Recently in DC Category

...but it's a start.

I swear, I'll chill on the music for a while.

Some quick dispatches from Congress Daily PM:

The European Union threatened to lodge a complaint at the World Trade Organization over U.S. laws that prohibit gambling Web sites, saying the rules may break global rules by discriminating against companies based in the bloc, Bloomberg News reported. U.S. authorities have targeted European companies for operating gaming sites, said the European Commission, which today announced an investigation into the U.S. practice. The United States has not taken action against domestic companies that offer similar services, said the commission, the European Union's executive arm. "The U.S. has the right to address legitimate public policy concerns relating to Internet gambling, but discrimination against EU companies cannot be part of the policy mix," EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said in a statement. The U.S. law banning Americans from wagering on gaming Web sites was ruled illegal by the WTO in 2004.

Next, Joe Barton (R-TX) along with John McCain (R-AZ) are quietly trying to kill off the Universal Service Fund, which provides phone service to all Americans, by "capping" the amount it can raise from long distance access fees, as well as changing the source of its' funding to individual consumers, making it a political hot potato. CongressDaily's David Hatch reports:

House Energy and Commerce ranking member Joe Barton, R-Texas, one of the fiercest critics of the $7 billion universal service program, is quietly drafting legislation to permanently cap the federal fund, which subsidizes telecom and Internet connections for citizens, hospitals, libraries and schools in rural- and low-income areas. Committee staffers said the bill is intended to spark debate and influence any legislative action on the topic in 2009 after a new administration takes control. They did not provide a timeframe for the measure's introduction. Barton is preparing his bill as the FCC grapples over revisions to the fund and Energy and Commerce Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee Chairman Edward Markey, D-Mass., plans hearings later this year on revamping universal service.

The FCC is seeking to impose a temporary cap, but Barton would go further with a permanent ceiling, a move certain to draw the ire of the fund's many proponents on Capitol Hill, particularly on the Senate Commerce Committee. Nevertheless, some prominent lawmakers have championed the idea. In 2006, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Senate Commerce chairman and now the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, co-authored an amendment that would have capped a key portion of the fund assisting rural carriers. It was eventually withdrawn amid wrangling over the issue.

Get Angry.

Plagiarism is pretty darned low.  At the risk of getting admonished by Andrew for lack of a proper introduction, here's the scoop from CNN.com

 

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A senior White House official admitted Friday that he copied large sections of another writer's work for an essay appearing in a Fort Wayne, Indiana, newspaper.

In an e-mail to The News-Sentinel, Tim Goeglein, special assistant to the president and deputy director of public liaison, apologizes, saying, "It is true. I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses."

Goeglein goes on to say he has reached out to the author, Jeffery Hart, whose 1998 writings in the Dartmouth Review he copied nearly verbatim.

"I have written to Jeff to apologize, and do so categorically and without exception," he said.

The White House press office provided the e-mail to CNN. Spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said the White House was made aware of Goeglein's column and actions Friday morning.

"It's not acceptable," Lawrimore said. "And we're disappointed in Tim's actions."

Lawrimore would not speculate on whether the plagiarism would affect Goeglein's job at the White House, adding "we will certainly keep you updated as we learn more."

 

 

There is a world of difference between what I just did there (and what we do often) and plagiarism.  What I put in here from CNN is clearly attributed, with a verbal acknowledgement, a link back to the original content, and even a change in format to indicate that the material is from a different source.

 

In an age where information changes hands with incomprehensible speed and people react to reactions to reaction to the original content, it is more vital than ever that we give credit to the creator(s) of said content and make it clear what is original and what isn't.  Every instance of plagiarism calls into question the credibility of an entire industry.

Eager to nail a corporate head to the wall in the mold of his predecessor Elliot Spitzer, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has (according to AP, via The Register) has issued a subpoena for traffic data for Comcast's New York subscribers, despite the company's relatively small footprint in the state.

Cuomo may be a small fish for the company to worry about. When FCC Chairman Martin says things like

"While networks may have reasonable practices, they obviously cannot operate without taking some reasonable steps...but that does not mean they can arbitrarily block access to certain services."

you know you might have a problem. Martin (R), whose tenure at the FCC has been known for fines as massive as his love for deregulation, may join fellow Commissioners and usual suspects Michael Copps (D) and Jonathan Adelstein (D) in issuing an official order and possibly fining the nation's largest Cable TV provider and ISP for their throttling of BitTorrent traffic and subsequent attempts to cover-up or obfuscate the issue.

