Category: Law
It seems like there won’t be another Mickey Mouse copyright extension act
…advocates of a new copyright term extension bill wouldn’t be able to steamroll opponents the way they did 20 years ago. Any term extension proposal would face a well-organized and well-funded opposition with significant grassroots support.
“After the SOPA fight, Hollywood likely knows that the public would fight back,” wrote Daniel Nazer, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, in an email to Ars. “I suspect that Big Content knows it would lose the battle and is smart enough not to fight.”
“I haven’t seen any evidence that Big Content companies plan to push for another term extension,” Nazer added. “This is an election year, so if they wanted to get a big ticket like that through Congress, you would expect to see them laying the groundwork with lobbying and op-eds.”
Of course, copyright interests might try to slip a copyright term extension into a must-pass bill in hopes opponents wouldn’t notice until it was too late. But Rose doesn’t think that would work.
Here is the full piece, via someone in my Twitter feed sorry I forget.
Against teacher collective bargaining
Our estimates suggest that teacher collective bargaining worsens the future labor market outcomes of students: living in a state that has a duty-to-bargain law for all 12 grade-school years reduces earnings by $800 (or 2%) per year and decreases hours worked by 0.50 hours per week. The earnings estimate indicates that teacher collective bargaining reduces earnings by $199.6 billion in the US annually. We also find evidence of lower employment rates, which is driven by lower labor force participation, as well as reductions in the skill levels of the occupations into which workers sort. The effects are driven by men and nonwhites, who experience larger relative declines in long-run outcomes.
That is from a new paper by Michael Lovenheim and Alexander Willen, via Noah Smith.
The Minimum Wage, EITC, and Criminal Recidivism
From Amanda Y. Agan and Michael D. Makowsky, here is an new and important approach:
For recently released prisoners, the minimum wage and the availability of state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITCs) can influence both their ability to find employment and their potential legal wages relative to illegal sources of income, in turn affecting the probability they return to prison. Using administrative prison release records from nearly six million offenders released between 2000 and 2014, we use a difference-in-differences strategy to identify the effect of over two hundred state and federal minimum wage increases, as well as 21 state EITC programs, on recidivism. We find that the average minimum wage increase of 8% reduces the probability that men and women return to prison within 1 year by 2%. This implies that on average the wage effect, drawing at least some ex-offenders into the legal labor market, dominates any reduced employment in this population due to the minimum wage. These reductions in re-convictions are observed for the potentially revenue generating crime categories of property and drug crimes; prison reentry for violent crimes are unchanged, supporting our framing that minimum wages affect crime that serves as a source of income. The availability of state EITCs also reduces recidivism, but only for women. Given that state EITCs are predominantly available to custodial parents of minor children, this asymmetry is not surprising. Framed within a simple model where earnings from criminal endeavors serve as a reservation wage for ex-offenders, our results suggest that the wages of crime are on average higher than comparable opportunities for low-skilled labor in the legal labor market.
But two days ago I ran into Amanda and family at Penang restaurant in Philadelphia…
Policing nature
Lasers are to be deployed against Britain’s biggest bird of prey to stop them taking sheep.
Farmers will be able to apply for licences to fire the beams on to hillsides on the west coast of Scotland to discourage sea eagles from areas where they are believed to be feeding on lambs. The method is being trialled by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) and its partners in response to concerns among the crofting and farming communities.
White-tailed sea eagles were reintroduced to Scotland in the 1970s and the population stands at an estimated 106 breeding pairs. It is thought that the figure could double within ten years.
According to sheep farmers and crofters, the birds are not only taking large numbers of lambs but threatening rural livelihoods. Laser licences will be granted to farmers in areas where lambs have been taken by the birds.
The beams create patterns that disorientate the birds and make them fly away. The lasers cause the birds no harm and deter other predators from preying on farm animals.
That is from the London Times. And from Jonathan Franzen.
Security breach in India?
In 2010 India started scanning personal details like names, addresses, dates of birth, mobile numbers, and more, along with all 10 fingerprints and iris scans of its 1.3 billion citizens, into a centralized government database called Aadhaar to create a voluntary identity system. On Wednesday this database was reportedly breached.
The Tribune, a local Indian newspaper, published a report claiming its reporters paid Rs. 500 (approximately $8) to a person who said his name was Anil Kumar, and who they contacted through WhatsApp. Kumar was able to create a username and password that gave them access to the demographic information of nearly 1.2 billion Indians who have currently enrolled in Aadhaar, simply by entering a person’s unique 12-digit Aadhaar number. Regional officers working with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the government agency responsible for Aadhaar, told the Tribune the access was “illegal,” and a “major national security breach.”
A second report, published on Thursday by the Quint, an Indian news website, revealed that anyone can create an administrator account that lets them access the Aadhaar database as long as they’re invited by an existing administrator.
Here is the full story, via Brian Slesinsky.
Collective Action Kills Innovation
Oregon has just passed a law that gives gas stations in rural counties the option of allowing self-pumping (in some rural counties this is allowed only between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m.!) As you have probably heard, this incomplete lifting of an absurd restriction has some Oregonians upset and afraid.
