Comments
Following some complaints, I’ve opened up the comments for unregistered visitors. So for everyone who’s been dying to take me to task for my uninformed commentary on Gaza, now’s your chance.
What’s he going to say?
We know at least the broad strokes of Obama’s economic plans, but I’ll be listening closely on Tuesday to hear what he has to say about the situation in Gaza. From an article in Ha’aretz:
“We’ve got plenty to say about Gaza, and on January 20, you’ll hear directly from me,” [Obama] added.
Hopefully we’ll get a substantive idea of what his approach will be coming out of the gate. This preview of his speech, though, doesn’t offer any clues. I’m seeing some hints that Israel’s Western allies, along with Egypt, will indeed be pushing to strengthen Fatah and the PA politically. From the New York Times:
From Sharm el Sheik, the French, British, German, Spanish, Italian and Czech leaders traveled to Jerusalem for dinner with Mr. Olmert, who told his guests that undermining Hamas rule in Gaza depended on strengthening the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, whose power is currently confined to the West Bank.
The Sharm el-Sheikh conference also provided an opportunity to try to shore up the credibility of Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority. The PA, which was ousted from Gaza by Hamas in 2007, has been largely sidelined during the conflict, and Mr Abbas has faced criticism from Palestinians for not responding decisively to the crisis. He took part in the gathering and addressed the press alongside the European leaders.
Meanwhile, Jeffrey Goldberg thinks Fatah may be sharing intelligence with Israel. If this is true, a joint effort to weaken Hamas politically, along with some pressure on Israel to make concessions, could go a long way. I have a feeling the only way for Obama to gain real credibility with the Arab nations would be forcing Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank. Whether this is politically feasible, I have no idea.
YouTube: “Three Strikes and You’re Out”
Nate Anderson at Ars Technica covers what is probably the best cause célèbre I’ve seen for oponents of restrictive copyright enforcement. The article recounts the case of Kevin Lee, a prolific film blogger who used YouTube extensively to publish “video essays” which interspersed his own critical insights with short film clips. Lee’s work demonstrates everything that’s good and noble about the Internet: an unpaid blogger pioneering new avenues of critical discourse, just to share his love of cinema with others. His blog, Shooting Down Pictures, reveals a passionate, intelligent observer documenting his travels through the greatest 1,000 films. Read more about the significance of Lee’s work at The House Next Door.
But all this came to a grinding halt when, after a third DMCA takedown notice was served against Lee, over five hours of his critical commentary was deleted by YouTube and his account closed. I’ve written about what I see as some helpful innovations on YouTube’s part in dealing with copyright, but this “three strikes” rule is absurd on its face. YouTube offers some fair objections to the idea that it should manually review all of these takedown notices, but deleting whole user accounts due to a small ammount of allegedly infringing content is bad for YouTube, bad for free speech, and will ultimately feed the backlash against copyright in general. It’s not even clear that the video that triggered the account deletion was violating copyright; Lee has a strong case that his critical videos fall under fair use protections.
The blame for this doesn’t fall entirely on YouTube, as many of the large rights holders are taking a “shoot first, ask questions later” stance with takedown notices, and of course the DMCA itself encourages this behavior. Any lasting solution will involve a combination of legal reform and consumers creating a shitstorm whenever something like this happens.
[Cross-posted at Emvergeoning]
They bombed what?
So I see that Israel bombed a few things today:
- UN compound hit by Israeli shells, setting its main warehouse for food, fuel and medicine ablaze
- Skyscraper housing international media groups, including the Reuters news agency, hit by Israeli fire
- Al-Quds hospital struck by Israeli artillery, destroying two floors and setting it ablaze
- One of two warehouses used by Red Crescent shelled, setting the building containing relief items on fire
- Jabaliya refugee camp hit. Saeed Seyyam, senior Hamas leader, is killed
I certainly recognize that Hamas encourages this stuff with their own illegal war tactics. But if Obama wants to change America’s relationship with Israel, this war may just provide him with the justification he needs.
A Narrow Path
A little over a week ago, Atlantic blogger Jeffrey Goldberg posted on why he hadn’t written more about Gaza:
I actually feel too close to this problem, a problem that symbolizes all problems. It’s true: I have friends in Gaza about whom I worry a great deal; I’ve seen many people killed in Gaza; I’ve served in the Israeli Army in Gaza; I’ve been kidnapped in Gaza; I’ve reported for years from Gaza; I hope my former army doesn’t kill the wrong people in Gaza; I hope Israeli soldiers all leave Gaza alive; I know they’ll be back in Gaza; I think this operation will work; and I have no actual hope that it will work for very long, because nothing works for very long in the Middle East. Gaza is where dreams of reconciliation go to die. Gaza is where the dream of Palestinian statehood goes to die; Gaza is where the Zionist dream might yet die.
Yesterday the New York Times published a fascinating article by Goldberg about the situation. It’s difficult reading or thinking about the conflict, because opinion has become so calcified, and the discussions involve vastly more heat than light. But Goldberg manages to elucidate the complex relationship between Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, and Iran, while offering the only seemingly plausible path to peace that I’ve heard:
The only small chance for peace today is the same chance that existed before the Gaza invasion: The moderate Arab states, Europe, the United States and, mainly, Israel, must help Hamas’s enemy, Fatah, prepare the West Bank for real freedom, and then hope that the people of Gaza, vast numbers of whom are unsympathetic to Hamas, see the West Bank as an alternative to the squalid vision of Hassan Nasrallah and Nizar Rayyan.
