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January 28, 2003
Vol. 6 No. 4
In this
issue:
1. Boies in the Attic
2. Getting to Database
3. Dreaming of Streamers
4. Quick Hits
5. New at Reason Online - Crank Hypocrisy
6. Reason's print
edition
7. News and
Events
Reason Express is made possible by a grant from The DBT Group, manufacturers of affordable, high-performance mainframe systems and productivity software.
It was inevitable that that the raucous glee with which anti-Microsoft techies cheered on the Justice Department's antitrust pursuit of the software giant would come back to haunt them. But who knew the karmic payback would be so literal?
Former anti-Microsoft bulldog David Boies has now been retained to put the screws to the Linux/Unix community. One branch of the Unix world -- SCO Group -- has Boies tracking down supposed violations of its proprietary versions of the business operation system.
It hasn't taken very long for professionals in the field to note that SCO's products haven't been very successful and that the legal route is a poor substitute for actually building something people want.
This, of course, is exactly the kind of thing which could be said -- and was, by some -- of Netscape, Sun, IBM, and the whole crew running to the feds over Microsoft's supposed violations. The point, then as now, is that bigfoot law is a tremendously clumsy thing to use to address the fluid market dynamics of the software industry.
For those who invited Boies into the techie boutique while he was at Justice, the sound you hear now is a large, masculine bovine trampling all your fine porcelain.
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/01/22/188234.shtml?tid=
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-981569.html?tag=fd_top
It has its origins in the creepy Total Information Awareness effort, and now stands to be run by the sometimes fabulously arrogant nannies at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That said, a federal database of health data need not run roughshod over civil liberties. There is some legitimate purpose being served here, and a chance -- a chance -- to build it in such a way that individuals remain protected.
The reality is that a great deal of medical data is already Hoovered up by governmental and quasi-governmental institutions. As a result, there's been a good deal of practice manipulating relevant data points -- age, sex, symptoms, treatment -- while losing the stuff that has no medical value, such as names and identifying numbers.
A database that had the very narrow goal of serving as an earlier warning system for a biological attack would fit a legitimate public health role. A pattern of patients turning up with sudden fevers and rashes within a few hours of each other could provide clues as to what the agent might be and the means of transmission. Such information could make combating such an attack easier. It might even deter one.
But there is the obvious risk, maybe even the likelihood, that such a database would be horribly abused and utterly ineffectual. There already is an aura of the silver bullet syndrome around the project, investing it with the purported power to fix everything. That is wrong and dangerous. Using medical data to fight terrorism is not going to be easy.
As the complexity of handling millions and millions of bits of info becomes evident, the temptation will be to off-load that complexity to someone else -- namely doctors and hospitals and whomever else might be caught in the reporting noose. That should be a non-starter, as onerous new reporting requirements will be a sure sign that the database is a mess.
Music retailers are doing their best to push music labels toward some sort of Web-based distribution system. A new coalition that includes Best Buy and Tower Records has noticed that they must find a way to give consumers what they want or consumers will go elsewhere.
For one thing, retailers who watch thousands of blank CDs fly off their shelves have got to figure they are missing out on some high-margin sales. Customers are doing a rather clumsy and inefficient dance to get the stuff they want. They are piling in cars to go to stores to buy blank discs. Next they carry the discs back out to their cars and drive somewhere else to copy and/or download the music that they want. They then burn the discs. Only then do they have what they wanted when they entered the store.
The retailers are also looking at offering some sort of streaming and downloading service, areas that the labels have thus far bungled beyond belief. Whether the labels will license any of these ideas is anyone's guess. If Best Buy were smart it would just start its own label and see what happens.
At the same time, the labels face a newly united front from the hardware and software side against any more expansion in copyright laws. The Alliance for Digital Progress opposes any effort to mandate copy protection regimes in media-handling products.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-982170.html
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-981882.html?tag=cd_mh
Quote of the Week
"This law is supposed to be a shield, and I think the RIAA is using it as a sword." -- Les Seagraves, chief privacy officer for Earthlink, on the recent ruling that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act compels ISPs to hand over subscriber info whenever copyright holders demand it.
http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,57360,00.html
Sport Hoot
Reason editor-in-chief Nick Gillespie defends the blighted SUV on CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0301/25/cnnitm.00.html
Number of the Least
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is working to change the name of U.S. 666, which runs through the northwestern part of the state. The Biblical number "discourages tourism and economic development," officials claim.
http://santafenewmexican.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=6775812&BRD=2144&PAG=461&dept_id=367954&rfi=8
IP Not So Freely
Big telecom players are leaning on startup Voice-over-IP companies to change the way they assign phone numbers. The VoIP folks say the complaint is the first step to bringing them under the sway of the FCC.
http://news.com.com/2100-1033-982130.html?tag=lh
Hey, Maker
Chicago police thought that hay from a church's nativity scene was actually more than $660,000 worth of pot. The haul was in the bed of a pickup truck that was stopped last month. The crime lab says it made a mistake.
http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-pot24.html
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