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Weiye Loh

The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. Corporations | The Big Picture - 0 views

www.ritholtz.com/...you-vs-corporations

Corporatism Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 29 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • For a long time, American politics has been defined by a Left/Right dynamic. It was Liberals versus Conservatives on a variety of issues. Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Tax Cuts vs. More Spending, Pro-War vs Peaceniks, Environmental Protections vs. Economic Growth, Pro-Union vs. Union-Free, Gay Marriage vs. Family Values, School Choice vs. Public Schools, Regulation vs. Free Markets.
  • The new dynamic, however, has moved past the old Left Right paradigm. We now live in an era defined by increasing Corporate influence and authority over the individual. These two “interest groups” – I can barely suppress snorting derisively over that phrase – have been on a headlong collision course for decades, which came to a head with the financial collapse and bailouts. Where there is massive concentrations of wealth and influence, there will be abuse of power.  The Individual has been supplanted in the political process nearly entirely by corporate money, legislative influence, campaign contributions, even free speech rights.
  • It is now an Individual vs. Corporate debate – and the Humans are losing. Consider: • Many of the regulations that govern energy and banking sector were written by Corporations; • The biggest influence on legislative votes is often Corporate Lobbying; • Corporate ability to extend copyright far beyond what original protections amounts to a taking of public works for private corporate usage; • PAC and campaign finance by Corporations has supplanted individual donations to elections; • The individuals’ right to seek redress in court has been under attack for decades, limiting their options. • DRM and content protection undercuts the individual’s ability to use purchased content as they see fit; • Patent protections are continually weakened. Deep pocketed corporations can usurp inventions almost at will; • The Supreme Court has ruled that Corporations have Free Speech rights equivalent to people; (So much for original intent!) None of these are Democrat/Republican conflicts, but rather, are corporate vs. individual issues.
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  • What does it mean when we can no longer distinguish between the actions of the left and the right? If that dynamic no longer accurately distinguishes what occurs, why are so many of our policy debates framed in Left/Right terms? In many ways, American society is increasingly less married to this dynamic: Party Affiliation continues to fall, approval of Congress is at record lows, and voter participation hovers at very low rates.
  • There is some pushback already taking place against the concentration of corporate power: Mainstream corporate media has been increasingly replaced with user created content – YouTube and Blogs are increasingly important to news consumers (especially younger users). Independent voters are an increasingly larger share of the US electorate. And I suspect that much of the pushback against the Elizabeth Warren’s concept of a Financial Consumer Protection Agency plays directly into this Corporate vs. Individual fight. But the battle lines between the two groups have barely been drawn. I expect this fight will define American politics over the next decade.
  • Weiye Loh on 29 Sep 10
     
    The Left Right Paradigm is Over: Its You vs. Corporations
Weiye Loh

Book Review: "Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Tr... - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...aomi-oreskes-and-erik-m-conway

