The Copyright Directive’s Link Tax Has Been A Failure; Will Anyone Learn From This?

Copyright

from the another-failure dept

It seems so long ago that people were trying to stop the worst aspects of the EU Copyright Directive. It was quite a battle, as Chapter 6 of Walled Culture the book (free digital versions available) recounts in detail. The final legislation was passed in March 2019, but it is important not simply to accept what happened and move on. The copyright industry used many dubious arguments to convince MEPs to vote for the new copyright framework. Although many of us pointed out the flaws in these at the time, we were drowned out by the chorus of well-paid lobbyists employed by the copyright world. Now that the EU Copyright Directive has been in force for a few years, we can begin to see its real-world effects. That allows us to compare them with the claims that were made to get the law passed.

For example, the so-called “link tax” was supposedly about saving the newspaper industry. Many publishers say they are struggling, which is true, but not for the reasons they claim. It is largely their own failure to embrace the opportunities of the Internet in the 1990s that led to newcomers like Google becoming hugely successful in the online news space. Nonetheless, publishers argued that a new ancillary copyright should be created to allow them to generate revenue that was desperately needed if the world of newspapers was to thrive in the EU.

In fact, as I wrote in an article six years ago, for the link tax we did have some data points. Both Germany and Spain had introduced a link tax before the EU Copyright Directive, and the resulting income from them was pitiful – certainly nowhere near enough to “save” the newspaper industry. This showed the link tax was more about publishers asserting their right to demand a payment from the Internet giants, as part of their larger claim that any use of copyright material must be controlled by them.

There was another thread to the publishers’ argument that even more copyright protection was needed. According to the newspaper industry, the journalists who wrote the news stories deserved some remuneration from Internet companies that linked to it. This was a seductive argument, not least for journalists. But I knew from my own experience as one of them, that these grand promises from publishers to share with journalists extra revenue rarely materialized, and that this was just a ploy to win over doubtful MEPs. We are now in a position to see how this particular aspect of the link tax has worked out. A useful post by Ula Furgal on the Kluwer Copyright Blog summarizes what has been happening around the EU in terms of implementations:

Rather unsurprisingly, only a handful of the member states decided to implement the provision on the journalists’ share by explicitly indicating what part of publishers’ revenues creators are entitled to receive. And among those that did, the share varies quite significantly. While in Italy, journalists are due to receive between 2-5% of publishers’ revenues, in Bulgaria the share should be minimum 20% and at least 1/3 in Germany. In Greece, the percentage depends on the proportion of journalists employed by a publisher, compared to those involved on casual basis. It is either 15% or 25%, with the former owed to journalists when less than 60% of them are salaried employees, which could be read as the Greek legislator’s attempt to reward the publishers providing creators with more stability. The share guaranteed by the Lithuanian implementation (to be followed by Poland) is the most generous, reserving 50% of the revenues to authors.

The blog post notes that there is huge variation here, “which is difficult to justify as it is rather unlikely that the news production processes and sector practices vary so significantly between the countries”. That state of affairs is particularly ironic since one of the main justifications for the EU Copyright Directive was that it would unify copyright law across the twenty-seven member states and bring it into the digital age. In practice, it has simply extended the earlier fragmentation of copyright in new ways.

As for the key question of whether journalists are, as promised, benefitting much from the new link tax, Furgal writes:

It does not seem that the right to appropriate share is currently making a substantial difference to the journalists and their incomes.

That’s really no surprise, given that the earlier link taxes in Germany and Spain made very little difference to publishers’ incomes, and journalists get a (varying) proportion of that. But as well as confirming that the past was a good guide to what might happen with any new EU-wide ancillary copyright, this particular piece of copyright history is also important for some current discussions, as Furgal points out:

Considering its complex positioning, between big tech, content producers and creators, the appropriate share problem could offer valuable lessons for the ongoing discussion on remunerating creators in the GenAI age.

Sadly, the failure of the link tax to deliver anything worthwhile for anyone, despite all the time and effort involved in bringing it in, is likely to be a lesson that the copyright industry refuses to learn.