“I don’t even know HOW to pump gas and I am 62, native Oregonian . . . I say NO THANKS! I don’t like to smell like gasoline!” one woman wrote.
“No! Disabled, seniors, people with young children in the car need help. Not to mention getting out of your car with transients around and not feeling safe. This is a very bad idea. Grrr,” another woman wrote.
“I’ve lived in this state all my life and I REFUSE to pump my own gas . . . This [is] a service only qualified people should perform. I will literally park at the pump and wait until someone pumps my gas.”
Most of the rest of the America–where people pump their own gas everyday without a second thought–is having a good laugh at Oregon’s expense. But I am not here to laugh because in every state but one where you can pump your own gas you can’t open a barbershop without a license. A license to cut hair! Ridiculous. I hope people in Alabama are laughing at the rest of America. Or how about a license to be a manicurist? Go ahead Connecticut, laugh at the other states while you get your nails done. Buy contact lens without a prescription? You have the right to smirk British Columbia!
All of the Oregonian complaints about non-professionals pumping gas–“only qualified people should perform this service”, “it’s dangerous” and “what about the jobs”–are familiar from every other state, only applied to different services.
Once we got familiar with self-pumping it didn’t seem like a problem, but it’s surprising we ever got self-pumping as it would have been easy to scare people into voting no. After all, the case for trained gas pumpers is far stronger than for licensed barbers. Perhaps we were less risk averse and complacent in the past. I don’t think we could build the Hoover Dam today either.
It’s easier to scare than to inform and we fear losses more than we desire gains so collective decision-making defaults toward stasis.
We have innovations like Uber and Airbnb and many others only because entrepreneurs didn’t have to ask for permission. Had we put these ideas to the vote they would have been defeated. Allow almost anyone with a car to drive customers around town? Stranger danger! Let any house be turned into a hotel? Not in my neighborhood! Once the innovations were brought into existence, the masses saw the benefits but they would not have seen those benefits if the idea had been put to a vote. Demonstration is more powerful than imagination.
More and more, however, the sphere of individual action shrinks and that of collective action grows. Thus, I do not laugh at the Oregonians and their fear of gas pumping freedom. We are all Oregonians in one form or another.
Why Spielberg’s *The Post* bugged me (full of spoilers, but if you already know the history…)
The movie centers around Daniel Ellsberg’s revelation of the Pentagon Papers and their publication in The New York Times and most of all The Washington Post, the center of the dramatic tension. The courts rule for the newspapers (and ultimately Ellsberg) and Spielbergian triumphalism reigns. Yet so many of those liberties have reverted to the state — had he stuck around, would Edward Snowden have received a public trial before a court of law? You may believe Snowden is a different case (read Gladwell), but shouldn’t a public court be deciding that? The feel-good tone of The Post also would not match a movie about a minor American military victory in the Vietnam of 1966, given what followed. Does historical context matter so little? Post-Obama, can newspapers protect their anonymous sources in matters of national security?
I usually don’t mind when movies play fast and loose with the truth, as is done in almost every biopic or history. (They didn’t actually blow up that Death Star, they merely damaged it.) But this case is different. The whole theme of this film is about standing up for the truth even when commercial considerations dictate otherwise. It then feels dishonest to give Katharine Graham (Meryl Streep) a wildly overblown role, as this portrait does. But it does make for a better story and presumably a higher-grossing movie.
For an artwork that pretends to defend freedom of the press, the underlying message is remarkably Trumpian in an almost Straussian manner. The press collude, dine and party with leaders, and refuse to reveal their crimes and scandals, all to receive “access” and to be flattered. Every now and then their need for reputation, and the desire for a broader national market, spurs them to “turn on” a president gone astray. “The people” don’t have much of a say and fake news is everywhere.
The sadder commercial reality is that the first quarter to third of the movie is sophisticated and then it falls into good guys vs. bad guys. It’s not smart enough to be Strauss.
It feels as if every actor or actress in the movie is a “grizzled veteran” of some kind or another.
The scenes of newspaper and print technology will go down as some of the finest cinema of our time.
What should I ask Matt Levine?
Yes, the Matt Levine who writes for Bloomberg. The “the only greeting you need is “Only you can do what you do!”” Matt Levine.
That one (not the other one). I’ll be having a Conversation with him, so what should I ask?
Did you know by the way that Matt can speak Latin?
The robot regulatory culture that is San Francisco
The city recently cracked down on delivery robots — autonomous devices such as those tested by Yelp’s Eat24 service last year, that travel on the sidewalk to distribute food and other essentials to customers. New rules limit them to a speed of three miles an hour, and require a human operator nearby. Moreover, only nine delivery robots can be tested in the city at any time, dashing the hopes of start-ups that had envisioned fleets of self-driving bots taking hot pizza to hungry millennials.
And:
The pet shelter initially reported good results from the security robot, with fewer car break-ins. However, controversy arose over its powers of surveillance, and at one point it was kidnapped. Unknown assailants covered the robot with a tarp and smeared barbecue sauce on its sensors to block them. The president of the pet shelter at first alleged the perpetrators came from a nearby homeless encampment but later said she wasn’t sure.