Science Uncertainty Political Economy

shared by Weiye Loh on 19 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Merchant of Doubt is exactly what its subtitle says: a historical view of how a handful of scientists have obscured the truth on matters of scientific fact.
  • it was a very small group who were responsible for creating a great deal of doubt on a variety of issues. The book opens in 1953, where the tobacco industry began to take action to obscure the truth about smoking’s harmful effects, when its relationship to cancer first received widespread media attention.
  • The tobacco industry exploited scientific tendency to be conservative in drawing conclusions, to throw up a handful of cherry-picked data and misleading statistics and to “spin unreasonable doubt.” This tactic, combined with the media’s adherence to the “fairness doctrine” which was interpreted as giving equal time “to both sides [of an issue], rather than giving accurate weight to both sides” allowed the tobacco industry to delay regulation for decades.
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  • The natural scientific doubt was this: scientists could not say with absolute certainty that smoking caused cancer, because there wasn’t an invariable effect. “Smoking does not kill everyone who smokes, it only kills about half of them.” All scientists could say was that there was an extremely strong association between smoking and serious health risks
  • the “Tobacco Strategy” was created, and had two tactics: To “use normal scientific doubt to undermine the status of actual scientific knowledge” and To exploit the media’s adherence to the fairness doctrine, which would give equal weight to each side of a debate, regardless of any disparity in the supporting scientific evidence
  • Fred Seitz was a scientist who learned the Tobacco Strategy first-hand. He had an impressive resume. An actual rocket scientist, he helped build the atomic bomb in the 1940s, worked for NATO in the 1950s, was president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in the 1960s, and of Rockefeller University in the 1970s.
  • After his retirement in 1979, Seitz took on a job for the tobacco industry. Over the next 6 years, he doled out $45 million of R.J. Reynolds’ money to fund biomedical research to create “an extensive body of scientifically well-grounded data useful in defending the industry against attacks” by such means as focussing on alternative “causes or development mechanisms of chronic degenerative diseases imputed to cigarettes.” He was joined by, most notably, two other physicists: William Nierenberg, who also worked on the atom bomb in the 1940s, submarine warfare, NATO, and was appointed director or the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1965; and Robert Jastrow, who founded NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which he directed until he retired in 1981 to teach at Dartmouth College.
  • In 1984, these three founded the think tank, the George C. Marshall Institute
  • None of these men were experts in environmental and health issues, but they all “used their scientific credentials to present themselves as authorities, and they used their authority to discredit any science they didn’t like.” They turned out to be wrong, in terms of the science, on every issue they weighed in on. But they turned out to be highly successful in preventing or limiting regulation that the scientific evidence would warrant.
  • The bulk of the book details at how these men and others applied the Tobacco Strategy to create doubt on the following issues: the unfeasibility of the Strategic Defense Initiative (Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars”), and the resultant threat of nuclear winter that Carl Sagan, among others, pointed out acid rain depletion of the ozone layer second-hand smoke, and most recently, and significantly, global warming.
  • Having pointed out the dangers the doubt-mongers pose, Oreskes and Conway propose a remedy: an emphasis on scientific literacy, not in the sense of memorizing scientific facts, but in being able to assess which scientists to trust.
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: Ideological Diversity in Academia - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...cal-diversity-in-academia.html

Academia Diversity Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 12 Feb 11 - No Cached
  • Jonathan Haidt's talk (above) at the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology was written up last week in a column by John Tierney in the NY Times.  This was soon followed by a dismissal of the work by Paul Krugman.  The entire sequence is interesting, but for me the best part, and the one that gets to the nub of the issue, is Haight's response to Krugman: My research, like so much research in social psychology, demonstrates that we humans are experts at using reasoning to find evidence for whatever conclusions we want to reach. We are terrible at searching for contradictory evidence. Science works because our peers are so darn good at finding that contradictory evidence for us. Social science — at least my corner of it — is broken because there is nobody to look for contradictory evidence regarding sacralized issues, particularly those related to race, gender, and class. I urged my colleagues to increase our ideological diversity not for any moral reason, but because it will make us better scientists. You do not have that problem in economics where the majority is liberal but there is a substantial and vocal minority of libertarians and conservatives. Your field is healthy, mine is not. Do you think I was wrong to call for my professional organization to seek out a modicum of ideological diversity?
  • On a related note, the IMF review of why the institution failed to warn of the global financial crisis identified a lack of intellectual diversity as being among the factors responsible (PDF): Several cognitive biases seem to have played an important role. Groupthink refers to the tendency among homogeneous, cohesive groups to consider issues only within a certain paradigm and not challenge its basic premises (Janis, 1982). The prevailing view among IMF staff—a cohesive group of macroeconomists—was that market discipline and self-regulation would be sufficient to stave off serious problems in financial institutions. They also believed that crises were unlikely to happen in advanced economies, where “sophisticated” financial markets could thrive safely with minimal regulation of a large and growing portion of the financial system.Everyyone in academia has seen similar dynamics at work.
Weiye Loh

Where Science Meets Politics « Alan Colmes' Liberaland - 0 views

www.alan.com/...where-science-meets-politics

Science Politics

shared by Weiye Loh on 06 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • The New York Times series on the risks of natural gas highlights this problem.More than a quarter-century of efforts by some lawmakers and regulators to force the federal government to police the industry better have been thwarted, as E.P.A. studies have been repeatedly narrowed in scope and important findings have been removed.
  • if, as the article indicates, Republicans from gas drilling states and even the EPA are suppressing research into the dangerous side effects of natural gas extraction to encourage its us at the expense of fuels that are worse for climate change, then it is making a serious mistake. Better to understand the dangers of natural gas drilling, compare them to the benefits of natural gas vs. coal and oil for climate change, and regulate accordingly.
Weiye Loh