Follow me @glynmoody on Mastodon and on Bluesky. Originally published on Walled Culture.

Filed Under: copyright, eu, journalism, link tax

Daily Deal: The 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle

Deals

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

Advance your programming skills and start building responsive apps with the 2024 MERN Full Stack Developer Bundle. The 10 courses cover HTML, Bootstrap, CSS, React, MongoDB, Express, NodeJS, and more. It’s on sale for $40.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Big Tech’s Promise Never To Block Access To Politically Embarrassing Content Apparently Only Applies To Democrats

Say That Again

from the hypocrites?-in-big-tech?-how-could-it-be? dept

It probably will not shock you to find out that big tech’s promises to never again suppress embarrassing leaked content about a political figure came with a catch. Apparently, it only applies when that political figure is a Democrat. If it’s a Republican, then of course the content will be suppressed, and the GOP officials who demanded that big tech never ever again suppress such content will look the other way.

A week and a half ago, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing about the threat of foreign intelligence efforts to interfere with US elections. Senator Tom Cotton, who believes in using the US military to suppress American protests, used the opportunity to berate Meta and Google for supposedly (but not really) “suppressing” the Hunter Biden laptop story:

In that session — which I feel the need to remind you was just held on September 18th — both Nick Clegg from Meta and Kent Walker from Google were made to promise that they would never, ever engage in anything like the suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story (Walker noted that Google had taken no effort to do so when that happened in the first place).

Clegg explicitly said that a similar demotion “would not take place today.”

Take a wild guess where this is going?

Exactly one week and one day after that hearing, Ken Klippenstein released the Trump campaign’s internal vetting dossier on JD Vance. It’s pretty widely accepted that the document was obtained via hacking by Iranian agents and had been shopped around to US news sites for months. Klippenstein, who will do pretty much anything for attention, finally bit.

In response, Elon immediately banned Ken’s ExTwitter account and blocked any and all links to not just the document, but to Ken’s Substack. He went way further than anyone ever did regarding the original Hunter Biden laptop story and the content revealed from that laptop. We noted the irony of how the scenario is nearly identical to the Hunter Biden laptop story, but everyone wants to flip sides in their opinion of it.

Elon being a complete fucking hypocrite is hardly new. It’s almost to be expected. That combined with his public endorsement (and massive funding) of the Trump/Vance campaign means it’s noteworthy, but not surprising, that he’d do much more to seek to suppress the Vance dossier than old Twitter ever did about the Hunter laptop story.

So, what about Meta and Google? After all, literally a week earlier, top execs from each company said in a Senate hearing under oath that they would never seek to suppress similar content this year.

And yet…

That’s the link to the dossier on Threads with a message saying “This link can’t be opened from Threads. It might contain harmful content or be designed to steal personal information.”

Ah. And remember, while Twitter did restrict links to the NY Post article for about 24 hours, Meta never restricted the links. It only set it so that the Facebook algorithm wouldn’t promote the story until they checked and made sure it was legit. But here, they’re blocking all links to the Vance dossier on all their properties. When asked, a Meta spokesperson told the Verge:

“Our policies do not allow content from hacked sources or content leaked as part of a foreign government operation to influence US elections. We will be blocking such materials from being shared on our apps under our Community Standards.” 

Yeah, but again, literally a week ago, Nick Clegg said under oath that they wouldn’t do this. The “hacked sources” policy was the excuse Twitter had used to block the NY Post story.

Does anyone realize how ridiculous all of this looks?

And remember how Zuckerberg was just saying he regrets “censoring” political content? Just last week, there was a big NY Times piece arguing, ridiculously, that Zuck was done with politics. Apparently it’s only Democrat-politics that he’s done with.

As for Google, well, Walker told Senator Cotton that the Biden laptop story didn’t meet their standards to have it blocked or removed. But apparently the Vance dossier does. NY Times reporter Aric Toler found that you can’t store the document in your Google Drive, saying it violates their policies against “personal and confidential information”:

As we’ve said over and over again, neither of these things should have been blocked. The NY Post story shouldn’t have been blocked, and the Vance dossier shouldn’t have been blocked. Yes, there are reasons to be concerned about foreign interference in elections, but if something is newsworthy, it’s newsworthy. It’s not for these companies to determine what’s newsworthy at all.