That is from Leslie Hook at the FT.
Is effective solar power further away than we had thought?
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one excerpt:
The first disquieting sign is that solar companies are spending only about 1 percent of their revenue on research and development, well below average for a potentially major industry. You might think that’s because things are going so great, but some major solar users may have already maxed out their technology. According to Sivaram’s estimates, four of the five most significant country users — Italy, Greece, Germany and Spain — have already seen solar energy flatten out in the range of 5 percent to 10 percent of total energy use. The fifth country, Japan, is only at 5 percent.
And:
A common view is that solar power will come into its own once batteries and other storage technologies make steady improvements. Yet Sivaram notes that lithium-ion batteries in particular are not well-designed for storage across days, weeks and months. Also note that about 95 percent of global energy storage capacity is from hydroelectric power, a discouraging sign for the notion that solar energy storage is on a satisfactory track.
And:
Solar energy has great potential for emerging economies, but some very basic preconditions are not in place. India, for instance, would need to end its kerosene and electricity subsidies. Freer trade in solar technologies is found in Tanzania and Rwanda but not always in West Africa.
My column draws heavily on Varun Sivaram’s forthcoming Taming the Sun: Innovations to Harness Solar Energy and Power the Planet, Amazon link here. This book is full of useful information, a pleasure to read, and more generally a model for how to write about science, technology, and policy. It will definitely make my 2018 “best books of the year” list.
Tax reform sentences to ponder
Income categories are paying almost exactly the same share of federal taxes as before. Millionaires actually pay a tiny bit larger share in the new bill.
That is from John Cochrane, drawing on Greg Mankiw, with the source being the Joint Committee on Taxation. I would say that media coverage of this bill — which does have many objectionable features — has been somewhat less than ideal, most of all on the issue of redistribution. Overall, claims about redistribution — from either side — are much more likely to be wrong or misleading than claims about most other topics.
My Law and Literature reading list 2018
The New English Bible, Oxford Study Edition [not all of it]
Guantanamo Diary, by Mohamedou Ould Slahi
Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory
Glaspell’s Trifles, available on-line.
Year’s Best SF 9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, used or Kindle edition is recommended
The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories, by Franz Kafka, edited and translated by Joachim Neugroschel.
In the Belly of the Beast, by Jack Henry Abbott.
Sherlock Holmes, The Complete Novels and Stories, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, volume 1, also on-line.
I, Robot, by Isaac Asimov.
Juan Gabriel Vasquez, Reputations
The Pledge, Friedrich Durrenmatt.
Ian McEwan, The Children Act
Shakespeare, The Tempest, Folger edition
Margaret Atwood, Hag-Seed
Curtis Dawkins, The Graybar Hotel
Movies: To be determined.
How to think about 2018 — predictions for the year to come
That is the topic of my latest Bloomberg column, here is one bit:
The onset of a new year brings plenty of predictions, and so I will hazard one: Many of the biggest events of 2018 will be bound together by a common theme, namely the collision of the virtual internet with the real “flesh and blood” world. This integration is likely to steer our daily lives, our economy, and maybe even politics to an unprecedented degree.
For instance, the coming year will see a major expansion of the “internet of things”…
And:
But whatever your prediction for the future, this integration of real and virtual worlds will either make or break bitcoin and other crypto-assets.
And:
So far the process-oriented and Twitter-oriented foreign policies have coexisted, however uneasily. I see 2018 as the year where these two foreign policies converge in some manner. Either Trump’s tweets end up driving actual foreign policy and its concrete, “boots on the ground” realization, or the real-world policy prevails and the tweets become far less relevant.
There is much more at the link, including a discussion of cyberwar, China and facial surveillance technologies, and the French attempt to ban smartphones at schools.
Canada facts of the day
The estimate comes from Canada’s bureau of statistics, which studied marijuana consumption between 1960 and 2015.
The government has promised to research the drug’s affect on the economy and society as it ramps up its plans to legalise cannabis next summer.
The report also found that use has gone up over the years as it has become more popular with adults.
In the 1960s and 1970s cannabis was primarily consumed by young people, according to Statistics Canada.
But in 2015, only 6% of 15-17 year olds smoked cannabis recreationally, compared to two thirds of adults over 25.
Here is the story, via Mark Thorson.
Abolish the penny?
There is the danger that prices will be rounded up more than down. A 19-year-old Canadian, Christina Cheung, has done a study of penny abolition in Canada and here are her findings:
She found 60.8 per cent of grocery store prices ended in 8 or 9.
Cheung put those numbers through a computer simulation program that generated hypothetical purchases.
“I simulated [grocery purchases] depending on what province you’re in, what tax rate you have, and how many items you buy,” she said.
She excluded the volume of credit and debit card transactions, which aren’t affected by penny rounding.
She then made a discovery: a typical grocery store would earn an additional $157 of revenue from rounding each year.
All together, she found grocery stores in Canada yield an additional $3.27 million dollars over a year.
The paper will be published in Atlantic Economic Journal. Here is the full story by Roshini Nair, via Michelle Dawson.