Land Destroyer: Alternative Economics - 0 views

landdestroyer.blogspot.com/...alternative-economics.html

New Media Economics

shared by Weiye Loh on 20 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Peer to peer file sharing (P2P) has made media distribution free and has become the bane of media monopolies. P2P file sharing means digital files can be copied and distributed at no cost. CD's, DVD's, and other older forms of holding media are no longer necessary, nor is the cost involved in making them or distributing them along a traditional logistical supply chain. Disc burners, however, allow users the ability to create their own physical copies at a fraction of the cost of buying the media from the stores. Supply and demand is turned on its head as the more popular a certain file becomes via demand, the more of it that is available for sharing, and the easier it is to obtain. Supply and demand increase in tandem towards a lower "price" of obtaining the said file.Consumers demand more as price decreases. Producersnaturally want to produce more of something as priceincreases. Somewhere in between consumers and producers meet at the market price or "marketequilibrium."P2P technology eliminates material scarcity, thus the more afile is in demand, the more people end up downloading it, andthe easier it is for others to find it and download it. Considerthe implications this would have if technology made physicalobjects as easy to "share" as information is now.
  • In the end, it is not government regulations, legal contrivances, or licenses that govern information, but rather the free market mechanism commonly referred to as Adam Smith's self regulating "Invisible Hand of the Market." In other words, people selfishly seeking accurate information for their own benefit encourage producers to provide the best possible information to meet their demand. While this is not possible in a monopoly, particularly the corporate media monopoly of the "left/right paradigm" of false choice, it is inevitable in the field of real competition that now exists online due to information technology.
  • Compounding the establishment's troubles are cheaper cameras and cheaper, more capable software for 3D graphics, editing, mixing, and other post production tasks, allowing for the creation of an alternative publishing, audio and video industry. "Underground" counter-corporate music and film has been around for a long time but through the combination of technology and the zealous corporate lawyers disenfranchising a whole new generation that now seeks an alternative, it is truly coming of age.
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  • With a growing community of people determined to become collaborative producers rather than fit into the producer/consumer paradigm, and 3D files for physical objects already being shared like movies and music, the implications are profound. Products, and the manufacturing technology used to make them will continue to drop in price, become easier to make for individuals rather than large corporations, just as media is now shifting into the hands of the common people. And like the shift of information, industry will move from the elite and their agenda of preserving their power, to the end of empowering the people.
  • In a future alternative economy where everyone is a collaborative designer, producer, and manufacturer instead of passive consumers and when problems like "global climate change," "overpopulation," and "fuel crises" cross our path, we will counter them with technical solutions, not political indulgences like carbon taxes, and not draconian decrees like "one-child policies."
  • We will become the literal architects of our own future in this "personal manufacturing" revolution. While these technologies may still appear primitive, or somewhat "useless" or "impractical" we must remember where our personal computers stood on the eve of the dawning of the information age and how quickly they changed our lives. And while many of us may be unaware of this unfolding revolution, you can bet the globalists, power brokers, and all those that stand to lose from it not only see it but are already actively fighting against it.Understandably it takes some technical know-how to jump into the personal manufacturing revolution. In part 2 of "Alternative Economics" we will explore real world "low-tech" solutions to becoming self-sufficient, local, and rediscover the empowerment granted by doing so.
Weiye Loh

China used prisoners in lucrative internet gaming work | World news | guardian.co.uk - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...prisoners-internet-gaming-scam