Martin has indicated his unwavering support for competition in all arenas, and although one would suspect he would naturally side with the business, the fact that Comcast operates a "competing" Video service throws a wrinkle into what would otherwise be a clear-cut "reasonable network management" practice. Also, Martin and several of his colleagues were adamant in their desire to encourage more disclosure and transparency in broadband subscription limitations.

 

Meanwhile, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has sued the U.S. Department of Justice. Again. They're curious to hear about discussions, negotiations or conversations between Google and Jayne Horvath, who was USDOJ's first "chief privacy and civil liberties officer" in 2006, when Google fought off a subpoena for a massive amount of search records. In an extreme cross-country case of "DC revolving door," Horvath is now Google's senior privacy counsel.

According to EFF counsel David Sobel, "

Google has an unprecedented ability to collect and retain very personal information about millions of Americans, and the DOJ and other law enforcement agencies have developed a huge appetite for that information...We want to know what discussions DOJ's top privacy lawyer had with Google before leaving her government position to join the company."

I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means, and I'm certainly used to revolving door type moves like this. I can understand the EFF's concern, but perhaps they doth protest too much?

They've filed a FOIA request about this, six months ago. Given the DOJ's normal FOIA time lag, maybe it would be better to just ask Google. Heck, if you want a bigger headline, sue them! At least it would be more than EFF's business as usual.

(FYI, this article is obviously, fictional. It is a first in a series of depictions of "worst-case scenarios" that can and will befall new media companies that ignore Washington at their peril. Make sure to read the whole thing. Got a problem? That's why I have comments).

The Washington Times-Post-Tribune, June 4th, 2009

WASHINGTON, DC - 25 year old Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of the popular "social networking" site Facebook sat stone-faced in the ornate room surrounded by angry men his father's age and older, most of whom he had never heard of or seen until he received a subpoena two weeks ago. He is not alone. Behind him sit a team of lawyers hired hastily to defend him and his company against criminal negligence charges, lawsuits, and a whole host of legal and regulatory battles.

On this humid morning, the gavel was held by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Not long ago, the very chair Zuckerberg sat in had been occupied by a much bigger star who was brought to earth by these mere mortal Congressmen. Baseball legend Roger Clemens, who Zuckerberg had seen pitch at Fenway Park during his time as a student at Harvard, had sat and absorbed round after round of scathing criticism from Committee members who excorieated him over his alleged use of Human Growth Hormone and other performance enhancing drugs, while Clemens could only stammer and give contradictory answers when Members confronted him with records of his previous sworn statements.

Zuckerberg has a busy week. Besides Waxman's Committee, he is scheduled to appear before the Federal Trade Commission about Facebook allegedly selling user data in violation of their privacy policies and Federal law. Later this week, he'll sit in front of the legendary war hero Daniel Inouye (D-HI) when the Senate Commerce Committee plans to grill him about his privacy practices and his targeted advertsing program powered by Microsoft, which is an investor in Facebook. Down the hall in the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room, Zuckerberg will answer to Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-PA). Right now, both Waxman and Specter want to know why Facebook didn't do more to keep their "high school" site safer when his site famously "opened up" in 2007, taking Facebok from a directory of college students and some corporate employees to becoming a worldwide network which intended to compete with News Corporation's MySpace. In fact, at the table across the isle from him is Chris DeWolfe, Zuckerberg's counterpart at MySpace. DeWolfe had weathered this storm before and was now in Washington not as a cautionary tale, but as an expert in opening social networks while protecting users from criminals of all sorts.

These men have reason to ask some questions. In May of 2009, three 15 year old girls from the same town in the suburbs of Philadelphia were abducted without warning, their bodies later found raped, beaten and drowned in the Schukyll River. The girls didn't know each other, but they did know one man, a recent college graduate who trained on Philadelphia's Boathouse Row, where all three girls spent time every summer at 3 separate boat clubs, but all took private sculling lessons from the suspect. The "killer" connection? They were all his "friend" on Facebook.

Zuckerberg became more and more nervous, biting his lip and turning around to whisper to the team of lawyers behind him whole Waxman calmly had DeWolfe describe the steps MySpace had taken over the years after a rash of hghly publicised incidents where child abductions and other crimes had been perpetuated using his site. DeWolfe explained that while they couldn't control everything that went on, they had an entire staff devoted to investigating complaints, and even regularly cross-checked names of users against "registered sex offender" lists. MySpace's CEO noted that his company had been "under a microscope for years." DeWolfe added,

"We realized we were a target and  put considerable resources into making our site as safe as we possibly could, even when we as technology experts thought that what we were doing was unneccesary or impractical. We wanted to show that not only did we care about who was using our site, but that we also were willing to go the extra mile to satisfy the concerns of people who might not understand what we do, or what our users, including their children do with our service, and we certainly didn't want anyone using what we thought was a great tool for such horrible purposes. We even worked with Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the Mozilla foundation to develop "parental controls" for MySpace which integrated into users' web browsers, so parents could restrict what their computers could do on the site."