This political solution is in line with Fareed Zakaria’s argument that nations must be liberalized before they can be successfully democratized. Palestinian democratic elections gave us Hamas as a legitimized government. It’s clear that Hamas can neither be negotiated with nor bombed into submission. But if Palestinian government can undergo an internal liberalization, and if Israel responds with more moderation, there may be a narrow path forward.
Life Imitates the Simpsons
Josh Marshall gives Marcus Schrenker “points for originality” for faking his own death in a plane crash in order to escape his mounting financial problems. Problem is, this is exactly how Krusty the Clown faked his death to escape his mounting financial problems on The Simpsons.
Those tax cuts…
Kevin Drum is perplexed by Obama’s apparent good-faith gesture of bipartisanship (including massive tax cuts in his stimulus bill, and then really working to get the support of congressional Republicans). Noam Scheiber sees it as a shrewd trap: give the conservative economic arguments their due, and force the opposition to make unreasonable demands that reveal their true colors. But why couldn’t it be both? If Obama gets strong support for the plan across the aisle, he makes good on his promise to govern as a bipartisan leader. If not, he provides an opening for Senate Democrats to attack the baser motives of their Republican colleagues. Win-win. But then again, maybe Obama’s economic team is just trying to craft good policy.
The Importance of Being at the Inauguration
Nevertheless, even if it is symbolism, the Warren choice strikes me as Obama’s biggest mistake since the election. He’s elevating a conservative religious leader to new heights, giving him stature and credibility, and making his far-right message that much more meaningful when he challenges Obama administration policies in the future.
I’ve heard a lot of liberals make this argument against having Rick Warren deliver the invocation at Obama’s inauguration, but I just don’t buy it. Delivering this invocation is going to give him more credibility than authoring one of the most popular non-fiction books currently in print? Than hosting a high-profile election debate at his church? Than being on all those “most influential leaders” lists published by Time, Newsweek, et al? And of course, you could always make this argument from the other side: by having Warren involved in the innauguration, Obama will carry more influence with evangelicals because it shows he respects their leaders, even though he may disagree with them.
One other factor that is not getting nearly as much attention as it should is that there will be another religious leader at the inauguration (performing the benediction): Rev Dr Joseph Lowery. You can read more about him here, but suffice it to say that he’s no homophobe.
The Decline and Fall of Net Neutrality
The Wall Street Journal unleashed a firestorm yesterday with its article on the apparent collapse of the net neutrality coalition that included — well, just about everyone except the telecoms: free speech advocates, major technology companies, the FCC, and the Obama administration. As I was reading it, a couple of things jumped out at me. First, the Journal claimed that Lawrence Lessig had recently softened his position on net neutrality. A Stanford Law professor, Lessig founded Creative Commons, an organization dedicated to promoting and defending a set of licenses providing voluntary, less restrictive alternatives to current copyright. As a well-known advocate of open source software and free culture (and an Obama advisor, the Journal is quick to point out), it would be quite a blow indeed were he to abandon net neutrality.
Luckily, a hop over to Lessig’s blog clarifies his stance (which, he says, hasn’t changed in years):
I distinguish between “zero price regulations” (such as Markey’s bill (which I say I am against)) and what I called “zero discriminatory surcharge rules” (which I say I am for). The zero discriminatory surcharge rules are just that — rules against discriminatory surcharges — charging Google something different from what a network charges iFilm. The regulation I call for is a “MFN” requirement — that everyone has the right to the rates of the most favored nation.
This is precisely the position that the Journal breathlessly attributes to me today. It represents no change — no “softening” no “shift” in my views.
Now no doubt my position might be wrong. Some friends in the network neutrality movement as well as some scholars believe it is wrong — that it doesn’t go far enough. But the suggestion that the position is “recent” is baseless. If I’m wrong, I’ve always been wrong.
Ars Technica, with their own quick response, points out that what Google is trying to do — the lynchpin of the article — does not seem to violate net neutrality principles in the first place. They point to a helpful post from Google’s Public Policy blog, which addresses the WSJ directly:
Some critics have questioned whether improving Web performance through edge caching — temporary storage of frequently accessed data on servers that are located close to end users — violates the concept of network neutrality. As I said last summer, this myth — which unfortunately underlies a confused story in Monday’s Wall Street Journal — is based on a misunderstanding of the way in which the open Internet works.
…
Despite the hyperbolic tone and confused claims in Monday’s Journal story, I want to be perfectly clear about one thing: Google remains strongly committed to the principle of net neutrality, and we will continue to work with policymakers in the years ahead to keep the Internet free and open.
P.S.: The Journal story also quoted me as characterizing President-elect Obama’s net neutrality policies as “much less specific than they were before.” For what it’s worth, I don’t recall making such a comment, and it seems especially odd given that President-elect Obama’s supportive stance on network neutrality hasn’t changed at all.
Unfortunately, the Journal’s article succeeded in stirring up dust rather than clarifying the issues. The type of “edge caching” that Google is attempting does raise some important questions about how close ISPs should be to major content providers. But rather than delving into the possible impact of this particular innovation, the Journal tries to paint a picture of the demise of the net neutrality coalition that just isn’t based in reality, as far as I can tell.
UPDATE: To be fair, a WSJ blogger did follow up with a more balanced and detailed discussion of edge caching. He points to yet another post on Wired, which offers some helpful insights:
So is the WSJ right? Well, while it seems logical to argue that edge caching gives those that use it an unfair fast lane on the web, the reality is that, without edge caching, the whole web might be quite a bit slower.
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