Games Cultural Industries Prison Labour

shared by Weiye Loh on 26 May 11 - No Cached
  • "Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."
  • "If I couldn't complete my work quota, they would punish me physically. They would make me stand with my hands raised in the air and after I returned to my dormitory they would beat me with plastic pipes. We kept playing until we could barely see things," he said.
  • "gold farming", the practice of building up credits and online value through the monotonous repetition of basic tasks in online games such as World of Warcraft. The trade in virtual assets is very real, and outside the control of the games' makers. Millions of gamers around the world are prepared to pay real money for such online credits, which they can use to progress in the online games.The trading of virtual currencies in multiplayer games has become so rampant in China that it is increasingly difficult to regulate. In April, the Sichuan provincial government in central China launched a court case against a gamer who stole credits online worth about 3000rmb.
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  • lack of regulations has meant that even prisoners can be exploited in this virtual world for profit.
  • The emergence of gold farming as a business in China – whether in prisons or sweatshops could raise new questions over the exporting of goods real or virtual from the country."Prison labour is still very widespread – it's just that goods travel a much more complex route to come to the US these days. And it is not illegal to export prison goods to Europe, said Nicole Kempton from the Laogai foundation, a Washington-based group which opposes the forced labour camp system in China.
Weiye Loh

Evaluating The Evidence for Cell Phones and WiFi « Critical Thinking « Skepti... - 0 views

www.skepticnorth.com/...dence-for-cell-phones-and-wifi

Mobile Wi-Fi Radio Waves Cancer Uncertainty

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • he “weight of evidence” approach to evaluation of causality is often vilified by cell phone and WiFi scare mongers as being an inadequate way to judge the evidence – often because it disagrees with their own sentiments about the science.  If you can’t disqualify the evidence, then you can go after the method of evaluation and disqualify that, right?  Of course, the weight of evidence approach is often portrayed as a dumbshow of putting all the “positive” trials on one side of the scale and all of the “negative” trials on the other and taking the difference in mass as the evidence.  This is how Dr. Phillips characterised it in his paper on electromagnetic fields and DNA damage, as well as his appearance on CBC Radio.  Of course, the procedure is much more like a systematic review, where all of the papers, regardless of their outcomes, are weighed for their quality. (The higher quality studies will have good internal and external validity, proper blinding and randomisation, large enough sample size, proper controls and good statistical analysis; as well as being reproduced by independent investigators.) Then they are tallied and a rational conclusion is offered as to the most likely state of the evidence (of course, it is much more involved than I am stating, but suffice it to say, it does not involve a scale.)   This is standard operating procedure and, in fact, is what we all do when we are evaluating evidence: we decide which studies are good and we pool the evidence before we make a decision.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Jun 11
     
    n many discussions of the "dangers" of WiFi and cell phones, the precautionary principle is evoked. It is the idea that we have "an obligation, if the level of harm may be high, for action to prevent or minimise such harm even when the absence of scientific certainty makes it difficult to predict the likelihood of harm occurring, or the level of harm should it occur."  It is important to note that the precautionary principle or approach is required when we do not have a scientific consensus or if we have a lack of scientific certainty.  It is used often in European regulation of potential health and environmental hazards.  "Scientific certainty" is an important clause here, because it does not mean 100% certainty. Science can never give that absolute a result and if we required 100% certainty of no risk, we would not walk out our front doors or even get out of bed, lest we have a mishap.
Weiye Loh

Net-Neutrality: The First Amendment of the Internet | LSE Media Policy Project - 0 views