While it was understandable why in the fog of the release about the Hunter Biden story both Twitter and Meta said “let’s pump the brakes and see…” given how much attention has been paid to all that, including literally one week before this, it certainly raises a ton of questions to then immediately move to blocking the Vance dossier.

Of course, the hypocrisy will stand, because the GOP, which has spent years pointing to the Hunter Biden laptop story as their shining proof of “big tech bias” (even though it was nothing of the sort), will immediately, and without any hint of shame or acknowledgment, insist that of course the Vance dossier must be blocked and it’s ludicrous to think otherwise.

And thus, we see the real takeaway from all that working of the refs over the years: embarrassing stuff about Republicans must be suppressed, because it’s doxxing or hacking or foreign interference. However, embarrassing stuff about Democrats must be shared, because any attempt to block it is election interference.

Got it?

Filed Under: content moderation, hunter biden laptop, hypocrisy, jd vance, jd vance dossier, ken klippenstein, nick clegg, tom cotton
Companies: google, meta, twitter, x

Cox Sues Rhode Island Because It Dared To Use Infrastructure Bill Money To Fund Broadband Competition

Broadband

from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept

As we’ve mentioned a few times, $42.5 billion in taxpayer-funded broadband subsidies will soon start hitting the states next year courtesy of the 2021 infrastructure bill’s Broadband, Equity And Deployment (BEAD) program. Efforts to expand affordable fiber access don’t get all that much press attention in the AI hustlebro era, but the impact will be massive all the same.

Unfortunately, a ton of that money is going to be given to giant telecom monopolies with a long history of empty promises and half-completed networks. But an impressive chunk will also wind up in the hands of smaller broadband ISPs, cooperatives, city-owned electrical utilities, and municipal broadband networks, allowing them to build fiber access out into areas that would have never seen service otherwise.

Unsurprisingly, entrenched telecom giants like Verizon, Cox, AT&T, and Comcast are working hard to ensure the lion’s share of this funding goes to them, and not pesky competition. That has involved overstating coverage areas so that other companies can’t get funds, trying to block funds from funding direct competitors, or miring competing grant applications in costly bureaucratic grant challenges.

Since the states are in charge of fund disbursement, how corrupt and fucked up fund dispersal is will be highly state dependent. Some states, like New York, California, or Vermont, are spending big on popular community broadband networks. Other states, like Pennsylvania, are just throwing the lion’s share of funding at giants like Verizon, ignoring the company’s long history of sketchy subsidy abuse.

In Rhode Island, incumbent cable giant Cox Communications has filed a court challenge attempting to block the state from doling out $108.7 million to the company’s competitors.

Cox is very upset that not all of the state’s share of infrastructure bill broadband money is going to Cox, so they’re trying to pretend the process was somehow flawed:

“The cable company claims Rhode Island used “flawed Internet speed data” to determine which areas are underserved and that the plan “will benefit wealthy parts of the State already served with high-speed Internet in contravention of the program that it purports to implement.”

Cable and phone giants have lobbied extensively (with mixed results) to make sure the majority of this infrastructure money goes to completely unserved, heavily rural locations they historically couldn’t care about because of the high cost of deployment. The problem is that limited competition means that affordability is also a key consideration; so driving some new competition into these stagnant suburban and urban markets where apathetic regional monopolies like Cox do business would also be helpful.

Cox, of course, doesn’t want that. Like most giant telecoms they’re perfectly happy with their regional domination of largely uncompetitive U.S. broadband access, allowing them to price gouge captive customers. For years, big ISPs like Cox have taken advantage of inaccurate FCC mapping data to overstate their coverage footprints in order to downplay the lack of competition.

