Clinton & Obama on Technology
Broadband
Freedom to Tinker has analyses of both Obama and Hillary Clinton. He makes a good argument for justifying government investment in broadband infrastructure (and he is a self-professed member of the "laissez-faire, free-market right" and characterizes the "Clinton position ... at its admittedly high level of vagueness, as being roughly on target."
Clinton calls for "tax incentives to encourage broadband deployment in underserved areas." Obama's position is far more detailed and ambitious -- although he doesn't speak to the funding side of the equation.
Two thumbs up.
Net Neutrality
Obama has a clear position, and one that I endorse: telecoms should not be allowed to charge fees that "privilege the content or applications of some web sites and Internet applications over others.” This position extends the fundamental concept of the common carrier law (which enables telephone interoperability, or example).
TechCrunch shows that Clinton favors Net neutrality, but it's not on her innovation page. It is, however, on a January 2007 blog post. Shame on her communication staff.
Two thumbs up.
Copyright
Here, I ran into rough sailing. Using Google to search the candidate sites, I found this from Clinton, May 2007, Silicon Valley -- it does not inspire me because it seems mired in the past. Someone give her Wikinomics so she can see that the really big intellectual property holders are opening their patent lockers.
And if we're going to reap the benefits of innovation, we have to take every step to ensure that our trading partners adhere to a standard of intellectual property protection similar to what we have in the United States.
I know that intellectual property piracy costs companies millions of dollars every year and that piracy and counterfeiting hit our high-tech companies more than any other sector in the economy. So let's get back to free and open scientific enquiry and the promise and provenance of a free and open society, and let's also take the steps necessary to protect the results of that free and open enquiry.
Obama seems in the same historical camp when looking abroad (someone give him a history book -- the one that shows how the young United States infringed on European author rights):
The Motion Picture Association of America estimates that in 2005, more than nine of every 10 DVDs sold in China were illegal copies. The U.S. Trade Representative said 80 percent of all counterfeit products seized at U.S. borders still come from China. Barack Obama will work to ensure intellectual property is protected in foreign markets, and promote greater cooperation on international standards that allow our technologies to compete everywhere.
Intellectual property is to the digital age what physical goods were to the industrial age. Barack Obama believes we need to update and reform our copyright and patent systems to promote civic discourse, innovation and investment while ensuring that intellectual property owners are fairly treated.
Two thumbs down. (Someone should send these two graphs to Lessig.)
I also learned that both Clinton and Obama advocate increased transparency in government communication with citizens, a good thing. Obama specifically mentions opening the patent process to "citizen review" (a trial is ongoing). And Clinton emphasizes the need for public investment in R&D, something that has declined dramatically in recent decades.
Read more: from Clinton, her position on innovation; from Obama, his technology and innovation white paper.
Comments
I am afraid that these topics are a bit outdated from a technology point of view. The Neutrality one is interesting, but only as much as it is linked to the anti-trust laws. What mines the technology field at the moment is the attitude towards open source software and the relationship between anti-competitive practices by some companies and the abuse the same companies make of US intellectual property laws.
Patents on software and abuse of dominant position in the market are the main issues. That is, if we stick to information technologies.
If we go into other technologies, I would be interested to know what are the candidates intentions in regards to biotechnologies (genomics, for instance), space technologies, environmental technologies, military technologies, etc.
Hi, Alphast!
Those two — broadband and net neutrality — may not be impt in Europe but they are very impt in the US. Each year our world ranking in % of homes with broadband declines — even with our inflated estimates of how many people do have access.
I’m using “copyright” as a short cut term for intellectual property, but I’m focused on digital writing, music, movies, etc more than patents & research.
Privacy is impt, too, but should be separate from technology as a policy, IMO.
Ok Kathy, fair point I guess. I do wonder though what is the position of both candidates towards the blatant abuse of dominant position by technology companies. I know anti-trust laws are in place in the USA, but strangely enough, they don’t seem to apply to tech companies. Is there a reason behind this, or is it just the result of ignorance from the judicial system?
Hi, Alphast — that’s a good question. Given their views on copyright, my guess is that they support dominant tech firms.
For the courts to act, there has to be a suit. Recall how long it took to get an action against MSFT in the courts. Not sure which other “blatent abuses” you’re talking about!
IMO, we have just as much to worry about in consolidation of media outlets.
I totally agree on the media aspect. And this is as much a European problem as a US one. It is global, actually.
By the way, I renamed my personal blog. In case you wondered, yes, the new name is a direct allusion to yours. I hope you won’t take offense.
As for “blatent abuses”, I was speaking of MS corp., but also other ones such as Yahoo or Google using their position and the US patent law to put their hands or simple ideas where there is difficulty to prove anteriority and more importantly where, in EU laws, patent system would not even be applicable. I am referring for instance to the patent on the “progression bar for uploads”, the attack on GNU Linux by an ex-Novell partner, etc.
I think that one technology infrastructure project that President Obama should consider is the Trans-Global Highway, proposed by Frank X. Didik a number of years ago. According to Didik, the proposed “highway”, which would contain roads, rail roads, water, oil and gas pipes as well electric and communication cables. The highway would use and standardize the existing road networks and build new roads as well as a number of key tunnels. Interestingly, the longest Tunnel in the proposal, would still be shorter than the longest existing tunnel today. It would seem that there are many advantages to the construction of the Trans Global Highway including vastly lower cost and faster shipping, better allocation of resources, the ability of utilizing raw materials and much lower carbon emissions, than the existing transportation system. The highway would open up a new era of international cooperation. The Trans-Global Highway site is located at http://www.TransGlobalHighway.com