blogs.lse.ac.uk/...irst-amendment-of-the-internet

Net Neutrality

shared by Weiye Loh on 30 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • debates about the nature, the architecture and the governing principles of the internet are not merely technical or economic discussions.  Above all, these debates have deep political, social, and cultural implications and become a matter of public, national and global interest.
  • In many ways, net neutrality could be considered the first amendment of the internet; no pun intended here. However, just as with freedom of speech the principle of net neutrality cannot be approached as absolute or as a fetish. Even in a democracy we cannot say everything applies all the time in all contexts. Limiting the core principle of freedom of speech in a democracy is only possible in very specific circumstances, such as harm, racism or in view of the public interest. Along the same lines, compromising on the principle of net neutrality should be for very specific and clearly defined reasons that are transparent and do not serve commercial private interests, but rather public interests or are implemented in view of guaranteeing an excellent quality of service for all.
  • One of the only really convincing arguments of those challenging net neutrality is that due to the dramatic increases in streaming activity and data-exchange through peer-to-peer networks, the overall quality of service risks being compromised if we stick to data being treated on a first come first serve basis. We are being told that popular content will need to be stored closer to the consumer, which evidently comes at an extra cost.
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  • Implicitly two separate debates are being collapsed here and I would argue that we need to separate both. The first one relates to the stability of the internet as an information and communication infrastructure because of the way we collectively use that infrastructure. The second debate is whether ISPs and telecommunication companies should be allowed to differentiate in their pricing between different levels of quality of access, both towards consumers and content providers.
  • Just as with freedom of speech, circumstances can be found in which the principle while still cherished and upheld, can be adapted and constrained to some extent. To paraphrase Tim Wu (2008), the aspiration should still be ‘to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally’, but maybe some forms of content should be treated more equally than others in order to guarantee an excellent quality of service for all. However, the societal and political implications of this need to be thought through in detail and as with freedom of speech itself, it will, I believe, require strict regulation and conditions.
  • In regards to the first debate on internet stability, a case can be made for allowing internet operators to differentiate between different types of data with different needs – if for any reason the quality of service of the internet as a whole cannot be guaranteed anymore. 
  • Concerning the second debate on differential pricing, it is fair to say that from a public interest and civic liberty perspective the consolidation and institutionalization of a commercially driven two-tiered internet is not acceptable and impossible to legitimate. As is allowing operators to differentiate in the quality of provision of certain kind of content above others.  A core principle such as net neutrality should never be relinquished for the sake of private interests and profit-making strategies – on behalf of industry or for others. If we need to compromise on net neutrality it would always have to be partial, to be circumscribed and only to improve the quality of service for all, not just for the few who can afford it.
  • Separating these two debates exposes the crux of the current net-neutrality debate. In essence, we are being urged to give up on the principle of net-neutrality to guarantee a good quality of service.  However, this argument is actually a pre-text for the telecom industry to make content-providers pay for the facilitation of access to their audiences – the internet subscribers. And this again can be linked to another debate being waged amongst content providers: how do we make internet users pay for the content they access online? I won’t open that can of worms here, but I will make my point clear.  Telecommunication industry efforts to make content providers pay for access to their audiences do not offer legitimate reasons to suspend the first amendment of the internet.
Weiye Loh

When information is power, these are the questions we should be asking | Online Journal... - 0 views

onlinejournalismblog.com/...-questions-we-should-be-asking

Data Power Open

shared by Weiye Loh on 15 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • “There is absolutely no empiric evidence that shows that anyone actually uses the accounts produced by public bodies to make any decision. There is no group of principals analogous to investors. There are many lists of potential users of the accounts. The Treasury, CIPFA (the UK public sector accounting body) and others have said that users might include the public, taxpayers, regulators and oversight bodies. I would be prepared to put up a reward for anyone who could prove to me that any of these people have ever made a decision based on the financial reports of a public body. If there are no users of the information then there is no point in making the reports better. If there are no users more technically correct reports do nothing to improve the understanding of public finances. In effect all that better reports do is legitimise the role of professional accountants in the accountability process.
  • raw data – and the ability to interrogate that – should instead be made available because (quoting Anthony Hopwood): “Those with the power to determine what enters into organisational accounts have the means to articulate and diffuse their values and concerns, and subsequently to monitor, observe and regulate the actions of those that are now accounted for.”
  • Data is not just some opaque term; something for geeks: it’s information: the raw material we deal in as journalists. Knowledge. Power. The site of a struggle for control. And considering it’s a site that journalists have always fought over, it’s surprisingly placid as we enter one of the most important ages in the history of information control.
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  • 3 questions to ask of any transparency initiative: If information is to be published in a database behind a form, then it’s hidden in plain sight. It cannot be easily found by a journalist, and only simple questions will be answered. If information is to be published in PDFs or JPEGs, or some format that you need proprietary software to see, then it cannot be easily be questioned by a journalist If you will have to pass a test to use the information, then obstacles will be placed between the journalist and that information The next time an organisation claims that they are opening up their information, tick those questions off. (If you want more, see Gurstein’s list of 7 elements that are needed to make effective use of open data).
  • Weiye Loh on 15 Jul 11
     
    control of information still represents the exercise of power, and how shifts in that control as a result of the transparency/open data/linked data agenda are open to abuse, gaming, or spin.
Weiye Loh

Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog: IPCC and COI: Flashback 2004 - 0 views

rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/...cc-and-coi-flashback-2004.html

