Info/Law

During last year’s Presidential campaign, the Obama team earned accolades for its embrace of new technology to get its message out. During the transition, it extended tools developed during the campaign to allow citizen input on policy.  So, 100 days in, how is the new President doing on fostering technological innovation?

Not too well, according to Wired magazine.   Wired gives the new administration a “D” on copyright policy, a “C” on cyber security, and a “D minus” on privacy.  Speaking just to the copyright question, the Administration has done a lot to justify Wired’s unfavorable assessment thus far.  The Administration has courted controversy by appointing a large number of content-industry lawyers to key law enforcement posts, a practice that the Vice President has promised to continue as the Administration prepares to appoint the first-ever IP czar.  You don’t need to look any further than the listing of amicus curiae briefs filed in MGM v. Grokster to see the conflict between strengthening copyright and strengthening innovation: as participants on both sides of that case well understood, more of one means less of the other.

According to Wired, EFF’s Fred von Lohmann thinks it’s still too early to give the administration a grade on innovation.  The new President has had a great deal on his plate, to be sure, from war to a variety of economic crises to a new public-health scare.  But as I suggested during the campaign, those things don’t displace technology policy, they just crowd it out of the headlines and push it into the back rooms.  The new administration has a technology policy that is revealed by its actions to date, and it’s neither unfair nor premature to evaluate those actions according to their likely effects on innovation.

We will soon have a new data point to add to the mix.  In January, the Supreme Court invited the Solicitor General to file a brief expressing the views of the United States concerning the pending cert petition in CNN, Inc. v. CSC Holdings, no. 08-448 (better known as the Cablevision case).  The Court’s rules don’t oblige the SG to file by any particular date, but it’s highly likely that they will do so before the end of the current Term of the Court this summer.  The SG’s recommendations have historically carried a great deal of weight with the Court, and Dean Kagan’s decision may reveal a great deal about which way the wind is blowing in Washington.  As they used to say, stay tuned!

UPDATE: In a very nicely done brief, the SG has recommended against cert in Cablevision.

Filed under: Copyright, Court Decisions, Digital Media, Internet & Society, Media, Privacy, Security