Open Market

I'll Show You Unpersuasive, Timothy Not-Berners Lee!

Over at TLF, my good friend Tim Lee has responded to my response to his response to the response of net neutrality regulation supporters, responding to the question of what, exactly, they think will happen in a world without net neutrality.

Interesting discussion (including thoughts from CEI alum James Gattuso) in the comments of the Tim’s first post linked up there, so check it out.

--Brooke Oberwetter

Internet Medicine: Does that Make Al Gore My Family Physician?

A new study finds an increasing number of doctors using information from Internet searches to help diagnose illnesses:

The internet search engine Google has added another impressive string to its bow - by helping doctors diagnose illnesses, according to a new study.

 

Researchers found that almost six-in-10 difficult cases can be solved by using the world wide web as a diagnostic aid.

 

Doctors fight disease by carrying about two million facts in their heads but with medical knowledge expanding rapidly, even this may not be enough.

Fred has written on this topic before, but from the patient’s side. He explains how online resources are helping people take change of their own health and well being:

The hierarchic medical structure of the past—the doctors as high priests dispensing their knowledge in oracular fashion—is rapidly being replaced by the noisier, but vastly more knowledgeable Web.

As the mainstream infectious diseases of the past fade into history, people find themselves affected by less common diseases, by rarer side-effects, by ailments with no clear etiology. But this is almost equally true of their physicians who, increasingly specialized and dealing with a few thousand patients a year, are unlikely to encounter your particular malady.

The Internet, in contrast, has made it possible for victims of "rare" conditions to find ways to communicate with one another. These sites today are generally "noisy" and a bit paranoid; many of their sponsors and members see rare contaminants or industrial pollutants causes for almost everything. Nonetheless, they are maturing. While some argue we need government oversight of this profusion of speakers, the solution to bad information is not censorship but rather better information.

Let’s just hope the FDA doesn’t hear about this. Before you know it, only board certified physicians will be allowed to post comments on WedMD.com.

--Richard Morrison

Windows Vista goes for the gold

Microsoft’s long-awaited new operating system, Windows Vista, is now completed for release. Once it comes out, of course, you can expect years of patches and updates, but for PC manufacturers putting the operating system on their machines, this is the final draft. IT insiders who’ve been messing with various beta versions over the last year tell me that, functionally, Vista is pretty nifty, with a raft of new organizational and design features that really pump up the computing experience. I’m glad to hear this—much more so than, say, when I heard that Microsoft had kowtowed to foreign governments over its software design. 

As good as Vista is likely to be, it will, like all previous versions of Windows, have flaws (hence the regular updates). And I’m sure we’ll hear calls from so-called consumer advocates to regulate the product for whatever cause du jour these folks come up with. But when governments—who have no particular expertise in designing good programs—get to step in and dictate the terms of something as complicated as operating system software, companies lose the ability to control their product, making it more, not less, likely that flaws, security holes, and other problems are likely to occur. 

--Peter Suderman

What’s new with the Net neutrality situation

CNet has a useful article on how tech legislation looks to shape up now that Democrats control the House and, for all practical purposes, the Senate. It’s worth reading in full, but the most worrying section is this:

Network neutrality is one of the clearest examples of a partisan rift. In the Senate, all the Republican committee members but one voted against extensive broadband regulations. These regulations are backed by Internet companies such as Google and eBay, but are opposed by telecommunications and hardware providers.

"Clearly, we're going to have to address the question of network neutrality," Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, told reporters on Wednesday. Dingell, who has served in the House for more than 50 of his 80 years, is set to be the next chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which writes telecommunications laws.

Dingell didn't elaborate. But he's previously gone on the record as a staunch supporter of extensive regulations that would prohibit network operators from charging content providers extra for premium placement or faster delivery, dubbing it "private taxation of the Internet."

[snip]

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the California Democrat set to be the next House Majority Leader, has also been a strong supporter of more Net neutrality regulations. Pelosi said in June that "without Net Neutrality, the current experience that Internet users enjoy today is in jeopardy."

What’s a little bit surprising is that Pelosi, despite her support for the problematic regulations, is basically right. Net neutrality regulations would hinder the net from progressing beyond the neat and useful but still woefully underdeveloped system it is today into the mature, massively powerful information delivery system of tomorrow. We’re currently on the verge of stepping into the realm of High Definition video content being delivered over the net, but that transition is going to be much slower, and much more costly, with neutrality regulations in place. Even those who’re innately afraid of change ought to be able to see that, when it comes to the net, forward progress—the development of cheaper, more versatile, more powerful Net applications—is a good thing. But by Pelosi’s own admission, she and other neutrality proponents want to stunt the Net’s development, shackling it to the current era through panicky, change-averse legislation. 