Politics Science Activism NGO

shared by Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • In this case the NGOs and other groups represent environmental and humanitarian groups that have put together a report (in PDF) on what they see as needed and unnecessary policy actions related to climate change. They put together a nice glossy report with findings and recommendations such as: *Limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees (Celsius, p. 4) *Extracting the World Bank from fossil fuels (p. 15) *Opposing the inclusion of carbon sinks in the [Kyoto] Protocol (p. 22)
  • It is troubling that the Chair of the IPCC would lend his name and organizational affiliation to a set of groups with members engaged actively in political advocacy on climate change. Even if Dr. Pachauri feels strongly about the merit of the political agenda proposed by these groups, at a minimum his endorsement creates a potential perception that the IPCC has an unstated political agenda. This is compounded by the fact that the report Dr. Pachauri tacitly endorses contains statements that are scientifically at odds with those of the IPCC.
  • perhaps most troubling is that by endorsing this group’s agenda he has opened the door for those who would seek to discredit the IPCC by alleging exactly such a bias. (And don’t be surprised to see such statements forthcoming.) If the IPCC’s role is indeed to act as an honest broker, then it would seem to make sense that its leadership ought not blur that role by endorsing, tacitly or otherwise, the agendas of particular groups. There are plenty of appropriate places for political advocacy on climate change, but the IPCC does not seem to me to be among those places.
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  • Organized by the New Economics Foundation and the Working Group on Climate and Development, the report (in PDF) is actually pretty good and contains much valuable information on climate change and development (that is, once you get past the hype of the press release and its lack of precision in disaggregating climate and vulnerability as sources of climate-related impacts). The participating organizations have done a nice job integrating considerations of climate change and development, a perspective that is certainly needed. More generally, the IPCC suffers because it no longer considers “policy options” under its mandate. Since its First Assessment Report when it did consider policy options, the IPCC has eschewed responsibility for developing and evaluating a wide range of possible policy options on climate change. By deciding to policy outside of its mandate since 1992, the IPCC, ironically, leaves itself more open to charges of political bias. It is time for the IPCC to bring policy back in, both because we need new and innovative options on climate, but also because the IPCC has great potential to serve as an honest broker. But until it does, its leadership would be well served to avoid either the perception or the reality of endorsing particular political perspectives.
  • Weiye Loh on 21 Jun 11
     
    Consider the following imaginary scenario. NGOs and a few other representatives of the oil and gas industry decide to band together to produce a report on what they see as needed and unnecessary policy actions related to climate change. They put together a nice glossy report with findings and recommendations such as: *Coal is the fuel of the future, we must mine more. *CO2 regulations are too costly. *Climate change will be good for agriculture. In addition, the report contains some questionable scientific statements and associations. Imagine further that the report contains a preface authored by a prominent scientist who though unpaid for his work lends his name and credibility to the report. How might that scientist be viewed by the larger community? Answers that come to mind include: "A tool of industry," "Discredited," "Biased," "Political Advocate." It is likely that in such a scenario that connection of the scientist to the political advocacy efforts of the oil and gas industry would provide considerable grist for opponents of the oil and gas industry, and specifically a basis for highlighting the appearance or reality of a compromised position of the scientist. Fair enough?
Weiye Loh

Google to be formally investigated over potential abuse of web dominance | Technology |... - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...ation-federal-trade-commission

Google Monopoly Anti-Competition Antitrust

shared by Weiye Loh on 25 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • The inquiry will examine the heart of Google's search-advertising business, and the source of most of Google's revenue. Google accounts for around two-thirds of internet searches in the US (and close to 90% in the UK) and according to critics unfairly uses that dominance to favour its own growing network of services.Last November, the European commission opened its own formal investigation into allegations that Google discriminated against competing services in its search results and prevented some websites from using ads by Google competitors.
  • Legal experts said the investigation could be similar in scale to the massive antitrust probe of Microsoft, which started in 1991 and ended in a settlement a decade later. Professor Joshua Wright of George Mason Law School said: "The investigation will be of a comparable scale to that of Microsoft."But he said the chances of Google being found guilty of antitrust behaviour, as Microsoft was, were far smaller. Wright said for the US to bring a successful case against Google, it would have to prove the company was harming consumers. "As an outsider I would say that obstacle is far higher for them today with Google than it was back then with Microsoft," he said.
  • He said Google faced a higher risk in the EU case but that in either case the investigations were likely to have a profound impact on the firm."Even if the charges are ultimately bogus, they will occupy many, many hours of managements time and attention," he said.The FTC's investigations are likely to widen to other companies as official requests for information about their dealings with Google.The company has long denied any anticompetitive behaviour, arguing that users can easily click on other choices on the web.
  • Weiye Loh on 25 Jun 11
     