DeWolfe took another shot at Zuckerberg, adding that "we knew some users might not like the changes, but we felt we had a responsibility to the people who ue our site to make sure that users of all ages, parents, children, and really anyone could feel safe about being part of our community."

Zuckerberg certainly had a lot to answer for, and could not say he did not see this coming. In late 2007, Facebook was forced by a revolt among their own userbase to restrict their "beacon" feature, which let people's "friends" know when they bought things at online retailers like Amazon, or booked plane tickets online. Before that, they backtracked after introducing an overhaul of their site including the "news feed" feature, which prompted a user "uprising" that received widespread press attention, and led Zuckerberg to personally apologize to the site's membership.

(click Read More below)

...side projects. Google's 20% time is well known. Alex Payne (better known as al3x) has written something nice about the value of having something to do besides work.

Sadly, in a place where the standard opening question in a bar is "so, what do you do?," side projects are often frowned upon. If you're an associate at a law firm, it might even be completely verboten, save for an approved pro bono project here and there. Many state bars require attorneys to provide a certain amount per year of free services, but aside from the rare academic or law review paper, most don't have time for outside projects in their chosen field.

Luckily for me, I'm not a lawyer, and I am generally free to work on my own interests on my own time. I can't help thinking how much things could change if this town were more open to allowing the hordes of brilliant, creative, educated people (my hometown of Bethesda, Maryland boats one of the most educated populations in the US) that flock here for public service to pursue their own ideas, and even use their creativity to improve what gets done, and even the process of how things get done around here and across the country.

Ok, so yesterday I (even before Drudge!) found out about the New York judge who decided that "Friending" someone on MySpace was a violation of an Order of Protection.

Because I'm such a darn nice guy, I'll quote the judge again, because I do think his ruling makes sense from the point of view of a guy who sits on a bench, hears cases, and reads law books.

"Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried, Grapple them unto thy soul with hoops of steel," the judge wrote, adding: "But not when an order of protection prohibits someone from communicating with another."

"While it is true," he also wrote, "that the person who receives the 'friend request' could simply deny the request to become 'friends,' that request was still a contact and 'no contact' was allowed by the order of the protection."

I am so very excited to go to SXSW Interactive next month. One of the reasons is that a keynote is being given by Mark Zuckerberg, the "boy genius" behind Facebook. I've written before about why I think people overvalue Zuckerberg and underestimate the massive exposure his company has to all sorts of Governmental actions, hearings, investigations, and whatnot. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook in 2008 is Bill Gates and Microsoft circa 1998.

Both MarkZ and BillG share a major mistake: as their companies attracted more attention through various PR gaffes, they didn't make earnest efforts to get their stories out in Washington. They figured the product was enough.

Facebook has already suffered through the disaster of a user revolt after the News Feed some time ago, the MoveOn.org inspired retooling of Beacon, and even worse, the recent NYT article about Facebook keeping your data "forever" after you try and delete your account, Do they have any real professionals telling their side and speaking the right language? No. They hire smart people, but they're California Smart, not DC Smart. So far, they've been lucky that no cute white girls have gone missing after using Facebook.

Microsoft had a great streak. They launched Windows 95 and got the whole world excited about computing. Then came the Browser Wars, during which they actually destroyed an entire company in the space of a few short years and reduced their two competitors in Operating System technology to obscurity through anticompetitive practices, and eventually got antitrust actions against them in the U.S. and the EU, one of which was ended by the Florida recount since the original judge was thrown off the case and the Bush DOJ settled for pretty much nothing. The EU one is ongoing and MS keeps losing appeals.

How did that happen? Well, despite news reports, consumer complaints, and all sorts of bad press, Microsoft had virtually no Washington presence for the longest time. Now they have one of the best lobbying operations in DC, as well as many in state capitals (see the ongoing ODF controversies in Massachusetts, etc).

Facebook (at this writing) has zero registered outside lobbyists, and their Washington presence is limited to a guy whose job it is to get political candidates to put their pages on there. Yet, they're constantly the subject of bad press. They faced a user revolt when they introduced the "news feed" feature last year. Recently, their Beacon feature was forced to be modified after MoveOn.org got a petition together, and the New York Times reported only days ago on how hard it is to get them to get rid of your data after you delete your account.

