Day: May 23, 2002

Plugging the Analog Hole

No, this isn’t alt.sex.stereos, it’s even worse — it turns out the Motion Picture Association of America is intent on proving correct every paranoid Slashdotter and Lawrence Lessig devote with a proposal to regulate analog-to-digital converters. Cory Doctorow is all over this at the EFF’s Consensus at Lawyerpoint blog. According to Doctorow:

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed the “Content Protection Status Report” with the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, laying out its plan to remake the technology world to suit its own ends. The report calls for regulation of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), generic computing components found in scientific, medical and entertainment devices. Under its proposal, every ADC will be controlled by a “cop-chip” that will shut it down if it is asked to assist in converting copyrighted material — your cellphone would refuse to transmit your voice if you wandered too close to the copyrighted music coming from your stereo.

Don’t take his word for it though, read the MPAA’s report (PDF) right from the Judiciary Committee’s web site which reads, in part,

In order to help plug the hole, watermark detectors would be required in all devices that perform analog to digital conversions.

I don’t like to swear here, but this warrants it — Holy Shit, do these people realize what they are proposing? Do these morons even think through their idiotic proposals? Doctorow highlights some of the problems,

Virtually everything in our world is copyrighted or trademarked by someone, from the facades of famous sky-scrapers to the background music at your local mall. If ADCs are constrained from performing analog-to-digital conversion of all watermarked copyrighted works, you might end up with a cellphone that switches itself off when you get within range of the copyrighted music on your stereo; a camcorder that refuses to store your child’s first steps because he is taking them within eyeshot of a television playing a copyrighted cartoon; a camera that won’t snap your holiday moments if they take place against the copyrighted backdrop of a chain store such as Starbucks, which forbids on-premises photography because its fixtures are proprietary works.

And that’s for starts. This is the sort of proposal that I’d chalk down to paranoid Slashdotters if it weren’t there in black and white on the Senate’s site. This proposal is the consumer electronic version of Mutual Assured Destruction — if the MPAA succeeds in that dream it will mean a complete end to the sort of consumer electronics American consumers are so fond of.

This proposal is simple insanity. Better to just ditch copyrights outright if this is the alternative.

What to Do About Malawi?

People in Malawi want money and food from you and I — in fact they might die if they do not receive it. Unfortunately, whether or not to provide them with those resources is not quite so straightforward.

The famine conditions that Malawi is currently experiencing are no accident. They were largely brought about by a corrupt government with a callous disregard for human life.

Last summer it was obvoius that Malawi’s maize crops were far below what would be required to feed the nation. But for political reasons, the government of Malawi refused to declare a food emergency. In fact, the government claimed, Malawi had plenty of food. Just to prove how much food Malawi had, it sold part of its maize reserves to Kenya.

Now people are dying of hunger in Malawi. The government finally got around to declaring a food emergency in February 2002, by which time it was too late — donor countries had largely allocated money and food elsewhere.

Now in some cities about one person a day is dying of starvation. Without food aid from the developed world, that could turn into tens of thousands of deaths very soon.

Should we give them the aid? Should we be concerned about reports that politicians in Malawi skimmed off some of those maize reserves and held them off the market, waiting for the price to rise significantly?

Great Britain recently announced it would send more aid to the African nation. So far the United States has not made any similar announcement. What are the moral obligations (if any) on this sort of self-inflicted human disaster?

Another Sept. 11 Myth Debunked

Thanks to Bill Herbert for pointing to this Slate story that debunks a central claim about alleged terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.

All of the media coverage about Moussaoui has claimed that his behavior was suspicious because he wanted to learn how to fly a plane but did not want to learn how to take off or land — implying that he was training to pilot a plane into the World Trade Center.

It turns out that widely reported claim is false. According to writer Kate Taylor, “The facts are just the opposite: Moussaoui told his Eagan, Minn., instructors he wanted to learn only how to take off and land.”

According to Taylor, the FBI corrected the erroneous claim in a Nov. 17, 2001 meeting with reporters, but the orginal reports have stuck in the minds of the media (Taylor notes that Maureen Dowd last Sunday repeated the claim that Moussaoui did not want to learn how to take off or land).

Source:

Did the Media Misreport Zacarias Moussaoui’s Suspicious Activities? Kate Taylor, Slate, May 21, 2002.

Study Highlights Extent of Corruption in Russia

Corruption is a major problem facing developing countries and a couple of recent reports suggest that Russia may lead the world in the bribery business.

This month Transparency International reported that companies in Russia are more likely to pay bribes to officials than in any other emerging market country in the world. That report was followed up a couple days later by a report from the Indem think tank highlighting the staggering toll that bribery takes on the Russian economy.

Indem’s study estimated that bribes add up to almost 12 percent of the total Russian gross domestic product — a staggering $36 billion a year.

Almost all of that is paid by businesses, who spent an estimated $33.5 billion a year in 2000 and 2001. Bribes made up about 10 percent of the cost of all business transactions in Russia.

Individuals paid about $2.8 billion in bribes, generally in order to procure “free” government services such as health care or access to education.

That is a level of corruption that is difficult to fathom. Clearly Russia will have a difficult time achieving decent economic growth with this hidden corruption tax and lack of transparency in its economy.

Source:

Study: Bribery a $36Bln Business. Valeria Korchagina, Moscow Times, May 22, 2002.