    US regulators are poised to launch a formal investigation into whether Google has abused its dominance on the web, according to reports. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is days away from serving subpoenas on the internet giant in what could be the biggest investigation yet of the search company's business, according to The Wall Street Journal. Both Google and the FTC declined to comment. A wide-ranging investigation into Google has been discussed for months. Google has faced several antitrust probes in recent years, and is already the subject of a similar investigation in Europe. In the US inquiries have so far largely been limited to reviews of the company's mergers and acquisitions.
Weiye Loh

Everything is a Remix Part 4 on Vimeo - 0 views

vimeo.com/36881035

Creativity Law Regulation Remix Culture

shared by Weiye Loh on 24 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • Weiye Loh on 24 Feb 12
     
    Our system of law doesn't acknowledge the derivative nature of creativity. Instead, ideas are regarded as property, as unique and original lots with distinct boundaries. But ideas aren't so tidy. They're layered, they're interwoven, they're tangled. And when the system conflicts with the reality... the system starts to fail.
Weiye Loh

Card fraud: Banks not doing enough - 0 views

business.asiaone.com/...A1Story20090812-160631.html

Identity Credit Card Cashless technologies Responsibilities fraud

shared by Weiye Loh on 17 Aug 09 - Cached
  • Customers cannot be faulted for negligence by merchants to verify signatures on credit cards
  • Customers cannot be faulted for negligence by merchants to verify signatures on credit cards, or for the banks' failure to implement an effective foolproof secondary security mechanism to protect cardholders.
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Aug 09
     
    Contrast this case in Singapore to other countries like the United States or Malaysia that limits the liability of the consumers of such cases to a specific amount - which policy is better? On another note, I have always been intrigued by the fact that organizations, while being infinitely more powerful, are regarded as individuals with individual rights legally. What does this have to say about the identity of organizations?
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Aug 09
     
    The issue of responsibility was heavily debated and the parties identified are 1. the credit card owners, 2. the banks, 3. the retailers. 4. government bodies e.g. MAS, CASE on their regulations and policies. Which party do you all think should shoulder the moral obligations of owning the technology of cashless payment? How then should this translate to the laws and enforcement?
  • Weiye Loh on 17 Aug 09
     
    The case came to light when a certain Mdm Tan Shock Ling's credit cards got stolen. Within an hour, the fraudsters used her credit cards to chock up bills amounting to $17k. She was only notified of the purchases when a bank called her to confirm if she has just purchased a rolex watch using one of her credit card. The banks requested her to pay back the bills because they will only cover payments made after she has reported the lost of her credit cards. There were a few articles regarding the issue, with Newpaper sending their reporters (Chinese women) out shopping with an Indian man's credit card. Their investigative journalism showed that retailers are generally lax in their verification of the purchaser's identity vis-a-vis the name and signature.
joanne ye

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | When can you speak ill of the dead? - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8170429.stm

shared by joanne ye on 19 Aug 09 - Cached
  • "It's a hostage to fortune to say nice things when someone dies. And reacting to this one was particularly tricky. For a long time he's been Wacko Jacko. So he wasn't someone who was unequivocally lauded."
  • joanne ye on 19 Aug 09
     