Now that the government has improved mapping data (in this case the state also used Ookla crowdsourced speedtest data), and it’s highlighting competition and coverage gaps, Cox is suddenly upset. The Rhode Island Commerce Corporation (RICC) issued a statement correctly noting that Cox is simply angry that it may soon face new competitors in long-stagnant markets:

“Let’s be clear about what’s behind Cox’s lawsuit: It is an attempt to prevent the investment of $108.7 million in broadband infrastructure in Rhode Island, likely because it realizes that some, or even all, of that money may be awarded through a competitive process to other Internet service providers.”

The RICC also noted that Cox was largely absent from earlier conversations about how the state’s share of BEAD funding would be distributed, and only showed up to whine when it became clear the infrastructure bill would help fund new competitors:

“Cox did not submit public comments on the design of the BEAD program, did not raise concerns at public Broadband Advisory Council meetings (where they are the sole provider represented), and declined to share its network map information during the 90-day Rhode Island Broadband Map Challenge Process. Our planning process was open and participatory, and Cox did not participate.”

This is par for the course for U.S. telecom monopolies. They work tirelessly to crush all competition in a region with the help of corrupt and state federal lawmakers. Then, when somebody actually does anything that addresses regional monopoly power, they whine, and file lawsuits, and kick and scream like rich, petulant toddlers who didn’t get the right toy for Christmas.

I spend pretty much every week now talking to a different municipality somewhere in the U.S. that has been able to build out affordable new fiber networks thanks to either 2021 COVID relief legislation (ARPA) or the infrastructure bill. In many instances, the funding is helping to construct new open access fiber networks that deliver locals uncapped, symmetrical gigabit fiber access for as little as $70 a month.

You can see how fat and comfortable cable giants, used to charging twice that for slower service, might not appreciate that.

These projects may not be seeing much nationwide press attention, but they’re hugely impactful all the same. This being government, I’m laboring under no illusions that there won’t be ample graft at the hands of lazily-regulated telecom giants. But I’m also seeing first hand how these funds are making a meaningful difference in a lot of long-neglected communities country wide.

Filed Under: BEAD, broadband, competition, fiber, gigabit, high speed internet, infrastructure bill, rhode island, telecom
Companies: cox communications

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

Techdirt

from the listen-up dept

This week, both our winners on the insightful side are invocations of established maxims. In first place it’s an anonymous comment about people flipping opinion of hacked materials between Hunter Biden and JD Vance:

How many times must I tap the sign?

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

“There must be in-groups whom the law protectes [sic] but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

–Frank Wilhoit

In second place, it’s Stephen T. Stone regarding the latest ignorant and confused attack on Section 230:

And here we have another example of one of the most truthful maxims ever uttered on Techdirt: No one can oppose Section 230 without lying about it.

For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment form Reasonable Coward about Elon Musk’s hypocrisy and general personality:

Birds of a feather

Musk and Trump have similar personalities. They say whatever sounds great in the moment, and don’t let it constrain their actions in the slightest. They see no shame in hypocrisy, because they’re incapable of shame.

Elon might have well said, “Twitter is broken, and only I can fix it!”

Next, it’s an anonymous comment based on reading ExTwitter’s first transparency report:

Page 8 of that report is fascinating

If I’m reading it correctly (and I may not be, as it’s poorly/vaguely worded) Twitter is still massively overrun with bot-generated spam. This is consistent with Twitter’s history pre-takeover: they couldn’t control it then either. It’s also consistent with observations elsewhere: darknet marketplaces are brimming with offers to sell batches of social media accounts along with the automation to orchestrate their actions. AND it’s consistent with what we know about bot operations run by governments (e.g. Internet Research Agency in Russia).

This is only going to get worse as LLMs are deployed to create content that’s progressively more difficult to discern from human-generated content, and as botnet operators do what they’ve done for 20+ years: upgrade their C&C and find ever-more-ingenious ways to conceal themselves.

Over on the funny side, both our winners come in response to our post about that transparency report. In first place, it’s an anonymous comment about the frequent, robust transparency reports that the old Twitter used to release:

Since then, theses reports have been so transparent they become invisible.