--Peter Suderman

Value for the Money

Over at TechLiberation, Tim Lee has a great post that addresses a big question that’s on my mind in the network neutrality debate: just how, exactly, do proponents of net neutrality regulation think things will play out without regulation? What are their specific fears? We hear a lot of generalized predictions about what the big bad ISPs will do, but we just don’t get much detail, apart from the ridiculously implausible claims of the folks at Gun Owners of America, who seem to think that Verizon is just itching for the opportunity to detect and block every packet of data it carries that mentions the Second Amendment. 

The big general fears are that ISPs will block or degrade data that competes with their own services, block or degrade data they find objectionable, or force their own favored content onto your screen. For some really basic economic reasons, the second and third fears are unfounded. (Tim’s post focuses on ISPs forcing favored content, with a link to his previous writings on the implausibility of blocking or degrading content). And for political reasons, the first fear is also pretty groundless—anti-competitive behavior by ISPs is already subject to FCC intervention.

One fear, however, didn’t make Tim’s list; it’s the fear that the ISPs will do exactly what we think they’ll do, which is to introduce tiered pricing for content delivery. 

Some NN-regulation supporters champion the doctrine of “equal prices for equal bits;” The cost of transmitting any two packets of similar content should be equal, though various prices can exist for various kinds of content; YouTube shouldn’t be allowed to pay for faster delivery than anyone else in the video market, but video transmitters might need to pay more than text transmitters.  Hardliners say that all bits should be treated equally, even if they aren’t; content discrimination should be illegal and delivery should be totally unpriced. The EPEBers are saying that Borders shouldn’t be allowed to ship via FedEx while Barnes and Noble ships USPS. The Hardliners are saying that shipping the collected works of Danielle Steel should cost the same as shipping a gift card.

Both are essentially arguing that competition is one dimensional: it is singularly about the quality of the product. But in reality, competition is multi-dimensional; in the case of vendors who sell identical books, the only way to compete is in non-quality factors like convenience and customer service. You can pay one store $8 for a copy of Ms. Steel’s Jewels shipped in a week, another store $11 for a copy shipped in three days, or a third store $14 copy guaranteed to arrive tomorrow. Value for the money spent is at the root of competition, not quality or price alone. 

Suppose some new tech-tinkering über-geeks come up with a search engine even better than Google. Because they lack brand recognition, they need to keep expenses at a minimum while word of mouth slowly spreads about their better quality. In net neutrality America, they cannot keep expenses down by opting for lower quality delivery than that offered by Google. Delivery speed is not a viable option for competition; everyone has to ship at the $11 rate. Now imagine that one of the über-geeks is a trust fund baby. He’s so sure that his product is superior, he invests his trust fund in Über-geeks, Inc. so they can buy higher speed delivery than Google offers, thus giving Google a serious competitive run for its money. Sadly this too is not an option in net neutrality land.

Prices and price flexibility are essential to competition. The fear that content competition will suffer without regulation is absurd on its face. Indeed, net neutrality regulation will rob new innovators and content creators of the very tools that would make challenging already established businesses possible. It’s little wonder then that the already established businesses—like Amazon, E-bay, and Google, to name a few—are fighting for net neutrality tooth and nail. 

--Brooke Oberwetter

Lomborg on the Stern Review: "...selective...flawed...sloppy...one-sided..."

Our friend Bjørn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, has an excellent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal (subscription only) today taking on the Stern review of the economics of global warming:

Faced with such alarmist suggestions, spending just 1% of GDP or $450 billion each year to cut carbon emissions seems on the surface like a sound investment. In fact, it is one of the least attractive options. Spending just a fraction of this figure -- $75 billion -- the U.N. estimates that we could solve all the world's major basic problems. We could give everyone clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care and education right now. Is that not better?

 

We know from economic models that dealing just with malaria could provide economic boosts to the order of 1% extra GDP growth per capita per year. Even making a very conservative estimate that solving all the major basic issues would induce just 2% extra growth, 100 years from now each individual in the developing world would be more than 700% richer. That truly trivializes Mr. Stern's 10% to 13% estimates for South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Last weekend in New York, I asked 24 U.N. ambassadors -- from nations including China, India and the U.S. -- to prioritize the best solutions for the world's greatest challenges, in a project known as Copenhagen Consensus. They looked at what spending money to combat climate change and other major problems could achieve. They found that the world should prioritize the need for better health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education, long before we turn our attention to the costly mitigation of global warning.