    Case It has been almost two months since Michael Jackson died. Some would call him "the King of Pop" and some would call him "Wacko Jacko". The latter term mostly derived due to his past child abuse cases, which he was never convicted and once acquitted. Problem The judgement of whether Michael Jackson was a good person is hard to reach a conclusion because we will always get both positive and negative accounts. Regardless of whether these accounts constitute misinformation, people (even those who have never met him) continue to talk about him because he was a celebrity (moreover one who had recently passed away). Given his recent death, negative comments (especially if they are misinformation) can really hurt those who love (i.e. family members) or adore (i.e. fans) him. However, positive comments can be misinformation too. Does his recent death make positive misinformation more acceptable? If he really did commit child abuse crimes (note: big assumption here), does that make positive misinformation towards him unjustified (especially to his victims)? Hence, the ethical problem here is the way people should go about talking about other people. Questions 1. We know the old saying, "don't speak ill of the dead". This is in conjunction with Kant's categorical imperative to respect other human beings. Adopting duty-based morality, should the negative comments about Michael Jackson (whether they constitute misinformation or not) be reduced or even stopped? 2. Adopting rights-based morality (specifically the right to free speech) should people be allowed to talk about whatever they want (including new media platform) in whatever way they want to? Should regulation by the authority be implemented? 3. Adopting similar duty-based morality to question one (specifically the virtue of not lying), should positive comments about Michael Jackson (whether they constitute misinformation or not) be increased or even exaggerated? 4. If Michael Jackson really did commit
  • joanne ye on 19 Aug 09
     
    4. If Michael Jackson really did commit child abuse crimes (note: big assumption here), due to the clash of duties (respect VS. not lying), should we talk about those crimes when we discuss about him in a public platform? Does just consequentialism come into play here?
Low Yunying

Pro-democracy activist placed on trial or political blogging - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html

politics blogging

shared by Low Yunying on 30 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Low Yunying on 30 Sep 09
     
    This case study is dated back at 2001, when a pro-democracy activist in China was put on trial in western China for publishing political materials on the Web. Huang Qi was arrested after publishing articles commemorating the 1989 protests in Tiananmen square on his Web site, 6-4tianwang.com. He also uploaded information on his site about the democracy movement, Falun Gong and the independence movement in the northwestern Muslim region of Xinjiang. In fact, Huang Qi remains in detention (as reported by a news article in Feb2009). This brings us to the question of whether it is ethical for the State to curtail an individual's rights to freedom of expression. After all, he was merely publishing articles about an event that has already happened, and he should have the right to upload whatever he feels on his blog. There is also an issue of the violation of human rights as he has been detained for almost ten years and some have reported that he was beaten while in custody. Does the state have the right to intervene and lock the man up for close to a decade over a political blog post? Does the state have the right to stifle any opposing viewpoints or dissent on the internet? Should political views be allowed to aired or should they be moderated for the well-being of the society? After all, dissenting views could lead to bloody events in conflicts between opposing groups and the state. How much should the government intervene in the regulation of the internet? Where is the line to be drawn in terms of freedom of expression?
Chen Guo Lim

Censorship exacerbates stereotypes. - 15 views

Perhaps, censorship does make stereotypes more obvious. What about in the event that censorships maybe employed by governmental regulations, which is almost always the case, if you exclude self ce...

censorship sterotypes

started by Valerie Oon on 01 Sep 09 4 follow-ups, last by Chen Guo Lim on 02 Sep 09
qiyi liao

Online Censorship: Obama urged to fine firms for aiding censors - 3 views

Internet activists are urging Barack Obama to pass legislation that would make it illegal for technology companies to collaborate with authoritarian countries that censor the internet. -The Guardi...

started by qiyi liao on 02 Sep 09 no follow-up yet
Inosha Wickrama

ethical porn? - 50 views

I've seen that video recently. Anyway, some points i need to make. 1. different countries have different ages of consent. Does that mean children mature faster in some countries and not in other...

pornography

started by lee weiting on 30 Aug 09 9 follow-ups, last by Inosha Wickrama on 04 Sep 09
Jody Poh

U.S. students fight copyright law - 9 views

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/11/technology/11iht-download.1.7846678.html?scp=20&sq=copyright&st=Search A student previously fined for breaking copyright laws at Brown University on Rhode Island ...

copyright :file sharing" "Intellectual property rights"

started by Jody Poh on 25 Aug 09 no follow-up yet
Chen Guo Lim

POLICE & THIEF - 5 views

According to the readings, one reason why people do not consider illegal downloads as theft is that it does not deprive others of that item. When I download an mp3 file from, the file will not disa...

started by Magdaleine on 26 Aug 09 1 follow-up, last by Chen Guo Lim on 26 Aug 09
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