In second place, it’s another anonymous comment about the details of the report:

From this transparency report, they’ve suspended 464M accounts because of spam & “manipulation” just for the first six months of 2024! (they don’t say how much have been re-instated.)
That’s about 150% of the number of users of Twitter in 2022.
I now understand why Elon has so much difficulties to estimate the correct number of users, more than half are spam!

For editor’s choice on the funny side, it’s JMT responding to a bizarre comment claiming we made up the transparency report:

Yes, the report that exTwitter released to the public, which Mike read and then wrote an opinion piece on, is totally made up. The document that downloaded to my computer when I clicked the link in the post is actually just a figment of Mike’s imagination. And mine apparently…

Finally, we have a comment from BernardoVera rebutting accusations that Musk isn’t really a free speech absolutist:

Nah… Musk absolutely believes in his own right to speak absolutely freely — whenever, wherever, and however he wishes.

That’s all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: September 22nd – 28th

Techdirt

from the that-was-that dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2019, we learned more about how easy it was to buy access to people’s movements from companies gathering license plate data, while AT&T was proclaiming that it could not be sued for selling customer location data just as readily. A big EU ruling thankfully said the right to be forgotten was not global, while another required Google to put certain links at the top of search results. A French court declared that Steam gamers really do own the games they buy, while in the US, a court said fair use nullifies a French rightsholder’s attempt to extract money from an art scholar. This was also the week that we announced our anthology of speculative short stories, Working Futures.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2014, NSA cheerleader Ben Wittes was attempting to attack NSA critics while CIA boss John Brennan was lying about his lies. The Seventh Circuit upheld a fair use win but did so in a convoluted and problematic way, while we looked at a copyright question around taking selfies in museums. Law enforcement was predictably freaking out over Apple and Google’s decision to encrypt phone info by default, leading to lots of attempts to spread FUD, while the EFF offered a rundown of epic failures to regulate cryptography. Meanwhile, a patent troll was brushed off in its attempt to sue the FTC for investigating its shakedown scam.

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2009, the case was finally settled over a blogger who tracked patent trolls, while some were defending another patent that was interfering with the sale of Microsoft Word. A court smacked down an attempt to double dip on copyright and trademark damages, the music industry was still pushing for three strike systems, and we wrote about why DMCA safe harbors are so important. The Google books settlement was called off and set to be renegotiated, Eminem’s misguided lawsuit about Apple was getting started, and Elton John was flip-flopping about whether he supported kicking people off the internet. Also, President Obama officially nominated Victorial Espinel to be the first IP Czar.

Filed Under: history, look back

Low Orbit Satellite Companies Respond To Scientists’ Concerns About Light And Environmental Pollution With Even Bigger, Brighter Satellites

Broadband

from the blot-out-the-sun-for-the-sake-of-innovation dept

Scientists say that low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations being built by Amazon, Starlink, and AT&T pose a dire threat to astronomy and scientific research, and that too little is being done to address the issue.

Back in 2022, scientists declared Starlink satellite constellations an “existential threat for astronomy,” noting that the reflection and light pollution (Musk claimed would never happen in the first place) is making it far more difficult to study the night sky, a problem researchers say can be mitigated somewhat but never fully eliminated. That’s bad.

Worse, perhaps, is that more recent studies have shown that the disposable nature of these satellites means a lot of them will be constantly burning up in orbit, releasing all kinds of problematic chemicals and metals upon re-entry. It’s bad enough that scientists say it could imperil the repairs we’ve made to the ozone layer. That, is also, in case it’s not clear, bad.

In response, companies like AT&T and their Texas-based startup partners have responded by launching hundreds of even larger and brighter low-Earth orbit disposable satellites:

“The prototype satellite, BlueWalker 3, launched in September 2022 and unfurled its array around two months later. The company was quite proud of its size, “Made in TX—size matters!” Avellan boasted on Twitter, when referring to BlueWalker 3. Astronomers, however, were not amused.

BlueWalker 3 appeared as bright as two of the ten brightest stars in the night sky, Procyon and Achernar, through the lenses of different telescopes, according to a Nature study published in October 2023. Before unfurling its array, the satellite had a brightness magnitude of around +3.5, making it visible to the naked eye. However, after deploying its antenna array, its brightness increased by about two magnitudes.”