Zuckerberg, their "boy genius" CEO is profiled in the press as your typical start-up guy living on a mattress despite his estimate net worth of several billion since the company is privately held, and according to his own words during an awkward, stilted 60 Minutes appearance, will probably remain private at least 2008. While more "charismatic" (I use the term loosely) than BillG (who many have speculated suffers from a mild form of Asperger's Syndrome), they both share the trait of being completely tone-deaf when it comes to the way us "beltway insiders" look at technology companies we see as either violating the law, or just acting irresponsibly when there isn't a law to break.

Legislation, like nature, abhors a vacuum. If there is a perceived problem (think "predators on MySpace") than Congress, or the FCC, or the FTC, or whoever thinks they should do something, will do it, without thought to the unintended consequences that their action will trigger. Take child pornography laws, for instance. Everyone agrees that child porn is harmful, and abuse of children is abhorrent and reprehensible. On the other hand, these same laws force prosecutors to charge teenagers who forward drunk cellphone camera pictures around the internet under the same statutes that they prosecute those who hoard videos and photos documenting child abuse.

Of course, many "legislative initiatives" are fueled by media driven hysteria, which leads to bad hearings, (see Josh Green's take on the Roger Clemens hearings) driven by the sole desire to humiliate those who the Congress have done wrong, which in the worst instances can lead to the reactionary writing of bad laws sold with good PR, which of course invoke the law of unintended consequences.

Back to the New York judge and the unprecedented (but not unreasonable, which is simply my personal opinion as I Am Not A Lawyer) case of "Friending" as violating an Order of Protection.  In the press, the general public, and in technical circles, people love to talk about the differences between Facebook and MySpace, but mostly in terms of things like demographics, social network organization, openness to development and user interface. They're forgetting something.

MySpace has already been brought on bended knees before the authorities to avoid regulation. They've adopted policy after policy (however useless), issued press release after press release, and had their News Corporation execs appear with all sorts of law enforcement types who crowed gleefully as MySpace "purged itself of registered sex offenders," as if you could really do that.

Facebook, like its' interface, is clean. It has been spared the wild hysterics of local television news. It has not been featured on "To Catch a Predator" and it is not part of a major media conglomerate which like Roger Clemens, lawmakers would love to publicly humiliate. While they are still private, and while the boyish, not-quite-Rupert-Murdochian Zuckerberg is still the face of the company, they still have a chance to head off being known as the next  boogeyman.  They're a Google, not a Microsoft. People still believe they're a good company, with a smart young kid running things who makes innocent mistakes. They can have a goal of connecting communities and bringing people together, and they can have a great motto like Google's "Don't be evil."

There are other cautionary tales. YouTube  didn't think to partner with any content providers, or do anything to make themselves look like a useful and beneficial service for the general public as it gained popularity, and instead it got hit with a  gigantic lawsuit over Copyright Infringement as soon as it got bought by Google. A few letters to Big Media, and a good PR blitz with say, videos of missing children or putting short Public Service Announcements before random popular videos, and they could have saved themselves a ton of grief by casting themselves as the "good guys" instead of the "cool kids."

They should remember, however, that even Google was slammed by the late, great Congressman Tom Lantos just a year before his tragic death for contributing to censorship and vicariously aiding human rights abuses in China. Lantos, who survived the brutality of the Nazi Holocaust, had this to say to the group of executives from Google, Yahoo, Cisco and Microsoft:

"Your abhorrent actions in China are a disgrace...I simply don't understand how your corporate leadership sleeps at night."

The trick to avoiding the "gotcha" game in Washington is to get your story out before the other guy, and to always make sure you have a record of 100 good things to counter every bad thing. If you're a social networking startup, you're in danger. Join a coalition. Get your own efforts started. Think of ways to use your technology to partner with existing groups to do good. Think Red Cross, Salvation Army, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Hire someone who knows how to get the right people in and around Congress to know about the good things you are doing. There's even a Family Online Safety Initiative. Why haven't you joined it?
 

Do these kinds of things now before the sharks start to circle. Make them a real part of your business plan. You should want to be a "safe" online business as much as you'd want to be a "green business." You want the news cycles on your side, so there is no temptation for the media to make mountains of molehills, and even if some emmy-starved reporter wants to be the next Chris Hansen and finds some nutjob using your service for an isolated misdeed in some tangential way that he can exploit, even if of all the social networks on all the tubes on all the internets, some reporter saw some psycho walk into yours, the people in charge can realize that the one bad apple doesn't mean they have to chop down the tree.

Hey New Media, I'm talking to you! How about you talk to me.

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