I surrender

Username:	Password:
Forgot your password?	Remember Me

Our Executive Branch Schizophrenia On Content
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/12/bidens-ip-roundtable-brings-together-big-content-fbi.ars

There is a sad schizophrenia within the "unified executive." The executive branch cares deeply about getting broadband to everyone and revolutionizing our lives thereby. But they keep hearing voices about how broadband is a dangerous tool of piracy that, unless loaded with all manner of protections to fight those criminals spelled c-u-s-t-o-m-e-r-s, will destroy all that is good and noble in America.

Link Harvest: Hollywood Revenue to Hit $10 bn
http://www.thewrap.com/article/domestic-bo-shatters-revenue-record-11626

Ah, the logic of "piracy." When revenue is down, it's the fault of them damn pirates, when it's up, think how much more we could have made. Always a crisis, unsupported by evidence of actual damage, and impervious to any evidence that "piracy" not only does not impact sales, it may increase sales.

Link Harvest: Benjamin Stuart Broadcast Paper. International Coordination Links
Benjamin Stuart has just been appointed FCC Scholar In Residence. Focus is clearly on spectrum, with his latest paper putting him firmly in the anti-tv camp.
http://www.tvnewscheck.com/uploads/files/benjaminpaper.pdf
CV http://www.law.duke.edu/fac/cv/benjamin.pdf

At some point, I am going to need to write a systemic demolition of this mantra that auctioning spectrum puts it to its "highest best use." There is a wealth of evidence that this is simply not true empirically. At best, it gives exclusive access to whoever at the moment can extract the highest value and outbid competitors -- which is really not a very good proxy.

On the plus side, the U.S. has updated and improved its spectrum coordination protocols with Mexico.
http://www.fcc.gov/ib/sand/agree/

This will be a help as we expand use of the spectrum for new services, such as the broadcast white spaces.

Link Harvest: Case against New Moon "Pirate" Dropped
After spending 2 days in jail, the Illinois prosecutors decide not to press charges against a woman filming her sister's B-Day party at an Illinois theater showing of New Moon. Guess the system works.
http://www.thewrap.com/article/case-against-accused-new-moon-pirate-dropped-11650

Agave99 Sponsors "Mizvah Crusade" With "Kosher Shot Girls"
http://whitetrashbbq.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-hanukkah.html

Martin Silver, President of Agave99, the certified Kosher tequila, has hired 8 scantily clad "kosher shot girls" to engage in a "mitzvah crusade" to bring kosher tequila shots to the masses. I presume it is not only the nes that will be pirsumed.

I'm as filled with national pride as a Native American at an Atlanta Braves game watching the crowd do a tomahawk chop.

Addendum: I'm annoyed at myself for missing the obvious joke. Clearly this is the mitzvah of pirsumei pritzah

Happy Birthday to lonebear
Happy Birthday to

lonebear! Many happy returns.

Mike Huckabee and Jon Stewart Are Right
In this clip, Stewart explores Huckabee's decision to grant clemency to Maurice Clemmens. Huckabee defends his decision by saying he made the best decision he could with the information at the time, and that he could have chosen to never grant clemency as the safer move -- but that would result in harsh punishment for those who deserve clemency (one should recall that former President George Bush was criticized for his parsimonious use of clemency and pardon power as both governor of TX and President). Stewart offers that too many on the left seize the opportunity for payback and ignore the consequences. Both are right, in my opinion.

I know some have seized on Huckabee's reliance on the recommendations of Christian ministers as a factor in his clemency decisions. It is certainly a legitimate criticism of Huckabee if, in fact, he was unduly swayed by sympathy for co-religionists or if he exercised harsher judgment against those in similar circumstances who had not been born again. Huckabee's record, however, appears to support the claim that he generally considered the operation of the justice system in Arkansas too harsh and that he used his prerogative as governor to reduce sentences to match circumstances in cases that did not involve acts of religious contrition.

In the interview, Huckabee lays out factors that influenced him and why he would make the same decision again: the youth of the offender, the apparent undue harshness of the sentence in light of the actual offense, and the fact that he was reducing the sentence to what he considered appropriate for the offense not pardoning the offense. If Huckabee let his sympathy for an apparently repentant Christian tip the scales, it appears to have been only one element in a list of factors that he applied consistently in other cases.

For a system to work, we must accept that sometimes predictions about the future will be wrong, sometimes tragically so. Huckabee was not responsible for the Willy Horton ads. He made what appears to have been a reasonable decision, and has the courage to defend it. Jon Stewart is equally right to observe why progressives should resist the urge to let schadenfreude get the better of us.

Clearing Broadcast Bands While Protecting White Spaces
This is my true wonkiness at work. I wish I could do more of this stuff and less network neutrality.
http://www.wetmachine.com/totsf/item/1757

3.65 GHz Band Equipment Uses Full 50 MHz; At Last My Work Here Is Finished
According to this announcement, Airspan has received certification to use the full 50 MHz of the 3.65 GHz band allocation. That'll be Greek to most reading this (worse, as I think some who can read Greek on my f'list won't understand this). Suffice it to say that it is a final validation of something I pushed for at the FCC and won (primarily with the help of Sascha Meinrath) over considerable resistance from the WiMAX posse lead by Intel.

I'm too optimistic to think this finally lays to rest the question of whether equipment manufacturers will invest enough in unlicensed technology to make unlicensed allocation worthwhile -- which was the big sticking point institutionally with the Wireless Bureau at the FCC. But it helps for future arguments for the "licensed lite" approach.

I'm really finding it hard
To imagine why people believe crap like this. A mayor is saying Obama scheduled his speech on Afghanistan to preempt A Charlie Brown Xmass Special and that therefore he is a Muslim and unfit to be President?
http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2009/dec/04/mayor-fires-at-obama-online/

And you don't see why this makes you sound like an idiot and discredits the broader Republican party?