 

We all want a better world. But we must not let ourselves be swept up in making a bad investment, simply because we have been scared by sensationalist headlines.

 

Hopefully Bjørn’s work will help keep the alarmist crowd from suggesting that Stern’s extreme predictions are now somehow part of the “consensus” on climate change we keep hearing so much about.

-- Richard Morrison

So the Government Dictating Broadcast Content is 'Fair'?

Fans of free expression should hit up a piece in Human Events, by our very own John Berlau, on those misguided souls who are intent on bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” to broadcast TV and radio. For anyone who wasn’t following FCC regulations before 1987 (when it was eliminated), here are the basics:

The Fairness Doctrine, initiated by the Federal Communications Commission in 1949, mandated that radio and television stations “provide a reasonable opportunity for the presentation of contrasting viewpoints” on “vitally important controversial issues.” But since there are contrasting views as to what’s “fair,” broadcast stations were left with a few unpleasant options. They could a) provide equal time to overtly liberal and overtly conservative opinions—regardless of the advertising dollars they draw b) be deluged with demands for free response time by aggrieved listeners, or c) shy away from addressing controversial issues. That last option was the one often chosen. The Fairness Doctrine was decried across the political spectrum—by free marketeers and by genuine free-speech liberals such as CBS News president Fred Friendly—for its chilling effects on discussion of issues.

Some might argue that the Fairness Doctrine made some sense in a world with only three television channels, but especially given the dizzying proliferation of news and entertainment options today, re-implementing it is especially daft.

-- Richard Morrison

The ADA Meets Cyberspace

BNA is covering the recent district court ruling that Target can be sued if its website is inaccessible to the blind:

In this class action suit—brought by the National Federation of the Blind (NFB)—the Court rejected Target’s argument that only physical stores were covered by anti-discrimination laws, ruling instead that certain aspects of Target’s virtual space—target.com— are subject to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and California state law.

NFB and University of California Berkeley blind student Bruce Sexton brought the lawsuit, contending that Target’s website violates the ADA as well as California anti-discrimination laws by failing to include, among other things, “alt-text”—which screen readers use to vocalize a description of an image to a blind computer user. The plaintiffs allege that these and other access barriers prevent blind customers from purchasing products online, locating retail stores, refilling prescriptions, or printing coupons to redeem at stores.

Target argued that the plaintiffs’ case should be dismissed, but the Court disagreed, saying that anti-discrimination laws do apply to websites such as target.com.

You can also find Laura Parker’s USA Today story on the lawsuit (re-published on the Arizona  Republic’s website) here.

--Richard Morrison

Better Halloween Through Science

It turns out that Monsanto, the occasionally controversial biotech company, is hard at work on more than just wheat and maize. They're also experimenting with how to improve other crops like...pumpkins:

[Monsanto scientist Bill] Johnson said customers want deep orange colors and dark green stems that don't snap off when you use them to carry the pumpkin. His job is to breed varieties with those qualities with other strains that are resistant to certain viruses or the dreaded powdery mildew.

 

Monsanto has thousands of breeding lines of pumpkin stock, Johnson said. Most [of] the work is done in California and Florida greenhouses using traditional breeding techniques of mating the best plants with one another over generations.

 

We don’t always realize it, but even as we go about our day-to-day life, there are people striving to make our pumpkin stems greener, sturdier and spookier. Bless those people. Of course, that isn’t the only Halloween connection going on:

 

Monsanto's critics call genetically engineered crops Frankenfoods. In spite of the natural appeal such a label might have for Halloween sales, Johnson said there aren't any plans to splice pumpkin genes.

 

“It's not something that's on the radar right now,” he said.

 

A reasonable choice on Monsanto’s part, I think. For the back story on biotech foods and their public reputation, see Greg and Henry’s book, The Frankenfood Myth: How Protest and Politics Threaten the Biotech Revolution (Praeger, 2004).

--Richard Morrison

Bean Counters Caucus in DC

The American Financial Services Association is holding its 90th annual meeting here in Washington this week, and attendees are tackling a number of challenges including the threat of identity theft to customers, the multiple levels of regulatory control over member companies and calls for the industry to "do good" in addition to doing good business.

A lot of these are issues CEI has worked on as well. For more, see Wayne and Brooke's paper on identity theft, Wayne's latest installment of 10,000 Commandments on regulatory overkill, Isaac's take on "corporate social responsibility" and business do-gooders, and John's work on financial regulation in general at the Center for Entrepreneurship.

One particualr highlight for those attending the conference today - our friend Walter Williams will be giving the lunch keynote address "The Role of Government in a Free Society." I assume it'll be the shortest speech of the week.

--Richard Morrison