions). Furthermore, an awful lot of prominent conservative thinkers have come out in favor of the report. So whether or not Blackburn "tolerates" it, doesn't have much bearing on whether or not "conservatives" tolerate it. It just seems to show that Blackburn may be completely out of touch and out of step with those she claims to represent.

As for the idea that copyright is not a government monopoly -- well, that's just wrong. I mean, there's nothing to argue here. It's a simple fact: a copyright is a monopoly. In the earlier days of the US, the founders even directly referred to them as monopolies. So I'm not even sure how this point is debatable, unless you're entirely ignorant.

Then there's the idea that "property rights don't matter anymore." That's just weird, because no one suggested that at all. In fact, if you actually read Khanna's paper, he argues quite the opposite. Property rights matter a great deal. The problem with copyright is that it's a restriction on people's private property rights.

Finally, while the RSC did retract the report, after heavy pressure from various lobbyists, at no time did they "denounce the process and the ideas in the paper." They simply argued that it did not properly represent the views of all of their members. One assumes this includes Marsha Blackburn, but judging from the comments from her staffer, I would think that the RSC would not wish to associate itself with the pure and blatant ignorance coming out of her office. We can argue the merits of the paper (and, in fact, we've been trying to do that in a series of posts). But to pretend the paper says stuff that it doesn't... and to argue things that are clearly factually 100% false is no way to go about making policy.

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Console Manufacturers Pressure Google Into Pulling Emulators From The Android Market

Tim Cushing — Wed, 1 Jun 2011 12:30:05 PDT

In what is a rather unsurprising move, Sega and Nintendo have pressured Google to remove certain emulators from the Android Market. Some of the details via Geek.com:

Over the weekend developer Yong Zhang, known on the Android Market as yongzh, saw his Android developer account revoked and all the apps he offers removed from the Market. The apps he was offering were all emulators for popular older systems including the NES, SNES, Genesis, N64, Atari, Game Gear, and Game Boy. But Google has seen fit to remove all of them ( including Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, Ataroid, Gearoid, and Gameoid).

Now, I know the rationale behind this. Or rather, I know of it. I don't know as in understand it.

I can see console developers having an issue with someone making money with their IP. I can understand why that's an issue. What I don't understand is why forcing these emulators and roms to be removed is the answer.

Reggie Fils-Aime has stated before his dislike of indie developers and the general race-to-the-bottom price competition, but has anybody at Sega or Nintendo or Sony ever considered the possibility of contacting these developers and licensing the emulators?

[CLARIFICATION (mainly for the benefit of console developers): By "licensing," I don't mean wave the lawyer stick around threateningly until they give up all commercial rights in perpetuity in exchange for a lawsuit-free existence and a signed copy of Tamigotchi: Party On!

I mean actual fair licensing agreements in which both parties have a chance to make some money. END CLARIFICATION.]

There are thousands of fans out there, cranking out amazing stuff simply because they love the consoles and the games. Emulators, ROMs, fan fiction, fan movies, translations, you name it, somebody is out there doing it.

And it's not like most of these consoles are still available from the developers and they're certainly not cranking out new titles for the Genesis or the SNES. So why not take all this fan power and harness it into something that makes you money (granted, not at $40-50 a pop) rather than just shutting it down and collecting a big fat $0 for your efforts.

Mobile gaming is the new console gaming. All those kids who grew up with a NES or a Genesis are now cruising around with their smartphones looking for a hit of nostalgia. Besides, any gamer worth his fanboyism will tell you that all the best games were released at least a decade ago, if not longer. (See also: Final Fantasy VII, Sony Playstation, 1998.)

Besides, all the programming and debugging (well, most of it) has already been done. All it needs now is the official go-ahead from the console manufacturers and everyone can start printing money or bitcoins or whatever. You're not going to get rid of them. The fans are everywhere and they've got more enthusiasm than you've got lawyers. If you can't beat 'em, monetize 'em.

UPDATE: As Chris Rhodes (and others) have pointed out, this emulator removal does not have anything to do with Nintendo. In fact, it looks as if yongzh brought this upon himself by selling open source code as his own.

The two links I used to put this story together (the one in the post) and this one over at Engadget both mention Sega's hand in getting some emulators pulled and conjecture that Nintendo may have been involved with getting the rest removed. It's not until you start reading the comment thread at Engadget that any of yongzh's misdeeds are even mentioned. Generally, I don't head to the comment threads to get the real story, but there's a first time for everything and unfortunately, this wasn't it.

Between those two articles and a long history of console developers battling emulator/ROM programmers, not to mention Nintendo's obvious lack of interest in developing for smartphones, I assumed that Nintendo was involved.

Well, as the old saying goes: "Never assume, because it makes an ass out of the author and often leads to public evisceration and eternal damnation thanks to Google cache."

My thanks to everyone who pointed this out and my apologies to everyone else.

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How To Get Spectrum Back From TV For More Useful Purposes

Mike Masnick — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 22:13:20 PDT

If you look at how our radio spectrum is allocated today, you discover that TV broadcasters have a huge chunk of spectrum (that chart doesn't directly display how much spectrum is actually included -- I remember seeing another chart, which I can't find now, that shows proportionally how much more spectrum broadcasters have). This was given to them -- entirely for free -- years ago, when spectrum wasn't used for much. These days, however, spectrum is precious for so many different things, and certainly much of it could be put to better use. Of course, the broadcasters aren't thrilled with giving up any of their windfall. For years, they dragged their feet, kicking and screaming, about switching from analog to digital broadcasting, which was needed to reclaim some spectrum. More recently, they've been fighting attempts to use "white space" spectrum -- which is spectrum that's unused, but close to used spectrum. The broadcasters insist there will be interference, while technologists insist the technology is good enough to block interference.

So, it's interesting that, just as we're hearing of the first tests of white space networks, the FCC is also talking to broadcasters about other ways to reclaim some spectrum and put it to use on something more useful and productive. Apparently, the plan on the table right now would be for broadcasters to give up the spectrum in return for a cut of the revenue the government would get in auctioning off the spectrum for wireless use. Of course, some may find it distasteful that public spectrum that was given to these companies for free can then get sold off with at least some of the money going to those who never bought or truly "owned" the spectrum in the first place. But, given that the FCC set things up in a way where it basically created a de facto ownership structure of the spectrum, it's difficult to see any reasonable way to get that spectrum back without paying for it.

In the link above, Adam Thierer suggests we just give the current holders property rights in the spectrum, and assume that they'll then sell it off to those who can do something more innovative with it (or change and do something more innovative themselves). I've long been a proponent of giving up the ridiculous idea of having the government decide how each slice of spectrum must be used. Why not let the companies who control the various slices of spectrum make use of it as they see fit? It seems more likely that we'd get more efficient uses of the spectrum. So, it's good to see more thinking about ways to put some of that spectrum to better use, but it would be nice if we allowed the market, rather than the government, to figure out how to best use it.

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