The justification for these services is that the companies are helping connect the disconnected. But the high price tag of services like Starlink means that the people most in need of connection (tribal, rural areas) often can’t afford them (AT&T has never been known for affordability).

Basic physics and capacity issues mean these services often don’t scale well, inevitably resulting in weird network throttling, caps, and other restrictions you’re not going to see on traditional fiber or even 5G wireless. Such networks are also expensive to maintain.

Low-Earth orbit satellite service definitely has its place. It’s great for niche applications (disaster recovery, war, some scattered rural access for those who can afford it), but it’s not really any sort of broad panacea for U.S. broadband access. In many instances, you’re still better off pushing “future proof” fiber deeper into rural areas and then using 5G or fixed wireless to deliver last mile access. Especially once you factor in the potential harm to the environment or scientific research.

U.S. regulators have taken a mostly hands-off approach to the disposable satellite market for fear of “stifling innovation” with anything even vaguely resembling competent corporate oversight.

There have been some recently-passed FCC rules designed to ensure companies don’t just leave space junk in orbit permanently, but they’ve yet to be meaningfully enforced at scale, and the agency’s authority is in jeopardy thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings designed to undermine regulatory independence.

Barely or badly regulated companies flinging mountains of metal into orbit with an almost total disregard for significant harms to scientific research and the environment? All so a few folks with disposable income can get a hundred megabits per second at their second vacation home or RV? I mean, really, what could possibly go wrong.

Filed Under: 5g, bluewalker 3, broadband, fiber, high speed internet, leo, low earth orbit, satellites, telecom, wireless
Companies: at&t

Yet Another Study Shows ShotSpotter Can’t Fight Crime Or Get Help To Shooting Victims Faster

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the no-reason-to-keep-throwing-money-away dept

This would seem like a truly extraneous nail in the coffin of ShotSpotter deployment in Chicago, but there are far too many city council members still willing to prop up under-performing tech with faith-based arguments. And there’s the company itself, which has shifted narratives (along with redoing the company letterhead) over the past several months in hopes of keeping this part of its revenue stream flowing.

Chicago does have a problem with violent crime, a lot of which involves guns and gunshots. ShotSpotter appeared to be a solution. But, after several years of implementation, the city’s Inspector General’s office decided to look at the data. What it discovered was that the city had been paying millions of dollars a year in exchange for almost no reduction in gun crime or corresponding increase in successful prosecutions of those engaging in gun violence.

Mayor Brandon Johnson decided the city shouldn’t continue to pay for a service that provided no actual services. Several council members — perhaps urged on by ShotSpotter’s own pleas for its continued existence — fought back. These efforts were expected. And, to their credit, some council members even got creative with the city’s parliamentary rules in hopes of reviving the expiring ShotSpotter contract.

As noted earlier, ShotSpotter (now doing business as SoundThinking) fought back against the IG report by claiming the city was using the wrong metric to measure its effectiveness. It claimed the real value was speedier EMS responses to reporting gunshots, not any reduction in crime levels or increase in crime-fighting effectiveness.

It was a weird flex, considering the company deployed most of its marketing muscle (prior to several high-profile failures) claiming ShotSpotter was an essential crime-fighting tool. Now, it’s just a thing that might scramble ambulances faster. But even by that metric (one certainly chosen due to the dearth of comparative data in cities where ShotSpotter is used), ShotSpotter still under-performs. Some people have claimed otherwise, using cherry-picked data. But the truth is ShotSpotter is likely no better at saving lives than it is at reducing crime rates.

Here’s WBEZ Chicago’s Chip Mitchell, speaking to Michael Topper of the Social Science Research Council about the findings of his study [PDF] of ShotSpotter’s alleged life-saving abilities:

From your research, how likely is it that ShotSpotter enables police to solve more crimes or to reduce shootings or other gun crimes such as robberies?

What we’re finding is that there isn’t any evidence that this technology is actually benefiting crime clearance or crime reduction efforts. Because of the cost of these officers arriving slower and not arresting as many perpetrators on 911 calls, we don’t have the benefit of gun-related arrests and higher clearance rates across the city.

That’s pretty much the same conclusion the city’s Inspector General reached a couple of years ago. While ShotSpotter continues to dispute this, this is pretty much the same thing other law enforcement agencies in major cities have discovered when comparing clearance rates to ShotSpotter deployment.

The new twist is this: ShotSpotter isn’t getting emergency personnel to shooting scenes faster. Thanks to the gunshot detection system, scare resources aren’t often available where they’re needed most. And that means ShotSpotter likely isn’t saving nearly as many lives as it claims to.

This is explained in more detail in Topper’s report:

[R]eallocating resources to gunfire detection changes an officer’s time allocation. On one hand, this reallocation could be beneficial—ShotSpotter may frequently place officers closer to locations that foster higher volumes of crime. In this situation, an officer’s time of arrival may be reduced. On the other hand, these investigations of previously unreported gunfire may incapacitate officers from attending to reports of other crimes in the form of 911 calls—a lifeline for citizens in distress. In effect, these calls may suffer from increased response times, as officers are busy investigating ShotSpotter detections. Consequently, this may have far reaching implications given the critical importance of rapid response, which has shown to alter the probability of crime clearance and victim injury. Furthermore, response times may affect timely medical treatment, as emergency medical personnel are required to delay their services until police arrive if their safety is compromised.

Then there’s the next part of this ugly equation: as economist Michael Topper discovered during his scouring of the available data, ShotSpotter’s claims of faster EMS response times appear to have been cherry-picked to present something far more effective than it actually is. At best, the studies ShotSpotter uses to cite are making suppositions based on data sets that are far too small to truly represent the reality of the situation.

A new analysis by the University of Chicago Crime Lab suggests the shooting fatality rates — the odds a gunshot victim dies of the wounds — are about 4 percentage points lower in areas with ShotSpotter. The analysis suggests the technology likely saves roughly 85 lives per year in Chicago. How does that jibe with your findings?

I took a look at this analysis. It relies on a research design known as regression discontinuity. It could be, for instance, a boundary in the middle of a street. On one side of the boundary are ShotSpotter detectors. On the other side, there are no ShotSpotter detectors. So they are comparing the sides of the boundary and finding that ShotSpotter is possibly saving lives. The main assumption here is that nothing else changes across the boundary except for the ShotSpotter detectors. But we can all agree there are many things that could change across the boundary. Just the next block over could be a lot safer. The other thing that this sort of analysis relies on is having a lot of data on both sides of the boundary. And, while I know that Chicago is more violent than many other U.S. cities, the analysis still requires a lot of data — a lot of gunshots and a lot of shooting victims on both sides of this boundary. So, I think the study needs more vetting before we take these estimates very seriously.

Topper doesn’t go so far as to claim ShotSpotter is completely useless. He points out similar research that indicates ShotSpotter isn’t worth paying for suffers from many of the same problems his does: namely, a lack of data. But what data does exist (and can be accessed by researchers — ShotSpotter is a private company that has no legal obligation to turn over this data to researchers or public records requesters) doesn’t have anything positive to say about ShotSpotter’s ability to reduce crime rates or EMS response times.

The financial bottom line is clear: ditching ShotSpotter would free up $10-15 million a year and a whole lot of police officers. And that could mean better response times to reported shootings and EMS scenes requiring a police presence. None of that is guaranteed, no matter how the city ultimately handles the expiring ShotSpotter contract. Having more resources available won’t mean much if officers are going to spend their extra free time doing things like chasing Pokémon or frisking every minority person they come across. But, at worst, taxpayers won’t be shelling out another $10+ million a year to obtain the same level of under-service they’ve become accustomed to since ShotSpotter’s arrival.

Filed Under: acoustic detection, always on surveillance, brandon johnson, chicago, chicago pd, gunshot detection, michael topper
Companies: shotspotter, soundthinking